12 Months of Climbing

Chicken Noodle Soup with Cheddar Scones ...

... that's really more of a stew than a soup. Actually, it's more of a casserole, except that it's not baked, in that it could almost be eaten with a fork. In fact, in the original recipe, it called for whole chicken pieces, but somewhere along the way we decided to shred the chicken.



It's still technically winter, and meteorologically (word? should be) it's typically the coldest part of the winter these days. Still flu and cold season, and everyone's Granny knows chicken soup is good for what ails you.

So here's an in-between chicken soupish concoction that can be slapped together in a moment's notice, when nothing else soups good and you need a bowl/plate of something hot that smells like home.

About 45 minutes total, which includes 25 minutes of simmer time where you can work on something else. I like this particular one because you put the chicken breasts in whole, so you don't have to worry about cross-contamination with your knives or cutting boards. Just one less thing to worry about, and one step closer to sitting down to eat.

We also like the frozen egg noodles, which are a bit gummier than dried noodles and soak up the chicken flavor.

4-5 cups of chicken stock
1 medium onion (yellow or sweet)
3 celery ribs, sliced down the middle and then cut medium-fine
3 carrots or one bag of baby carrots, cut into 1/4 inch chunks or medium-fine slices
1 bay leaf if you have it

One package chicken breasts, 3-4 breasts, 1.5-2.5 pounds or so
2 teaspoons dried sage
1-2 teaspoons salt
.5-1 teaspoon black pepper (both to your taste)

1 pound frozen cavatelli, dumplings, or egg noodles.

2 Tablespoon each butter (slightly softened) and flour. You can get these two out at the beginning, and the butter should be soft enough by the time you need it.

In a large Dutch oven or stock pot, simmer the chicken stock, onion, celery, carrots, and bay leaf for about 5-10 minutes. Add the whole chicken breasts, sage, and salt/pepper. Simmer for 25-30 minutes covered or partially covered. Flip the chicken a couple or three times to make sure it cooks evenly.

Once this is going, cook the frozen noodles according to its instructions. This usually takes about 15 minutes — 5-10 minutes to get the water boiling, then 10 minutes of cooking time.

At this point, you can opt to serve the chicken breasts whole, which means you'll need a knife, fork, and spoon when it's eating time. Or, you can take two forks and pull the chicken apart into bite sized pieces.

Mix the flour and butter until smooth. Push as much of the chicken and veggies as you can to the side of the pot and spoon the butter/flour into the liquid in the middle. Stir or whisk into the soup, and then add the noodles. Simmer for a couple more minutes so the noodles absorb some of the flavor and everything is evenly heated. Serve in soup bowls or shallow pasta bowls.

Let's go back to the simmer time. Once the soup / stew is ready to simmer, you can either clean up the kitchen or whip up some biscuits. If you choose the latter, here you go.

Dry ingredients, can be prepped ahead of time:
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbs baking powder
1 tsp sea salt or kosher salt
6 Tbs butter, cold, cold, cold
1 cup shredded Cheddar

Preheat the oven to 450º. Mix the flour, sugar, powder, and salt, and then cut in the butter and add the shredded cheese. Lightly combine.

Mix and stir in:
1 cup butter milk *
1 egg, beaten

* No butter milk? One cup of plain yogurt works, or put one Tbs of either vinegar (white or cider) in a measuring cup and fill with milk to the one cup line. Let it stand for 10 minutes to thicken.

Pour the liquid into the dry and very lightly combine just until mixed. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or not) and scoop 1/4 cup of the batter for each biscuit. They'll rise just a bit, so space them out 1-2". Bake for 15 minutes. Should be ready just in time for the soup.

Stuff to Try

Quick list of things that caught my eye and made the to do list for February.

Ricotta Bread from The Greasy Skillet










Palak Daal, spinach and lentils, from 101 Cookbooks.









"Looks like somebody's been watching Julie and Julia," says the Internet Food Association. How about a boeuf bourguignon that looks like this but takes only this long?

Photo from the IFA Food Porn photo pool.

Cajun Chicken Pasta from the Pioneer Woman. (Visit her site for some of the best food photography on the web.)







Edamame Hummus, from Weelicious.








Freekeh Salad with Sweet Potato and Lemon ... just because I like the way "freekeh" sounds. From The Atlantic's food section.

February means ... one more month until St Paddy's Day

So, here ya go.

