Potato Leek Soup with Chicken

A while back, I saw an intriguing recipe for potato leek soup, so I bought some leeks a few days ago.  Not having ever worked with them before, I searched the internet and found a video showing which parts to use for what and how to clean them and cut them up.  

Leeks are grown in sandy soil and are really dirty.  If you look between the leaves of the tops, you'll see lots of black sand and dirt packed in there!  Following the video's directions, I cut off the dark green tops, rinsed them off, and froze them to use next time I make broth.  I cut off the tiny roots and threw them away.  The remaining part, the white and pale green part, had to be sliced up and cleaned.

The video showed cutting the leek lengthwise, slicing it, putting the slices into a bowl of cold water, and swishing them around.  The slices of leeks float on top of the water, and the sand and dirt sink to the bottom of the bowl.  You scoop the leeks out and put them in a strainer/colander and rinse them.  You don't want to just pour the bowl of water and leeks through the strainer/colander because then the dirt will be reintroduced into the leeks!  There was a LOAD of black sand in the bottom of the bowl when I was done swishing the sliced leeks around.  That simple process did a great job!

Anyway, this was an easy, tasty soup, and I learned about leeks - a bonus!  You could garnish the soup with sliced scallions if you want to make it pretty, but I don't usually go to those lengths.  I did, however, make garlic bread, using french bread made with the recipe in the previous post - YUM!

Potato Leek Soup with Chicken

4 slices bacon, chopped
2 large leeks, sliced
4 large potatoes, cubed
1 t dried thyme
2 t salt
1 t pepper
48 oz chicken broth
1 1/2 lb shredded cooked chicken breast
1 c heavy cream

In a 4-quart pan, cook bacon until crisp.  Add leeks and cook until soft, but not browned.  Add potatoes, seasonings, and broth.  Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer until the potatoes are soft, about 20 minutes.  

Puree the mixture, using either a blender (do it in batches, not filling the pitcher past half full) or an immersion/stick blender directly in the pan.  With the mixture in the pan, add cream and chicken, heat to a simmer, and serve.

Toys in the Kitchen Part 5, and Blender Quiche

My friend Karen, whose blog I follow, posted a recipe for quiche a few weeks ago (see it here) and I was inspired!  Oh, her recipe sounded so good, but it makes too much for my measly 9-inch, 1-inch-deep aluminum pie pan, as compared to her monster 11-inch, nearly 2-inch-deep ceramic one.  I guess I could scale it down to my size pan.

But then I thought - duh!  I have two perfectly good quiche recipes in my card file.  I haven't made a quiche in years.  I have two Real Men living here in the house, and as those of us of a Certain Age "know," Real Men Don't Eat Quiche!  LOL!  But they like eggs and cheese and onions and BACON (bacon makes everything better), so...

I got out my trusty old Black & Decker Crush Master blender and went to town.  Because this quiche is mixed in the blender, lots of air gets incorporated into the mix, which makes the quiche light and puffy instead of heavy and dense.  That Boy even ate his entire serving without picking out the vegetables!

I got in a hurry and forgot to
flute or crimp the pie crust!
It still tasted good!

Blender Quiche

4 eggs

1 c milk

1 T flour

1/2 t salt

1/4 t pepper

1/4 t nutmeg

1/2 bunch of green onions, cut in 1"-2" pieces, including tops

1 1/2 c (6 oz) shredded swiss cheese

4 slices cooked bacon, cut into 1" pieces

1 unbaked pie crust

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and set the rack in the middle position.  Put the first six ingredients in the blender and mix well.  Stop and add the onions, cheese, and bacon.  Pulse until the pieces are about 1/2" in size (6-10 times).  Pour into pie crust.  Bake 35-40 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let sit 10 minutes before serving.

TIPS:  You can just spray the pie pan or dish if you don't want the calories from the crust, add mushrooms, use a medium onion cut into eighths for the green onions, substitute light or whipping cream for the milk, or substitute cheddar cheese for swiss. 

For Quiche Lorraine, use 12 slices of bacon (1/2 pound before cooking), 1 c swiss (Gruyere) cheese, 1/3 c onion, light or whipping cream for the milk, no nutmeg, 1/4 t sugar, and 1/8 t cayenne red pepper.  Keep the eggs, flour, and salt.

Quick Chicken Saute with Bacon and Scallions (In My Cast Iron Skillet)

Here's another quick and easy recipe using those Chick-zilla boneless skinless breasts.  They generally run close to a pound EACH.  For this recipe, I use two of those huge chicken breasts.  I have to use my large 12-inch cast iron skillet because my largest Revere Ware skillet is only a 10-incher, and it just isn't big enough for those bad boys.

This is a pretty quick recipe, and it doesn't have a lot of ingredients, but it is super tasty!  I serve it over either spinach egg noodles or regular ol' egg noodles, and add a vegetable on the side.


