A Taste of Spring: Tomato, Orange and Tarragon Soup

Posted on April 25, 2013 by bitsandbreadcrumbs

Spring has come, bloomed, and almost gone around here…at least as far as the showy display of azaleas is concerned. In April we’ve see-sawed between highs in the 80’s and 50’s to lows in the 30’s…and the 70’s! With our last cold snap most likely behind us, it’s time to lighten things up a bit, and I’ve found the perfect way to do it.

This very quick and easy soup is so delicate and delicious that you may even forget it’s ridiculously healthy, too. Tomatoes and oranges happen to love each other, and when you combine those flavors with the sweet undertones of anise in the tarragon, it’s a perfect trifecta for the happiest of soup marriages. The resulting taste is so fresh and lighthearted, filled with all the promise of Spring and Summer, and it’s quite a versatile recipe, too.

You can actually make this any time by using minimally processed and no-salt canned tomatoes, some dried tarragon and fresh orange. Or, you can make it in the summer months with freshly grown tarragon and those prized homegrown tomatoes…I just can’t wait for that time to come! Use some store-bought stock, or homemade if you have it…either vegetable or chicken stock will work just fine. Make this and eat it hot or cold. Puree it and then go for it, or strain it after the puree and add some enrichments to make it creamy and velvety!

The base recipe I’m showing you today is actually vegan, and you can decide if you want to fuss with and add to it, but we really enjoyed this “as is,” both hot and cold. Serve it by itself or with an accompaniment. No matter how you choose to enjoy it, it’s a lovely way to welcome the warmer weather with the lighter meals and fresh ingredients we so look forward to. Happy days.

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And just for fun, here is a peek at my Camellia Japonica Colonel Fiery in all its blooming glory. He (or she as the case may be), is blooming long and late this year, and has been in continuous bloom for many weeks now.
I’ll show you more of my garden—including the azaleas you see in my new header—in my next post, but meanwhile…happy eating and Happy Spring!

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Tomato, Orange and Tarragon Soup
Serves 6-8

1 large clove of garlic, peeled and minced
1 large sweet onion, peeled and chopped
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1- 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes in puree, no salt added
1-14 oz. can of diced tomatoes, no salt added
2 Tablespoons double concentrated tomato paste
4 cups of vegetable stock or broth, no salt or low sodium, store-bought or homemade
Juice and zest of one orange
1 1/2 teaspoons dried tarragon leaves, or 2 Tablespoons fresh tarragon, minced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste if needed

Heat the olive oil in a large stock pot or soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and the garlic and saute until the onion is tender and translucent, about 3-4 minutes. Add the crushed tomatoes and puree, canned tomatoes with juice, tomato paste, vegetable stock or broth, juice and zest of the orange, tarragon, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and pepper, and stir well. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and cook for 35 to 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the pot from the heat and puree the soup in the pot with an immersion blender until smooth, or in batches in an upright blender. Season the soup to taste with a bit more salt and some pepper if desired. Serve this hot or cold, garnishing with a thin orange slice and a stem of fresh tarragon if you like. It will keep in the fridge for several days, and like most soups, is arguably better the next day.

At this point you have a very delicately flavored and super tasty vegan soup. If you want, you can strain the soup through a fine mesh sieve to remove any solids and obtain a silky smooth texture. You can also add enrichments to make this a cream soup with or without straining it by returning the pot of soup to low heat and stirring in 1/2- 3/4 cup of half and half or cream, or to taste, heating the soup until it is completely warmed through. I have also stirred a tiny bit of half and half or cream into a serving of this soup cold, and it was excellent!

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The Last of Winter’s Harvest: Chard, Gruyere and Pancetta Pie

Posted on April 14, 2013 by bitsandbreadcrumbs

Yes indeed, I really had planned to change the header to Spring for my next post, but due to an extremely busy week and some traveling, that’s not going to happen. Fortunately, the “Winter Look” seems entirely appropriate for this post (in spite of the fact that we hit 80 degrees here last week), because this recipe is all about using the last of the Winter chard from my garden before turning it and planting new veg for Spring/Summer.

We’ve had a truly mild Winter here, a non-Winter almost, and my rainbow chard really loved it. Just enough cool weather to make it continue to produce, and no hard freezes to kill it. I had almost a pound of it left to harvest this week from the few plants in my tiny raised bed garden plot. But what to make?

