Lentil Leftovers Hand Pies

Usually I try to post things that are my own brilliant ideas, creative creations, or invented recipes, but this week, I saw something someone else had made and I just had to make it and share it with everyone.

First, a confession: I am the worst person at making the most ridiculous, giant pots of soup on the planet. They come out delicious and wonderful, but… in obscene quantities. I put on some stock simmering, then chop up some of this vegetable, then decide that some of that vegetable could go in, then, OOH, I didn’t realize we had some of this left! and so on and so forth. And then the beans and the grains expand more than you thought they would, you have to transfer to a bigger pot, et cetera, et cetera. Even when I try to make a small batch of soup, we have leftovers for days.

And that’s what happened this week. It had been raining for days and the forecast said more rain. It was cold in our house. So I made a thick lentil stew with veggies from the farm share. (This is your recipe, if you’re wanting one…) An onion. Some garlic. A potato. A couple of carrots. Some miscellaneous greens (beet greens and something else that I’ve never been able to identify but tastes mildly cabbagey). Some barley. A giant, ripe heirloom tomato. Most of a cup of lentils. I threw it together with some bullion cubes and a few bay leaves, some parsley and thyme from the garden, and let it all cook down for a long while.

The soup was great, and incredibly filling, which is why there was way too much soup. Another contributing factor was that Charlie stopped by our favorite local bakery to pick up some hearty marbled rye bread to go with it. So, in our fridge there was a big container of leftovers.

And that day, The Cast-Iron Darling posted a recipe for Chili Hand Pies made with leftover chili.

Brilliant! Perfect! It’s a rare treat to find empanadas that are vegetarian, let alone hand pies. I thought about mixing in some cumin and making the lentils more like a taco filling, and I thought about putting some cheese in there, but in the end, I just left them alone. I made a pie crust from scratch using (you guessed it) Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust, except I used half whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour. I would have tried out The Cast Iron Darling’s recipe, but it required eggs and we had zero, which is also why there is no eggwash on my hand pie.

I got about six out of Charlie’s recipe, though I still have lentil stew left and am thinking of making another round.

Charlie and I had them for dinner one night, and I also had one for a snack after I’d frozen them. I put it in the microwave for two minutes and it came out perfectly. The crust stayed crusty and everything.

Thanks, Cast-Iron Darling, for this awesome idea!

Lactose Overdose: Cream of Broccoli Soup

Charlie loooooves broccoli, so when the weather went chilly again this week, I pulled out this recipe I created long ago. This soup went along with my Lactose Overdose: Spinach Cheddar Muffins. I managed to use up some Bibs and Bobs Vegetable Stock that I had in the freezer, so this batch really turned out quite lovely.

All I need now is an immersion blender!

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter
1/2 onion, chopped finely
1 stalks celery, chopped finely
2.5 cups vegetable broth
more water if necessary
3 cups broccoli, about half chopped finely and half coarsely
1 potatoes, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
Several shakes of garlic powder (or 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced)
1.5 tablespoons butter
1.5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
chives for garnish

Directions

In 1 tbsp butter, saute the onions and garlic on medium heat in a large pot for 2-3 minutes or until soft. Do not brown. Add the 1.5 tablespoons of butter, and when melted, add the flour. Stir this mixture together and cook for one minute, again, not allowing it to brown.

Add the vegetable stock on top of this. Stir until the flour mixture is incorporated into the stock. Bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat. Add the remaining vegetables (celery, carrot, potatoes, broccoli) and stir. The stock should cover the vegetables. If it doesn’t, add a bit of water.

Simmer the soup for about 15-20 minutes. Add the milk, cream, and garlic powder (if you did not use fresh garlic). Stir. Let simmer for another 3-5 minutes. Add the shredded cheddar cheese. Stir until it is completely mixed in. At this point, you may use an immersion blender to make the soup smoother, or a potato masher failing that – this step is optional. Add fresh black pepper to taste.

Serve with fresh chives on top if desired.

Tobarnut Soup

Tobarnut Soup is Tomato, Barley, and Butternut Squash Soup.

[I should have posted this weeks ago! Oops!]

