Split Pea Soup with Mint Cream

This is an easy slow cooker recipe with a lighter taste than your average split pea soup.

Soup:
1 cup dried split peas
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
5 or 6 radishes, chopped (this is supposed to be 3 stalks celery, but I'm allergic)
2 cloves garlic, chopped (you could totally use garlic powder--you're pureeing it anyway)
4 sprigs fresh mint
1 tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
6 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 ½ cups cooked green peas

Cream:
¼ cup whipping cream
¼ cup sour cream
2 Tbs finely chopped mint

1. Add all soup ingredients EXCEPT cooked green peas to slow cooker and cook on low about 10 hours or high for 5 hours, until everything is super tender.
2. Meanwhile, make mint cream by whisking cream in medium bowl until thick and folding in sour cream and mint. Refrigerate until ready to use.
3. Just before serving, puree soup with hand blender (or puree in batches in blender/food processor) and stir in green peas. Pour soup into bowls and add a dollop of mint cream to each.

Tag Revamp

I'm determined to get around to reorganizing all the tags on our posts. My hope is to make the tag list shorter but still useful. So I'm going to put my tentative list here and give people a day or two to suggest different tags or tell me which tags we might not need.

Beef
Cheese
Chicken
Pork
Seafood
Veggies
Baking
Dips/Sauces
Breakfast
Salads
Soups
Sweets
Slow Cooker
Indian
Japanese
New foods
Food adventures
Food Bios

Also, should we keep the list format or change it to one of those clouds of tags? Cloud form makes it easy for me to see what tags are getting used, but list is easier to scroll down. Thoughts? Feelings?

Thai Peanut Sauce

This one's so easy and tasty I just assumed I'd posted it, but I can't find it anywhere. So here it is, our go-to yummy sauce. The recipe as written is a good amount for two, maybe three people. I generally double it for us and the kids, 'cause I like to go heavy on the sauce.

Thai Peanut Sauce

3/4 cup light coconut milk
1 tsp red curry paste (I use Thai kitchen)
1/4 cup peanut butter
2 Tbs brown sugar
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/4 tsp salt

1. Whisk together all the ingredients in a medium saucepan and heat on medium-high until it starts to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low or so and simmer about five minutes. Serve over veggies and rice.

Jambalaya

This one's from our exciting new book, 175 Essential Slow Cooker Classics, by Judith Finlayson.

1 lb mild Italian sausage, removed from casings
2 onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp Cajun seasoning
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cracked peppercorns
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup barley, any kind, rinsed under cold water
8 oz medium shrimp, cooked, peeled and deveined
1 roasted red pepper, chopped fine
1 long red chile or jalapeno pepper, finely chopped (optional)

1. In skillet, cook sausage over medium-high heat, breaking up with a spoon, until no longer pink. Using slotted spoon, transfer to slow cooker. Drain all but 1 Tbs fat from pan.
2. Reduce heat to medium. Add onions to pan and cook, stirring, until softened, about 3 minutes. Add garlic, Cajun seasoning, oregano, salt and pepper and cook, stirring, about 1 minute. Add tomatoes and chicken stock and bring to boil.
3. Pour mixture into slow cooker. Add barley and stir well. Cover and cook on low 6 to 8 hours (or on high 3 to 4), until barley is tender.
4. About 20 minutes before serving, turn slow cooker to high and add shrimp, roasted pepper, and chile. Cover and cook until shrimp is heated through.

Without the chile, this turned out medium spicy--depends how spicy your sausage is, I think. I'd recommend tasting before adding a chle at the end, or just skipping the chili and adding hot sauce to your bowl if you want an extra kick.

Thai Lettuce Cups

This is one of our favorites and I don't think I've ever posted it. It's a two-parter but neither part is very hard at all.

Cucumber Relish:
1 cucumber, diced small (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup roasted peanuts, finely chopped but really I don't usually chop them
3 Tbs rice vinegar

Mix all three in a smallish bowl and put it in the fridge to chill while you make the filling


Lettuce Cups:
One head of boston or butter lettuce--just separate and wash the leaves. You probably didn't need instructions for that.