Then I remembered I’d seen someone posting a quiche recently, and it made me start thinking how long it had been since I’d had one. That might be a nice way to use up my chard! A quick reconnaissance of items in the fridge resulted in the knowledge that I already had some pancetta that I’d found on sale, some gruyere and Parmesan cheeses, plenty of eggs, milk, a red onion, et voilà!

This was quite a delicious pie, with more defined layers than your average quiche because of all the greens…more like a cross between a quiche and a pie. The greens do release a bit more of their liquid during the second round of cooking, so be forewarned that you’ll need to let this sit for a few minutes before you cut it, as it’s a little juicy. It does firm up nicely once it approaches room temp, but of course we couldn’t wait that long and I only let it rest 5 minutes before cutting. Even so, I found that it held together just fine. And regardless of how pretty or not any slices may have been, it’s gone!

Like most quiche or pie recipes, this one is pretty flexible. You can use less chard, but I wouldn’t try more, and you can sub bacon for the Pancetta, and white onion for red. I think spinach would work nicely here, too, in lieu of the chard, or as a mixture.

Chard, Gruyere and Pancetta Pie
Serves 6

1 – 9 inch good quality frozen whole wheat pie crust (yes, you can make your own, but as I said, it was a busy week!)
4 oz. Pancetta or you can substitute good quality bacon
1 small red onion, peeled and finely chopped
12 oz. ( you can use less if you like) rainbow or other chard, washed, dried, stems removed and leaves chopped crosswise into bite sized pieces
3 large eggs
1 cup half and half
1/2 cup milk (I used 1%, but any will do)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper or more to taste
4 oz. grated good quality gruyere cheese
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

If you’re using the frozen pie crust, check the package directions to make sure that it is ready to go for a quiche or pie, or if you need to pre bake it, do so. Same with a home made pie crust, which will probably need blind baking. My crust is ready to fill from the freezer.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Cook the pancetta in a large non-stick skillet over medium low heat, turning occasionally, until it is golden brown and crisp. Remove the pancetta from the pan to a paper towel to drain, reserving 1 1/2 Tablespoons of the grease in the skillet. Add the onion to the skillet and cook over medium heat for about 3 minutes, until the onion softens and becomes translucent. Add the chard to the pan, sprinkling half the salt and pepper over the chard, and saute until it is wilted and tender, about 5-8 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, half and half, milk, the remaining salt and pepper and the nutmeg until combined.

If using a frozen crust, remove it from the freezer and the packaging, and place it on a cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil, or follow the instructions on the package. Crumble the pancetta into the bottom of the crust, spreading evenly. Sprinkle the cheeses evenly over the pancetta. Top the pancetta with the chard mixture, then pour the egg custard mixture evenly over the top. It will be full, and you may have a couple of tablespoons of extra custard left, depending on how much chard you use, or how large your pie crust is. Carefully transfer the pie on the cookie sheet into the oven and bake at 375 degrees F for about 40 minutes, or until it is puffed and beginning to be golden, and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. If you need to, cover the edges of the pie crust with foil if they start to brown too quickly. When the pie is done, remove from the oven, allow it to cool for at least 5 minutes, and cut into 6 wedges. This can be served warm, at room temp, rewarmed slightly in the microwave or oven, or even cold.

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There and Back Again: Some Mud and Fire.

Posted on April 6, 2013 by bitsandbreadcrumbs

Warning! I don’t have a new recipe post for you today. But I hope you’ll stay, indulge me and read on. Yes, this is the answer post to the teaser at the end of the Spinach, Cheese and Phyllo Tart alluding to new adventures. It all started here:

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Many years ago, I decided to take a class in pottery at our local and very wonderful Callanwolde Fine Arts Center. I had taken one clay class in college and didn’t enjoy it, but thought perhaps my perspective might have changed after being out in the real world for a while, so I was willing to give it another go. Little could I have known then how deeply that decision would impact my life. It led to a love and pursuit of clay for 15 years, and the forging some life-long friendships along the way. And then strangely, in some ways it led me back to painting watercolors, then to gardening, then developing even more of an interest in food and cooking, and then to this blog.

I first approached clay because I thought it would be a fun way to provide some much needed physical and creative release from a pretty stressful business. Pounding clay is great therapy, and working sculpturally was a wonderful way to gain perspective on what I did every day in a more two-dimensional world.

Clay is dirt. Mud, in fact. No doubt about it. It’s primeval. It’s grounding. It’s been the material of choice for hand made vessels that have propelled humans from the stone age into the modern world, Vessels for the necessities of life and community, for food, water and storage. We still use it. We feel connected with the Earth and each other every time our hands touch it.

