Week 32 - Your Favorites

Whenever someone asks the question - what is your favorite food? - it's an almost impossible question for us to answer. We could make you lists of foods we love, but it is so hard to pinpoint it down to one specific favorite (or even one type of cuisine). The theme for Week 32 of the challenge was "your favorites," which led to me staring blankly at the computer trying to figure out what we could make. Huaraches? Maybe. Tacos? We've already done quite a few Taco Tuesdays. Catalan-style chickpeas? Did that already (even if I haven't finished writing that post yet). I could go on and on. Eventually I decided that it would be good enough to just pick something we liked that we've never made yet at home. The answer? Split pea soup.

Green split peas, the star of the dish

I've loved split pea soup since I was a child. It's warm and comforting, and really good for you, packed with tons of vegetables. Although we've had all different types of split pea soups over the years, the one that really stands out in our minds is the one we had on a vacation back in 2007. We were on an Alaskan cruise and it was the designated day for the ship to go through a passage of glaciers. It also happened to be a really chilly day for an Alaskan summer and the weather and visibility were so bad that we couldn't really get in to see the glaciers. But what they did do was serve up an amazing split pea soup on deck to try to help us keep warm. Technically it was a "Dutch pea soup," but it was so warm and luscious and had incredible flavor from the ham, the peas, and the vegetables. I hoped to emulate that soup with this challenge.

Dutch pea soup on our Alaskan cruise

I wanted to make the soup in a slow cooker since I thought it would be less work. The flavors would be good and the slow cooker would do all the work. In the end, it didn't end up being much less work and the prep took a ridiculously long time (I think I was moving exceptionally slowly after getting up late that day), but I think that was mostly on me. I looked to this recipe for slow cooker split pea soup for guidance to try to get the proportion of water and cooking times right, since I'm still a novice with slow cookers and haven't done too much experimenting.

Soup ingredients (can't see the ham)

The ingredients for the split pea soup were:

- 1 lb (or so) of dried green split peas, picked through and rinsed ($2.15)
- 2 russet potatoes, peeled and diced ($0.98)
- 1 medium onion, diced ($0.30)
- 1 bunch of carrots, diced ($1.50)
- 1 small head of garlic, minced ($0.15)
- 1 lb of ham bones (with meat on them) ($4.55)
- 7 cups of water ($0)
- 3 large spoonfuls of chicken bouillon ($1)
- 1 bay leaf ($0.10)
- 1 bunch of fresh parsley, minced ($1.50)
- salt and black pepper to taste ($0.10)

For approximately $12.33, we got an entire slow cooker full of split pea soup, enough for 2 dinners for 2 and lunch for me another day. It made a lot of food for the price, which was great.

Slow cooker with all the ingredients finally inside

Prep and cooking for the soup is technically really easy. Just prepare all the ingredients and throw them in the slow cooker together. Turn it on and it's done in 8-10 hours on low or 4-5 hours on high. My only problem was that I am slow at prep and I woke up late, so in order for us not to eat at 11pm, I had to start the slow cooker before every single ingredient was prepped. Our kitchen also has really limited counter space, which meant that for a time, I was chopping on the stove, and then I had to carry the ingredients across the kitchen, and all of that just added up to a lot of wasted time and slowness. It also meant that for the first hour or so, the lid on the slow cooker was not on tight and that I had to keep opening it to drop in more stuff, so that was a big mess and exactly how you're not supposed to operate a slow cooker.

Finished slow cooker soup

In the end, what I ended up doing was cooking on low for 5.5-6 hours, finding that it was way too watery, and raising it to high for another hour. It was still kind of watery, so for the next 20 minutes or so, I kept it cooking while I smashed maybe half of the potatoes against the side of the slow cooker to make it more starchy and thicken it up, while A took the ham bones and shredded the meat from them. Once we finished that and we added salt and black pepper to the soup to give it more flavor, we covered it back up and let it cook on high for another 20 minutes.

Total, it ended up being almost 8 hours, but about 1/4 of that time was on high. I think on low it would have needed way more than 8 hours the way our slow cooker was running. By the end, it was nice and thick, the way split pea soup should be. We were worried when 6 hours in, it was still really watery, so we had to be a little more "active" with the slow cooker than we originally planned.

Dinner!

The soup was quite good by the end. The carrots and potatoes were nice and soft, the flavor of the soup was good, the peas were almost pureed. The ham was good, but it wasn't as strong in flavor as we thought it would be, so we added more salt than expected. I think next time, I would prefer to use the diced ham, but there wasn't any at Trader Joe's and the butcher recommended the ham bone for soup. This is the first time I've ever made split pea soup and even though there are some things I would improve for next time, I would consider this a success!