Irish Stew with Cheddar Scone

January Nutrition News and Odds and Ends

Scanning the funny papers ...

1. Tons of school lunch news these days, starting with La Vida Lacovore. If you have a school-aged child, in public or private school, or if you pay taxes that support a school, or if you eat food, you owe it to yourself to at least scan the headlines at La Vida Locavore.

A teacher in Illinois has been buying her school's lunch every day and posting her experience on her blog, "Fed Up: The School Lunch Project." Even a simple PB&J turns into an agro-business nightmare.

And here's a look at the anti-school lunch reform movement, the nutritional equivalent of the Know Nothing Party, I guess.



2. Vitamin D: Miracle Drug or Hype?

Interesting piece on the potential benefits of Vitamin D.

However ...

This one article sums up just about everything that we need to keep in mind when reading about the latest research on just about anything.

“Correlation does not necessarily mean a cause-and-effect relationship,” said Dr. JoAnn E. Manson, a Harvard professor who is chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

... [S]ince most of the data on vitamin D comes from observational research, it may be that high doses of the nutrient don’t really make people healthier, but that healthy people simply do the sorts of things that happen to raise vitamin D."

3. A simple breakdown of the differences between whey protein and soy protein here, at VeloNews.

4. Everyone has been talking about watching too much TV lately. A study in Australia found that watching TV is correlated not only with diseases associated with a lack of exercise, such as heart disease, obesity, and high blood pressure, but also an increase in death by all causes. In a nutshell, it comes down to our general lack of not just exercise but activity. You can work out all that you like, but that's only 30 minutes to an hour or so out of the 24 hour day. If you spend the rest of the day sitting in front of a computer or shuffling papers, and then add even more sitting down to your leisure activities, then the smidgen that you dedicate to working out pales in comparison. And as David Munger of ResearchBlogging.org says, "Out of the hundreds of thousands of years Homo sapiens has existed, we’ve been intensely physically active for all but a few of them."

5. A look at the mental health of Virginia Woolf and its impact on her work, from the folks at Seed.

6. Interesting side-trip here at Bang Goes the Theory, a BBC show that mixes Myth Busters with NOVA. How much energy does the average family use, in terms of cyclists pushing generators?

Reason #237 why you need an iPad

The seeds from your everything bagel will not find themselves into the nooks and also the crannies of your keyboard.

That is not insignificant in this household. Well, not for the entire household, but for the grazer-typist looking me back in the mirror.

Bánh Mì the second time around

The website is called The Battle of the Bánh Mì, which is obviously a bad pun ("bad pun" being redundant, of course). But there's more to the name than just the pun. The word "battle" is not insignificant, because it is a battle of the taste buds to see which of the several thousand variations of this simple sandwich is the best.

Why all the love for a simple sandwich? The Greasy Skillet calls it "a sandwich I could marry." M. says it's the best sandwich she's ever had, which is high praise, given that we live down the road from the Choice City Deli, home of maybe the biggest and best Reuben you'll ever find (centered around a foot-high pile of bison pastrami). One the one hand, it is just a sandwich. But on the other ... oh what a sandwich it is.

Take your classic American BBQ, with tangy sauce on succulent meat, accented with sour pickles or relish ... and then put that on steroids. That's the bánh mì for you. No, that's not quite right, because this isn't an over-powering meal. Just a near perfect combination of flavors that you'll never get tired of trying.

Last month we made our first excursion into bánh mì territory, trying out a meatball version, using this Jeanne Thiel Kelley recipe. That sandwich was so good, I really doubted that there was any room for improvement. But making the grilled pork version has convinced me that there can't possibly be a wrong way to make this sandwich. Both the meatball and grilled pork versions called for fish sauce, which I omitted. Instead, I added a couple of squirts of Sriracha to the marinade, which brightened it up without scaring off my wife's western Nebraska sensibilities.

I followed a different recipe for pickling the veggies, and both ways came out great. My only recommendation would be to follow the one that you think is easiest in terms of containers and storage space. The first time, I used nothing but vinegar, sugar, and salt. The second version called for a warm water solution with a little bit less vinegar, a little bit less sugar, and the same amount of salt. It simply comes down to, would you rather save a couple of cents using less of the ingredients if it means the extra step of filling a container with water? It's really a toss up.

My recommendation: give this version a shot, and then look around at The Battle of the Bánh Mì and see which direction you can take it.

