Mirin Chicken with Ramen Noodles for Souper Sundays

From Noodle Fusion; a tasty little soup.

Chicken (or Quorn cutlets) is marinated with a reduction of mirin, soy sauce, (vegetable) broth, & sugar. Bring vegetarian dashi (sans bonito flakes) to boil, cook ramen for a couple minutes, drain, cover with foil, reserve broth.

The chicken or chicken-replacement-product is seared on each side, cooled & sliced.

Broth is boiled again, put noodles in bowls, pour broth over, top with chicken (or whatever), garnish...we used grated ginger & daikon matchsticks.

Skipped: black mushrooms

It's got some flavor, the noodles are fun, just a good soup.



Here you go, Deb! More soup for your Sunday.

Smoked Chicken & Tortellini in a Cream Sauce

It was one of those days...a Saturday, I believe...that just got away from us. We'd had a plan for dinner, but ended up too tired to bother.

Night wore on, realized we had to eat something. As always, I started suggesting things Matt might like. He was stuck on pasta, so I suggested he use up the cheese tortellini we'd gotten for something else.

He liked that idea.

I then brought up the remainder of the smoked chicken he still had in the refrigerator.

Also in favor of this.

And yes, we did have some cream left...so very quickly, what might have been a peanut butter sandwich kind of night resulted in...for him anyway...a pretty tasty & unexpected dinner.

Warm Potato Salad with Pancetta & Brown Butter Dressing

A little different than the usual mayo-yellow mustard coated potato salad.

Fingerling potatoes (we found this lovely trio of Yukons, reds & purple) are sliced & boiled just till tender, then tossed with a dressing of butter-cooked pancetta with shallots, a nice grainy mustard & sherry vinegar, & finally topped with chives.

Despite the amount of pork fat in this dish, the lack of mayonnaise makes this rather light compared to conventional potato salads. Oh, and quite tasty. (says Matt)

Batman: Year Seventy

Right, so it's no real secret I like comic books, heroes, and all the trappings associated with them. It's also fairly well-known the level of detail I will put into anything I am even mildly passionate about.

So don't tell me you're shocked to learn that I celebrated Batman's 70th 'birthday'; we both know you're sitting there...rolling your eyes and/or laughing...saying 'yeah, that's exactly the sort of thing she'd do'.

It was 70 years ago that the Caped Crusader made his first appearance in Detective Comics, and that's a heck of a milestone for anyone. The sort that demands celebration.

And there's really only one way I know how to celebrate: with food.





I have had conversations with both my foodie & comic book friends about this: what do heroes eat? It's not something that's ever shown, really; ok, if you're reading the Flash, for example, you may get a scene or two where he's shoveling in large quantities of food. But that's less 'what' he's eating & more 'gotta keep up with that super-charged metabolism'.

Yes, I have my favorites in the hero world, and Batman is at the top of that list. (Technically he's tied with Wonder Woman, but that's a different post for a different day.)

I've actually given this a lot of thought (No! Really?); what exactly would Bruce Wayne eat, as Batman? He's often depicted as being too busy to bother with whatever Alfred has prepared, but the guy has to eat eventually.

Alfred's a smart man. He'd be sure whatever was on the tray he set next to 'Master Bruce', close to the computer, would be hearty, flavorful, & good for him. And most importantly, it would be something that would keep: years & years of looking after Gotham City's self-proclaimed protector meant he knew the food had to be ready & edible whenever Bats got around to it.

That ruled out a lot of options. Nothing that had to be kept hot, or might get soggy.

It also had to be easy to eat; Bruce would be working on...oh, comparing bullets, researching links between suspicious characters, or analyzing DNA samples. Any food he bothered to pick up would have to be pick up-able.

A roasted tomato basil soup, delicious both hot or cold, served in a big mug. Pick up, take a swig, go back to work.

Sandwich with nutty, multi-grain bread, toasted & brushed with olive oil (mayo would go bad before Bruce got around to it), topped with slices of Gruyere, crisp bacon, roasted chicken breast & a good, crunchy lettuce.

Foods that can wait till the Batman realizes he's not eaten in more than twelve hours & had better keep up his strength, but won't slow him down in his quest to keep his city safe.

At least, that's what I like to think would happen.





And because no celebration should pass without a cake, I give you The Dark Knight Cake; a dense chocolate cake made with both cocoa & 88% dark chocolate, covered in dark chocolate ganache.

Oh, and yes...it may resemble a certain signal often seen in Gotham's night sky...

Happy Birthday, Batman.

Wartime Wednesdays: Honey Twist Bread

Common Causes of Inferior Bread
POOR FLOUR---A cheap flour may be an expensive flour because it makes a loaf inferior in texture, flavor and volume.
OLD YEAST---Dead yeast plants cannot leaven bread. Old compressed yeast cakes or dry yeast which has been stored away until many f the yeast plants are dead will act very slowly if it all and will not give good results.
TOO MUCH or TOO LITTLE KNEADING---Dough kneaded too much becomes sticky and will not rise well in the oven. Dough kneaded too little makes streaked bread, poor in texture, which sometimes contains lumps that might have been worked out in kneading.
TOO MUCH FLOUR---Too stiff a dough makes coarse-textured bread of small volume and dry crumb.
OVER-RISING---Too long rising gives a very porous loaf with little flavor, a pale crust and a porous crumb with broken, irregular texture. This bread crumbles badly. If the rising continues too long, the dough may become sour
UNDER RISING---Too little rising gives a loaf which is small and flat. It browns too quickly in the oven. The crumb is compact and dull.
TOO COOL AN OVEN---Bread will continue to rise too long if the oven temperature is too low. The result is bread that is very porous in the center and upper par of the loaf. The bread dries out before it begins to bake.
TOO HOT AN OVEN---The dough crusts over immediately and cannot continue to rise as it should the first ten or fifteen minutes it is in the oven. The crust becomes very brown before he crumb is baked.
ROPE IN BREAD---Rope may appear at any time but is most likely during hot, damp weather. It gives bread a ropy, stringy quality and a very disagreeable odor and makes it unfit for use. It is due to a type of bacillus which may be in any one or more of the ingredients used in bread.
If rope develops, all utensils used in making bread and containers in which bread is stored should be sterilized with boiling water and rinsed with water to which vinegar has been added. Since acid inhibits the growth of the bacillus, 1 tablespoon vinegar for each quart of liquid should be added to each subsequent batch of dough until all the materials in stock at the time of rope appeared are used up.
---The Victory Binding of the American Woman's Cook Book; Wartime Edition, published 1943


