Chickpea and pasta soup with rosemary

A fast pantry-friendly soup must be tried. There's a rule or something. Plus, it's still unseasonably, unreasonably cold here.

The original recipe takes a tad longer to prepare, since it has you make a tasty-looking broth of leeks, carrots, rosemary and thyme. Since I had already made such a broth the previous day, I skipped ahead and was able to make this over the lunch hour along with cheese scones on the side.

Chickpea and pasta soup with rosemary

Adapted from “Sunday Soup” by Betty Rosbottom, which is organized seasonally with more than enough recipes to get you through a year of Sundays.

Ingredients

15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained, divided

¼ cup water

1 14½-ounce can diced tomatoes

2 teaspoons fresh rosemary

1 teaspoon salt

4 cups wicked good broth

1 cup small pasta like ditalini

3 cups fresh spinach leaves

Shaved  Parmesan cheese

Method

Combine ½ cup drained chickpeas with ¼ cup water in food processor. Puree well. Add pureed chickpeas, remaining chickpeas, tomatoes, rosemary, salt, broth and pasta in a large Dutch oven. Bring to a simmer and cook 8 minutes, stirring often, until pasta is cooked through. Stir in spinach just until wilted. Serve with shaved Parmesan for garnish.

Rating: Hearty and tasty. Super fast to fix if you've got good broth on hand. It's a versatile formula, too. Sub in cooked cannellini beans if that's what you've got, and swap in arugula or baby kale leaves for the spinach.

Vegetarian chowder

Happy May Day. Soup might seem an incongruous choice, but it's Minnesota and the middle of a pandemic where we need something I can make ahead for lunch while working from home. Preferably something that uses ingredients on hand or easy to come by.

It's also a Bandcamp Friday, where you can boost the impact of your music purchase to help artists who currently aren't able to get revenue from performances. On the first Friday of May, June and July, Bandcamp is waiving its portion of the revenue share so artists get a bigger cut. It's a great way to show your support for your favorite artists, learn about some new ones and get some new tunes in your house to boost your spirit. You can check out local musicians performing in the Star Tribune's weekly listing of virtual events.

Vegetarian Chowder

Adapted from "Autumn Harvest Chowder," by Mary Carroll as published in the Star Tribune in 2001. Serves 6 reasonably well.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ cup chopped onions

2 cups cubed red potatoes (I like to peel ¾ of them but leave skins on the rest for color and texture contrast)

½ cup chopped celery

4 cups broth

Dash dried thyme

1 (28-oz.) can stewed tomatoes

1 cup cooked corn kernels

1 teaspoon

1 cup milk

½ cup cream

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

Method

In large heavy pot, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onions and cook5 minutes or until softened but not browned.

Add potatoes and celery and cook 3 minutes. Add broth and thyme and bring to boil. Simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Add tomatoes (including juice) and corn and simmer about 20 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in milk and cream. Sprinkle with parsley and heat through.

Rating: Fine enough interpretation of a chowder minus the usual protein component. Adaptable to whatever you have on hand. I've made this a few times now, usually when that's what the pantry offers.If you want to make it vegan, oat milk is a logical substitute, although I haven't tried that variation yet.

Pasta with sun-dried tomato paste sauce

 

This recipe is so 2001. It's from a compendium of Food & Wine recipes for that year, but you don't necessarily need to have that date reference to pin down the food era. It dates from before carbs' fall from grace (well before pasta's recent resurgence), and capers and sun-dried tomato paste in a cream sauce are definitely of that time palate. But I haven't made this particular recipe before, so it's technically newish to me.

Pasta with sun-dried tomatoes

Adapted from Food & Wine magazine's 2001 Cookbook  At $4.70 in hardcover, it's now cheaper than the subscription was.

Ingredients

1 pound short pasta (fusilli or penne would be good candidates)

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 garlic cloves, minced

⅓ cup sun-dried tomato paste

1 tablespoon capers

¼ cup white wine

½ cup heavy cream

½ cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese

6 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

Method

Cook pasta to al dente. Drain, reserving cooking liquid.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large deep skillet. Add garlic, cooking just until fragrant. Add tomato paste, capers and wine. Stir and cook 1 minute. Stir in cream and Gorgonzola. Cook for a few minutes until cheese melts.

Stir in cooked pasta into sauce and toss to coat. Add pasta cooking liquid as needed to make desired sauce consistency. Stir in 6 tablespoons Parmesan and the parsley. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as needed. Serve garnished with more Parmesan.