Slow Cooker Love

We made this recipe back on Halloween and I finished writing this post on November 6 of last year. I'm not sure why we never posted it (especially since I've already posted another recipe using our slow cooker). Week 6 of the 52 week challenge includes a different recipe for rice and peas, so it's about time that I finally put this up on our blog so you know what we're comparing the new recipe with! This is pretty much exactly as written from November 2013.

We got a new slow cooker recently (the Hamilton Beach 6 quart set and forget) and we love it. I originally thought that the first recipe we would make to test out the new slow cooker would be chicken soup, but then A found this awesome-sounding recipe for slow cooker chipotle lime chicken thighs (here) and plans immediately changed. The recipe also included instructions for a side of Jamaican rice and peas that we made alongside it. After trying it, we're instead calling this recipe "chipotle chicken stew with coconut rice and beans." It was delicious.

First, the chipotle chicken stew.

Ingredients:

I remembered the cilantro for the photo but not when it came time to garnish...

- 1/2 yellow onion ($0.30)

- 3 stalks of celery ($0.25)

- 2 carrots ($0.50)

- 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts ($3)

- Salt ($0.05)

- Black pepper ($0.05)

- 1 (15 oz) can of tomato sauce ($1.49)

- Juice of 2 limes ($0.45)

- 2 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce plus ~1 tbsp of sauce ($0.60)

- 4 garlic cloves ($0.10)

The recipe also called for garnishes of avocado and cilantro leaves, but (1) I couldn't find an avocado I liked at the store and didn't really know how to pick a good one back then and (2) I completely forgot about adding the cilantro in my glee over the taste of the stew. Oops. Maybe next time.

The total cost of this part of the recipe was approximately $6.79. Next time, I think I would use a whole onion instead of 1/2 and add in the avocado and cilantro, so that would probably bump the total up to $8-9. Not terrible for a poultry meal that was enough for dinner for two plus two lunches for one (and probably could have lasted longer if we hadn't been such happy gluttons the first night we had the stew).

Process:

1. Prep the ingredients. Chop the mirepoix (onions, celery, carrots). Season the chicken generously with salt and pepper. Whisk together the sauce ingredients - tomato sauce, lime juice, minced chipotle chiles, adobo sauce, minced garlic.

2.  Layer the slow cooker. Mirepoix on the bottom.

Arrange chicken over vegetables. [I think next time I'll turn the chicken so the "flat" sides are facing up and then season with salt and pepper on the other side too.]

Pour sauce mixture over chicken and vegetables.

3.  Cook on low for 6 hours. [It says 6:30 in the photo but we stopped it early. I know you're not really supposed to open the slow cooker to stir it but it was our first time with it so I stirred it a few times. It also wouldn't be a bad idea to open it to flake the chicken with two forks maybe 1/2 hour before the recipe is done.]

And for the side dish, coconut rice and beans.

Ingredients:

Ignore the Chef Boyardee and the fried onions that had nowhere else to go in the pantry...

- 2 cups brown rice (~$1)

- 1 can light coconut milk ($0.99)

- 1 cup water ($0)

- 1 can of red kidney beans ($0.79)

- 1 tsp dried thyme ($0.10)

- Finely grated lime zest ($0.05)

- 1/4 cup chopped scallions ($0.20)

- Salt ($0.05)

- Black pepper ($0.05)

The rice cost came out to approximately $3.50 but that is a real ballpark estimate since I have no idea how much the rice really costs. Not bad considering how much rice this made. It's also quite dense so you can't really eat that much of it at once without feeling it sitting like a rock in your stomach (said in the best way possible).

Process:

1. In a medium saucepan, combine the brown rice, coconut milk, water, beans, thyme and lime zest. Set over high heat and bring to boil. Reduce to low, cover and simmer until liquid is absorbed. 

[Photo of pot ready to boil should go here but I forgot to take one]

All of my liquid absorbed before the rice tasted done, so we kept adding more water and simmering until we felt like it was done and not too chewy. We stopped when it had the consistency of barley. As it sat and waited for the stew, it continued to soften up.

2. Add scallions, salt and pepper to taste.

3. Mix it all up and it's done.

Review:

We were so happy with this dish. The coconut rice and beans were really rich and heavy, but combined with the stew, it cooled down some of the spice and added a nice coconut flavor. That said, it wouldn't be necessary to make this with the stew, and regular rice (or other grains) would work just as well (and would be cheaper). We haven't had any Jamaican rice and peas that tasted like this before, which is why we renamed it to coconut rice and beans.

The chipotle chicken stew was amazing. I surprised A a little bit with how spicy it was, which was completely due to the chipotle chiles in adobo. The recipe called for 1 tbsp minced, but I had been reading a lot of Chowhound threads on chipotle chiles where people kept saying they usually use 2 for everything they make, so I used 2. Of course one of them was gigantic, so I guess it was probably more like 3 chiles. And chipotle chiles are not mild. If you don't know what they are, they're smoked jalapenos, which should give you some idea of their heat. I moved them into this tiny plastic Gladware thing to put in the fridge, and they barely fit. To get the cover on, more and more of the adobo sauce kept squirting out, so I just added the rest of the adobo sauce to the recipe. The result was probably a bit spicier than it needed to be to get the good spicy, smoky flavor. But it was so good that we're not complaining about that at all. Maybe next time I won't use quite so much...

