My Favorite Chicken Soup

The mistake a lot of people make with soup is dropping in their meat while the liquid is boiling, which shocks the proteins, making it tough and chewy. Let your soup come down to a simmer, with only a few more minutes left before the veggies are done, then give your meat just a few minutes of gentle cooking before you serve. The result is super tender.


Ingredients

1 quart water
4 bouillon cubes
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3 zucchini
2 cups green beans, chopped to 1/4"
4 medium red potatoes, quartered
2 cups baby carrots, cut in halves
2 packs sliced white mushrooms
2 pounds chicken breast or thigh meat, cut into 1" chunks
1 can coconut milk

Directions

1. Bring water to a boil. Add bouillon, carrots, potatoes, and garlic. Cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally.


2. Reduce heat to a simmer. Cook five more minutes


3. Add chicken, coconut milk, and mushrooms. Cook five minutes.


4. Just before serving, add green beans.

Serves 3 dinners and 3 lunches

My Perfectly Stinky Omelet

I love cheese.

Cheese, cheese, cheese. Here it goes down, down into my belly.

I haven't found any good cheese shops on the West Side, where I live, but have sampled the goods from the Cheesestore of Silverlake (amazing selection), and the Artisan Cheese Gallery on Ventura (outstanding grilled sandwiches, dripping with melty dairy goodness). In absence of "legitimate" cheese shops like this, I do just fine with Whole Food's extensive cheese section, and pick up something new every visit.

One of my more interesting finds could choke a cow with its pungency. Ciresa taleggio is a semi-soft cow's milk cheese with a musty rind. Imagine brie with the smell of the underside of a fallen log in a marshland. Straight, or even on crackers, it's too strong for me to stand.

But when cooked, a magical chemical process occurs. The flavors mellow slightly, and add a great punch to your dishes. I've enjoyed it blended with regular cheddar in a quesadilla. But the best delivery system is via omelet, where it plays off the blandness and fluffy texture of the eggs.

I made this one for lunch the other day. It came out perfectly light and golden. The trick is slower, lower cooking. The stuff in the background is applesauce. Zero points for presentation, but the sweetness offsets the sour and salt from the yolks and cheese. I always eat my omelets this way now.



Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter

1 1/4 cups fresh spinach, torn into small pieces

1/4 cup shredded muenster

1/8 cup taleggio (produced by Ciresa)

2 eggs, whisked

Directions

1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a small skillet or omelet pan.


2. Pour in the eggs, tilting the pan so they cover the bottom evenly.


3. Immediately spread spinach evenly over eggs, and sprinkle both cheeses over the spinach.


4. Cook 4-5 minutes, or until top of eggs are just becoming firm. Flip one side over the other, and move to a plate.

My Passage to Porto's

We've picked up cakes from nearby Porto's Bakery before for coworkers' birthdays, and with the exception of the Parisian chocolate, they've all been pretty impressive. I've seen the place on a smattering of best-of lists, most notably for their Cuban pork sandwiches, but until today I had not partaken.

Lucky for my tummy, I had business that took me past the place around lunchtime today. I stopped in and braved the long (but moving) line for a steak torta and horchata smoothie (can't resist horchata).

Apparently, the place can be pretty cheap if you know what to order. My coworker, who was riding shotgun got out of there with two empanadas and a small salad for $4! Mine was over double that.

Horchata Smoothie (16 oz): $3.25
Pretty good, with all the requisite spices that make horchata taste like a little bit of Thanksgiving, but the blended ice waters it down too quickly.

Steak Torta: $6.55
Soft Cuban bread with a nice sour edge, but you can tell it was baked early this morning. That seems kind of lazy for a BAKERY. The shredded beef was seasoned and slow cooked. I think it'd have been great with some black beans and rice. On the sandwich with lettuce, tomato, guacamole (is that even Cuban?), and cotija cheese, it came off as ok, and not worth the money. It had the feeling of a decent -- not great -- burrito.

Overall, it was good, but I'm not sure I'd brave the drive or line again for that level of quality.

My At-Home Cubicle

Oh, the joys of the last day before a vacation!

I worked from my mom's house in San Diego today, awaiting a plane trip out of Lindbergh Field tomorrow, and the view of a lawn and blue sky from her kitchen table are decidedly more enjoyable a view than polyester gray cube walls.

Even better than the view is the opportunity to put an oven range to use instead of the office microwave come lunchtime. One of the great aspects of SD's food scene is there numerous health food grocers. My perennial favorite is Henry's for its farm-style produce (as opposed to the test tube stuff of the supermarkets or the gilded produce of Whole Foods), and organic meat. The butcher counter produces top-notch sausages, and we picked up their chicken basil variety. They are plump, juicy, un-greasy, and perfectly seasoned.

I sauteed them until the skin had a crispy finished, then removed them from the pan and tossed in leftover mashed potatoes so they soaked up the juice, and got a little smokey flavor.

Call it a Californian bangers and mash. To cut the fat and leave a clean finish on the palate, my beverage of choice was a bottle of DRY rhubarb soda.