Rating: There's nothing wrong with a creamy tomato sauce, and the capers and Gorgonzola give it some extra tang. I'd make it again if that's what was in my pantry and refrigerator, which is what led me down this road. 

Beer garden food: Pickle dip and horseradish deviled eggs

Last year I ran across a book about German beer gardens, which sounded like a truly wonderful institution to me: You get to bring your own picnic and then you buy the local beer to go with it. Perfect for someone like me.


I thought, if only we could have those here. And then I realized, we actually sort of do. Those super small taproom operations that don't offer food but let you bring your own are really the same concept. Which is funny, because when I first encountered taprooms without food I was somehow not in favor, not realizing the possibilities, and also not knowing if people actually really did bring their own food or just go to the food truck du jour.   

Then we realized that we could actually walk to Venn Brewing. It's a bit of a trek, but then you can just walk it off on the way home. And yes, people did indeed bring their food and there were picnic tables. Eureka: a beer garden.

That discovery had me scouting out recipes that would make good beer garden fodder, and these two made the cut. Sadly, now Venn is closed at the moment, but someday we can hope all our beer brewing establishments can safely reopen.

In the meantime, many local breweries are delivering or offering curbside pickup. You can find a list here. Prost.


Janet’s Mom’s Dill Pickle Dip

From "Season: A Year of Wine CountryFood" by Justin Wangler. You might expect something fancier-pants from a cookbook about wine country, but this plays well in beer land, too.

Ingredients

1½ cups firmly packed, finely grated and well-drained dill pickles

1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon

1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

¾ cup mayonnaise

½ cup sour cream

2 teaspoons powdered ranch seasoning mix

Potato chips for dipping

Method

Use a box grater to grate pickles. Drain on paper towels.

Mix all ingredients (except chips). Chill. Tastes best if made a day ahead, and it keeps well.

Rating: Like most non-high-brow bar food, really, really tasty and fairly addictive. We used a really tasty pickle from Hazelwood Creek via the Midtown Farmers Market, and I suspect the quality of the pickle really makes a difference here.  Good with chips, but also made a killer bread spread for BLT sandwiches. Definitely a recipe to pull out for those of us who might over-supply ourselves with refrigerator pickles in the summer and need to use them up before putting up the next year's crop.




This next recipe started life as deconstructed deviled eggs, or “undeviled.” The horseradish mixture just got drizzled over the top as a dressing and then the whole mess was anointed with herbs. It was fine, and certainly less fussy then actually mixing the yoke with the dressing. But I found myself thinking that it would actually be much tastier with the dressing incorporated with the cooked yokes. So I tried it again, deviling the eggs

 Undeviled eggs with herbs and horseradish

Adapted from "Season: A Year of Wine CountryFood" by Justin Wangler

Ingredients
8 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and sliced in half

¼ cup neutral flavored oil

1 tablespoon prepared horseradish

1 ½ tablespoons Champagne vinegar

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Zest of 1 lemon

3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

2 green onions, thinly sliced

½ cup assorted herb leaves

Method 1
Mix oil, horseradish, vinegar and mustard together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Drizzle over eggs. Sprinkle with lemon zest and fresh herbs.

Method 2
Mix  oil, horseradish, vinegar, mustard and lemon zest together. Season with salt and pepper. Remove egg yokes from eggs and place in a bowl. Mix in dressing until you achieve desired consistency (I ended up with a bit leftover). Fill egg whites with egg yolk mixture. Garnish with chives (I skipped the abundance of herbs).

Rating: Fine enough undeviled, but it's not particularly looky. Inhalable as filled deviled eggs.

Spinach feta dip with dill

 

Super fast, tasty, versatile and made with ingredients I'm likely to have on hand. What's not to like?

Spinach feta dip with dill

From EatingWell. They specified reduced-fat versions of the dairy products, naturally.

Ingredients

2 cups chopped fresh spinach

¾ cup crumbled feta

½ cup sour cream

½ cup fresh dill sprigs

2 ounces cream cheese

1 garlic clove, grated

½ teaspoon ground pepper

Method

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.

Rating: This worked fine as a dip for veggies and later as a sandwich spread. The feta and dill combo gives it a nice tang. It helps fill that "green" quotient in any array of dips without having shreds of spinach to get stuck in teeth. I'd definitely consider making it again, particularly when there's an impromptu gathering.