1/2shallot(peeled and minced, can use 1/4 small onion)
1small potato(peeled and cubed)
4-5cupschicken or vegetable broth
2Tbspsbrandy
1/4cupwhite wine
1pinchdried tarragon
1/2cupsour cream
1/2cupshredded parmesan cheese
salt and pepper(to taste)
1/4cuptoasted hazelnuts(crushed into large pieces, for garnish)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350ºC/175ºF Set garlic bulbs in aluminum foil or dish with a cover, drizzle with the olive oil. Place in oven and cook for approximately 1 hour. Allow to cool until easily handled. Remove cloves from skin. Melt butter in pot. Add shallots and cook until just softened. Add the potato and garlic, stirring. Add the broth, brandy, wine and tarragon. Bring the soup to a light simmer for 20 minutes. Either blend in pot with a handheld blender, or blend in regular blender in batches, until smooth. Return to pot, add the sour cream and parmesan, stirring in completely. Add salt and pepper to taste. Place in bowls, sprinkle the hazelnuts on top and serve.
Hiya folks. Sorry for the huge delay between posting. I’ve ended up with a relapse of my concussion, and as a result have been trying to limit my screen time to reduce my symptoms. Since I do need to stare at a screen all day for my job, the blogging has taken a bit of a backseat of late. BUT! I think things are starting to turn, so I am going to be spending a bit more time putting together posts. I’ve had plenty of time to cook, so I’ve got a lot of content in backlog! I just need to get the stuff I have written down into posts!
With that, let’s talk about today’s recipe. A roasted garlic soup. This luscious, velvety bowl of deliciousness is so comforting and luxurious-feeling with ultimately fairly inexpensive ingredients (minus the booze and nuts). It plates really nicely too, so you can impress your dinner guests by serving this as a beautiful (and delicious) appetizer. Y’know… when we’re able to have dinner guests again (*silent tears*).
To get this recipe started.. we need to roast the garlic. This part is super simple, just place the garlic in some tin foil (or a covered oven-proof dish if you’re not wanting to use foil), drizzle it with the olive oil, seal the package up, and place it in a 350ºF/175ºC oven. If you want to make it easier to access the garlic later, you can cut tops off to expose the very top of the cloves before drizzling with the olive oil, but I don’t really find it all that easier. Bake the garlic for approximately an hour.
When the garlic is cooked, remove from the oven, open the package up and let the garlic cool until cool enough to handle. Then, remove those delicious little nuggets of roasted cloves from the skin and set them aside.
Next, melt the butter in a pot over medium heat, then add the shallot or onion, and stir until just softened. Add the potato, and stir until the potato is coated with the butter. Next, add the garlic, broth, brandy, wine and tarragon, stirring well. In the recipe I suggest adding a pinch of tarragon. For any cooking beginners, you may ask: how much is a pinch? Well, if you were to reach into your spice jar and pinch a small amount of the spice between your index finger and thumb? That’s about a pinch.
Bring the soup up to a light simmer, cover and cook for 20 minutes.
Next is how we get that nice, smooth texture. If you have one, you could use a hand blender to blend the soup right in the pot. I prefer to blend in a blender so the soup is soup-er smooth (yes I did that). If you have a smaller blender, you might have to do this in batches.
Once blended, return the soup to the pot, and add the sour cream and parmesan cheese until fully mixed. Can you use regular cream here? Absolutely. I just didn’t have any and going to get some just doesn’t seem like a necessary trip.
Finally, serve, topping with the hazelnut pieces, a drizzle of olive oil and some parmesan cheese, and serve.
Preheat oven to 350ºF/175ºC. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of sugar in water, sprinkle yeast over top and let stand for 10 minutes. Combine bloomed yeast with milk and 5 cups flour. Beat well until smooth. Cover and let rise in warm place until light and bubbly (~5 minutes). Add eggs, sugar, 1/2 cup butter, and salt. Mix thoroughly. Stir in enough flour to make a dough that is neither too soft or too stiff. Let rise for 60 minutes. Turn on to a floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes, mixing the raisins into the dough. Place back in bowl and let rise for 1 hour, until doubled in bulk. Divide and shape into loaves. Place in greased loaf pans, let rise for 1 hour until doubles in bulk. Bake 30-45 minutes until golden brown. Serve.
