Good friends of ours, Lynn & Sue, often exchange dinners with us. We’ve been doing it for years, and always enjoy their company whether it’s at our house or theirs. Sue’s a very good cook, so we have great conversations about food and about choir/church. Lynn and Dave have guy talk – about wine, travel, and choir/church. They’re both 2nd tenors. Sue and I are both 2nd altos. The day I’m writing this [over a week ago] we just sang our little hearts out for Reformation Sunday. Our choir, which has now swelled to about 140, and may be up to 150 starting next week, was a significant part of our church service, with the help of a brass ensemble multiple drums and flute, guitar, organ, piano and a synthesizer. It was gorgeous music – both to sing and hear. We sang some of the old hymns that I know nearly by heart – Great is Thy Faithfulness, for one.

Normally I don’t use my blog as a venue for discussing my faith, but I just had to share a bit about my Christian music life. Anyway, Sue & Lynn invited us for dinner that night, even though we didn’t get home from singing completely through two services, until about 12:30 pm. I’d offered to bring a couple of things, though, to make it easier on Sue. We do that generally, the guest brings something and a bottle of wine.

I’d given Sue a list of options of things I’d thought about making, and she chose two of them. But then Lynn started joking about a dinner I fixed one night a year or so ago when I made tabbouli salad, but instead of bulgur wheat, it was made with cauliflower. I didn’t tell any of the guests what was in it. Lynn, who professes to dislike cauliflower in most forms, liked it a lot. Then I told him what was in it. He’s never forgotten that I like to slip some in under his radar.

So, of course, I had to find some kind of cauliflower appetizer. Where he wouldn’t have a clue. It’s a kind of game we play. I couldn’t find much except some Indian-type ones making roasted cauliflower, flavored with Indian spices, which sounded more like a side vegetable anyway. But baking cauliflower florets would be much too obvious. Had to find something with camouflage. So this is the one. Found it on the internet, although it was a very oddball website and I’m not going to link to it. Besides, I changed the recipe, so it’s not really anybody else’s anymore. It was called a pate so I figured I could get away with serving it to Lynn, telling him it is a bean pate.

It’s really a dip – and contains many of the usual ingredients for one – like cream cheese (light), and sour cream (light). But then it veered off in another direction:  hardboiled eggs, an onion, a small quantity of cannellini beans, and some cooked cauliflower. The seasonings are mild – salt, pepper, curry and parsley. As a matter of fact, the online recipe I found called it curried cauliflower pate, but the recipe didn’t contain any curry. I added curry powder and also lime juice because it needed just a little something to zip it up some. And I’d probably add even more curry powder, but didn’t want to overwhelm the palates of us all. I used less beans, less sour cream, less cream cheese, and MORE cauliflower. The online recipe contained butter, but I left it out.

I served it with some veggies and pita chips. along with a second appetizer too (an almond dip, which I’ll post in a day or so). A Greek type one based on skordalia, the Greek sauce made with baked potato. More on that one later. I also took a Roasted Sweet Potato, Black Bean and Red Bell Pepper Salad with a jalapeno dressing, which was really good (I posted that one last week). Very international menu, based on what I was bringing! Sue made a delish Mexican baked chicken dish with tomatoes, sour cream, avocado and a tomatillo sauce. And a very nice spinach, apple and pomegranate salad. Oh yes, and for dessert we had pieces of Julia Child’s chiffon pumpkin pie that I thought was fabulous. She’s going to give me the recipe.

