French Onion Soup

Soup season is here! This is a recipe I have tinkered with for awhile and think this is super easy and flavorful!

All you need is:
a stick of butter
4 or 5 Vidalia onions
4 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
some thyme
1 cup of red wine
3 tablespoons of flour
1.5 to 2 quarts of beef broth
Gruyere cheese
bread

First melt the butter. Then add chopped up onions, diced garlic, bay leaves, sprinkle some thyme with salt and pepper. Let caramelize for about 30 minutes.

Add one cup of red wine (wine you would drink) and boil for about 10 minutes until it is reduced. Remove bay leaves.

Then add 3 tablespoons of flour and stir (turn down the heat so it won't burn) so the onions dry up a little bit.

Lastly add 1.5 to 2 quarts of beef broth, I like Pacific beef broth, and let is simmer for 40 or so minutes, until it is the flavor and thickness you like!

Broil some cheese on some bread, place it on top of the soup, and add some shredded cheese into the soup! Sprinkle French's Original Onions on top!

 Melt butter, add sliced up onions, chopped up garlic, bay leaves and thyme. Add salt and pepper.

Cook until caramelized - it should take around 30 minutes. Don't let them burn!

Add one cup of red wine and boil until the onions become dry - maybe 10 minutes. Remove bay leaves.

Add 3 tablespoons of flour and stir to dry the onions a bit.

Simmer for around 40 minutes

Broil some bread with cheese on it to top and add some grated cheese to the soup. Top with French's onions.

Chicken and Gnocchi

This is kind of a twist on chicken pot pie and chicken and dumplings. I posted it on Instagram and it seemed like a lot of you wanted the recipe. Plus it's SUPER easy. It takes about 25 minutes.

First, cook one medium chicken breast in the oven - then shred it with two forks. Or use leftover rotisserie chicken.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons of butter
some garlic minced, I used half a clove
3 small carrots, peeled and cut up
3 celery stalks, cut up
Peas
2 tablespoons of flour
2 cups of chicken broth
1/2 cup of milk
*I also used a few splashes of heavy cream!
Salt/Pepper to taste
Shredded Chicken.
Fresh made gnocchi (that I bought at Whole Foods)

Here is the thing about this recipe, you can sub whatever veggies you really want. I didn't use onion, but you can. I didn't use potatoes, since I used gnocchi) but you could. I didn't use corn but you can - really make it whatever you like.

First in a small sauce pan saute all your veggies in the butter. Saute them until they are as tender as YOU like them. I like veggies a little more al dente so I did about SEVEN minutes on medium high heat, while stirring.

Second add your flour and stir to coat quickly - do not let the flour burn. Start to boil some water if you are going to add gnocchi

Third add the chicken broth, milk, cream if you have it, and salt and pepper. Turn the heat down and let it simmer, it will thicken pretty quickly. Fourth add the chicken.

Now you can add your gnocchi. And you are done! Add more salt and pepper as needed.

Delicious.

ricotta gnocchi

I have made a lot of potato gnocchi, but a few weeks ago I had some really amazing ricotta gnocchi in manhattan and wanted to try and replicate it at home.  Honestly it is so much easier than potato gnocchi and I think even tastes better.  Even for those of you that do not like ricotta, you would not even know it is made from it!

Serves around 4
One 16-ounce container whole-milk ricotta
1 large egg
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan  cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt 
1 cup flour

Combine all of these things together until well incorporated. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. You want the consistency to me not wet, yet not dry when you take it out and roll it into your typical gnocchi "log." It should be somewhat wet, but if it is sticking to your hands at all add a little more flour. 

Once you roll the dough into a log and cut your sections freeze them on a plate for about 15 minutes before you boil them.  When you boil them and they bob to the surface they are almost done, let then cook for another minute or so. 

Proceed to cook them in whatever sauce you desire in a saute pan. 

 

squash

In the summer squash is my go to veggie for dinner. I cook it practically every night! But I found a new tool that makes it more fun and somehow more tasty! The machine makes veggies come out like ribbons (it also has other blades) that I then saute in just olive oil with salt and pepper.  But I think you can find a lot of recipes out there for this tool! The machine can be found here

I also have a video up on instagram, follow me over there!

tortellini video

here is a video (not the best quality ever) of making a tortellini! 

easy! 

tortellini making

On a rainy day nothing is better than making some comfort food. This is my first time making homemade tortellini on my own - which I learned last week at Stir (a blog post on that soon).

At this point I am going to let you work with your own dough recipe, or look one up. But for the filling, which I have never done before you will need chicken, egg, cream, garlic (and really anything else you might want to add, I added mushrooms). I used the leftover chicken from a roasted chicken I made the night before, so it had already been cooked and seasoned. But you can use whatever kind of chicken! Put this all in a food processer.

2 chicken breasts
1 egg
1/2 cream
3 garlic cloves
salt, pepper, rosemary etc to taste.  

Once this is blended put this in a piping bag (or like me a Ziploc).  For my broth I collected the chicken fat from the prior nights roasted chicken and added about a half cup of broth (or water.)

Blended up filling

Press out your dough to almost the thinnest setting

Sheets ready to cut into circles (use a cookie cutter).

Add a tiny bit of filling. DO NOT OVERFILL. Wet the outer circle.

Fold into a half moon. Wet the edges again to ensure everything is closed up.

Meet the sides.

