Recipe: Favorite Tortellini Soup

Not only is this my favorite soup recipe, it's also one of my very favorite suppers of all!  I will eat this soup even if it's 80 degrees outside.  I will eat this soup cold if I'm too ravenous to microwave.  I will eat this soup in a box, with socks, and in other Dr. Suess related circumstances.  

I found the original recipe here, and this blogger says she found it in Bon Appetit, so you know it's trustworthy.  I always omit the spinach - I don't like greens in my soups.  Over the years I've tried adding in other vegetables, but the only thing I really loved is celery.  After many rounds of scientific testing, I can say this soup is perfection (p <. 001).  

Here are my assembled ingredients (with a handsome husband in the background).  I always choose low sodium chicken stock, and I prefer Kitchen Basics.  I also always try to get low sodium cannellini beans - you'd be amazed how much unnecessary sodium is in canned beans.  I also prefer the Jennie-O turkey kielbasa for this recipe.

The first step is to sweat your minced whole onion and 2 stalks of celery in about 2 tbs of olive oil.  

Then I add 4 cloves of minced garlic.  I know that sounds like a lot of garlic for soup, but trust me, it's just the right amount.  Also fresh garlic is best, the jarred minced garlic is okay sometimes but not in this recipe.  I also add about a tbs of dry thyme, and a tsp of red pepper flake at this stage.  When using dried herbs, adding them at this stage allows them to toast, and draws the oils out, making the flavor brighter and fresher.

Then I add in the kielbasa, which I've diced in little quarters.  I allow this to come together in the pan for a few minutes.  The kielbasa doesn't really need to develop color, but I like the flavors mixing in each stage.  At this point, your house should be starting to smell like glorious herbaceous meat... I imagine a cozy pub after a long, cold journey when they serve you up a big pot of stew... That's never happened to me, but I imagine that's what it smells like!  

Then I pour in the whole box of chicken stock, the rinsed beans, and the package of cheese tortellini and bring it up to a boil.  I use a "family size" package of tortellini because I want a lot of leftovers, but if you want a brothier soup you could use a regular size package.  I boil it for as long as the tortellini needs to cook. 

Technically you could eat it right away.  But I learned the best tip ever from my idol, the Pioneer Woman: always let your soup rest off the heat for 15 minutes before serving.  Not only is it then the perfect hot-but-not-scalding temperature, but the flavors mellow and it really becomes soup.  

Then eat it!  Eat a whole bowl!  Eat another!  Sip the rich, herby, delicious, savory broth.  Each tortellini is saturated with it, like soup dumplings.  

And then, overnight, something magical happens.  When you take the leftovers out for lunch, you discover the broth has become even thicker and richer, and you're consuming some sort of soup/pasta/stew revelation!  I've considered making a huge pot of this and then just refrigerating it so I can skip to the leftover phase... But it's usually too good to wait.

Favorite Tortellini Soup

32 oz (4 cups) low-sodium chicken stock

Cheese tortellini

Turkey kielbasa

1 can low-sodium cannellini beans

2 stalks celery

1 onion

4 cloves garlic

1 tbs thyme

1 tsp red pepper flake

2 tbs olive oil

1. Mince onion, garlic, and celery.  Dice kielbasa

2. Sweat onion and celery in 2 tbs of olive oil, in a soup pot

3. Add herbs and garlic, sauté for a minute

4. Add kielbasa, sauté for a minute

6. Add chicken stock, beans, and tortellini, bring to a boil

7. Boil according to package directions for tortellini

8. Let soup rest off heat 15 minutes prior to serving

I hope you enjoy this soup as much as I do!

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Recipe: Chicken with Mushroom Pan Sauce

I like to have the Food Network on the in the background while I'm working on the computer at home - it's soothing to have people cooking delicious food while I'm trying to figure out what exactly I wrote in my dissertation again...

This show came on (I won't name names) in which this lady, I guess, makes typically high-fat foods into "diet" food.  Now, I am definitely a proponent of making healthy food choices.  I'm not an over-the-top organic nut, and I enjoy my wine and pizza as much as the next girl, but when cooking at home I do make efforts to create "balanced" meals.  Nicolai and I try to eat lots of greens, and to not go overboard with portion sizes.  I've even been known to occasionally substitute lower-fat or lower-sodium ingredients in recipes.  But overall I believe it's better to cook with food in its natural state, and just eat less of it if it's truly THAT bad for you.  Butter is better.