Filling:
1 Tbs olive oil
1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
1 cup frozen corn
12 ounces soy crumbles or your favorite ground meat
1/2 tsp Thai red chili paste (I use Thai kitchen, it's pretty common)

1. Heat oil in large non-stick skillet on medium-high. Add onion and cook 5 minutes or so until it browns. If you're doing meat, throw that in there and brown it at the same time. Or . . .
2. Add crumbles and corn and cook until nice and hot. Several minutes if they're frozen, 1 or 2 minutes if they're thawed.
3. Add chili paste and cook 3 minutes or so. The chili paste likes to clump up so make sure to stir it well. Season with salt and pepper, add the green onions, and remove from heat.

To serve, put generous spoonfuls of filling and relish on a lettuce leaf, fold it like a soft taco and eat. Or just tear up your lettuce and make some sort of Thai taco salad. ;)

By the way, I made our blog pages search-able so hopefully our personal 'search blog' gadget will start to work better.

New cheese!

They were handing out samples of this at the marke the other night, so we bit. It's amazing stuff: Dorset Drum English Farmhouse Cheddar. Pricey for a cheddar, but worth it for a splurge. It's basically your Platonic ideal of a cheddar: perfect balance between creamy and crumbly, with a sharpness that keeps building in your mouth as you eat it. Plus it comes in a nifty thick black wax rind.

That is all.

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

 

PineappleUpside-Down Cake

It is said that thepineapple originated in the Caribbean Islands from a shipwreck. Thepineapple carried by an ill-fated Spanish ship was washed ashore. Itwas carried onboard, because the Spanish explorers ate it to preventscurvy – a disease that causes Vitamin C deficiency.

The pineapple upsidedown cake was first recognized in 1924, in a fund-raising cookbookand again in 1925 in a Gold Medal Flour ad. In 1936, Sears Roebuckadded it to its catalog; making is a familiar staple of Americanculture. 

 

Apineapple upside down cake begins with a layer of sweet pineapplethat is syrupy and glazed in butter at the bottom of a heavy skillet.This is topped with a cake batter and baked. After baking, thecreation is flipped over, producing a beautiful upside down pineapplecake.

I'm not sure how accurate the above information is but I thought it was an interesting story.  I made my first pineapple upside-down cake when I found the recipe in a magazine and decided to try it.  I seem to remember that we were living in Yakima, Washington.  Alongside the recipe, the magazine had an offer from the Dole company for a special cake pan so I sent for one and both Dad and I have used it for pineapple upside-down cake ever since.  Later on, I don't remember when, we picked up another pan in a thrift shop.  We must have done that twice over the years because when Dad got the pans out to make cakes for a party this year he found that we had three!  Since we never make more than two at a time, we sent the extra one home with Dena and promised to post our recipe on the family food blog.

This cake can be made in any kind of pan that you happen to have.  You can cut the pineapple slices to fit your pan and create your own design.  Should you, however, want the kind of pan that we have you can purchase one on Amazon.com   http://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Ware-Pineapple-Upside-Down/dp/B000237FSK   or search for a better price somewhere else.

Now – for ourrecipe! Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

¼ cup butter

½ cup brownsugar

5 to 7 slicesDole Pineapple

Maraschinocherries (optional)

1 package whiteor yellow cake mix for a one layer cake (such as Jiffy Cake) orone-half of a regular size package.

Melt butter,brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of pineapple syrup in an 8 or 9-inchskillet or cake pan or in special upside-down cake pan. Remove fromheat and arrange pineapple and cherries in mixture.

Prepare batteras directed on cake package. Pour over mixture in the pan. Bake ina preheated 350 degree oven 40 to 50 minutes, until cake tests done. Let stand 5 minutes. Invert on serving plate. Allow 2 to 3 moreminutes before removing the pan. Serve warm or at room temperaturewith whipped cream. Makes 5 or 6 servings.