Keyword Bread, Raisins, Ukrainian Food
And now for the details…
This recipe is directly out of my grandma’s recipe box. Every year around Easter, she would make multiple loaves, and send several home with each of us. Easter weekend just doesn’t seem quite the same without toasted paska slices, smeared with lots of butter, served with some slices of old cheddar. Seriously, it makes me drool just thinking about it.
What is paska, you may ask? It’s a sweet bread, typical of many Eastern European countries, served on Easter Day, often after is has been blessed at church. Different folks will do different things with the paska dough. And this isn’t even different countries, but different families may have traditions that alter from family to family. Some will braid it or form it into ornaments, and some may add things like custards, sprinkled sugar, seeds, or raisins. For us? There was never any braiding, it was always simple loaves, and it was always with raisins.
Most paskas have their primary ingredients as milk, eggs, flour and butter. Because of the added fat in the dough from the milk, butter and egg yolks, the texture of the bread is fluffier and more “crumby” than a typical white bread, as the fats inhibit the formation of gluten chains. And with the addition of slightly more sugar than a typical bread dough, paska is fairly sweet, but not cake sweet. It is similar in flavour and texture to brioche or challah.
Let get to cooking. I was a bit worried about this batch… because of COVID, apparently lots of people are baking bread right now, and there was zero yeast left at all three stores I either visited or called. The only yeast I had in the house was stuffed at the back of the pantry and had an expiry date of 2016. Yikes. But… it’s all I had, so away we went.
Mix the 1 tsp of sugar into the lukewarm water and stir to dissolve. Sprinkle the yeast overtop, and let the yeast sit, to allow it to bloom, for about 10 minutes.
While you are waiting for the yeast, scald the milk and let it cool to lukewarm. What does scalding the milk mean? Place it in a pot and heat it up until it just starts to bubble and let off steam (it will get that “milk scum” formation on top). Why scald the milk? I have no idea. I’m venturing to guess that this is recipe that has been passed down a few hands/generations, and scalding the milk was needed because milk was not necessarily pasteurized when this recipe was first created… but… it’s the recipe, so I’m following it as taught by Grandma.
Once the milk has cooled to lukewarm, and the yeast has bloomed, add the milk and yeast mixture to 5 cups of flour. Mix thoroughly.
The dough at this point will be very soft and sticky. Let it rest in a warm place for about 5 minutes, until light and bubbly.
Next, add the beaten eggs, the rest of the sugar, 1/2 cup of melted butter, and salt. Mix thoroughly. The dough will be almost liquidy at this point, more like a batter than a dough.
To get it looking more like a dough, now is when we start to mix the rest of the flour in. Mix it in 1-2 cups at a time, fully mixing the flour into the dough between each additions. After the first few additions, the dough will become too thick to mix with the spoon, start kneading the flour in with your hands at this point. Stir in enough flour to make a dough that is neither too soft or too stiff. It should be a bit tacky, but doesn’t stick to your hands when you pull away.
Cover the dough with a tea towel and set it in a warm place to rise for an hour.
After the dough has risen, turn it out onto a floured surface, and knead the dough for 5-10 minutes until it is smooth and satiny (grandma’s word, seriously, it was on the recipe that I copied from her), and knead the raisins into the dough.
Place the dough back into the bowl, cover, and let it rise again for another hour or until the dough has doubled in bulk.
Divide the dough and shape it into loaves. Place the loaves into greased loaf pans, and let them rise another hour, until they have doubled again.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF/175ºC. Once the dough has risen in the pans, brush the tops with the remaining melted butter, and place them into the preheated oven for 30-45 minutes, or until the bread is golden brown.
Remove the loaves from the pans to allow them to cool. Or! Even better, cut into the bread while it’s still warm, slather with butter, and enjoy!
Don't be scared by the list of ingredients, this is an easy, no-fuss dinner that spends most of it's time in the oven so you are free to do other things around the house!