We had some tomatoes that were accumulating from our farm share, despite the fact that there has been a terrible blight that has affected the tomatoes in our area this season. Somehow, farmer Rich has managed to get us a variety of tomatoes, including some lovely heirloom tomatoes which we really enjoyed. I had about four large tomatoes (three red and one yellowy-orange) and two small yellow tomatoes, so I was plotting a tomato soup. When the butternut squash arrived this week alongside a few of the large tomatoes, I started imagining putting the two together. I’ve got a great creamy tomato soup recipe that I’m sure I’ll post here one day that I finally got around to posting, but for now, I’ve decided to combine tomatoes, roasted butternut squash, and barley for another slow cooker soup.

It may seem like our house is overrun with soup these days, but I like to put the soup in little individual containers and put them in the freezer. We’ve also had pretty much the entire household with some kind of cough and sniffles, though we’re not sure if it’s allergies or what. Either way, soup has been a very welcome meal.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium butternut squash
2 tablespoons flour
3 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped
3 cups vegetable broth
1/4 cup canned pumpkin puree
3/4 cup barley
1 tablespoon fresh basil
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
2 teaspoons fresh parsley
1 bay leaf
1 cup light cream or milk (optional)
1/4 cup or so grated parmesan cheese (optional)
Salt and pepper

Directions

Cut butternut squash lengthwise and place face up on a lightly greased baking sheet. Roast the butternut squash in a 400 degree oven for about 30-60 minutes (depending on the size and shape of your squash) or until soft enough to scoop.

Let cool, then scoop out the part with the seeds and discard. Remove the skin. Mash the flesh, either with a fork, a potato masher, or a blender.

I’ve made this soup twice now, and the first time I made it where I blended the tomatoes before they went in, and the second time I didn’t. If you want a very smooth soup, you should do this, but otherwise, don’t worry about it – being in a slow cooker will break it down a bunch.

Toss the olive oil, onions, and flour together in the bottom of the slowcooker. Ideally, you’d do this in a medium sized pot, heating the oil on medium heat, then adding the onions, cooking for about 3-5 minutes or until soft, then adding the flour, stirring constantly, cooking about one minute, not allowing it to brown. But, since this is a slowcooker, and I was in a hurry and didn’t want to wash another pot, I just threw it all in and it worked out just fine.

Add the onion mixture to the slow cooker. Pour the chopped (or blended) tomatoes over the onion mixture and stir well. Add the mashed butternut squash. Stir well.

Stir the barley, basil, rosemary, bay leaf, and parsley in. Add a bit of salt and pepper, but you may need more later.

Set the slow cooker to “low” and check on it in about 5-6 hours.

When the barley is soft, probably after about 6 hours in the slow cooker, be sure to remove the bay leaf, then add the parmesan cheese (optional). Add the milk or cream*, if desired, and stir. Taste to adjust for more salt and pepper if needed.

*The barley tends to soak up a lot of liquid even once the soup is done cooking, so for my freezer portions, I omitted the milk, and I’ll add it back when I heat the soup.

Crockpot Creamy Corn Potato Soup

Tuesday was Crockpot Attempt Number Two, and I was really hoping to make use of the wonderful corn that arrived as a last minute addition to our farm share this week. A neighboring farm had shared enough for each of us to take six fresh ears, and I had some potatoes left from last week’s share. We also got red bell peppers this week, too, so this soup was meant to be.

Tuesdays I usually work in the afternoon, so I got up when Charlie was leaving for work and started chopping veggies. It took a while because of the arthritis in my hands, but eventually, everything was ready to be thrown into the pot. By the time I got home from work, we had delicious soup and enough plenty of leftovers. The crockpot is turning out to be brilliant for Mondays and Wednesdays when Charlie has class until 9pm, since it just keeps things warm, and then whenever we’re ready to eat, it’s ready to feed us.

Ingredients

4 large ears of corn, kernels cut off
1 carrot, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
4-5 small potatoes, peeled and chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 small onions (or one medium, but I had these from the farm share)
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil (I eyeballed it to coat the onions at the bottom)
1 tablespoon dried parsley (use double fresh if you have it)
1 teaspoon tarragon
1 teaspoon thyme
2-3 shakes red cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
vegetable stock to cover the the veggies (or, I was out of stock, so I used 3 large bullion cubes and water)
1/2 pint light cream

Directions (for a 4-Quart Slow Cooker)

If you’re feeling ambitious, sauté the onion and garlic for a minute or two, but if not, give them a toss in the olive oil. Then, proceed to dump the corn, carrots, potatoes, pepper, and celery on top of it. Toss in the tarragon, parsley, thyme, and red cayenne pepper in. Pour vegetable stock in until the vegetables are covered by the liquid. Give it a stir. Do not add the cream.

