Italian Minestrone Soup

This is by far the best and most filling soup I've had in a long time, and I'm a soup fan. We almost always have a pot of homemade soup in the fridge and I'm thinking this one will quickly become the favorite. It's a very thick soup - we added a can of tomato soup - and we also (of course!) used vegetable broth instead of beef broth. It's absolutely perfect with homemade bread...and that's a filling dinner. It's also four points per serving, so it's also points friendly. Yay.

Ingredients:
1 med. onion, chopped
1/4 c. celery leaves, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
Olive oil
1 c. chopped carrot
1 c. chopped celery
1 (28 oz.) can tomatoes with liquid
1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce
2 c. beef stock or broth
1 c. red wine
1 zucchini, sliced
1 1/2 c. chopped cabbage
1 (14-16 oz.) can white beans or pinto or kidney beans
1 c. elbow macaroni
Water or V-8 juice
Pepper
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. oregano

Instructions:
Saute onion, garlic and celery leaves in olive oil until
onions are clear, 5 to 10 minutes. Add chopped carrots,
celery, tomatoes, tomato sauce, beef stock, wine, bay
leaves, oregano and pepper. Simmer until carrots are
tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Add zucchini and cabbage and
simmer until they are tender. You may need to add 1 to 2
cups more water or V-8 juice to get desired consistency.
Add beans and macaroni and cook until tender. Serve with
Parmesan cheese. You can vary this recipe with other beans,
vegetables or rice.

We didn't use Parmesan cheese.

Crêpes

I learned to make those when I was about 10, and I have two left hands, so they are not as complicated as they look and sound.

Makes ~ 30 crêpes that are ~ 7 inches (15 cm) in diameter. You may get more or less depending on the size of your skillet. Once the skillet is heated, plan on a minute and a half to two minutes per crêpe.

Ingredients:

1 cup (130 g) all-purpose (plain) flour
2 cups (480 ml) milk*
3 eggs
A drop of vanilla extract, optional

* I know that a few people here avoid milk for a variety of reasons. You can substitute water, but whole milk crepes taste a lot better than low-fat, no-fat or water crêpes. I assume soy milk would work too, but I honestly haven't tried.

Directions:

Beat all ingredients with a mixer. The resulting batter is slightly thicker than buttermilk.
Heat a skillet.
Put a few drops of oil, so the crepe doesn't stick. My friend soaks a cotton ball with oil and runs it across the bottom of the skillet but that's a bit too demanding for me.



Pour a bit of the batter in the middle:



*Quickly* hold the skillet and wiggle it with a circular motion, so that the batter spreads evenly in a thin layer.
It takes a bit of practice to figure out the exact amount of batter you need. My advice is to go easy. If you underestimate the amount of batter, that happens:

But it can be fixed by spooning batter into the holes. The other way around, you get a thick crêpe, and that is not fixable.

When the top layer dries up (happens fast, so stay by the stove), the crêpe is ready to be flipped.


Run a spatula around the edges - that's where it is most likely to stick to the skillet.
Gently slide the spatula under the crêpe:


... and flip:


Cook for about a minute more, or according to taste - we like ours medium baked.
Transfer to a plate.
Repeat the whole thing until you run out of batter.

I cover mine with another plate while they are warm so they soften up.

They go well with sweet or savory filling.

Sarma

Aka dolma. I realize that most people won't ever make them by hand but I had leftover vine leaves and I figured that as long as I am making them, I am going to make pictures.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup rice
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 pound (500 g) ground (minced) meat
diced raisins, optional
diced mushrooms, optional
salt, pepper, thyme to taste
~ 50 pickled vine/grape leaves

You may skip the meat and make them vegetarian.
You can also substitute pickled cabbage leaves for the vine leaves, but the taste will be different.

Edited to add: in the US you can find cabbage or vine leaves in most Eastern European or Middle Eastern grocery stores, or in the ethnic food section of big chain grocery stores like Safeway. They come in a glass jar and are usually in the pickles section.