I became addicted to the medium and had the good fortune to be invited to work in the studios of some very talented professional potters who were first my teachers, and later became close friends. After a time, I stopped taking classes and joined some of those same potters in our own studio. During those years, I explored different ways to hand build, multiple firing techniques, and created both decorative and functional pieces. I particularly enjoyed building with coils, and I embraced an exposed coil style of handbuilding that I used for many years. I loved painting with bright commercial glazes and then Raku firing them, smoking the pieces to enhance the contrast between color and darkness, shiny and matte. I showed some work in local festivals and in our own studio shows. I had a blast. And then one day I stopped doing it completely.

Why did I leave it? The answer to that might be a book unto itself, because as we all know, interests and life take natural twists and turns.

Briefly, my sabbatical from clay was a time to explore…things that ended up, at least in my mind, being oddly related to clay in some form or another. Getting my hands into organic gardening and the organic and sustainable food movement, cooking my own food more frequently and creating new recipes, taking some time to paint watercolors, finding that I enjoy writing. But what I firmly do believe about our existence in this world is that we are, inexorably, pulled towards—or back to—the things we are meant to do. And resistance is futile. So now, 10 years later, I’m embracing clay once more. And I’m so excited about it that I wanted to share!

Don’t worry. I’m not changing anything…I’m still a professional graphic designer, I still love cooking and blogging about food, and will still be doing and enjoying those things. But I know now it’s time to return to clay because I love it, too, and I’ve really missed it.

So how on earth does all this talk of clay tie into this food blog? The premise of this blog is: Bits and Breadcrumbs: Where all trails lead to good food. Some of you may remember a post I did year before last. It was the holiday season and I mentioned some fellow artists and showed you their postcards for their holiday shows and sales. I also mentioned my Arty Artichoke Dip that I used to make sometimes for our grand pot luck Raku events at Callanwolde, and also for our studio shows when I was a potter. Those pot lucks and the signature dishes that showed up there were famous—and still are—so you’ll be hearing more about them in the future. See? Trails to more good food via clay. Food and art have always gone together, and every opening I go to seems to also be a big food event as well as a showcase for the art. After all, the term “starving artist” has more than one meaning!

Additionally, some of the comments I received on that same post were requests to see some of my work, but at that time, I didn’t have anything shot in a digital format since I hadn’t been working in clay for so long. In truth, much of my work from those years now resides in other people’s personal collections, and my only reference is still in slide form. But I do happen to have an inventory of the pieces left from my last studio show that I have now shot. So…..drum roll, please. I introduce you to my other persona: Mirthful Mudslinger.

All the images you see here today were hand built by me, and are currently featured items on my new Etsy store. These items are decorative and decoratively functional, and I think you’ll find them interesting. What I really hope is that you’ll stay tuned for the new work, which will be coming very shortly. I have lots of ideas I want to explore, and there will definitely be some food-related and food-safe pieces, too. See that clay-food connection?

After today’s post, I may occasionally interrupt this cooking broadcast to update you with new work I think you might like to see, directing you to my Etsy gallery which you can find right now by clicking here: Mirthful Mudslinger. I’d also really, really love it if you’d take a moment to “Like” Mirthful Mudslinger on Facebook by clicking here and then the “like” button on the page, which will provide you with a quicker way to see the new work as soon as it’s uploaded to the store, if you follow Facebook.

And that’s my new adventure, folks! Thanks for reading this long post. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s little foray into another direction, and look for me to be back to our regular programming on the next post! Hopefully by then I will have made my new Spring header, too. Meanwhile, may you have a truly Mirthful day!

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Note: If you live in the Atlanta metro area there are 3 wonderful resources in which to explore the world of clay on a community level. Check out Callanwolde Fine Arts Center-my alma mater, so to speak, and where I know the fine clay studio director and a good many of the equally fine current instructors, with classes in handbuilding and throwing, assistantships, and many firing options including electric, gas, salt, soda and Raku; Abernathy Arts Center-great instructors, handbuilding and throwing classes with multiple firing methods available including Raku; MudFire-an open clay studio facility by membership with a gallery, also has many firing options including electric, gas and Raku.

If you are interested in purchasing any items seen here and reside in the U.S., please go to the Etsy store at the link above. If you live outside the U.S. and are interested in purchasing an item shown here or on Etsy, please contact me directly. I am currently not shipping outside the U.S. via Etsy.

CATS