The House of Cooking, Part 3: Dawn of The House of Cooking

This post is mainly going to be about how to put slightly obscure or otherwise unwelcome ingredients to work in a way that is flavourful and enjoyable, because putting everything from our CSA box to good use can sometimes be challenging. But I'll be damned if I'll let it beat me. We're going to use everything we get from that box if it kills us. That's only a dim possibility, and only if one of the boxes comes with cyanide pills. So I'm pretty safe.

Please don't include cyanide in my next box. Thanks.

In one of our recent boxes we received Fennel. D hates fennel, or anise as it's otherwise known, or anything licorice flavoured. This meant the challenge of figuring out how to make the fennel to her liking was up to me. This ended up being surprisingly easy. All I did was saute it in butter with a bit of salt and pepper, some of our ubiquitous garlic scapes, and after about 5 minutes threw in some mushrooms and taragon and let that saute for another five minutes. I say that on the understanding that I threw in whole mushrooms because I was lazy and didn't want to chop them but because of this laziness the mushrooms were a little underdone, so I would recommend slicing or shopping them and then the cooking time noted above should be fine.

Prepping the fennel is easy. Just cut off the hard root end and the stalks, and then quarter it vertically (stalk end to root) and then slice the resulting quarters.

The reason this preparation worked for D is because the cooking process sweetens the fennel, and the simple spices serve to mute the very strong licorice flavour of the fennel that might otherwise bother her. The taragon especially helped. If you want a more detailed recipe, ask me in comments and I'll post one.

Another challenge we occasionally have is kale. Kale is tough to use, because you get a huge amount of it and really, who uses kale except for the manufacturers of V8? One of our CSA boxes had a head of kale in it a couple of months back and we were at a loss with what to do with it until D, I think partially in frustration, made it into soup.

I am not normally a big soup fan. This has nothing to do with D's inherent distrust of salt and pepper, nothing at all. I do not make soup as a general rule, so the soup that is made is made by D. It's usually quite nice but soup just doesn't usually float my boat unless it's exceptionally rich. D is not prone to making rich soups, which is fine.

However, the soup she made with the kale was hands down one of the best soups I've ever eaten. She will agree that the speed at which I consumed that particular soup exceeds by an order of magnitude the speed at which I have consumed any and all previous soups combined, over the course of our nine years together. What I mean, to be clear, is that there are probably still hiding in our freezer soups made near the start of our relationship that remain unconsumed. This soup didn't last long enough to even smell the freezer. Because we just got another head of kale in yesterday's box, I have just today tried to replicate her accomplishment, with some success, and I'll put my recipe below, but given it's still on the stove I don't have a final verdict for you. It is, however, shaping up to be very nice.

Note, however, that the base of the soup is broth made from the bones of my chicken recipe on my last post. You could probably use stock from the store, but why not use leftovers where you can instead? There's a richness of flavour that comes from homemade broth that's hard to get from store bought. Plus, making my chicken recipe means you get to EAT my chicken, which is great, and then you can have chicken sandwiches and soup for lunch for the rest of the week. That's what we call, in the industry, win-win.

D and Jeremy's "Mostly Jeremy's Recipe for Kale and Legume Soup" Recipe

6 cups of chicken broth (preferably home made)
1 head of kale
1 can of romano beans, drained
1 can of black beans, drained
1 can of chopped or crushed tomatoes (or even whole tomatoes, but then chop them in can)
1 cup of lentils
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp black pepper
2 tbsp organo
1 tbsp rubbed basil
(optional) 1-2 cups chopped cooked chicken leftovers (optional, but easy to do if you made my chicken recipe first and have leftovers)

Recipe is simple. First chop the kale across the ribs, making thin strips about 1/2 inch across. Then bring the broth to a boil in a stock pot (the pot I used was WAY too small) and reduce temperature to medium. Add all the ingredients, cook for 15 minutes on medium, stirring occasionally, then reduce temperature to a simmer and continue simmering for an hour or so. Remove from heat, serve.

D is about to try the soup. Will have a verdict soon.