Bean, ham and spinach slow-cooker soup

I’m always in the market for slow cooker recipes that take at least 10 hours to make, so they can be coasting on the warm cycle when I get home without any harm. So few recipes seem to fall into that time category, so I jumped on this one, especially since it called for ham, and I had a bunch leftover after a family gathering.

Slow-cooker smoky navy bean soup

Adapted from Family Circle. Note that this recipe needs attention the night before, and just a slight amount of prep work at the very end of the cooking time.

Ingredients

1 pound navy beans

2 cups chopped ham

1 large onion, chopped

3 celery stalks, thinly sliced

3 carrots peeled, thinly sliced

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes (I used the kind with onions added, since that’s what I could find, the original called for ones with peppers)

½ teaspoon dried thyme

6 cups water

1 teaspoon salt (optional)

¼ teaspoon black pepper

5 ounces baby spinach

Method

Soak beans in water overnight. Drain, and add to slow-cooker insert. Stir in water, ham, onion, celery, carrots, tomatoes and thyme. Cover and cook on low for 10 hours.

Remove 2 cups of the soup to a food processor or blender. Puree and return to soup. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed. (The ham brings a lot of saltiness to the party, so you might not need all that’s called for.) Stir in spinach, cover and cook about 5 more minutes until wilted.

Rating: As a child I really liked that bean with bacon soup that came out of a condensed can. This is kind of like a slightly more grown-up, possibly more healthful version. It’s still got that same smoky flavor and the thickness, thanks to the pureed part. It’s  certainly a hearty weeknight alternative. The recipe claims it serves 8; I’d say 6.

Make ahead: I soaked the beans overnight one night, drained them the next morning and stored them in the refrigerator. Then I assembled all the ingredients in the slow-cooker insert the night before to further simplify morning getaway. And like most bean soups, it stores and reheats just fine, so you can make the entire meal ahead and reheat it if you like.

Beer and brats soup

OK, so it’s actually kielbasa. But it’s basically the same principle. I had a cabbage and sausage to use up, plus a freezer nearly devoid of remaining soups, so I tried this hearty soup on a recent cold, rainy Sunday. (Turns out the weather was better then than today, when it's had the audacity to pelt us with snow just in time for the evening commute.)

Cabbage soup with kielbasa

Adapted from the Chicago Tribune

Ingredients

1 quart broth

1 cup beer

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes

1 bay leaf

1 small head cabbage, shredded

1 large baking potato, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes

1 large onion, thinly sliced

1 large carrot, peeled, cut into quarters lengthwise and then into ¼-inch slices

8 ounces kielbasa or other flavorful sausage

½ teaspoon dried thyme leaves

¼ teaspoon caraway seeds

Method

Heat broth, beer, tomatoes and bay leaf to a boil in a large Dutch oven. Add remaining ingredients. Partially cover and cook over medium heat until potatoes and carrots are tender, about 30 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 4 generously as a main dish, 6 if you’re doing a cup of soup on the side.

Rating: Not a wower. Not horrible, by any means, but it doesn't inspire me to make it again. It was fairly fast to fix as soups go. The recipe relies greatly on the sausage for its flavor, so you have to make sure it’s a good one. The flavor, sadly, didn't come into its own by the time it reached the leftover stage, unlike many soups.

Boozy bourbon carrots

Bourbon carrots

From “Betty Rosbottom’s Cooking School Cookbook”

This recipe had me at bourbon, so I figured I’d give boozy carrots a go.

Ingredients

1½ pounds carrots, peeled, sliced diagonally ¼-inch thick

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

3 ½ tablespoon butter, divided

½ teaspoon salt

1½ cups water

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons bourbon

1½ tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Method

In a heavy saucepan, bring to a boil the carrots, granulated sugar, 1½ tablespoons of butter, salt, and water. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover and cook until just tender, about 10 to 15 minutes. Drain. Salt and pepper to taste.

In a large skillet, heat remaining butter and brown sugar over medium high heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Add carrots, stirring to coat well. Add bourbon and cook a few minutes more. Garnish with parsley.

I used a mix of colors of carrots from the farmers market.

Rating: The sauce is wonderfully boozy, but it doesn’t seem to really stick to the carrots. The carrots are fine, and the sauce divine, but it would be better if they melded a bit more.

