Zuppa's on!

Tonight, I was in the kitchen for quite awhile, but it was well worth it! I made what Jamie Oliver calls "La Mia Ribollita Preferita," his favorite ribollita. This is a Tuscan soup whose name literally means "reboiled." According to Wikipedia, Italians used to make this soup by reheating leftover minestrone soup from a previous meal.

The cannellini beans, which I bought dried, needed to soak in a bowl of water overnight. Before I went to sleep yesterday, I placed my dried beans in a bowl, filled it with water and covered it with some saran wrap. When I got home from work today, the first thing I did was place those beans on the stove in a large pot with some water, a squished tomato, a bay leaf and a small, peeled potato. Dried beans need to cook for about an hour, whereas fresh ones only need about 25 minutes, so I knew I had an hour of simmering ahead of me.



Then I got my mise en place together!



While my beans were cooking, I finely chopped 2 red onions, 2 carrots, 3 stalks of celery and 3 garlic cloves. I placed them all in a pot with some olive oil, a pinch of ground fennel seeds and a little bit of dried red chili, and cooked them on a medium heat, for about 20 minutes. I allowed the mire poix to sweat, without browning. Meanwhile, I cubed some bread and thinly sliced a beautiful bunch of kale.

Once the 20 minutes had passed, I added a can of plum tomatoes and allowed it to simmer for a few more minutes. Once it had simmered, I added the beans from the other pot, after removing the tomato, bay leaf and potato. You want to reserve the cooking liquid to actually make the soup (but I found that if you don't have enough, it works to add some hot water from the sink as well - just make sure you season).



Once the mixture came back to a boil, I added my sliced kale and it immediately started to wilt into the soup. Doesn't it look bright and delicious!?



I softened some cubed semi-stale bread with some of the cooking liquid and then added that to the soup as well. I made this loaf of French Herb bread this weekend, so it wasn't exactly crunchy-stale but it worked for this situation. The bread really thickens up the soup and gives it this fantastic texture!



I continued cooking the soup for another 30 minutes, adding a little more water to loosen it up a bit along the way. It was nice and thick, and the recipe called for 4 big glugs of extra virgin olive oil to top it all off. This gave the soup a lovely sheen and a great silky texture. So comforting on a cold day like this one!



I served the soup with a great panzanella salad, but more on that tomorrow - I figured I'd split this evening's cooking into two posts for two reasons. One, I was racing around the kitchen this evening - these two recipes were pretty labor intensive, and two, tomorrow's my late night at the gym so we'll be eating leftovers for sure!

Buona notte il amichi miei!

A Successful Attempt at a Korean Favorite

Remember my recent post about all different types of Asian cuisine and their differences? Well, tonight I made an attempt at a Korean favorite of ours, Bibimbap. Traditionally, Bibimbap is a dish served in a warm clay pot, consisting of rice, vegetables, thinly sliced beef and a fried egg, topped with a Korean red chile paste. The recipe I decided to use is a part of The Professional Chef, a textbook from The Culinary Institute of America. I usually use this book as a reference guide, in order to master techniques, but I thought I'd give this recipe a shot, and I'm very glad I did!

From Flickr - by Eunmi Han

This particular version of Bibimbap called for some skirt steak to be marinated in some soy sauce, garlic, ginger, green onions, sesame oil, crushed sesame seeds and pepper. The marinade was really tasty and added some great flavor to the dish. Once I'd made the marinade, I put the vegetables together. The recipe called for daikon, radish, carrots and cucumbers all julienned. One of my cucumbers had gone bad in the refrigerator :( and I didn't have any daikon, but I used some jicama instead, and also added some julienned shiitake mushrooms as well. Even though the recipe called for raw vegetables, I threw them in the wok with some peanut oil for a few minutes, just to soften the carrots and take the chill off the rest of the veggies. Everytime I've ever had Bibimbap, the vegetables have been cooked so I altered that part a little bit. I threw them in a stainless steel bowl and topped it with a pot lid so that steam could continue to cook the veggies a little bit while I finished off the rest of the dish.

While my rice cooked in my wonderful rice cooker, I threw the marinated beef into the wok with a bit of vegetable oil. It didn't take more than a few minutes for the small pieces to cook through, and while that was happening, I fried two eggs in a skillet, keeping them "sunny-side up" so that they would be runny when the yolk was broken over the dish. My rice cooker clicked when it was finished and I spooned some sticky rice onto each plate. I topped the rice with my steaming carrots, jicama, radish and shiitake mushrooms. I sprinkled some chiffonade of iceberg lettuce on top of that, and as it started to wilt from the heat, I piled on some beef. Lastly, I laid the fried egg on top of all of this!

For the sauce, the recipe really just called for Korean Red Chile paste but I wanted to thin the paste a bit so I mixed in some fish sauce, some rice wine vinegar and a little bit of sweet rice wine. It did exactly what I wanted it to do, and thinned down to more of a sauce...which was great for dripping over the already delicious concoction.

Normally, this dish is served in a clay dish that stays warm for an extended period, and continues to cook the rice while you eat, making it crispy and crunchy on the sides of the bowl. It adds something special to the dish, but even without those clay dishes, I really think I nailed the authenticity. It was so delicious and reminiscent of our trips to Korean restaurants! It's always a good feeling when you know you can make something that you love to order out - less money spent, more confidence in my culinary achievements! Try making your favorite restaurant dish at home...and share your experiences with us! We're rooting for you!

Also, check out my new and improved Stock Your Kitchen page. I've renovated it so that you can automatically add my recommendations to your Amazon shopping cart, should you be interested in purchasing something that I've mentioned in any of my posts. Hopefully, this will be more convenient!

Another Important French Term

It seems that the French have a corner on the market of important cooking techniques, and the mirepoix is one of the most important. Have you noticed that many recipes start with an assortment of diced onions, carrots and celery? That's the mirepoix! (pronounced meer-pwah)

Mirepoix for Tomato Sauce

In all its forms, either raw, roasted, or sauteed in butter, this trio is the base for many stocks, stews, and sauces. While this is the most common threesome, other cuisines have their own variations. In Italian culture, it is known as soffritto, and involves olive oil (instead of butter), as well as garlic, fennel, leek and herbs. In Creole cuisine, it is known as the Holy Trinity, and uses onion, bell pepper and celery.

The reason for the use of onions, carrots and celery (usually in a 50%, 25%, 25% ratio respectively) is the flavor and aroma that these three ingredients add to a dish. When chopping, there's not much need for uniformity among your cuts, since the vegetables cook down so much during the process. They get extremely soft and almost melt into the surrounding ingredients, adding body and thickness to the stew, soup or sauce. The smaller the dice, the quicker the aromas and flavors are released. In the event that you are looking to make a "white" stock (stock that has little to no color to it), substitutions for the carrots include parsnips and/or mushroom trimmings.

Roughly chopped mirepoix (Wikipedia)

I keep these three ingredients on hand at all times, and they usually have a starring role on my grocery lists as well. So many things start with this threesome, its just easier to always make sure you have enough on hand. Even if you don't have a recipe to go on, it's the base for basic marinara sauces, as well as most soups and stocks, so even if you are throwing something together during that "clean out the fridge" week, it is best to have them on hand!

Fun Fact: In French restaurants, mirepoix is an important item in every line cook's "mise en place" (the prepared food items at their cooking stations that save them the trouble of making each tiny part of a recipe every time an order comes in). Read more at Suite101: Mirepoix: A combination of onion, carrot and celery