I Love the Fall: Potato and Leek Soup

It's fall, and I had a hankering last week for soup. I made a ton of stock, froze most of it, and used the rest, thinning it with some water, to make the Leek and Potato Soup from HTCE. This is such a simple soup, but just three ingredients make a hearty and rich broth. It's easily going to become something I make all the time.

Potatoes (preferably a starchy kind, since you want them to thicken the broth), leeks, olive oil go into a large pot and cooked until they soften. In goes stock or water (or a combination) to cover. You bring that to a boil and let it simmer until the potatoes are breaking up and getting really soft. At this point, you're pretty much done. I pureed the soup at this point, but it's not necessary, I just prefer it that way.

Oh, and I added sausage. That move, while perfectly alright, didn't really add much to the soup, and I'd probably leave it out next time.

Served it with some homemade croutons (i.e. a piece of toast I cut up), salad with ricotta salata on the side. Delicious.

Staple: Cooked Beans

Part of the idea of the Ben Cooks Everything project is to see what's worth making from scratch. Some things, I've found, are totally worth it, save you money and store in the freezer for reheating at the perfect time (chicken stock, pesto, tomato sauce). Some of them aren't worth it at all, I've always thought.

Take beans. Canned beans are fine! Bittman himself has said so, and every bean recipe in the book can work either with cooked-from-scratch beans or canned beans.

They're certainly cheaper than canned beans--a pound of uncooked black beans cost me $1.86 and yielded 4 cups of cooked beans. And if you store them with some of the cooking liquid, they freeze and keep just as well as canned, but presumably, they taste better. I don't know, I've never cooked my own.

To cook them, Bittman provides three methods: Quick-Soak (boil, turn off heat, let soak 2 hrs, return to heat, simmer til done), No-Soak (boil then simmer, til done), and Long-Soak (soak in cold water for 6-12 hrs, drain, simmer til done). Regardless of the method you use, the type of bean makes the cooking time vary greatly. I opted for Quick-Soak, Bittman's favorite: place beans in water to cover, bring water to a boil, turn the heat off, let sit covered for 2 hours. This is the soak part of the recipe (I suppose the idea of "quick" is relative). Then you add a bit of salt, pepper, and let the beans simmer, tasting every 15 minutes until they are done. I also added a bit of stock to the cooking liquid as the water evaporated, after one of Bittman's suggestions. It took over 2 hours for the beans to finish cooking, but most of them went into the freezer with cooking liquid to cover so that they'll be ready to go when I need them down the line.

So, what does everyone think I should do with the beans now that they're done?

P.S. Bittman's list of 5 beans to always keep on hand (p. 413): white beans, black beans, pinto/kidney beans, chickpeas and lentils.

Tastes Like Chicken: Arroz con Pollo

No one knows for certain the origin of the term "Arroz con Pollo" or even what language it comes from, but many etymologists believe it means "Hot Ham Water." Today, it is used to refer to a chicken and rice dish which, again, no one knows the true origin of.

We do know this: It's easy, and it tastes great. I'm sick of writing that already, but it seems to happen a lot in How to Cook Everything. Anyway, this one's easy: sautee some onions in olive oil, add rice and coat with the oil, throw in some heated up stock and a pinch of saffron (tastes good; turns it that nice yellow), bring to a boil, turn down the heat, cover, and let cook for something like 30 minutes. It's done when the rice is done, and it takes as little effort as it sounds.

This is a winner right here. You may remember me mentioning my mom's recipe for rice, and that's similar in that you take onions, sautee in some butter, add the rice and sort of toast it a bit like you do here, then add stock and simmer it (covered! no peaking! my mother shouts from inside my head) til it's done. I dare say that this is a better way of doing the same thing, as the chicken gives up even more flavor than just stock. It's certainly more convenient in that way, though there's no accounting for nostalgia, which usually just trumps everything else. So while I'm not throwing away Reva's rice recipe just yet, this is certainly a similar method that yields similar, more chickeny results. Pictures to come.

There's No Shame in Appetizers for Dinner: Smokey Lime Chile Chicken Wings, Quick-Cooked Bok Choy, and Avocado Yogurt Sauce

Chicken wings are the greatest. The meat is usually on the cheap side, you can eat a ton of pieces without getting too full (although I usually end up that way), the spiciness combined with the cooling blue cheese and celery... it all adds up to something that's usually bar food but I think makes a fantastic main course. I decided to do the Smokey Lime variation in the book, which Bittman wisely suggests serving with Avacado Yogurt sauce. For vegetables, I got Bok Choy at the store and made Bittman's Quick Bok Choy.


The chicken wings, you separate into three parts if they didn't come that way (Whole Foods sells them separated in two parts already, but then you don't get the tips and it costs more). Save the tips--little triangular pieces that have pretty much no meat on them--for stock if that's your thing. Toss in some salt, pepper, a little olive oil, and roast them til they're done and a little brown. Then you toss them in the pimenton-chili powder-lime juice mixture, throw them back in the oven for a few minutes, and you're good to go. It took a little time--maybe an hour in total--but was pretty foolproof. How'd they taste? Hot, smoky, little tang from the lime, just perfect. They were a little bit overdone in my opinion, but this is another magical thing about chicken wings: even a little dry, they're still totally delicious.

While the wings were roasting, I whipped up the yogurt sauce in the food processor. So easy: avocado, cup of yogurt, clove of garlic, lemon juice, salt, pepper. You probably don't need the food processor (or blender) for this at all if the avocado is nice and soft. Didn't really taste like much on its own, but combined with the wings it was really rich and gave that soothing sensation you usually get from blue cheese, with a lot less fat and calories. Avocados: is there anything they can't do?


Meanwhile, the bok choy recipe is bomb. You heat some garlic in neutral oil, throw in the bok choy stems, let them cook til they lose their crunch, then throw in half a cup of water or stock and let them cook til most of the liquid's evaporated. At the last minute you can throw in the leaves if you like; these just have to soften, really, not cook like the stems. Using my own stock took it to the next level, and if you like bok choy (you probably do), you should try this method out.


Too easy. Overall, this was the perfect Friday night dinner.

Groundwork: Quickest Chicken Stock

Chicken stock: you're supposed to make your own, but I usually just take it easy and buy the carton or can. Works well enough. Well, if I'm going to make every recipe in How to Cook Everything, I might as well start with chicken stock, the base for so many of the recipes in the book. Michael Ruhlman's Elements of Cooking make it seem like you're not worth shit if you don't make your own stock, but Mark Bittman is the one who makes it seem manageable to make.


Take a whole chicken (sidebar: this may be very recent-college-grad of me, but I never realized how amazingly cheap a whole chicken is. Damn! I felt like I was stealing!), a celery root, some onions, carrots, salt and black pepper, add water (MB says 14 cups; I used a lot more, like 20+), bring to a boil then reduce to low heat for about an hour, or til the chicken is done. This is what MB calls Quickest Chicken Stock, and it really is. Didn't take very long, or even a whole lot of work, and now I have more stock in my freezer than I know what to do with. Luckily, I have the rest of HTCE to fill me in on the many uses for chicken stock.

But the best part of this recipe may be that it doesn't leave you with a dried out bird when you're done straining the stock. Rather, you get a really tender chicken to do whatever you want with. I carved it up (according to illustrations in HTCE, of course) and threw it in the fridge, saving the bones for more stock later on. You can do that, right?

I have to say, something about making your own chicken stock gives you this sense of accomplishment, like you're doing it the good old fashioned way. It feels good. I can't recommend it enough. And it makes your house smell good.