10cmpiece of fresh ginger(4", peeled, cut in large chunks)
2Tbspsdried makrut lime leaves(optional)
1small onion(peeled, cut in large slices)
2Tbspsbutter(melted)
1Tbspkosher salt
1/2cupdry white wine(plus more if needed)
4medium carrots(peeled, cut in large pieces)
15baby potatoes(halved, tossed in olive oil)
1fennel bulb(cored and cut in 8)
1 + 1/2cupsasparagus pieces(tossed in olive oil)
2Tbspsflour
1/4cupchicken broth
salt and pepper(to taste)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 425ºF/220ºC. Ensure bird's cavity is empty. Stuff cavity with garlic, ginger, and lime leaves. Place onion pieces on the bottom of the roasting pan. Place chicken on top of onions. Brush chicken with melted butter. Sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper. Pour white wine into base of pan. Place in oven for 15 minutes.
Reduce oven temperature to 350ºF/175ºC and place carrots, fennel, and baby potatoes. Lightly sprinkle veggies with salt. Cook the vegetables and chicken until the chicken breast meat registers at 165ºF/75ºC, about 20 minutes/lb. If the liquid evaporates off, add a bit more white wine.
10 minutes before the chicken is done, add the asparagus pieces.
Once done, removes chicken and veggies from the pan to a serving dish. Set the pan with the juices on the stovetop at medium-high heat (if minimal juices, top up slightly with more chicken broth). While waiting for the juices to start boiling, whisk together the flour and broth until smooth. Once the juices start to boil, slowly add the flour mixture, stirring continuously, until desired thickness for gravy is achieved. Remove from heat. Serve.
Keyword Chicken, Dinner, One Pan, Roasted, Vegetables
And now for the details…
Roasting a chicken was one of the first recipes I remember learning and being able to do on my own when I was younger. Roasted chicken is a surprisingly easy dinner to cook. And it displays nicely enough to look like it took a lot of effort to put together.
And you may ask, am I going to be a weirdo and name the bird like I did during Mo’s adventure? You know the answer. This little guy’s name is Fisher. He’s named after a recent song we did in RPM class, called “You Little Beauty”, and the artist’s name is Fisher. The moment I pulled the wee, three pound Fisher out of the fridge, I knew he was going to be a little beauty at the end, so the name only seemed right.
I am stuffing the chicken with some added flavour elements, but to be honest, you can do this recipe with nothing stuffed inside, and just some salt and pepper on the bird, and it turns out great! You may need to modify the cooking time a little bit, though, an unstuffed bird cooks in less time.
Let’s get to cooking, shall we?
Before we start prepping Fisher, preheat the oven to 425ºF/220ºC. We start at such a high heat to kinda sear Fisher’s outsides at the beginning to help lock in his juices.
Before stuffing, tie Fisher’s legs together so he can’t run away. Just kidding. Fisher is a dead chicken. He can’t run. But, we do want to tie his legs together to keep them in so they don’t splay out while he’s cooking and get all dried up. Unsure how to truss a chicken? This post provides a great step-by-step instruction to help you out!
Like I said earlier, you can get away with not stuffing Fisher, and just cooking him as is, with a little salt and pepper. But I like the added flavour Fisher will get from adding a few things into his cavity while he cooks. A lot of recipes will call for stuffing the bird with lemons or oranges… Citrus and chicken do go pretty well together. But to be honest, I’m not the hugest fan of the flavour of a roasted bird with lemon… Cooked lemon has a tendency to get bitter, and I don’t love the flavour it passes over to the poultry. I find it almost takes away some of the umami-ness of the meat. And so I’m going off-script with this one, and stuffing the bird with garlic, ginger, and lime leaves. No lime leaves? No worries. Omit them. I added them to play around and see what they added, and to be honest, the flavour addition was marginal…
Stuff Fisher with the chunks of ginger and garlic and leaves, alternating between them so they are spread out throughout the cavity. Before placing Fisher in the roasting pan, lay out the thick cut onion pieces on the bottom of the pan. We lay Fisher on top of the onions. These are going to lift Fisher up slightly so he doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan, or sit in his own juices while he cooks. Next, brush Fisher with the melted butter, making sure to get any exposed bits and pieces of him nicely covered. Sprinkle Fisher with kosher salt and pepper, then pour the white wine in the base of the pan.
