Creamy cauliflower soup

Cauliflower soup. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

This is one of those super-easy recipes that hardly needs written instructions. It's just two ingredients, but it made a creamy, nutritious soup that my eldest daughter loved. It's just cauliflower florets cooked in chicken broth and pureed with my immersion blender. You could add herbs like I did here, but honestly, that was more for the picture than for the taste (the soup's one fault being it is uncompromisingly pale). You could add cream, but unless you have your heart set on dairy, you really don't need it. And if you need a quick weeknight side dish for chicken or a roast, go easy on the broth for a silky cauliflower puree.

Cauliflower Soup

1 head cauliflower, trimmed and cut into florets
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Place cauliflower in a medium saucepan set over medium-high heat. Pour in broth. Let come to a boil, cover the pot and lower the heat. Let simmer for 20 minutes or until tender.

2. Strain the cauliflower, reserving the broth. Add about a cup of the broth back to the pan with the cauliflower and use an immersion blender to puree the vegetables. Gradually add broth until you reach the desired consistency, anywhere between mashed potatoes and soup. Season to taste and serve.

Text and images copyright 2012, Lucy Mercer.

Easy ice cream, vegan and gluten-free

Banana soft-serve ice cream. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Looking for a simple frozen dessert recipe? One that will please vegans, the gluten-free crowd, the lactose intolerant, diabetics and kids big or small? Try this one-ingredient frozen dessert that doesn’t even require an ice cream maker – banana soft serve.


It’s a tasty and frugal dessert that can be whipped up in just a few hours. Purchase over-ripe bananas from a local Atlanta supermarket, peel and slice them, freeze for a couple of hours and blitz in the food processor for a minute or two, until it’s fluffy and smooth. The soft serve dessert may be eaten right away or frozen for a scoopable texture.

Sliced bananas, ready for the freezer. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

In its purest state, this is an easy dessert to please guests with dietary challenges, but it’s also a blank canvas for culinary upgrades. A bit of honey (not vegan, though)  or agave nectar and lemon can perk up the flavors, and mix-ins such as chocolate chips dress up the dessert.

Super-ripe bananas. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Banana Soft Serve “Ice Cream”

Serves 4 to 6

6 medium ripe bananas

Optional: Juice of ½ lemon, 2 tablespoons honey or agave nectar

Mix-ins such as chocolate chips, chopped peanuts or almonds, fresh berries.

1. Peel bananas and slice into 1-inch chunks. Place in a zipper lock bag and freeze for at least two hours.

2. Remove bag from freezer and place banana chunks into bowl of food processor. Add lemon and honey or agave nectar, if using.

3. Process for one minute, then check consistency of frozen banana puree. If mixture still has chunks, continue processing in 10 second intervals until it reaches the desired texture.

4. Serve immediately, with mix-ins. The banana soft serve may be stored in airtight container in the freezer.

If you have extra uber-ripe bananas, make my favorite banana bread or create an elegant and easy ice cream topping.




Best banana bread - ever! Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books



Keen on quinoa

Suddenly, I'm crazy for quinoa...

Quinoa salad with chickpeas, lemon and mint by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

This week, I made a light-tasting, but filling quinoa salad with a refreshing hit of mint, dressed with lemon. No oil, and I didn't miss it. This salad is adapted from Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s “Splendid Table” newsletter. Do you listen to Lynne? I try and catch her program when the show airs on Saturdays. I also download the podcasts to listen to when I’m working in the kitchen. Aside from the delight of listening to her velvety voice talk about food, Lynne has an infectious laugh. She also talks about food in a way that makes me want to take notes and get into my kitchen and cook. Her book “The Splendid Table: How to Eat Supper” written with her producer Sally Swift is just like the radio show, but with pictures – you will absolutely find a new family favorite in there. My favorite find so far is a new technique for garlic bread that turns out great every time.

The quinoa salad recipe came across my radar on a day when I knew I needed to clean out my refrigerator and pantry. Scanning the recipe, which began as a couscous salad with beans, I knew I had all the veggies called for, plus a can of chickpeas. But I didn’t have the couscous. Instead, I had quinoa. Have you tried quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah)? It’s one of those good-and-good-for-you grains (okay, technically a seed) that we hear about, but don’t necessarily go the extra step and toss a box into the grocery basket. Here’s a reason to toss it into your basket on your next grocery visit  - the grains cook in 15 minutes and taste great. You may think they taste nutty, but if you ask me, quinoa is all about the texture – plus that cute little white curl of germ that pops out of the hull. Nutritionally speaking, quinoa is a complete protein, so even though we’re pairing it with beans, it would fill you up anyway, the beans are just a bonus. Quinoa is also gluten-free (two words that do not pop up on my blog very often, but probably should). It’s a good source of fiber, magnesium, phosphorus and iron. In summary: you can feel good about your dose of quinoa.

Summer Quinoa and Chickpea Salad with Lemon and Mint

Juice of one-half lemon

½ large shallot, minced

1 garlic clove, minced

1 teaspoon salt, divided

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided

3 cups cooked quinoa (from one cup, uncooked)

1 stalk celery, cut into ¼ inch dice

¼ cup raisins

1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, drained

¼ cup mint leaves, rolled tightly and sliced in a chiffonade

¼ cup Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped, (optional)



1. In a large bowl, combine the lemon juice, shallot, garlic, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and let stand while you pull together the rest of the dish.