But yesterday, I watched with mounting horror as this unnamed Food Network woman created a "mock"-potato-salad with microwaved cauliflower, fat-free mayonnaise (what is that even made of?!), something called "dijonnaise," which appeared to be some sort of viscous fat-free mayo and mustard blend that squirts out of a tube, dairy-free creamer (WHAT?), sugar-substitute, and boiled egg whites.  I just threw up in my mouth reliving that.  She was praising this salad, saying that 2/3 of a cup had "only 90 calories" and "a few" grams of fat.  As opposed to Satan's candy, real potato salad, which has "HUNDREDS" of calories per cup and will make you fat and ugly.  I was so upset by this.  Why are we demonizing food?!  Potato salad is meant to be consumed occasionally, at BBQs, you have a scoop with your burger.  I cannot imagine living in a world where I brought that radioactive mess to a party and expected everyone to eat non-dairy creamer and sucralose-coated vegetables, all so I could fool myself into thinking I'm eating something sort of like evil, bad potato salad.  Food is not evil.  And you can't trick me with that cauliflower!

All of this gave me so much anxiety, I had to cook a Julia Child recipe for dinner.  Yes, there is butter in it.  No, I don't call this a "cheat" meal.  Nourishing my body and soul with a variety of rich, light, wholesome, and sometimes even entirely healthy meals is not cheating on anything.  

I believe Julia called this recipe "Chicken with Mushrooms and White Wine Cream Sauce."  I call it, "the shit."  I've modified it somewhat from her recipe to make it a little easier in my kitchen and with my cooking style.  I've made variations on this recipe dozens of times - one of Nicolai's very favorite things to eat is chicken with some sort of pan sauce.  There are endless possibilities.  

I chopped up a shallot, sliced some baby bella mushrooms, and got my lemon ready for squeezing!  I also preheated my oven to 350.

Then I placed two chicken breast between two layers of plastic wrap...

And beat them into submission.  Don't let those chicken breasts talk back to you.  You're the boss of the kitchen!  (you should probably use a rolling pin and not a mason jar, but I live on the edge).

I do this so that my chicken cooks a little quicker (and more surface area for tasty browning)

Then I melted about 4 tablespoons of butter in a pan, and added the shallot.

After the shallots absorbed some of the butter (only about 30 seconds), I laid the chicken breasts in the pan, salt-and-peppered them, and then gave them a healthy squeeze of lemon.

After the chicken has developed some color on both sides (for me, about 5 minutes on the first side, and 3 on the 2nd), I put the chicken in the oven to finish cooking.

Next I added the sliced mushrooms, about a half cup of white wine, a half cup of chicken stock, and another pat of butter (because I do what I want).

This is one of the bottles of wine I got on my birthday trip to Leavenworth!  Nicolai and I were drunk when we bought this, but luckily it ended up tasting okay!

After the wine, stock, mushroom mixture had simmered and reduced about half, I added about 1/4 cup of heavy cream.  At this stage, I added some thyme because it's Nicolai's favorite herb and I forgot to put it in before, but I would recommend adding them with the mushrooms.  You can see Nicolai dipping a spoon in to taste on the right hand side of this picture...  

Add more cream, butter, herbs, or lemon to taste.

I made some brown rice, and a nice fresh arugala, carrot, and celery salad with sweet onion dressing on the side.  I think this would be equally good served over spinach, or with asparagus!

**As a note, I typically use unsalted chicken stock when I cook.  I didn't this time, and, of course, the dish ended up tasting too salty.  I would say it's always better to buy unsalted stock and control your own seasoning.

Chicken with Mushroom Pan Sauce

2 chicken breasts

1 shallot, chopped

1/2 lemon

1/2 tsp thyme

1 1/2 cups fresh mushrooms, sliced

4-5 tbs butter

1/2 cup white wine

1/2 cup unsalted chicken stock

1/4 cup heavy cream

1.  Prep your food, and preheat your oven to 350

2. Melt 4 tbs of butter in a pan, and add chopped shallot

3. After the shallot has absorbed some of the butter 

(about 30 seconds), add the chicken breasts

4. Squeeze the lemon on the chicken, 

allow the chicken breasts to brown on both sides, 

then place them in the oven to finish cooking

5. To the butter and shallot mixture in the pan, 

add mushrooms, thyme, and 1 more tb of butter

6. Add chicken stock and wine, and allow this to reduce to about half

7. Add cream

8. Serve chicken with pan sauce poured over.

Et viola!  No non-dairy creamer in this recipe.  I think Julia would approve.