So, you want to know how it went? Lynn tried both dips and didn’t say much at first. He then pointed to the skordalia dip and said “now, you didn’t slip some cauliflower in this one, did you?” Honestly, I could say with great laughter, “no, no cauliflower.” Sue asked him how he liked the other dip, this pate, and he said great. Liked it. We all did. When I told him it WAS cauliflower, he didn’t believe me. We all laughed and nearly finished the bowl. It was good. Not like a meat-based one (like clams) or a very major veggie one (like caramelized onions or artichokes) – in this one you really cannot taste or feel cauliflower. I liked the curry hint to it – it might not be to everyone’s taste. I liked the texture. And it’s fairly low cal and low fat.
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A year ago: Pork Tenderloin with Cherry Grape Sauce

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Every time I pop my package of frozen bacon out of the freezer, and somebody happens to be here, they usually ask “what’s that?” And I explain that these are my bacon rolls. “Bacon rolls? What are bacon rolls?” I’ve mentioned them here before, and I don’t recall where I heard this suggestion. Probably at a cooking class. When I buy bacon, usually I buy the uncured nitrate- and nitrite-free Niman Ranch thick bacon (carried at our local Trader Joe’s, and some upscale markets). It’s a rare morning when we eat bacon and eggs, so a package of bacon lasts a long time at our house. This uncured bacon doesn’t have a long shelf life, so the best thing for me is to freeze it. Mostly I use it in cooking, to flavor things. Like a stews, soups, green beans, or sprinkled on a salad even.

So, the above picture shows you what I do with them. I let the bacon package sit out at room temp for about 10 minutes. Otherwise when you try to pull off the first bacon strip, it almost tears, and it’s hard to roll, almost cracking in the process. Once it’s warmed a bit, the slices are easy to pull apart and roll up. So, I carefully peel off each strip of bacon, roll it up in a tight little ball and place it on a foil-lined baking sheet, with the end edge down. Just press the roll down a bit and it will stay firmly in place. The tray you see above was before freezing . . . I just pop that tray into a flat place in the freezer, loosely covered with another sheet of foil, until they’re frozen solid, then the whole batch is wrapped in heavy-duty foil and placed in a heavy-duty freezer bag. The bacon keeps for months. Then, whenever I need bacon, I just pull out ONE roll/strip. Or, I may even cut one of the rolls in half and use just that. Cutting frozen bacon is very easy because the fat doesn’t freeze very hard – a good butcher knife will sink right through. I find chopping frozen bacon far easier than crumbling or chopping it up later.

So, there’s one of my pantry secrets, if you can call it that!

A year ago: “Divorce” salad dressing (the story was better than the dressing, but it’s good for a laugh)

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This was SO good. And it looked like more work than I’d ordinarily want to do. I didn’t make this myself, but it was served to me at a recent cooking class. A class with nothing but Julia Child recipes. Phillis Carey taught the class, and made only a couple of tiny changes to Julia’s recipes, but this was just delish. It’s ideal for a sit-down lunch, if you do such things, or probably a brunch would be perfect. Could be done for a dinner, but it’s rich and filling, so you wouldn’t want anything else very substantial in addition to this. My friend Cherrie and I talked about doing it for a brunch, but it would be best if somebody else could/would help you with some of the work. Either with the soufflé, or with the other parts of the meal, like the fruit plate you might want to have, or the champagne cocktails. How’s that sound?

So what’s a fallen soufflé? Nothing but a soufflé that’s allowed to fall, which it will do all by itself if you just leave it alone. You do do the whipped egg whites folded into your egg mixture, it’s baked flat on a large baking sheet, turned out of the pan onto a flat surface. In that short time, the soufflé falls some – not so flat as scrambled egg-like, but it’s not as high as it is when it first exits the oven. Once briefly cooled, it’s stuffed with a Béchamel-rich spinach sauce (a Béchamel sauce is really just a cream sauce) and rolled. Then cut and served immediately, while it’s hot. In the photo above, there is an egg part underneath the spinach, it’s just that there was so much spinach it kind of rolled out the side. Notice how nice and fluffy the egg layer is.

If the meal didn’t require too much other work (like maybe a green salad and bread) this could be accomplished easily enough. The spinach and sauce can both be made ahead of time and reheated. It’s the soufflé part that can’t be even mixed ahead. Eggs are temperamental things – once they’re puffed up with air, they need to be cooked right away. Everything could be mis en place (ingredients put together on a tray, all ready). The baking sheet, buttered, parchment papered and buttered, all the whisks, whips bowls and mixers ready.