A nice bread with a honey-sweetened crust. Made a ridiculous amount, so I sliced up the remainder & turned it into French toast. Worked really well.

Cookbook Review: A Century of Flavors: Nielsen-Massey Vanillas

Spa Salad with Almond Vinaigrette

I've never really understood why the term 'vanilla' is commonly used to describe something that's safe or bland. Because in my experience, vanilla adds excitement & depth to just about anything.

When I received my copy of the book, and seeing the recipes offered by the folks at Nielsen-Massey, I knew the only real challenge would be my foodie OCD. Too many tempting dishes to choose from...and of course, I wanted to try them all.

It's a small but beautifully photographed book, with a good range & selection of recipes. Sweet & savory. Typically, it wasn't easy to whittle the down but I finally choose these three, starting with the Spa Salad.

The salad itself was light, as it's name suggests, with baby spinach, red onion, strawberries & sliced almonds.
It's the dressing, the vinaigrette, that really gave it some 'oomph'; mustard, maple syrup, vanilla & almond extracts, oil & rice vinegar.

The vanilla & almond went very well with the strawberries, which in turn pairs well with the spinach.

This was the only one of the three I tried in which the vanilla was present as a primary flavor, rather than an underlying enhancer.






Fillet Mignon with Vanilla Wine Sauce

This one...well, this one is going on the 'serve to company' short list.

A nice cut of beef gets seared & finished in the oven; that part's simple. But it's the Vanilla Wine Sauce that sends this over the top.

Beef stock, red wine, onion, marjoram, garlic, vanilla extract, tomato paste & brown sugar are simmered till reduced, then strained. Butter is whisked in till the sauce becomes glossy.

Thinly sliced mushrooms are sauteed in clarified butter till browned.

Steak, sauce, mushrooms...set it down in front of your guest & watch in amazement as it's literally inhaled before your eyes.

Matt made a lot of "mmmhmm" noises during this time. Eventually was able to tell me just how good it was.

Sauce was very smooth, very deep; complex but unobtrusive, so it went very well paired with a piece of meat you really want to emphasize.

And thanks to the advances in modern culinary sciences, I was able to produce both the original here & a veg version for Alex & me! (see below for Alex's plate!)

Using vegetable stock in lieu of beef, & half a recipe, even with faux beef strips this sauce was fantastic.







Vanilla Cashew Caramel Corn Crunch

Caramel corn; that's good stuff. But when you add some quality vanilla & perhaps some chopped cashews well...you can take your Cracker Jack & leave, thank you.

The smell alone makes you want to dive in, though it's best to wait till the caramel's cooled a bit...there's such a deep mix of flavors, a richness. Hard to stop eating it.


The book gives some basic ways to use vanilla, as well as some unexpected options. Whether showcasing or adding a layer of flavor, the Nielsen-Massey cookbook is a good one to have around.






Veg version, Morningstar Farms 'steak' strips replacing the actual steak.

Feel Better Soup

Last weekend, Matt came down with...something. I don't know if chicken soup really is the cure-all to end-all, but I'd recently made a smoked chicken stock (remains of a whole chicken Matt had smoked with many vegetables & herbs), so it seemed the culinary stars were in alignment.

The most fragrant broth I've ever come across, simmered with several slices of ginger & a few Kaffir lime leaves (later strained out), and at the last minute, some noodles tossed in.

Doesn't look like much, but according to Matt, it was amazing. And eaten with a limited-edition, numbered, Star Trek Spork, it may just have helped him Feel Better.

Seems the only one who can drag me out of semi-blogging retirement is Deb, & her Souper Sundays...so, here you go!

Smoky Tomato Soup with Gruyere Toasts

It has been ages since I joined Deb's Souper Sundays, so this past week I made this recipe for tomato soup.

Easy soup, few ingredients. Lots of tomatoes, some thyme & sweet smoked paprika as the heavy-hitters.

The flavor was most certainly diminished by out-of-season tomatoes. Trying again in two or three months would likely make this a heck of a lot tastier.

Finished with the tiniest amount of cream & blended & strained (I used an immersion blender instead), and served with baguette slices, toasted under a broiler, topped with shredded Gruyere and broiled again. Nice, light...not exactly dinner, but an excellent lunch.

Smoked Chicken, Apple, Blue Cheese & Walnut Salad with Cheese Biscuits

Well, not really much to say about this.

Mix of baby lettuces & spinach, diced green apple, bleu cheese & toasted walnuts, tossed with a lemon-mustard vinaigrette.

Smoked chicken for Matt, Quorn cutlets for us.

Cheddar cheese biscuits. Dinner. Yum.