Asparagus in parchment with fresh herb vinaigrette

Steam-roasted asparagus with fresh herb vinaigrette

Adapted from “Stir: Mixing It Up in the Italian Tradition”by Barbara Lynch, yet another book on my shelf that shows lots of promise, but hasn’t come out to play often.

Ingredients

1 bunch asparagus, tough ends snapped off

½ cup olive oil, divided

1 shallot, finely chopped

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons white wine vinegar (tarragon vinegar works nicely)

¼ cup chopped mixed fresh herbs, such as parsley, chives, tarragon and chervil

Method

Line a baking sheet with a piece of parchment big enough to encase the asparagus. Lay the spears on the parchment and toss with ¼ cup olive oil, some sea salt and cracked fresh pepper. Fold parchment over asparagus and fold up each end to seal. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 12 to 16 minutes, depending on thickness.

Combine shallot, mustard and vinegar in a small bowl. Whisk in remaining olive oil (this is one time the light-tasting olive oil works OK). Drizzle mixture over warm asparagus and serve.

Rating: Quite nice way to cook asparagus. Tender crisp with a tangy contrasting sauce (which also tasted good tossed with some of the roasted potatoes we served alongside). Very fast, very repeatable. The bundles could be assembled in advance and then popped into the oven at the last minute, and the vinaigrette could be made earlier in the day as well.

Ham with bourbon cream sauce

This is a different kind of ham gravy, so to speak. We were looking for an alternative to the whole ham hoopla, since we'd done the family gathering with grilled chuck eyes at a carpet-ripping-out party on Saturday. So I thawed this impulse purchase from a winter's farmers market from Auntie Annie's Fields in Dundas. This is what ham steak is supposed to be: a thickish slab of actual meat, not something so thin it turns tough when you cook it.

Ham steak with bourbon cream sauce

From Gourmet Oct. 2007

Ingredients

1 fully cooked bone-in ham steak

1 tablespoon butter

¼ cup bourbon

½ cup cream

2 tablespoons grainy mustard

Pinch of instant coffee powder

Method

Pat steak dry. Melt butter in a large skillet and fry over high heat until heated through, about 5 minutes a side. Transfer to a platter.

Add bourbon to pan drippings. Cook to reduce slightly. Add cream, mustard, and coffee powder. Simmer until slightly thickened. Drizzle some of sauce over the top of ham; serve the rest on the side.

Rating: Let's see: ham, butter, bourbon, cream and mustard. Hard to go far wrong, aside from the cardiac arrest issue. Far fewer leftovers to deal with than a regular ham, so that's a big plus in my book. I do kind of ponder whether the sauce is wasted on ham, which didn't need the help. Could be mighty tasty on chicken cutlets. The coffee powder is a nice flavor hint.

Apple pecan stuffing

Apple-pecan stuffing

Adapted from “Fit Food: Eating Well for Life” by Ellen Haas. While purporting to be healthful and all that, mostly it seems to be recipes that are good food for you on the face of it, rather than books that rely on gimmicky substitutes to improve the "goodness" factor.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter

2 medium onions, chopped

4 celery sticks, finely chopped

3 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored  and chopped

4 large sprigs thyme

2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage

5 cups bread, preferably whole wheat and a few days old

2 cup chopped pecans

½ cup chopped fresh parsley

½ cup broth

Method

Melt butter in a large skillet. Add onions and celery and cook over medium heat until soft. Add apples, thyme leaves and sage and cook until apples are softened, but still look like cubes.

Stir apple mixture into a greased baking pan. Mix in bread, pecans and parsley. Add broth to moisten and season with salt and pepper. (Can be refrigerated for up to 2 days at this point.)

Cover pan with foil and bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for 5 minutes or so more, until it starts to brown at the edges.

Rating: This recipe is like a cross between two stuffing recipes I make, one that’s the traditional rosemary, sage, thyme variety and one that’s like apple-pie meets stuffing. I like all three. I might prefer the other apple stuffing variety, but this one is quite nice too, especially with the crunch and flavor of the pecans.  Certainly it was an admirable way to use up some ends of loaves before they went bad, and the make-ahead factor makes it a week-night approved dish that I'd make again.