2. Add the quinoa, chickpeas, celery, raisins, mint and olives, if using. Toss together. Taste for seasoning and add remaining salt and pepper, or maybe lemon juice, if needed. Serve at room temperature or place in an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to serve. If seving from the refrigerator, let it sit for a few minutes to shake off the chill - this salad is best at room temp.

Summer's Best Stew: Ratatouille



Ratatouille and creamy grits by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books



I've returned to the kitchen, my source for solace in the late summer. The light through the window is changing, it's amber coming through at a different angle, backlighting the spider web on the porch.

Spider web by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

My soul seeks comfort food, but my warm house isn't quite ready for day-long braises and Dutch ovens bubbling over with stewed chicken and bready dumplings. Ratatouille, thick with chunks of eggplant swimming in fresh tomato, I've found, speaks to my soul and lets me walk away from the table without needing a starch-induced nap.




Eggplants by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


There are at least two approaches to preparing ratatouille: the one-pot method, where each item is chopped and added to the pan gradually. This yields a tasty, but homogeneous stew. My preferred method requires roasting some of the vegetables, namely the eggplant, to give some textural variety to the final product. My recipe is evolving, first with the boilerplate recipe in the "Gourmet Cookbook," now tweaked by Francis Lam’s primer on Salon.com (previously published at Gourmet.com.) It is, to use Lam’s phrase, so good you’ll want to punch a hole in the wall (but please, don’t, somebody‘s mother will have to fix that.)

Redneck Ratatouille

I tend use whatever quantities of these vegetables I have on hand, given the general guidelines in the recipe. I’ve used roasted Poblano peppers and assorted banana and chili peppers instead of or in addition to the bell peppers. Just be mindful of the heat factor when cooking with the spicy peppers.

2 medium eggplant, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

Salt

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

4 large garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

3 large onions, peeled, halved, each half cut into 4 wedges

2 medium zucchini, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

2 medium yellow crookneck squash, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

4 large tomatoes, cored and chopped

2 tablespoons tomato paste (optional)

2 bell peppers, cored, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces

A handful of fresh basil

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

1. Eggplant prep: follow this step only if you have the large globe eggplants which tend to be bitter. If cooking with the smaller Asian eggplants, proceed to the next step. Set up a colander over a larger bowl and place eggplant in colander. Pour out about a tablespoon of salt onto the eggplant and toss. Let eggplant drain for about 30 minutes.

2. In a large oven-proof pot, preferably one with a lid, pour in all but about 3 tablespoons of oil and turn heat to medium. Add garlic and onion and bring to a bubbling boil. Let cook for about 30 minutes while you prep the remaining ingredients. Don‘t walk away, because, you know, it‘s a pot of boiling oil.

3. Heat oven to 450 and get out a half-sheet pan or a large cast-iron skillet. Pour eggplant and squash and zucchini out onto the pan (you may need to do this in batches), pour remaining three tablespoons oil and some salt and pepper on the vegetables and set in oven to roast for about 30 minutes. You’re looking for a touch of caramelly brown on the edges of the veg, not blackened.

4. Ok, now we have a pot of boiling oil and alliums on the stove and a pan of roasting squash and aubergine in the oven. It’s time to turn your attention to the tomatoes. In a food processor, puree the tomatoes and peppers. Add to the onion and garlic oil and continue to cook for another 30 minutes. Optional: if using tomato paste, you can add it to the pot with the tomatoes and peppers.

5. When tomato/onion/garlic/oil mixture is a rich red color, add in roasted squash/zuke/eggplant. Taste mixture for seasoning, then add salt, pepper and basil.

6. Turn oven to 300 and set Dutch oven with stew inside. Let ratatouille cook for at least one hour, and several more if you can. Remove pot from oven and let cool.

I serve ratatouille at room temperature over a bowl of creamy grits. Other choices are pasta such as rigatoni, or couscous, or polenta.

Text and images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.

Vegetable Broth a Snap to Make



Vegetables for Broth by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 Vegetable broth is a very useful thing to have on hand, or to put together on the fly. It makes soups sing and is a meat-free enhancement for rice and other dinnertime grains. Canned vegetable broth is usually no better than “ok,” so if you’re the kind of cook who keep carrots and celery and onions on hand, then you can put together this basic broth. Your food and family will thank you.

Roasted Vegetable Broth

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 carrots, peeled and diced ½ inch

1 onion, peeled and diced ½ inch

2 stalks celery, trimmed and diced ½ inch

1 bay leaf

Sprinkle of salt and pepper

Water

In a saucepan over medium heat, heat vegetable oil and add vegetables in stages, beginning with onions and concluding with celery. Add a small amount of salt to aid sweating and stir frequently. When vegetables begin softening, place lid on pot. After five minutes, stir and add water to cover, about 4 cups. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, add bay leaf and let steep for at least 20 minutes and up to 45. Let cool. Strain and use in recipe.