The Béchamel sauce is thicker than usual – in order to hold together the filling. Half of it goes into the soufflé, and the other half is used for the spinach filling. So there’s really only one sauce to make. The filling is not all that difficult – it uses frozen spinach, and you buy the Black Forest ham and cube it up quite small. So this dish is really do-able as long as you plan the menu accordingly.
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A year ago: Goat Cheese Potato Gratin

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Every time I open Russ Parsons’ book, ‘>How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table, I learn something. His book is so informative without being pedantic (too wordy, drivel type or preachy). He gives you the facts in a couple of different forms, as well as a few recipes, his favorites for that particular fruit or veggie. So it was that I learned we Americans are quite proprietary about our apples. Parsons thinks it’s because of our pioneer heritage – we hold hardiness and plain goodness as really important. We used to dominate the apple market worldwide, but no more. Bet you’d never guess who’s moved into first and second place, would you? (1) China; and (2) Chile. Those were surprises to me.

China barely knew apples 30 years ago, but they now harvest a third of all the apples grown in the world. But, there’s a bit of trouble in river city . . . the Chinese haven’t worked out storage very well, nor have they excelled with apple quality either, so they haven’t totally controlled the market. Yet.

It used to be that Golden & Red Delicious were the “IT” apples here in the U.S. But they’ve slid way down the desirable scale (more on that story below). So varieties like Gala, Fuji, Honey Crisp and Pink Lady have slid up into top types. Apparently Golden Delicious apples used to be a really superior apple – but only when it was allowed to mature on the tree to a golden hue. But the farmers and producers were lured into harvesting and shipping early, when they were still green, and the apples suffered. That’s still the case, unfortunately.

Then there’s the Red Delicious. I can recall that being one of the few eating apples I ever bought from about 1965 to 1995. But something happened to the red variety farming. Because we consumers wanted redder varieties, the farmers began pushing the producers of tree seedlings to bring out redder skinned apples. Guess what? The taste suffered because when skin darkens it becomes more bitter. Now we see red delicious that are almost black in color. Not good. We continued to buy them, because we trusted the variety. I stopped buying them some years ago when I couldn’t seem to find a really crisp one anymore. Every Red Delicious I bought was soft and mealy. We consumers buy fruit too much on color and may not realize the blacker the skin the more bitter the finish.

Finally, apple eaters began complaining, but the farmers didn’t want to hear it. They thought they had a lion by the tail and weren’t about to change their ongoing success. Eventually we did stop buying this old favorite. So the farmers began selling their product abroad. No, they weren’t going to change the breeding. They found exporters, instead. Then, as Parsons puts it, the sleeping giant (China) woke up and began producing big time, so American farmers suddenly lost business. Big time. During the last 15-20 years thousands of apple farmers went out of business. Trees and orchards were upended and farms sold. Some apple farmers had begun growing Pacific varieties (Fuji from Japan and Gala from New Zealand) and when they couldn’t sell them abroad they began selling them here. Voila! We started seeing them in our markets. Now they’re fairly standard issue.

So here are the different varieties he discusses (when I mention below about storage, it’s mostly the cold storage at harvest, not our home refrigerator chilling):

FUJI: a Japanese-bred cross between Red Delicious and Ralls Janet. Holds its shape during cooking, good sauce apple, buttery flavor. Stores well, but don’t buy them past mid-summer.

GALA: Cross between Cox’s Orange Pippin and Golden Delicious. A tart apple, golden with pinkish orange strips. Good for cooking, sauce, buttery flavor with a hint of spice. One of the earliest harvests. Does NOT keep well once purchased, so eat them up right away and stop buying in early Spring.

BRAEBURN: one of the first Southern Hemisphere apples to become popular. Probably a chance seedling from cross-pollination between Lady Hamilton and a Granny Smith. Spicy, tart bite, juicy crisp texture. Good for cooking, stores well and okay to buy into early summer.

