I made this the other night based on what I had in the fridge, freezer and assorted cabinets. Two cans of black beans? Check. Actually, I have five cans of black beans in the cabinet. Every time I go to the store, I can’t remember if I have black beans, so I buy another can. *sigh*

Anyway, to continue, a bag in the freezer of about 1 cup fire-roasted, diced tomatoes? Check. Jalapeno that I really need to use…? Well, you get the idea. For a things-I-need-to-use-in-the-kitchen project, it turned out really tasty!

Pretty Good Black Bean Soup
1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp olive oil
3 slices Canadian bacon, diced (you can skip this, or substitute sausage, bacon, some other kind of pork product, etc…)
1 small white onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried oregano
1 cup fire-roasted, diced tomatoes (with juice)
1 jalapeno, roasted, peeled & diced
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
juice of 1/2 an orange
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
salt & pepper to taste

Toast the cumin seeds in a small pan over medium heat. Just for a minute or two. Then, grind them in a spice or coffee grinder (a dedicated spice coffee grinder or a coffee grinder that you can wash the top part of). Set aside.

Heat a soup pot over medium heat and add the Canadian bacon. Cook for a few minutes and then add the onion and garlic. Cook it all for 6-7 minutes until starting to color and soft. Add the ground cumin, dried oregano, roasted jalapeno* and fire-roasted tomatoes. Stir to combine.

Next, drain one can of beans and add that. Rinse the other can and drain, then add that. I did this to get some of the salt from the canned beans out of the soup, but I still wanted a little bit of the canned stuff so that’s why I did it this way. You can rinse and drain both or not, whatever you want to do.

Add the stock next, as well as the orange juice and bring to a boil, Reduce and simmer for 30-60 minutes. I had time so I just simmered it for 60 minutes. If you want a thicker soup, use an immersion blender or a regular blender to break up some of the beans. Before serving, add most of the cilantro (saving some for a garnish) and add salt and pepper to taste.

You can also garnish with sour cream, cheddar cheese, tortilla chips, etc…

* To roast a jalapeno, put it under the broiler, turning as needed, until it is all black. Put it in a small paper or plastic bag to steam for about 5 minutes. Then, you should be able to peel the blackened skin off easily. Cut the stem off, slice in half nd remove most the seeds ant the ribs. Dice.

Still pretty warm from the oven!

Okay, so this pie has been out of the oven for about 18 hours now and it is 3/4 gone. Did I mention that we were asleep for like 8 of those hours? Right, so this is a really good pie!

The crust recipe is Dorie Greenspan’s Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough which is quite simply, the best pie dough I have ever made. Start with the pie dough. You can even make it a day ahead. I did this, rolling my bottom crust out the and letting it sit in the pie pan overnight in the refrigerator. The top crust just hung out in disc-form and then I rolled that one out before baking.

I kind of based the filling recipe on a number of recipes I found online and in cookbooks. It was a little from Column A + a little from Column B sort of thing. But first, onto the crust!

Dorrie Greenspan’s Good for Almost Everything Pie Dough
For a 9 inch Double Crust
3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 sticks very cold unsalted butter, cut into tbsp size pieces
1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces
About 1/2 cup ice water
My Addition: Zest of 1/2 an orange (you can zest the other half the orange for the filling)

Put the flour, sugar, orange zest and salt in a food processor fitted with a metal blade, pulse just to combine the ingredients. Drop in the butter and shortening and pulse only until the butter and shortening are cut into the flour.

You can of course, also use a pastry blender thingie or two forks or even your fingers. Don’t overdo the mixing - what you’re aiming for is to have some pieces the size of fat green peas and others the size of barley. Pulsing the machine on and off, gradually add about 6 tablespoons of the water - add a little water and pulse once, add some more water, pulse again and keep going that way. Then use a few long pulses to get the water into the flour.

If, after a dozen or so pulses, the dough doesn’t look evenly moistened or form soft curds, pulse in as much of the remaining water as necessary, or even a few drops more, to get a dough that will stick together when pinched. Big pieces of butter are fine.

Scrape the dough out of the bowl and onto a work surface. Honestly, I added about 10 tablespoons of water to mine. So, you may need more than 6 here.