Quick Chicken Saute with Bacon and Scallions

8 slices bacon, chopped
2 lb skinless, boneless chicken breast, sliced
6 scallions (green onion), chopped
1/4 c chicken stock or broth
1/4 c white wine (if you don't have any wine, you can replace it with more chicken stock or broth)

Preheat a large skillet over medium heat.  Add bacon and brown.  After the bacon is cooked, add chicken and brown on both sides.  Chicken is done when the juices run clear.  Add the liquids and stir in the scallions.  Cover and bring to a boil.  Serve with the liquid over noodles.

The BEST Way to Cook Bacon

Cooking bacon in a skillet is messy, messy, messy, and the bacon usually isn't cooked evenly.  Part is nearly raw and limp, part is too crisp and almost burned, and the rest is how you want it.  Not ideal.

You can cook bacon in the microwave, and it comes out pretty good - evenly cooked and fairly flat, but all those paper towels!  What a waste!!!

You can buy pre-cooked bacon, but it's relatively expensive, and there aren't as many flavor/thickness combinations as there are in raw bacon.

Bacon fat in a jar.

But if you cook bacon in the OVEN, whoa!  It comes out evenly cooked and flat, and you only need one or two paper towels to soak up the excess grease.  Most of the bacon fat stays in the pan, and it's really easy to save it by pouring it into a glass jar and refrigerating it.

You can cook an entire package at one time, and if you're not going to use it all, you can either freeze or refrigerate the cooked bacon and use it one slice at a time.  Just zap it in the microwave and you can make a nice, warm bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.

Some recipes will have you cook some bacon, then add things to the bacon and its fat.  In those cases, I start with some of my refrigerated bacon fat, add some of my pre-cooked bacon, get it hot, and there you are - just continue with the recipe as written.

So here it is...


Oven-Cooked Bacon

1 package bacon (1 lb regular thickness or 1 1/2 lb extra thick)
sheet pan (well, technically a half-sheet pan!)

Lots of ingredients, right?  Well, it's not really a recipe - more like instructions!

So, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and set the rack in the lower third of the oven.  (If you want the bacon extra crispy, put the rack in the lowest position).  Separate the bacon slices and place them on in the sheet pan in a single layer.  You can shove the slices as close together as you possibly can - just don't overlap them.

Put the pan in the oven.  Cook about 20 minutes for regular bacon, and about 30 minutes for extra thick.  Check it about 5-10 minutes before it's supposed to be done.

While the bacon is cooking, put one or two paper towels on a plate.  When the bacon is finished, carefully remove the pan from the oven.  There will be lots of bacon fat in the pan and it is HOT.  Don't get burned, and don't spill it!

Using tongs, remove the slices of bacon from the pan and put them on the paper towel-lined plate to soak up the excess fat.  Store or serve.

If desired, let the fat cool for several minutes.  While it's still liquid, pour it into a GLASS jar.  Put a lid on it and refrigerate.  Use it where you usually use bacon fat or shortening for cooking.

Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage, and My Eighth and Ninth Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Boxes - What I Got (The Late Reveal!)

The Eighth Box

I obviously received my eighth and ninth CSA boxes a while back, but I just had to complete the series and show you what my last two boxes contained!

The eighth box included tomatoes, sweet peppers, onions, carrots, and beets, and the ninth box, tomatoes, sweet peppers, potatoes, and carrots - lots of carrots!

I've chopped and frozen most of the onions and peppers, and eaten the tomatoes and potatoes, and some of the carrots (raw).

I still have some of the onions, all the beets, and a lot of the carrots.  I have plans for the beets and carrots, and you'll hear about them in time.

But today, I used one of the onions.  I never got to an Oktoberfest celebration this year - it rained and rained, and I wasn't going to wade through the mud.  I can wait until next year.

In the meantime, I decided to make German cuisine in my own kitchen.  

Today I was inspired to make red cabbage.  The recipe I use is called Rhineland Sweet-Sour Red Cabbage from the original Crockery Cookery cookbook, written by Mabel Hoffman.  YUM!  I've had a hankering for it for weeks, so I went a little crazy and made it.  I'll have a couple of other German recipes in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!

The onion came from one of my CSA boxes, but the red cabbage, alas, did not  We never received any cabbage, red or green, so I bit the bullet and headed to the store to buy a couple of heads.  It's a simple, foolproof way to make delicious red cabbage.  

Here's the recipe (my paraphrase):

Rhineland Sweet-Sour Red Cabbage (6 to 8 servings)

6 slices bacon, cooked and chopped (reserve 3 T bacon grease in the skillet)*
1 large head red cabbage, shredded
1 medium onion, chopped
6 T brown sugar
3 T flour
2 t salt
1/4 t pepper
3/4 c water
6 T vinegar

Put the cabbage, onion, and bacon in a 3 1/2- or 4-quart slow cooker.  Mix together the bacon grease, sugar, flour, salt, and pepper.  Stir in the water and vinegar.  Pour over the cabbage, onion, and bacon in the slow cooker.  Cover and cook on low 4 hours.  If the cabbage isn't cooked to your liking, turn the heat up to high for 1/2 hour.  Stir and serve.

*If you want the preparation to go even faster, here's a shortcut - chop up 6 slices of pre-cooked bacon and put it in the slow cooker with the cabbage and onion, and use 3 T of vegetable oil instead of the bacon grease.