Onion bisque: a recipe

Onion bisque

Despite the lack of snow here in Vermont, it's cold enough to still qualify as soup season. 

And we have a real winner here.

Onion bisque: I think the best way to describe it would be that it's like fancy-shmancy pureed french onion soup.

Clearly "onion bisque" was a classier name choice.

This recipe comes from Bon Appetit. The magazine runs a column in each issue in which readers write in, seeking their favorite restaurant recipes, in order to try to re-create them at home. I love this feature because I get not only some great recipes but also some excellent ideas for where to eat when I travel.

The onion bisque recipe is one that Chef Justin Devillier makes at La Petite Grocery in New Orleans. (Pfft, like there is any bad place to eat in NOLA, really).

Vietnamese slow cooker chicken with bok choy

Vietnamese slow cooker chicken with bok choy: this easy weeknight dinner is prepped in 5 minutes and has a sweet, ginger-soy flavor.

Even though I can see acres of grass and almost no snow, it's still winter here in Vermont. Which also means that it's still slow cooker season.

I won't wax poetic about the advantages of a slow cooker meal, as you've heard them all before. (Although I do pat myself on the back for making a convert out of reader Cristina who finally got her very own slow cooker for xmas this year based on my nagging and is now hooked!)

So what could possibly make this slow cooker recipe that much more wicked than all others I have tried? Three things:

1. It has essentially three ingredients: chicken, bok choy and sauce.
2. Because it has so few ingredients, it is moronically easy and fast.
3. The flavor is HEAVENLY! (Not to mention the aroma that will fill the house -- ay yi yi!)

I also love how I found this recipe -- yep, Pinterest. It's been catching on like a house-a-fire within the past month or two, and so many more participants means so many more great recipes to check out (among other things, like decorating tips, new light fixtures, cool DIY projects ... it's endless).

2012 Bloggies: The Ninj is a Finalist! Go Vote!

 
I can't believe it but I've been selected as one of the five finalists for a 2012 Weblog Award (a Bloggie!) in the "Best-Kept Secret" category! I am so excited and so honored. 

I hope you'll consider voting for me -- and suggesting that all your friends do the same. Go ahead, share it on Facebook and Twitter. I'll wait.

Follow this link or click on the the Bloggies badge in the right column of the page.

Have you been reading this blog, making the recipes, sharing in the Detox January love or just enjoying the witticisms? If so, please show The Ninj some love!

VOTE NOW -- VOTING ENDS SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19th.

Mwah!

Guinness ginger cake: a recipe

Guinness ginger cake

Beer in cake -- how can you go wrong?

I have to admit that I do not like Guinness (now I will wait for the wailing and gnashing of teeth to stop) ... as a standalone drink, that is.

I appreciate a good beer but not ones that are dark and heavy, like a stout. Or yeasty and wheaty like a Hefeweizen. (Clearly I'm choosy about my beer.)

While not my favorite drinking beer, Guinness is lovely for cooking -- rich and dark, very flavorful. I mean, just take a look at that cake! (Or bread, if you plan to eat it for breakfast as we did.)

Cakes/breads like this one, though, are the reason why I end up with a couple of random cans of Guinness in my refrigerator at various times throughout the year. You'd think that would mean that I would always have one on hand for cooking, but mysteriously someone winds up drinking them every time, leaving me to go buy yet another 4-pack when I only need one cup of the stuff.

Although, if you are a Guinness fan, that leaves you with about half a can to enjoy while you bake!

But back to the cake.

Baked sausage and grits casserole: a recipe

Baked sausage and grits casserole

Now that Detox January is over for another year, it's clearly time to re-embrace some old favorites.

Welcome back, sausage. Oh, how we have missed you.

Regular readers will know that I extra-love any recipe that is yummy but also quick and easy to prepare -- and that has sausage or bacon in it, but that's just me.

Behold, the baked sausage and grits casserole.

I got this recipe from my friend Kristen, who got it from her friend Eric. And it appears that each of us makes it slightly differently.

Kristen uses andouille turkey sausage and Eric uses half sausage and half shrimp, which I bet makes a killer faux shrimp-and-grits. I chose to go with hot Italian sausage because it was local, fresh and plentiful this week at the butcher. Also, if you cook the casserole for the full time, it turns out like the consistency of a quiche or breakfast casserole (see photo above); if you want more of that traditional loose grits texture, just cook it a little less.

Now isn't that the hallmark of a good recipe? Modify the beejesus out of it and it still holds together as someone's favorite.

Detox January, Week 4: tragic salted chocolate cookies

Salted chocolate cookies

I thought long and hard about whether or not to write this post.

Why?

Well, firstly because I wanted this to be a celebratory "you-made-it-through-Detox-January-so-have-a-cookie" post, and it's not going to be.

Also, because generally these posts are about recipes or techniques that I have tried and tested and then recommend to you. But those cookies staring you in the face over there, regardless of their good looks, are not ones I would recommend very highly.