Divide the dough in half. Gather each half into a ball, flatten each ball into a disk and wrap each half in plastic. Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour before rolling.

Roll the first dough disc out on a floured surface and lay the dough down in your pie pan. Trim your edges with a 1/2 inch overhang. Continue with making the pie now or chill the bottom crust in the pie pan and the disc for the top crust in the fridge overnight.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie - Filling
2.5 cups rhubarb stalks, ends trimmed, cut into 1/2-inch or so slices
1.5 cups strawberries, tops trimmed, sliced in half
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp of quick cooking tapioca
1/4 tsp kosher salt
zest from 1/2 an orange
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Toss all the pie filling ingredients together in a large bowl.

Super ripe, tasty local strawberries

Let sit at room temperature for about 15 minutes or so.

Assembling the Pie
1 egg + 1 tbsp water, beaten
raw sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Take your chilled dough out of the fridge. Let the disc you need to roll out soften up for about 15 minutes. Assemble the filling and add it to the pie shell.

Roll the top dough disc out and cover the top of the pie.

Crimp the edges together.

Here, I wrapped the whole pie up and stuck it in the fridge for about 15 minutes, as my top crust felt a little soft.

When you’re ready to bake: brush a little of the egg wash on the top of the pie and then make four slits in the top.

Sprinkle the top with some raw sugar and place the pie on a baking sheet and put in the middle of the oven. Give it 20 minutes at 400 degrees F, then turn down the oven to 375 degrees F and give it 40 more minutes. You want the pie to be in the oven for about 1 hour total.

Check after about 40 minutes and cover up the edges (either with a pie crust shield or aluminum foil) if the top edges are getting too dark. I did this to my pie about 45 minutes in.

When the pie is done, you should be able to see the filling bubbling up. Take the pie out and let it cool.

Then, enjoy!

Check out that awesomely flakey crust!

jwa and I went out for a nice Thursday night meal and FINALLY tried Tabla Mediterranean Bistro. So good! Excellent deal with the three courses for $24. We did the wine pairings for an extra $16.

I’m kind of sleepy so this post will be mostly pictures.

Just for fun, we both started the meal with a cocktail — the isadora duncan, housemade lemon-verbena vodka, cassis, tonic, rocks. Mmm!

Okay, three courses (plus desert), let’s go! For the first course, we both had the baby lettuce salad with deviled egg dressing, spiced pepitas, grilled garlic whips, shaved grana padano. It was paired with a 2006 domaine lafond, grenache blanc/rousanne/viognier, from Lirac, France. We both loved the pumpkin seeds (pepitas) here. Note to self: toast pumpkin seeds more often!

For the pasta course, jwa had the squid ink fettuccini with monteray monterey bay calamari, roasted fennel, lemon, pine nut bread crumbs, paired with a 2006 quinta dos roques, from Portugal. It was a little spicy and quite good.

For my pasta course, I had the snap pea agnolotti with lemon, english peas, shaved proscuitto, parmesan reggiano with a 2008 françois chidane, sauvignon blanc, from the Loire Valley, France. This was buttery and lemony and pleasingly salty from the proscuitto.

jwa’s main course: the pan-seared chinook salmon with roasted mushrooms, salt roasted new potatoes, sautéed mustard greens, saffron fumet. He repeated the 2006 quinta dos roques wine pairing here.

In a move that is quite unlike me, I opted for the rosemary marinated flank steak with grilled walla walla spring onion salad, english peas, mint, feta dressing. This came with a 2005 d’alessandro, syrah, from Tuscany, Italy. My first red wine of the evening, yum. The steak was all grrrrrrr! Red meaty! And the peas-mint-feta combination was really, really good — a nice compliment to the grrrr.

Dessert? Why not! jwa tried the lemon spongecake, which doesn’t seem to be on their online menu, so you get no extra descriptions. Sorry.

I had the marscapone honey semifreddo with chocolate sauce, crushed amaretto cookies with a Late Harvest Gewürztraminer, from Chehalem Mountains, Oregon.