The home office has its advantages.

My Cubicle Christmas

For an office that had a contest at Halloween to see who could devise the most fiendish cubicle decor, there has been surprisingly little Christmas effort put forward amid the third floor prairie dog farm this month.

But in my cubicle, the internet radio is tuned to all-day Christmas tunes, and the lights blaze for all to see. I've wrapped a couple strings up the posts at the back of my cube that carry the power and ethernet cables, hoping it would inspire a little Christmas cheer amongst my work-weary co-laborers. While compliments have been many, I have yet to see any trees, garlands, or nativity scenes spring up elsewhere. Granted there was one person who did her whole cube in wrapping paper before I got my decorations up, but that's immaterial to my ranting.


What the office lacks in decorating spirit, they've more than made up for in seasonal sweets. Every day there are bonbons, chocolates, cookies, candy, and all other manner of winter-coat inducing goodies. The baker in my group brought in a plate of assorted red and green chocolate cupcakes with lush cream cheese frosting. It's red velvet and green ... moss?

My Happiest Day

I haven't posted in a long, long time. But, hey, it's not like November is a big eating month, right? No big food-preparation events in that month, no sir.

Kidding aside, I was on a restricted diet of only liquefied foods for a month (A MONTH!!) due to a jaw issue I've been having. It turns out that eating all day, every day, can give you an arthritic jaw. It is the carpal tunnel syndrome of food lovers. It is a potentially life-altering diagnosis. It is a plague that has unseated kings from their thrones, caused the downfall of the American textile industry, extinguished suns, and dashed the hopes of world-famous sports stars like my hero, Takeru Kobayashi.

Needless to say, you fine readers wouldn't have been too interested reading about the instant Cream of Wheat and smoothies I've been living off of.

However, I'm back in the saddle, and so hungry I could eat the horse out from under it. The doctor has given me the go-ahead to eat foods fit for the above-toddler age range.

Imagine my joy when rumor of brownies in the kitchen started floating around the office a few minutes ago. I was more than ready to sink my teeth into some chewy, fudgey, cocoa heaven. Where I had been expecting a small plate or tin of someone's homemade confections, there was a ginormous gift basket full of brownies, chocolate chip cookies, white chocolate chip cookies, and peanut butter cookies ... and a hundred employees swarming around the basket like bees about a hive.

Where did it all come from? Who cares? My belief is that there are food gnomes hiding in the walls, looking out for us all ... or fattening us up to be eaten. Whatever.

I managed to snap this shot after the carnage passed, and there were only a handful of cookies left. But I got my brownie. I'm back and ready to eat.

My Ancho Butternut Squash Soup

This butternut squash soup recipe arose largely from one of my many aimless meanderings through the grocery store. I generally grab the first vegetable that looks good, and build a meal around it.

It turned out to be a perfect fall recipe, as well as a perfect soft food for this insane diet my doctor put me on to help heal my TMJ. I just try not to think of it as adult baby food. Ancho chili paste adds a wonderful smokiness to the soup, and just a little bit of spice to accent the squash's sweetnesss.

The benefit of buzzing down a soup into a smooth consistency is that you can include a bunch of vegetables besides the ones creating the main flavors of the dish. I added fresh green beans and tofu, and couldn't tell the difference. You could even add spinach or kale for some extra vitamins.

Ingredients

• 1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1" cubes
• 2 yellow potatoes, cut into 1" cubes
• 4 carrots, cut into 1/4" cubes
• 1/3 of a sweet yellow onion, roughly chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, diced
• 1 head fennel or anise, sliced thinly
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 large tomatoes, diced
• 3 cups roughly chopped green beans
• 1 package silken tofu, cut into
  
• 4 vegetable bullion cubes
• 1 can vegetable broth
• 4 dried ancho chilies, stems pulled off
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 2 cups sour cream
• optional garnish, crumbled Gorgonzolla
  

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a large stock pot. When it starts to glisten, add fennel, onion, and garlic. Cook until onions start to turn translucent. Be careful not to let garlic burn or brown. About five minutes.
2. Add 1/3 of the can of vegetable broth to deglaze the bottom of the pot and stir to incorporate any caramelized bits.
3. Stir in tomatoes and let them cook down. About eight minutes.
4. Add squash, carrots, potatoes, broth, and bullion. Pour in water until it comes to an inch from the top of the vegetables. The amount of water will depend on how much juicy the tomatoes are.
5. Bring to a boil, stirring lower vegetables to the top of the pot occasionally. Let cook for 30-40 minutes, or until carrots and squash are very soft.
6. While vegetables are boiling, microwave the 1 1/2 cups water in a wide bowl for two minutes. Set the chili pods in the bowl for about 10 minutes, until reconstituted.
7. Buzz chili pods and water in a blender or food processor until they become a paste.
8. When vegetables are soft, transfer contents of the pot into a blender or food processor, and buzz down to a smooth conistency. Add a little of the sour cream and tofu to each batch so they don't cool down the soup too much.
9. Serve immediately with garlic bread or crumbled Gorgonzola as a garnish.