JONAGOLD: New York apple, an offspring of Golden Delicious and Jonathan. Tangy, slightly soft, though, when eating out of hand. Not good for storing and don’t buy them after Spring.

EMPIRE: Also a New York apple, mostly available on the East Coast [I’ve never seen an Empire apple here in California]. A cross between McIntosh and Red Delicious. Good flavor, holds its shape in cooking, but buy before the end of Spring.

PINK LADY: From Australia. Crisp and honeyed, pinkish cast, a champagne tartness, and one of the last apples harvested, usually starting in late September. Stores well.

CAMEO: A chance mutation in Washington State from a Red Delicious. Bright red-striped with unique white spots. Good flavor, sweet and mildly tart. Lots of crispness and staying power. Because of its dense flesh, Cameos take longer to cook than most apples.

HONEYCRISP: Crisp and sweet, holds its shape during cooking, red with a golden background [our Costco has them right now in a 12-pack]. Developed at the University of Minnesota, mostly grown in northern Midwest. Remarkable storage characteristics, i.e. does well in long storage. Interesting to me is that scientists have done DNA testing on apples (yes, really) and have discovered the Honeycrisp is not a cross between a Macoun and Honeygold, and they still don’t know its heritage.

– – – – –

Grown: Washington State, New York, Michigan, California and Pennsylvania

Choosing: look for smooth skins, deep color; yellow apples should be golden, striped apples have a background that’s golden. Look for heavy apples that are firm.

Storing: In the refrigerator, as close to 32 degrees as possible; lots of humidity – best in a perforated plastic bag that will retain water, but not collect it. Your crisper drawer is best. Red Delicious apples are the first ones that turn brown once they’re cut – but all apples will keep for awhile if you put them in acidulated water – lots of water plus fresh lemon juice.

Recipes: Parsons included his favorite baked apple recipe (brown sugar and butter only); also an applesauce made with bourbon, sour cherries and hazelnuts; and a gratin of apples and dried cranberries.

Here on my blog you’ll find apple recipes for the following:

Escarole, Belgian Endive & Apple Salad
Bombay Cheese Ball (best served with apple slices)
Cinnamon & Apple Bread Pudding
Baked Brie & Apples
Caramelized Apple Gingerbread
Grandgirl’s Fresh Apple Cake
Crisp Apple Pudding (my all-time favorite apple dessert)
Apple Buttermilk Scone Round
Applesauce Spice Cake with Caramel Glaze (a real favorite)
Apple Pear Upside Down Cake
Apple & Parsnip Soup
Cranberry Relish with a Zip (I make this, without fail, every Thanksgiving)
Roasted Butternut Squash Soup (includes roasted apples and onions)
Apple, Dried Cherry & Walnut Green Salad
Crostini with Apples, Watercress & Blue Cheese (one of my very favorite appetizers)

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A few years ago my friend Cherrie and I attended a cooking class (at a wonderful venue in San Juan Capistrano that is no longer a cooking school) where the subject was apples. No ordinary apples however, but mostly heirloom ones. About 15 years or so ago my DH and I were with good friends, Jerry & Judy, on a driving trip in New England – in September when the leaves were just beginning to turn – and the first farm stand I saw with a big sign announcing “Fresh Apples,” I yelled and asked if we could stop. Back here in California it was in the high 90’s, but that Fall day in Vermont or New Hampshire, it was c-o-l-d, misting with rain. So East Coast Fall. I promptly bought about a dozen apples, of three varieties. I know one of them was Northern Spy. Another had “black” in the name, but I don’t recall it. The flavors were sublime. Different.