Pork:

Pork chops, loin, or shoulder works. I used a one pound pork loin, marinaded overnight in the following. An hour or so before cooking, I sliced the pork into super-thin medallions and returned it to the marinade. Then I pan-fried it with a light spray of olive oil.


2 tsp brown sugar (white sugar is fine)
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 of an onion or 1-2 shallots, chopped fine
1/3 - 1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbs sesame seed oil
fresh ground pepper
a shot or two of Sriracha

Marinate in an non-reactive container for at least one hour, up to 24 hours before cooking.

I sliced the pork super thin and only needed 1-2 minutes per side on medium high heat. You can do this ahead of time and then warm it up in the oven before assembling your sandwich, or make this the last step before everyone sits down to eat, or a combination like we did: grill the meat, transfer to a baking sheet and cover and keep in the oven until chow time.


Pickled veggies: Lots of options here.

One daikon block, peeled and chopped into matchsticks
2 carrots, peeled and chopped into matchsticks
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped into strips

2-3 cups warm water, depending on the size of your container

3 Tbs vinegar (rice, cider, white wine, etc)

2-3 Tbs sugar (less if you like sour pickles, more if you like sweet ... duh!)

2 Tbs sea or kosher salt


Measure cold water and nuke it for a minute or two. (Never cook with hot water from the tap ... picks up too many contaminants along the way.) Add the sugar and salt and stir until dissolved, then add the vinegar. Pour over the veggies in an air-tight container and store for at least an hour (I did mine overnight again).

Sandwich time!

High quality rolls, warmed in the oven for a few minutes.

Mix 2 Tbs mayo with a shot or two of Sriracha, mix, and spread on the bread.

Layer your meat and pickled veggies. Sprinkle with finely chopped cilantro. Eat and enjoy!

For our side dish, we made this wonderful salad from Molly Wizenberg at Bon Appètit. A very simple combination of celery root, fennel, and apple (she used Gala, but I'm addicted to HoneyCrisps), matchsticked, with a Dijon mustard vinaigrette. On paper, it sounds like way too much going on at once, but the earthy yet crisp and clean salad went perfectly with the tangy / spicy / sour sandwiches.

Hope you give this a shot, either as a pair or by themselves.

National Western Stock Show 2010

Had a weekend visit with the boy and took him to the stock show. First time for me, first time for him, but M. used to go a lot as a kid, so she guided us through it, made sure no one walked up to a horse from the wrong side and watched where we stepped when we followed the bulls.

Pix here.

Music in the Kitchen

Now, why is Willie Nelson's tequila-mango salsa not a surprise?

Music in the Kitchen

Favorite Recipes from Austin City Limits

January's News You Can Use

A quick jaunt around the newsroom ...


1. Weight lifting is good for your brain. From the NYT's Well. Seems like the more we learn about the brain, the more we find that it's just one big muscle, capable of all kinds of growth and change and modification and re-routing.

2. LA Times Health and Fitness: All Fibers Are Not Created Equal. A quick look at sources of naturally occurring fiber and how the supplemented, processed foods measure up. If you're on a low-carb diet or just plain eating too much junk, you need to think about this one.

3. Hal Walters looks at olive oil. "While most other dietary oils are virtually absent of phytonutrient phenols, extra-virgin olive oil, obtained from the whole fruit using the cold-press technique, is very high in phenols."

4. More on brain health. From Dr Phil Maffetone, fourteen things you can do just about every day to keep your brain ticking. Seven here and seven more here.


5. Running barefoot is getting more and more attention, but this web-based shoe retailer wants you to reconsider the risks. Hmmmm ... sounds like he's realized that it's hard to sell air to barefoot runners.


6. One of the things I find fascinating about education is how much inertia is in our systems and infrastructure. Teachers should be on the cutting edge of just about everything, should be innovative and open to new ideas. But throw them an idea that requires them to get off their butt and change, and you'd better get ready for some serious whining. Case in point: it makes zero sense to ask kids to clean their plate and fill their bellies, then send them out to the playground. Zero sense. And yet, only around 5% of schools schedule recess before lunch.

The Well: Play, Then Eat

(When it comes to education, we should frequently ask ourselves, if we were designing this from scratch, is this what it would look like? I think we'd be surprised how often we'll answer that question with a "no," and yet how infrequently we'll do anything about it.)