Place Fisher in the oven and cook him for 15 minutes. While he is doing his first stint in the oven, get the veggies ready to go. Cut the stalks off the fennel, then quarter and core it, then slice the quarters in half. Peel the carrots, and cut into large pieces. Cut the baby potatoes in half, and toss them with a little bit of olive oil.
Remove Fisher from the oven, and turn the oven down to 350ºF/175ºC. We’ve got the original “sear” on Fisher and now we reduce the heat to roast him all the way through. The lower temp is also going to allow us to cook the veggies in the pan with Fisher, without burning or drying them out too much. Add the fennel and carrots first, stirring them a bit to coat them with whatever juices have collected in the bottom of the pan. Then we add the potatoes to the pan. I like separating the carrots/fennel from the potatoes to give the taters some space to crisp up a bit more. Sprinkle all the veggies with a little bit of salt.
If there was little to no juices in the bottom of the pan, add a little bit of white wine or chicken broth to the pan. Place the pan back in the oven. Now we simply wait. Fisher is going to cook for about 20 minutes/pound. The most important consideration is to make sure that the meat registers at 165ºF/75ºC when measured at the thickest part of the breast, not touching bone. If you do not have a meat thermometer, you can cut into a deep part of the thigh. If the juices run clear, then Fisher is done. If there is still some pink in the juices, Fisher needs a little more time in the oven.
Just before Fisher is done cooking, by about 10 minutes (when the meat is around 10ºF/5ºC under it’s final temperature), add the asparagus into the pan. Again, we are going to check the juices at the bottom. If they are low, top up with a bit of wine or broth.
Put the pan back in the oven and cook for the final 10 minutes, until the chicken reaches the correct temperature. Remove the pan from the oven when everything is done. Move the chicken and veggies from the pan onto a serving platter.
Place the pan, with the juices, onto the stovetop and set the burner to medium-high heat. You might need to tip the pan so the juices tilt to one end of the long pan. Let the juices heat up to start boiling. Yet again… if minimal juices, top up with a little bit of broth.
In a small bowl, place 1/4 cup of the broth, and whisk 2 tablespoons of bisquick (remember the leftover flour mixture we had from the Kraft box? Now’s the time to use some of it! Otherwise, plain flour works just fine) into the broth until smooth with no lumps are left. Once the meat juices start to boil, turn the temperate down to medium, and slowly add the flour liquid, a bit at a time, stirring continuously, until the gravy has thickened.
Remove the gravy to a gravy boat, and serve!
Happy eating.
And now… BONUS TIME!!!
My RPM members groan when I introduce a bonus, since it usually means a “surprise” extra 15-30 seconds of effort after everyone thought the heavy effort was over. Well… at least they used to groan when I was still teaching (waiting for COVID isolation to end so we can make it back to the gym!) Soon… *tapping fingers* soon…
In this case, the bonus is making chicken broth from the leftover carcass after you have devoured the meat of of Fisher’s body. I made the broth using my Instant Pot, but you can easily do this on a pot on the stove, you’ll just need to cook it for about double the time, topping up the liquid if it boils off.
After getting most of the meat off Fisher, remove the ginger, garlic, and lime leaves from inside his cavity. You can leave them there if you would like, but you will end up with a very gingery-flavoured broth. Place Fisher’s carcass into the pot, and fill it with water until the carcass is covered, or you’ve almost reached the “MAX” line on the Instant Pot. Add some onion, carrot, and celery to the pot.
Cover and seal the pot, cooking on the “soup/broth” setting for 1.5 hours. If you are cooking on the stove, heat the liquid up until it starts to simmer, then reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook for 3 hours. Once done, let the seal release if in the Instant Pot, then strain the solids out of the broth. I would suggest using a cheesecloth to getting the little uckies out of there and you’ll have a nice, clear broth. Place the broth into freezable containers and place in your freezer for future use! The broth should keep in your freezer for several months.