Put the lid on, set the slow cooker to “low” and let it cook for about 7-8 hours. Your milage may vary with cooking times, of course, but try to get it so that the corn is crisp and the potatoes are soft.

When you’ve achieved that, pour in the cream and stir it until it’s incorporated. Taste it and adjust any seasoning.

Bibs and Bobs Vegetable Stock

My partner Charlie and I are the type of people who are modern hippies, I suppose. As I mentioned a few days ago, we almost never use paper plates or plastic forks. We recycle and we reuse a pretty dramatic amount. We joined a farm share, or community supported agriculture community this year. Hell, our next major big dream purchase after my KitchenAid Mixer is a composter.

In the meantime, though, we are composter-less. We’ve thought about getting one of those little guys that sits on the countertop and thought about saving up for one of the totally sealed units that sits inconspicuously under a cupboard. For now, though, we save our eggshells to put in flowerpots (it’s good natural fertilizer), and we sneak into the backyard with our veggie scraps and toss them into the bushes.

There’s a lot of vegetable waste that’s quite… well, I wouldn’t say edible, since you’re not going to throw it in your stir-fry or plop it in your next quiche, but I would say usable. My friends Anne and Neil of the Beet Risotto, who I get many of my hippie inspired ideas from, such as joining the farm share, gave me this idea for using up all the bits of vegetables that you usually would toss in the trash.

Make your own vegetable stock.

Not only is homemade vegetable stock one of the most delicious things on the planet, it’s also a way to cut down on waste. It’s very simple. Grab a gallon size ziplock bag or other airtight container. If you live with other people, label it, “SAVE FOR STOCK,” as they’ll be wondering what these bits of vegetable trash are doing in the freezer.

Then, whenever you chop up vegetables, evaluate what’s left.

Onion papers? Toss them in.

Ends of celery and carrots? Definitely.

Fresh herbs that are a little… not so fresh, but weren’t put through a proper drying process? Yes ma’am.

I’ve collected up beet stalks, the ends of asparagus, limp parsley, that little hard nub on garlic, and whatever else I’ve come across. I stuff all the bibs and bobs into my baggie and keep it in the freezer. When the bag is full, you’re ready to make stock. The only vegetables you’ll want to avoid are the really watery ones, like lettuce. Those aren’t going to contribute much.

Ingredients

1 gallon sized bag of vegetable parts, including at least about 1 onion, 1 carrot, 2 stalks of celery, some parsley – the rest is fair game
about 10-12 cups of water (you can make your stock more or less concentrated depending on how much storage space you have – just add more water upon using it later)
3 bay leaves (since everything will be strained, this is a good time to use those broken in half ones that are hard to fish out of other recipes)
4 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons soy sauce
salt to taste
freshly ground pepper

Directions

Toss everything except the salt and pepper into a big stock pot. Bring to a boil (this may take a while if your veggies are still frozen) and then reduce to a simmer. Cover.

Let your stock simmer for at least 40 minutes to an hour, but more is definitely better. Stir occasionally. You’ll be able to see the color drain out of the vegetables, so once they’re totally useless looking and your stock is a rich color, you’ll have gotten most of the flavor into your broth. Fair warning: your kitchen will smell wonderful for the afternoon, and people will be begging you to have some.

Storage

Some people recommend freezing stock into ice cube trays that you can have it prepped in smaller amounts. You can also put it into small tupperwares in the freezer, but think carefully before freezing the entire pot into one large container… I also like to make little batches of simple noodle soups for nights when I’m not feeling well. I’ll try to update with that simple recipe soon.

Kale-Came-in-Our-Farm-Share Creamy Potato Soup

We don’t often cook with kale, but both Charlie and I have been fond of it ever since our vegan buddy Milo came to stay for a few months last fall and introduced us to kale chips. This week, it turned up in our farm share. We get an email early Monday morning saying what we’ll get in our late Monday/early Tuesday pickup, and during work Monday morning, I kept envisioning a potato kale soup.