The chicken flaked off like pulled chicken. The carrots, celery and onions were soft like they are in soup. The sauce was zesty and spicy. It was a really great recipe and we were so glad that we made it. Never would have predicted that this would be the first thing to come out of our slow cooker (still haven't made chicken soup, now that I'm thinking about it), but really satisfied.

Week 2 - Polish

The theme for week 2 of the 52 week cooking challenge was Polish. So many options! I've eaten Polish food plenty of times (although I still have a lot more to explore), but never cooked it before. I love pierogi, but they are the Polish food I'm most familiar with (eating, not cooking), so I didn't want to do that. (I also find anything dumpling-like to be so labor-intensive and the food disappears so quickly.) I had it narrowed down to kielbasa skillets, potato pancakes, variations of cabbage rolls, and a couple recipes for kapusta (something I had never heard of until I started researching, but is apparently Polish for "cabbage"). I couldn't decide so I let A make the call. He chose a kapusta and kielbasa slow cooker recipe I found on Chowhound.

Ingredients:

The only ingredient we had at home was a Costco onion, so everything else came from Fairway.

- 6 Russet potatoes ($1.28)
- 1 large yellow onion ($0.50)
- 1/2 lb of turkey bacon ($1.86)
- 16 oz package of sauerkraut ($1.99)
- 1 lb of kielbasa ($6.99)

$12.62 is more than our home cooking recipes usually cost, even when they include meat, but over 55% of that cost was the kielbasa. I had been planning to get turkey kielbasa from Trader Joe's which was more than $2 less, but we were shopping on the dreadful first Sunday after New Year's (the worst shopping day of the season, compounded by the impending polar vortex). The turkey kielbasa was out of stock and I didn't want to go back out on Monday (the lines were even worse because of weather craziness) or Tuesday (the day of frigid temperatures), so I went to Whole Foods and got the only kielbasa they had. Next time I need kielbasa I may stop by the butcher shop or keep searching for a cheaper option (provided I have more flexibility than I did this time).

Process:

The recipe was pretty easy to follow. I love loading up the slow cooker in the morning, allowing the aromas to circulate around the apartment all day, and then having a stress-free evening while the slow cooker finishes up all the work. 

This wasn't one of those recipes where you just throw all the ingredients in the slow cooker and press start (although I do love those). The preparation went as follows:

1. Peel and chop potatoes into small pieces and throw into slow cooker.
2. Chop bacon into smaller pieces.
3. Fry bacon and layer on top of potatoes (without the bacon grease).
4. Saute onions in bacon grease. Once tender and translucent, put onions and bacon grease into slow cooker. (Since I used turkey bacon and a nonstick skillet, I didn't really have much grease.)
5. Slice kielbasa and put into slow cooker on top of onions.
6. Drain sauerkraut (reserve juice) and add on top of kielbasa.

I set the slow cooker for 8 hours. I checked on it every 2 hours or so to make sure it wasn't too dry. I ended up adding all the sauerkraut juice plus an additional 1/2-1 cup of water about 1-2 hours in. The sauerkraut on top was a little dry but not much else was. I just wanted to use the sauerkraut juice and throw the bowl in the dishwasher. But I think the amount of liquid turned out just right. I stirred it around every so often but tried to keep the potatoes on the bottom so they would boil and soften.

I ended up running the slow cooker for 7 hours instead of 8, but everything was done by then. Stirred it a bunch of times to mix everything together and mash up the potatoes a little bit and then it was time to eat!

Review:

This was a good dish for a winter's night. The potatoes were soft and combined well with the cabbage, soaking up the saltiness and sourness of the kielbasa and the sauerkraut. I liked how well it all blended together. A thought the kielbasa would be more flavorful, and thought the sauerkraut flavor was a little bit blander after cooking (but the potatoes picked up a lot of both of those flavors). I'm not really a huge bacon fan (I know, it's a rarity), but A thinks real bacon would have made this taste better. In fact, A didn't think the turkey bacon had much of any flavor. I agree that it didn't seem to add much. The overall flavors of this dish were good, but we might make some adjustments if we were to make it again. Maybe fresh kielbasa and real bacon instead.

I'm not really a huge "meat and potatoes" eater, so I can't see making this on a regular basis. I just need more vegetables in my meals, especially if the recipe is making enough for two days of meals. But I did enjoy my foray into Polish cooking and would do it again. Maybe next time it'll be golumpki in the slow cooker.