So is an anti-recommendation blog-worthy?

In the interest of being real, I decided it should be.

Lest you think that we eat awesomely all the time around here, with nary a slip-up.

Oh man, I started out with high hopes for these cookies. In fact, I was hoping they might rival the lauded salted oatmeal cookies, as they are billed as salty-sweet and there's a goodly amount of kosher salt in the recipe. But I was disappointed.

Detox January, Week 3: "Chef Boyardee" Broccoli Pasta

Broccoli pasta (it's like pesto!)

I realized that I've given you little other than dessert recipes during Detox January ("Let them eat cake!"), so I think that needs to end today.

But it doesn't end in a bad way, I promise. It ends with a lovely, easy pasta dish that I guarantee will become part of your weeknight repertoire, based on the easiness-to-awesomeness ratio.

Loyal reader Cristina turned me on to this one last year after hearing the story on NPR. Turns out "Chef Boyardee" was a real person: one Ettore "Hector" Boiardi (apparently there needed to be a phonetic dumbing-down of his Italian last name so that waspy America could pronounce it ... sigh).

Boiardi was an accomplished chef and had a successful restaurant in Cleveland when he decided, in true entrepreneurial fashion, to bottle and sell his popular sauce -- which eventually led him into a food manufacturing and importing business.

His whole family, apparently, were and are no slouches in the kitchen, his chef-niece Anna Boiardi included. Last year, she published a cookbook-cum-memoir, Delicious Memories: Recipes and Stories from the Chef Boyardee Family, which includes some of her family's best-loved recipes -- including this broccoli-centric one from her mother.

Detox January, Week 3: Chocolate Chip Banana Bombs

Chocolate chip banana bombs (or, Da Bombs)

Trust me, I didn't come up with that name.

I found the recipe for these cake-like cookies via an iPhone app called Big Oven. (Mr. Ninj heard about it on NPR and suggested I check it out.) It's an online cooking community and repository of user-submitted recipes. One of its coolest features is called "Use Up Leftovers" -- you can enter up to three ingredients and it will suggest recipes using those ingredients.

This week I had a few bananas beginning to turn scary-brown. I thought about banana bread, but that just wasn't doing it for me. So I typed "bananas" into the Big Oven app.

I got many results for banana bread: Easy, Quick, Crazy-Healthy, Best-Ever, Dad's, Not Yo Momma's and more.

Then I came across Da Bombs.

Detox January, Week 2: Bake Sale Chocolate Muffins

Two-ingredient chocolate and pumpkin muffins -- so good, they're even bake-sale-worthy.

Chocolate muffins (or cupcakes, if you prefer)

Chocolate muffins, OK, but I bet you're wondering about the bake sale part, right?

There's a backstory...

I recently learned that there is a backlash developing against the resurgence of interest in domesticity or what we of a certain age learned long ago as "home economics." I know, I know, this shouldn't be news, right? I mean, every time something becomes popular or trendy, a backlash ensues, yes?

So now baking is under fire.

(Not to mention raising chickens, but that's off-topic right now. )

This all came to a head when a contributor in The New York Times bemoaned the fact that people have actually been offering up Oreos or other store-bought treats as fodder for fund-raising bake sales. She apparently started an online uproar (summarized excellently by Jennifer Reese over at The Tipsy Baker), which has spiraled into an attack on what one of her critics calls the current "anti-feminist homemaker fetish."

Yipes. All she suggested was that you might actually want to BAKE for a bake sale.

So, as an Anti-Feminist Homemaker Fetish-ite, I offer up the following as a peace offering for the two camps:

Delicious, bake sale-worthy, low-fat/low-calorie/low-Weight-Watchers-points* chocolate muffins (or cupcakes, if you prefer) that even the busiest CEO can find time to make.

Orecchiette Bolognese: Homemade Pasta for Cook It! 2012

Homemade orecchiette Bolognese

Homemade pasta -- so much easier than you think!

One of the bloggers I follow, Caroline at Grow It Can It Cook It, decided to issue herself a challenge for 2012: to try one new cooking technique each month during the year that she has always wanted to try. And now she's invited the rest of us to play along at home.

Can you guess what January's challenge is? Yep ... homemade pasta.

Since I do not have a pasta machine, I knew I'd have to try something that doesn't need to be rolled into sheets. I've made gnocchi before, but as it is largely potatoes, I looked around for something else, something with semolina.

Orecchiette!

In Italian it means "little ears" and you can see why: the little indentation that makes the "ear" is perfect for holding a nice chunky Bolognese sauce (recipe below).

But back to the pasta itself.

Very simply, it is semolina flour, regular flour and warm water mixed together to form a dough, which is then shaped and dried slightly. That's it! Sure, a bit more time consuming than opening up a box of dried pasta, but so much classier.

You can definitely do this. I'll even walk you through it -- with pictures.