So, four actual courses, pre-meal cocktail and dessert wine pairings? Yeah, we kind of splurged with our meal here but it was mighty tasty! And sometimes it’s nice to splurge on a memorably delicious weeknight meal!

This makes a very good weekend meal. There are a lot of steps and ingredients but it is so worth it in the end (like a lot of long-cooking, multi-stepped recipes). It’s very similar to coq au vin, but with beer (duh). Use a good dark beer, Belgian-style if you’ve got it. I used half belgian, half regular dark. Four cups is about 2.5 bottles of beer, so you’ll have half a beer to drink while you start cooking. So, bonus points there.

Let’s see, what else? We had this with crusty bread but you could also add polenta or noodles to serve it over. I added garlic to this and subbed pancetta for the bacon but that’s about it. Oh yeah, I didn’t have leek leaves. Skipped that and added some rosemary sprigs to my bouquet garni instead.

This recipe is from the awesome cookbook, “French Farmhouse Cookbook,” and is the same cookbook with the walnut chicken recipe. That is pretty much my most favorite chicken recipe ever.

From the Aix-lea-Orchies villiage in France, right near the Belgian border. Hence the beer. Speaking of, a good dark beer works for well for drinking with this meal. We cracked open some Chimay Bleue.

Chicken Braised in Beer (Coq à la Bière)
Ever-so-slightly adapted from the French Farm House Cookbook by Susan Herrmann Loomis
2 tbsp olive oil, more as needed
1 large chicken (3 1/2 to 4 pounds; 1 3/4 to 2 kg), cut into 8 pieces (or buy an already cut-up chicken — 2 breast pieces, 2 wings with portion of breast attached, 2 legs, 2 thighs), excess fat removed
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large onion, cut in half, then in very thin crosswise slices
4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
4 cups dark beer
1 bouquet garni (5 parsley stems, 3 imported bay leaves, 2 green leek leaves, 12 sprigs fresh thyme, tied together, in cheesecloth if desired) — I skipped the leek leaves, added rosemary

For the garnishes:
1 tbsp unsalted butter
40 pearl onions, peeled
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup (250 ml) chicken or roasted vegetable stock
1/2 lb bacon or pancetta
1 lb button mushrooms, brushed clean and cut into quarters
1/2 cup (loosely packed) curly parsley leaves, for garnish (optional)
Thyme sprigs for garnish

Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it is hot but not smoking. Add the chicken pieces, season them with salt and pepper, and cook on one side until the skin turns an even golden brown, about 5 minutes. (Do not crowd the pan; brown the chicken in several batches if necessary.)

Carefully regulate the heat to avoid scorching the skin. Then turn the pieces, season again with salt and pepper, and brown on that side, 5 minutes.

Remove the chicken pieces from the skillet, reduce the heat to medium, and add the sliced onions and garlic (adding more oil if needed to keep them from sticking). Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are translucent, about 8 minutes.

Sprinkle the flour over the onions and cook, stirring, until the flour has absorbed much of the cooking juices and has a chance to cook, at least 2 minutes.

Then return the chicken to the skillet, add the beer and the bouquet garni, stir, and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat and cook, partially covered, at a lively simmer until the chicken is cooked through, about 50 minutes. Remove the chicken from the sauce and return the sauce to a boil. Reduce it by half, until it has thickened to the consistency of thin gravy, 5 to 8 minutes.

Return the chicken to the sauce, and remove the skillet from the heat; set it aside. (The chicken can be prepared up to this point a day ahead. Refrigerate it, covered. The following day, skim off any fat that has congealed on the surface, if desired. Reheat, covered, over medium-low heat.)

While the chicken is cooking, prepare the garnish: Melt the butter in a medium-size heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the pearl onions, season lightly with salt and pepper, and sauté until golden, about 10 minutes.

Add the chicken stock, reduce the heat to medium, and cook at a lively simmer, shaking the pan occasionally so the onions cook evenly, until they are tender through and the stock has neatly evaporated, about 20 minutes.

Remove from the heat and keep warm.

Cut the bacon or pancetta into small cubes. Brown it in a medium-size heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon or spatula and set it aside on a plate.