You see, where we live in Southern California, we can get nothing – and I mean nothing – except Golden, Pippin, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, McIntosh, Jonathan, Fuji, Braeburn (my DH’s favorite), and now the new Honey Crisp. Occasionally we can find Gala too. As I’m writing this I’m thinking that for many people that’s a LOT of types. But after years and years of those, and knowing there are others out there that offer very different flavor and texture, I’m in an apple-want state of mind. Actually most of those don’t come from California, but from Washington State. We have no heirlooms at all in our neck of the woods. I don’t believe they’d grow here even if we tried since our climate is only good for a couple of unique varieties (Anna, for one). We had an Anna apple in the backyard of our last house. The new owners tore down all of our gorgeous fruit trees (about 5) and put in an expansive cement-lined dog run. Makes me sad just thinking about it because the Anna tree produced some really nice apples.

So anyway, back to that cooking class. We tasted apples of a plethora of types. All very different. And from that class I still make two of the recipes – the Apple, Blue Cheese, Watercress & Honey Crostini, and the Caramelized Apple Gingerbread. There were another 5 or 6 recipes from that class, but they weren’t as memorable as the above.

The cooking class included information from the apple supplier, Applesource in Chapin, Illinois. You can order all their products online. We sampled 12 varieties that day. I made notes that the Calville Blanc was a French dessert apple (soft, good for Tarte Tatin), that Jonalicious is soft, juicy, high sugar, though. And that I liked the Macoun (like a McIntosh). And I knew I liked Northern Spy. The quote included about that apple was: “There’s no pie like a Spy Pie.”  But there were other types: Matsu, Pink Pearl, Ashmead’s Kernel (tart, firm), Cox’s Orange Pippin (very popular in the U.K., crisp, special aftertaste, but also soft, unlike our American Pippins), Esopus Spitzenberg (supposedly the parent apple of a Jonathan).

So recently I suggested to my friend Cherrie that we share an apple purchase from Applesource. The boxes arrived about 2+ weeks ago, and they’ve been stored in our wine cellar ever since. Every few days I pop down there and pick out a new variety to try. All heirlooms. Many different types than the ones we sampled at the class. All enjoyable. We’re only had four of the 12 so far. And they were on the pricey side, what with shipping and all. The idea (I thought) was that if we found some we really, really liked, maybe I’d order a bigger box of one or more of them. I might still do that, but I must remember that the shipping takes the price way up there in the stratosphere. You really want to be an apple connoisseur to do that. What we ordered was an “Antique Sampler.” They also have a (regular) Sampler of 12 too. The types change with whatever varieties happen to be ripe at the time you order or they ship.

We also ordered their cookbook. I haven’t yet made anything from it, but it’s a nice book and full of many different kinds of dishes, all using apples in one way or another. On Monday I’m going to write up a different kind of apple post – more info about apples in general. So stay tuned if you are an apple lover like I am.

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Reading as many recipes as I do in the course of a few months, unless I make notes, or recognize the print style, I can’t recall where I read or heard about a recipe. Such with this one. I think it was on somebody’s blog that I read about it. And the writer sent us off to the New York Times’ website to retrieve it, which I did, as it was in that week’s food section. I think. It wasn’t all that long ago – like a month. It’s  a Mark Bittman recipe – he of restaurant and TV fame. And cookbook fame too – he’s done one or more books about the “Best” of specific recipes (kind of like Cook’s Illustrated in a way). I don’t own any of his tomes. But, I will tell you this recipe is awfully darned good. When I did a search for this recipe I noticed a lot of other food bloggers are on this recipe’s bandwagon too. I’m  delighted to join the parade.

It’s a salad, or a side vegetable combo. The list of ingredients is simple: sweet potatoes (I used the dark orange type we call yams), onions, both roasted with olive oil, S&P, then tossed with some canned black beans (rinsed & drained), some minced bell peppers, a passel of cilantro chopped, and then the very simple dressing (pictured at left) of olive oil, some minced green chile (hot type like jalapeno), garlic and lime juice. Very simple. And very extra delicious, I assure you. The recipe said to toss the salad with the dressing just before serving, but I think soaking it in the dressing for awhile just brightened all the flavors. There was still a bit of dressing in the bottom of the bowl which I just left there for the leftovers. My first foray into Mark Bittman’s world produced a great recipe. I’d make this again anytime.
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A year ago: Peppers for Cold Meats (a kind of relish – I liked it so much I’ve posted about it twice and have made it 3 times in the last 6 months)

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Just so you know . . . there’s no oatmeal here. No brown sugar here either. An apple crisp of a different order.

This isn’t a new recipe to this blog. Just an old, but big family favorite. Well, we don’t have “family” at home anymore – just my hubby and me. So I should rephrase: likely it’s just MY favorite. I just love-love this stuff. My mother’s recipe, tinkered with just slightly over the years. Very easy, goes together in about 20 minutes. I’ve even been known to eat a little bowl of it for breakfast. Especially if I’ve made it with Splenda. This time I made it for my friend Norma who needs all the calories she can get, so I used all sugar. And even sprinkled more sugar than usual on the top of her dish. I made a second, smaller casserole of these apples for us – with less sugar. Enough for just a couple or three servings.

Doesn’t look much different here, before baking, than it does when it’s fully cooked. Here you see the crumbled flour, sugar, baking powder, egg mixture  sprinkled all over, dotted with butter, spices (cinnamon & nutmeg) and then sprinkled with some cold water (which gives it the crisp part). Those butter pats are quite small – this was not a really large oval baker – about 5×9 – and I used about 2 T. unsalted butter altogether.

It’s baked for about 40 minutes (35-45, depending on the apples and the thickness of the apple layer), cooled, then scooped out in a bowl with some vanilla scented and sweetened whipped cream (my favorite) or vanilla ice cream (second choice) or drizzled with heavy cream (third choice). My favorite thing about this type of apple dessert is the crispy topping. It’s not like a biscuit exactly (it’s not that thick); it’s not like any of the oatmeal-based toppings (this topping isn’t chewy in the least); it’s not like a crumbled pie crust, either (it’s crumbled anyway, not rolled or formed). It’s not a sweet top either (because there’s not that much sugar in it to begin with). The only sugar in this apple dessert is in the topping. There’s none at all in the apples. Did I mention that I made these with “honey crisp” apples? They’re very crunchy and sweet. So I cut down on the sugar by about a quarter, and they were still plenty sweet. On the baker for my friend I added more sugar on top, as I mentioned above. On the one we kept I reduced the sugar. I can vouch – it was as good as ever.

If you want the recipe – it’s in my archives from 2007. It’s a winner.

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This sort of looks like a sirloin steak, doesn’t it? Nope. It’s a huge, thick, tender, fresh halibut steak that was just falling apart. Good kind of falling apart. Full of flavor. I forgot to put some more green onions on top for garnish. They’re in the sauce, but hardly visible in the photo.

This recipe came via our daughter-in-law Karen’s mother, Barbara. She got it from a cookbook:  Elena’s Favorite Foods: California Style by Elena Zelayeta. Barbara served this one night when we were all together for a dinner. So, I asked her for the recipe! And when I tell you this is EASY, please believe me. It’s truly easy and comes together in less than 10 minutes. I served it with pan-sautéed zucchini and a veggie-laden green salad.

So what’s in the amber sauce? Nothing but soy sauce, sherry, lemon juice (I used lime) and green onions. How cinchy is that? The halibut is dipped in seasoned flour (seasoned only with pepper since the soy sauce provides plenty of sodium) and pan fried in a little oil. After browning both sides the sauce is added and you steam it until it’s just done. I removed the center bone afterwards, which is why it began to fall apart. Our steak was large enough for two people, so I probably should have cut it in half before cooking. Once cooked the bone didn’t cut apart with any ease. So, whack that steak in half first. Our neighborhood Costco had these fresh Alaskan halibut steaks for $6.99/lb.
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A year ago: Thai Pumpkin Shrimp Soup (oh, that was so delish – I need to make that one again)

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Really, I do love green beans. You can fix and eat them in SO many ways. Even plain with just a hint of butter, salt and pepper. If you’ve read my blog for long you know that I’m a huge fan of a recipe for Garlic Green Beans & Olive Oil. So easy, and I could eat a mountain of them. I was lured from the olive oil and garlic route in a class with Phillis Carey, awhile back. Hers have the allure of hazelnuts. But they’re also very easy. A dish you could make for guests, as long as you cook the beans ahead of time and have them and the hazelnuts all ready to finish just before dining.

When I made them a few days ago with some of the haricot verts (baby) beans from Costco, I decided to change the recipe a little bit, mainly because the hazelnuts I had needed to be skinned. Trader Joe’s carries them most of the year, but they’re not roasted or skinned, so the little buggers have to be toasted and rubbed to get the skin off. The easiest way to do this is to roast the nuts in a hot oven for a few minutes, then roll them around between two layers of terry cloth towels.

After roasting the nuts in a 400 oven for about 4-7 minutes, they looked like this – notice the cracks on some of them. They got hot enough that the skins began to crack off. That’s a good sign.

Here they are on a rough towel just before I started rolling them. You simply place the other half of the towel over the nuts and use the flat of your hands on the top towel to rub and roll around. Sometimes an errant nut will escape. I usually gather them back into a closer circle and do it again and again. Takes just a minute or so.

This is the result: most of the nuts have released their skins. You’ll notice one nut (top right) didn’t. I rolled that one several times all by itself. It still didn’t release the skin, so I chopped it anyway. A few skins won’t matter, but it’s good to get most of them off the nuts. The skins are bitter (well, somewhat bitter), therefore you do need to do this step – unless you can find mostly skinned ones already.

Since the skinning process toasted them, I didn’t want to pan-toast as in Phillis’ recipe. So I decided to use olive oil (rather than butter) and ADD some true hazelnut oil at the end. Then I tossed the chopped hazelnuts in at the end. I used my pounder to chop the nuts – that took about one minute max. Either way you make this, it has a distinct hazelnut flavor. Really delicious – either hot or cold. I served these as leftovers a night or two later, cold, and they were just as good. If you used butter you’ll need to reheat the beans to melt the butter – with olive oil you don’t.
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Files: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click link to open in MC – 14 contains photo)

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Lately it seems we can’t get enough of soups. All kinds of soups. Meat soups. Chicken soups. Even fish soups. But hot soups altogether. I don’t very often make vegetarian soups unless they have plenty of heft to them – not meaning fat or carbs – but chewiness or texture. This soup doesn’t really have either chewiness or a whole lot of texture. But it has some, and it’s got lots of gentle flavor. The flavor is regulated by the kind of sharp cheddar you put into it. If you want some heft, then you use a very strong Cheddar. I recommend an English cheddar, like a Cotswold, or some other kind of very sharp English type. See what your local cheese shop or market has to offer. Just remember: sharp, sharp, sharp.

This soup comes together in less than 20 minutes. Yes, really. Chopping the vegetables is the most time consuming thing you have to do. It contains chicken broth and half and half, some dry sherry, some thyme, cayenne, Bay leaf. Then the grated Cheddar is added in AFTER you take it off the heat. If you add most cheeses into a hot liquid, while you’re still simmering, it will separate. There are very few cheese that don’t cause that chemical reaction – Fontina being one of them. Can’t remember the others. But Fontina is not what you want in this soup – it’s far too mild tasting. This soup doesn’t have other strong flavors, so the Cheddar is IT. So anyway, you need to have the soup off-heat, then you whisk in the cheese. The soup is very hot, so it doesn’t take long for the cheese to melt completely. Ladle into bowls immediately and chow down. Ideally, you’ll serve this with some bread or savory muffin on the side. Even English muffins toasted with some cheese would be nice (and easy). In the class, Phillis served this with cornmeal, cheddar and sun-dried tomato muffins. I was lazy and didn’t do any of those, so we ended up having 1 1/2 bowls of soup instead.
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