Finished product in semolina. Freeze for 20 minutes.

Tortellini in chicken fat with a little broth.

I'm back with butter!

I hope you guys like the cleaner, fresher blog design here. I am going to attempt to truly post a few times a week about lungs, life, and food! I thought I'd come back here with a simple recipe about butter! This is not rocket science here!

I love everything about butter. It's color, it's consistency, the way it can transform from a cold solid, to something warm and soft, to something hot and liquid. And how it can be used in pretty much any cooking medium. It is the platform of so many dishes. It can elevate anything to be better. Lately I've been making honey butter. All you have to do is take softened butter - something you have left out for hours on your counter. And add a few tablespoons of honey to it. And mix it until it's a smooth completely mixed together consistency. It goes great with pretty much anything. Lately I have used it on fried chicken, biscuits, toast, and veggies. The saltiness, with sweetness and the two textures combined makes for a wonderful flavor and experience.  Please try it and let me know what you put it on and what you thought!

20 Min Pasta

You should have all of these ingredients on hand:
1 can of whole peeled tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic chopped
1/2 stick of butter
dried basil and oregano
salt/pepper to taste
I also add some heavy cream (about 1/2 cup) & parm cheese to taste

*I chop up the tomatoes (in the pot with a knife and fork) into 4ths pretty much

Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 or so minutes

Salted Caramel Treats

recipe - caramel treats

Tomato Salad

What you'll need:
lots of different varieties of tomatoes (yellow, brown, red, orange, grape etc.)
tomatiloes (they are green and tart)
1 avocado
3 garlic cloves
olive oil
salt/pepper to taste

cut up all the tomatoes into wedges, or halves for smaller varieties, cut up avocado in chunks, cover everything in olive oil (more than a drizzle, really coat everything) cut up garlic cloves and add to salad, add salt and pepper and really toss it all around so everything gets covered and let sit for at least 30 minutes (on counter or in fridge)

Zuchinni Fritters

This is a super simple recipe and a crowd pleaser

zucchini-fritters

Watermelon Jello Shots

This weekend we entertained (food posts coming all weekend!) and I saw these cute little idea for jello shots that look like watermelons over at this blog and decided to make them myself

You will need:
a box of watermelon jello (or anything red if you can't get that)
a cup of vodka,
and 10 limes

Cut the limes in half and remove the insides, I did this by cutting around the inside (like a grapefruit) and turning them inside out and ripping the stuff out.  Once that is done you an make the jello like you normally would (add one box to a cup of boiling water, remove and add the vodka slowly) then pour the liquid in the lime halves and store them in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

Once the jello has hardened cut these in half! You can try adding chocolate pieces to look like the seeds too. 

More Pizza Cups

My friend Carol made a version of pizza cups with basil, fresh mozzarella and a cherry tomato. Check it out. 

Tomato Tartlets from Martha

Sliced tomato over cheddar cheese on puffed pasty (cut out into circles from a sheet)
Bake at 375 for 30 minutes

Making Whoopie Pies

Remember I told you guys the story about how my acupuncturist's husband cleaned out the orange juice explosion that happened in my trunk? Well I heard he liked chocolate, so I decided to make him whoopie pies as thank you.  I have a special pan for whoopie pies that I got from Williams Sonoma and it's great (Laura also pointed out you could make muffin tops with it)

The recipe I use is what came with the pan:

 

Whoopie Pies William Sonoma Style

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup dutch process cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

6 TBS unsalted butter, room temp

34 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg, room tep

1 cup buttermilk, room temp

Filling

2 1/4 cups confectioners sugar

5 TBS unsalted butter, room temp

3 TBS milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/8 tsp salt

 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Grease the pan. 

 

I'm just going to be really honest here and say I basically put all the ingredients together in my mixer and let it go.  I'm not a baker so it's hard for me to do it step by step - and well it came out totally great so....You can do however you choose!

The filling is super easy.  But it's SUPER SUPER SUPER sweet, so cut back on the sugar or something if you don't like stuff that is really sweet!

Here they are all packed up to go to their new home.

A kitchen trick for buttermilk

Have you ever been in the middle of making a recipe that calls for buttermilk and you don't have any? ell there is an easy kitchen trick where you can make your own substitute really easily!

Take 1 cup of milk and either one tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice
Place the vinegar or lemon juice in the bottle of a measuring cup and add the milk up to the one cup line and let stand for five minutes.  And there you go -- you have a perfect buttermilk substitute and it really works!

There is also another way to actually make buttermilk if you have heavy cream.  Fill a jar halfway with heavy cream (like a canning jar)  Start shaking back and forth until the cream thickens and eventually turn into whipped cream.  Keep shaking untilthe whipped cream turns into a yellow glob (butter) and seperate liiquid (butter milk)

Pour the butter milk out of the jar and use it anytime you need buttermilk!

Olive Oil

I cook literally everything in extra virgin olive oil.  I came across this sale on Rue La La a few months ago from the company O -- which makes all sorts of oils and ordered 9 bottles of different variations of olive oil, vinegars and balsamic.  I've now had the opportunity to try most of the flavors and want to spread to you guys how great they are (you can get them at places like Whole Foods -- probably not all the kinds they offer -- but you can also get them on their website ooliveoil.  I use the extra virgin practically every day for anything I saute and have found great recipes for the vinegars, and I use the balsamic on tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. They are all so yummy!