Drain off all but 1 tablespoon of the fat. Add the mushrooms to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, until they begin to give up their liquid, are slightly golden, and are nearly tender through, about 5 minutes. Season generously with pepper, and remove from the heat.

Add mushrooms, the bacon, and the pearl onions, along with any juices to the chicken, and gently mix them in. Either transfer to a large warmed serving platter (one with edges, so the juice won’t run off) or serve directly from the cooking pot.

Garnish with the parsley, if desired, and serve immediately.

Oh my this was good. I messed around with the recipe a bit, mainly I made a 1/2 recipe of the rhubarb and a full recipe of the topping! Mahahahahaha — (that was an evil laugh).

I only had two rhubarb pieces which weighed 12 oz. That was my main reason for making a half recipe. But when I got it all mixed up, I found that I could just fill up 4 ramekins. So, I figured I would need almost all the crumbly topping of the original recipe. Right? Yes, exactly.

Recipe below is the full recipe, halve, double or quadruple as needed.

Rhubarb Crisp w/ Crunchy, Crumbly Walnut Topping
Adapted from Bon Appétit magazine
Rhubarb
24 ounces fresh rhubarb, trimmed, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (about 5 cups) — this is about 4 pieces
2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/2 tsp grated orange peel
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Crumbly, Crumbly Topping
2/3 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/3 cup chopped toasted walnuts
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix all rhubarb ingredients in large bowl to combine. Divide mixture among four to six 1-cup ramekins (depending on whether you are making a full or half recipe). Place ramekins on large baking sheet and bake rhubarb 10 minutes.

Take the rhubarb out of the oven after the ten minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare crumbly topping:

Mix brown sugar, chopped walnuts, flour, and butter in medium bowl. Crumble topping over rhubarb, dividing equally.

Bake until rhubarb mixture is bubbling and streusel is golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Serve crisps warm with a scoop of Sage, Rosemary & Thyme Ice Milk.

Okay, the ice milk. I changed a few things here. The original recipe used different herbs and also 4 and 2/3 cups of whole milk, which is kind of silly, since then I would have a lot of full fat milk leftover that I wouldn’t use for anything else. Four cups is a quart, so I just bought a quart and used four cups and shaved a bit off the other ingredients. My adaptation is below.

I also used vanilla sugar for the sugar. Basically, a container I put a used vanilla bean pod with a bunch of sugar. The pod makes the sugar all vanilla-y. When I measured the sugar out here, it was all I had left so I threw the empty pod into my milk too.

I really liked the vanilla flavor here so either use vanilla sugar, add a vanilla bean or use some vanilla extract at the end!

Oh and I found this just as creamy as ice cream — but no cream! Also, not a lot of pictures — it’s hard to whisk and take pictures at the same time.

Sage, Rosemary & Thyme Ice Milk
4 cups whole milk
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
1 3/4 tbsp cornstarch
pinch salt
4 sage sprigs
1 rosemary sprig
2 thyme sprigs
3 large egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract (or you can use vanilla sugar for the sugar above and add an empty vanilla bean pod or add 1 vanilla bean pod to the simmering milk)

Whisk together milk, sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a 2- to 3-quart heavy saucepan. Add herb sprigs (and empty vanilla pod if you have one) and bring to a boil, whisking constantly. Gently boil, whisking constantly, 1 minute.

Lightly beat yolks in a large bowl. Pour hot milk mixture through a sieve into a large bowl, pressing gently on sprigs before discarding.

Then gradually add milk to the yolks, whisking quickly until combined. Do this slowly and whisking fast or you will scramble the yolks.

Return the milk/egg mixture to the saucepan and over moderately low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for 3-5 minutes. It should register about 175 degrees F on thermometer, for you science-y, Alton Brown types.

Pour custard through cleaned sieve into a clean bowl. If you are using vanilla extract add it here and mix it in. Cool custard completely and chill in the refrigerator until cold, at least 2 hours.

I cheated here and put the hot mixture in the freezer to cool down. After about 3 hours it was cool enough to go in the ice cream maker. The best scenario is to just make this and refrigerate it the day before.

Freeze custard in ice cream maker. Transfer ice milk to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden.