3 Onion Quiche

I love all things quiche. The comfort of baked eggs in dough just makes the meal so comforting, yet I gladly eat it in warm seasons as well. I heard Spring is coming, some places slower than others, clearly, but my favorite leeks are in season again and it's time to put them to use.
Lynne Marie, my favorite mom-in-law, surprised me with this delicious recipe the night following my arrival to Jackson, WY for a well deserved vacation!
Recipe can be found here, in my favorite Sunset Magazine!

Super leftovers

Leftovers never taste as good as the meal on the night it was cooked. With one exception!
Since the Spring refused to make her way to North Dakota, I needed a hearty and comforting meal for the cold and windy days ahead. I decided to make a chicken and black bean stew using the highly rated recipe of Giada DeLaurentiis, which you can find here. Quick and easy is what I was looking for on a lazy, rainy day...
But you can only eat leftover chicken stew for so many days, right? This is when Jeff's creative mind came to my rescue, as he drained the fluid from the stew keeping all the solid parts, and mixed it with raw celery, mayo and mustard, basically making a chicken salad. This I have not heard of before! Put the salad on a baguette, cover with your favorite cheese, Havarti in my case, and throw it in the over for a couple of minutes for a quick broil!

Not quite Tuscany

Winter is refusing to leave us and after long walks with my dog Jackson I am always looking for a good warm-me-up meal. Perhaps the desire to be somewhere warmer inspired me to make a Tuscan white bean soup, and it certainly hit the spot! Since I couldn't find a recipe online that I really liked I decided to use my talents and make up my own. This is what I ended up with!

Winter Warm-up Tuscan White Bean Soup

You will need: 2 tablespoons butter, 1/2 onion, 2 celery stalks, 2 leeks (thinly slice only the white parts), 3 sliced carrots, chopped or sliced 4 garlic cloves, bunch of fresh spinach, 2 15oz cans of white beans, 4 c chicken stock, thyme, salt, pepper.
Sautee onion, carrots, celery and leeks in butter until soft. Add garlic and spices to your liking, sautee couple more minutes, add spinach and after it wilts pour in the chicken stock and drained beans, boil and cook on low heat for few minutes.

Very easy to make and super tasty! If you think you may not be able to handle the garlic, make sure to decrease the amount - this soup would definitely not be enjoyed by vampires, that's for sure!

Fish the Scandinavian way

You probably thought I was making Lutefisk! Truly, I don't think I have the stomach for that... Instead, Chef Jeff proposed we try preserving fish in a authentically natural way and make our own lox. He made sure we had a fresh salmon fillet and covered it with a mix of sugar and salt 1:1 ratio. You can use whatever spices you desire on the fillet itself before you preserve it, he opted to cover it with fresh ground black pepper.
Yes, this is a lot of salt and sugar, but rest assured none of it actually makes it to your plate. When you unwrap the fillet it needs to be rinsed off of the natural preservatives. We let the fillet sit in the fridge, covered in salt and sugar and wrapped tight in plastic wrap for 24 hours. After that, Jeff sliced it really thin while I was salivating. Bagel and capers are common companions to lox, but since I am not a die hard bagel fan, we chose Tuscan bread and dressed the sandwich up with thinly sliced red onions. Now, that's what I call a perfect Sunday lunch!

How to make chicken happy

Just roast it in butter! And no, I did not use Paula Deen's recipe, although from the word "butter" I know you may have suspected that! However, Barefoot Contessa's Ina Garten, one of my favorite food show hosts, raves about her roasted chicken she makes for her husband every Friday. Can roasted chicken be THAT good, I thought?
Oh, yes it can! AND so simple! Stuffing the cavity with salt, pepper, lemon and garlic and roasting it with vegetables is not very complex, yet it creates a delicious meal because of the little extra things that are involved. The chicken has a very delicate flavor of lemon and garlic, and not too overpowering at all. Adding a fennel bulb as one of the vegetables may seem a bizarre thing to do, but this vegetable is sweet and very pleasing when roasted. Baking potatoes in olive oil and chopped garlic in a separate pan will allow them to develop a nice crunch, which is what I always seem to miss out on when roasting chicken and veggies using other recipes.
You can find the recipe for Perfect Roast Chicken here. Now, not only the chicken is "Perfect" - check out those veggies, too!
Garlic Roasted Potatoes with a delicate crunch is how I like them!
Mmm... Gravy...

There heeeere!

When you live away from your home country sometimes you search for the little pieces that remind you of it. For me it's usually food. Now, living in North Dakota doesn't exactly present with too many opportunities to get Polish food, and when I crave some Polish flavors I resort to either going on trips to Polish Town in Chicago or Poland, of course. A much better, quicker and cheaper alternative would be ordering food online, and since Fat Tuesday was approaching quickly, and the Polish tradition is to eat doughnuts on this day, I though to myself - what a better dessert to have than some Polish doughnuts, or paczki!
Quickly I got online and ordered from Polana store online, that offers variety of other Polish foods, as well. Polish doughnuts vary from American doughnuts in appearance and the way they're prepared; they are also deep fried, but they're round and don't have the traditional American hole in the middle. Paczki are filled with confiture, or jam and glazed with icing. Traditional paczki are never prepared any other way.
And now, there here. As delicious as I remember. And I'm not sharing!

Heart attack breakfast

Everyone knows I like a good dessert, especially one that has European roots. Although I find American doughnuts little too sweet for me, I sure appreciate French pastries, such as beignets, or deep-fried pieces of dough covered with powdered sugar. Cafe du Monde, recommended at our hotel, is famous for those little pieces of goodness! Now, when a cafe shows up on the wikipedia page under the word "beignets", when it IS the VERY definition of beignets, you should not omit it when visiting New Orleans!

Let me tell you how to eat those little wonders. Step 1. Go to Cafe du Monde and keep in mind it will be very busy!
Step 2. Sit on the bench with a good view of Decatur St. Take couple sips of the famous cafe au lait made with chicory infused coffee.
Step 3. Hold the bag filled with beignets and powered sugar and shake it good to ensure even coverage!Step 4. Even if you want to eat all of your beignets at once, you have to control yourself and eat one at a time. Otherwise you will be covered with powdered sugar. Well, who are we kidding, you will be covered in powdered sugar anyway!

Step 5. Let it all go and devour those yummy pieces. You don't have to be well-mannered while eating those, everyone around you is doing the same thing!

Soft shell crab

Crabs shed their outer skeleton in order to grow for about a week at a time. Some species of crab can actually be eaten in that form, along with the soft shell that is covering them. While in N.O. Jeff wanted to try this delicacy and was not disappointed with it! Served battered and deep fried and with a dipping sauce was a very interesting addition to our culinary adventures!

Raw or grilled

That's your choice when ordering oysters. Which one are you going to have?
Char-grilled oysters are covered with cheese and served with buttery toast, so the choice seems pretty obvious, right? Wrong!
The Anna's Tasty Award goes to raw oysters at Acme Oyster House in N.O.! Served with sauce of ketchup, horseradish, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce) and crackers are a true hit!

At work cracking them open!
Just waiting to be devoured.
Dipped in the sauce and on a cracker.
The grilled oysters were delicious too, but I thought that frying them covered in cheese took away from the natural seafood taste I was looking for.

The search for the perfect gumbo

Being a fan of gumbo I just had to have it when visiting New Orleans! Now, having only had gumbo made by my friend Boyd or myself, I was in for a surprise. The Louisiana gumbo is darker than the one I had before - the roux in it would sure be considered burned by the French. It is also much milder; I am not sure if the restaurants are trying to please the tourists or if this is how the traditional creole gumbo is made. The soup was traditionally served with rice on top but it was more of a broth - the familiar abundance of seafood and vegetables was surprisingly missing from my plate, although I did find a little crab!
Although I did not find my perfect gumbo, I found some pretty tasty ones when exploring the city. After trying the soup in several restaurants in French Quarter, my best choice goes to Felix's Restaurant and Oyster Bar on Iberville St. The wonderful flavor of the broth sure made up for lack of spicy sausage!

Muffuletta

American-style sandwiches are not my favorite thing in the world and I will tell you why.
1. I think the bread is either too light or too heavy and I haven't found a perfect balance anywhere yet.
2. They are filled with tons of meat. While it seems that the meat is what Americans usually desire on a sandwich, I feel that it takes away from other flavors - the cheese, veggies, spreads. Believe it or not, your palate wants to taste things other than meat sometimes too!
3. Last but not least is the issue of cheese. Where did all the flavorful cheese disappear to? Don't sandwiches deserve tasteful, interesting cheese?
There IS good news, though. It seems that I have found the best medicine for our sandwich boredom and it is called Muffuletta.

The muffuletta sandwich was developed in Central Grocery in New Orleans, an Italian grocery store founded in early 1900's. The muffulleta sandwich is prepared with muffuletta bread with sesame seeds, marinated olive oil salad, several kinds of meats and 2 kinds of cheeses. Although it is seemingly full of meat, the ham, pepperoni, capicola and salami are sliced thinly, as to not take away from other flavors of the sandwich. The olive oil salad is made of marinated veggies that usually would never see an inside of a sandwich, such as carrots or cauliflower. Talk about original and impressive! Now, dig in!

In the bayou

To get away from the negative temperatures, snow and wind, Jeff and I decided to take a trip to a place I have always wanted to visit - New Orleans. Having never been south my expectations were huge! And I have to say, the weather, food and people delivered! The people are honestly grateful for the tourists coming back to the area after the storm.

One of the best things we did was the tour of the swamp, just north-east of N.O., where we fed alligators some marshmallows.
This is just one of many houses on the bayou. "You're born into this lifestyle, you don't choose it" according to my tour guide. People there live from what they catch; trapping of coypu (rodent producing a flavorful meat called nutria), shrimping, craw-fishing. Saturday nights the river is hoppin' with dancing parties the cajun people throw. "They would give you a shirt off their backs, even if that's the last thing they have".
Remnants of the Hurricane Katrina. The bayou is still full of old boats, garbage and whole houses, even after years of cleanup. We saw a house that floated to the alligator breeding area and the owner had to be air lifted by helicopter to safety.
The beautiful bayou is full of wild animals and plant species.
One of the bayou's residents.

Bake it like you're French

Since Barefoot in Paris cookbook by Ina Garten was one of my Christmas presents, I try to utilize it in my kitchen and bring a little class to my Polish/American cooking. Slowly, but surely, as they say...
Chef Jeff cooked an amazing Valentines Day dinner, as you may see in the previous post, but now it was my time to shine my talents in the dessert making portion of the evening. I am actually not a big baker - I have couple cake recipes that work out pretty well for me, but most of the time I feel that my baking skills are not what they could be. Regardless of this, I decided to make Pear Clafouti, which is a cake made of fruit covered by flan-like mixture and baked. Traditionally it comes with cherries, but the recipe called for pears, since they are in season more often. I think that I succeeded! The dessert was not too sweet, as most American desserts are, and it truly reminded me of the taste of my home. To sweeten it up, however, you may add some ice cream to it, as I did - I used banana ice cream. I also added frozen fruit on top to add some color.
This recipe is available online here as well as in the cookbook I mentioned.

The most expensive spice in the world

Certainly not the golden flakes in the Goldschlager! It is of course saffron, which is derived from a crocus flower. Ancient Persians bathed in saffron infused water to cure their battle wounds, but I found a better way to spice up my life!
For an early Valentine Day's dinner chef Jeff once again put my cooking abilities to shame and made a wonderful mussel bisque followed by mussels in white wine. Both were delicious, but if i had to choose my favorite it would hands down be the bisque. Difficult to believe that the only spices in it were salt, pepper and of course the saffron!
The recipe for the wonderful bisque came from Ina Garten's cookbook Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That? I highly recommend it, as it was relatively easy to make!
To clean the mussels immerse them in water with flour.
Mussels in white wine sauce, courtesy of Ina Garten aka Barefoot Contessa. This recipe is available online.

Chef Jeff Part 2 - Pork Wantons with Hawaiian Sauce

After working a long day at the hospital, I came home last night to very wonderful smells pulling me into the kitchen. To my pleasant surprise, chef Jeff was once again doing serious work, this time creating wantons from the leftover pulled pork. What a great use of on hand materials! He also made more Hawaiian sauce from scratch using 2 tablespoons of canola oil, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh garlic, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger and the leftover juice mixture from cooking the pork.
I wonder what is in the plans for tomorrow night's dinner???

Wrapping pork meat in wanton skins (you can get that in any grocery store refrigerated section), then frying them in olive or canola oil.
Just waiting to be devoured!