I looked at a lot of different recipes before getting started on this one. Most of them, however, included some kind of bacon or sausage. I settled on adding a slightly smokey Gouda since I’ve been vegetarian since about the time I was 10.

Make sure you read this recipe carefully. When making soups, I usually have a half and half process, where I simmer half of the veggies that disintegrate (in this case, I just did the potatoes) for a long time, and mash them with a potato masher to get a thick soup. Then, towards the end, I toss in the other half of the vegetables, which I’ve reserved in bite sized chunks. This way, the soup gets both flavor and texture, but it also has vegetable pieces that stay firm and brightly colored.

With creamy soups, this is a great way to cut down the fat in the recipe without sacrificing the creaminess of the soup. Even in recipes that don’t require potatoes, such as a broccoli soup, I might toss in a potato early on, mash it up, and then use a lower fat milk instead of cream. It helps avoid that really thin, watery texture that some lowfat creamy soups have.

Onto what I actually made! For the record, our friend Bo thought it sounded so good that he invited himself to dinner. He hopped a train from Brooklyn to Port Authority, then took a bus to the suburbs to sop up soup with us even though he had to be at work early in the morning.

Ingredients

1 tsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
3-4 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered
3-4 small red potatoes, skins on, chopped **keep the skin on and skin off potatoes separate!
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
6 cups vegetable stock
3-4 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
about 3 cups kale leaves, chopped
1 cup milk
4-6 oz gouda cheese, chopped
a shake or two of nutmeg
lots of black pepper
parmesan cheese to serve

Directions

Add oil to pot. Saute garlic for about a minute, then add onions and saute until soft, about 2 minutes. Add 6 cups of stock. Bring to a boil. Add the bay leaves. Reduce the heat and then add the PEELED POTATOES and simmer them until soft. Take out the bay leaves for a minute, and use a potato masher to mash the peeled potatoes until they’re in tiny little pieces. Later, they’ll boil down even more and make the soup even creamier.

Put the bay leaves back in, and let the soup simmer for another 10 minutes or so. Add the carrots and the remaining potatoes. Simmer for about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are soft. Add the parsley and remove the bay leaves.

Add the kale and cook for 5-10 minutes or until it’s more soft than super chewy. Once the desired consistency is reached, add the milk, stirring thoroughly. Next, add the gouda, and stir until the cheese is melted into the soup. When it’s completely mixed in, add the nutmeg, then add black pepper to taste. If needed, add more salt, and if desired, add parmesan cheese.

Pairs really deliciously with Spiral Herb Rolls.

Crisis Management Soup (Reenacted)

I made a round of something similar to Crisis Management Soup the other day and it is so epically awesome that I figured I should write down what I did.

Ingredients

1 zucchini
1 yellow squash
1 bunch spinach
1 large handful of green beans
2 carrots
3 stalks of celery
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 pt cherry tomatoes, halved
1 vegetarian bullion cube
1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 parsnips
1 can of small white beans

Directions

I would have put in potatoes, but we ran out when I thought we had more.

Chop up your veggies. Divide your zucchini, squash, carrots, celery, and parsnips, plus potatoes if you’ve got them, into two piles. One is going to simmer for a long time and turn to mush, the rest will cook for a shorter time to be a little firmer.

Saute your garlic in the pot for a couple minutes in a bit of oil. Add the onion, saute until soft.

Add the 28oz can of crushed tomatoes, then fill the can up 2x with water and add to the pot. Add tomato paste and vegetable bullion.

Toss in half of the veggies indicated above. Reserve the other half.

Bring to a boil, then simmer for a long ass time, covered. When you feel that you’ve got adequate simmerage, use a potato masher to squish up the veggies that are in the pot. Give it a good stir. Now, toss the remaining zucchini, squash, carrots, celery, and parsnips, plus potatoes if you’ve got them, and now is the time for green beans as well. Add the small white beans. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until tender (depending on how big you chopped them).

Save the tomatoes and the spinach for the last few minutes of your cooking. Toss them in, and your soup will be ready when the spinach wilts.