Directions:

In a skillet heat olive oil.
Saute onion, raisins and mushrooms.
Add ground meat and cook until it divides into crumbs and is no longer pink.
Add rice.
Cook for 5 more min until rice gets translucent.
Remove from heat, add spices.

Apologies for the poor quality pictures that follow - my kitchen is dark and I was trying not to smear any oil, rice or pickle juice on my camera.

Assembly:

Drain vine leaves.
Put leaf with the stem facing toward you. Cut stem if it's still there.
Put a teaspoon of rice and meat mix in the middle of the lower part of the leaf right above the stem.





Wrap it like a burrito:
1. Take the side of the leaf that's toward you and roll it forward once, so it flips over the filling.
2. Tug in the left and right sides of the leaf towards the middle.
3. Roll forward.







Here is the major caveat: you want the sarma to to be tightly rolled, so it doesn't unwrap when rice cooks and expands *but* you also want the rice to have the space to expand, so it shouldn't be too tight.

Sarma rolling is an art, which I don't claim to have mastered. I am happy when the majority of my leaves are not torn by the expanding rice :).

Repeat the whole rolling procedure about 50 more times :) until you run out of either filling or leaves.

Arrange sarmas, loose end down, in a slow-cooker pot.
Cover with a plate or prop them with something else that is moderately heavy and won't allow them to float and unwrap.



Pour enough water to cover them.
Drop half a teaspoon of filling in water.
Cover and cook on low until the filling you dropped in the water is cooked.

You may put them in a regular pot and simmer for about 2 hours but you run the risk of either the top layer being undercooked or the bottom layer being overcooked. The crockpot provides a more even temperature.


You can serve them warm or cold. They go well with yogurt and they freeze well.

Jelenka's Crocodile

I am not talking about crocodile meat, but about this crocodile:


This is an interesting looking stuffed bread that is perfect for entertaining. Taste-wise it's nothing spectacular, but it makes a good presentation. Especially if yours is not as cross-eyed :o) as mine and its mug is less pig like.

For the crocodile body:

3 1/4 cups (500 g) flour
1 cup (250 ml) milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
A pinch of sugar
A pinch of salt
40 g fresh (compressed) yeast or 4 teaspoons dry yeast (that is four times the yeast normally needed for this amount of flour, but it works)

For the filling:

1 hard boiled egg, sliced
1 roasted pepper, cut into strips
200 g ham, chopped
100 g cheese, shredded/grated

* Or, put in whatever you have in the fridge - the filling is up for interpretation. Just make sure that the filling is cooked beforehand if needed.

Directions:

Knead dough using the pizza setting of the bread machine.

The pizza setting has much shorter time for rising than the regular dough setting. With this amount of yeast, the dough rises quickly!

It's important to have all of the filling prepared before the dough is done. Again, it rises quickly even at room temperature, so you need to work fast.

On a piece of aluminum foil and with the help of a rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangle about 1.5 cm/ 1/2 inch thick

Arrange the filling in the middle along the long side of the rectangle.

To give credit where credit is due :), and because her pics are better than mine, here are the step-by-step instructions on how to make the croc, courtesy of Jelenka at http://www.eva.ru/

The pictures are pretty much self-explanatory, but ask me for translation if there is anything you don't understand. It looks way more complicated than it actually is.

Bake for 15 min at 325 F/162 C or until a toothpick inserted in the bread part comes out clean.



Edited to add: you cut it in slices across the shorter side and eat it like a regular stuffed bread.

Hot Pot

This scrumptious winter dish is one of my mother’s specialties, and I only hope that someday I can make it as well as she does! It’s a rich meaty casserole topped with lightly crisped potato slices. Perfect for the end of a cold day, and much healthier than its rich taste would suggest.

Serves 6 people

Prep time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 2h 55 mins

Ingredients:

400g shin beef (gravy beef)
400g lamb cutlets
4-6 tomatoes, sliced thickly
2 onions cut into rings (we use brown onions)
4 carrots, sliced into rounds
6 potatoes
1 teaspoon (5 mL) each of oregano, thyme and sweet basil
A few tablespoons of plain flour for browning
A little oil or margarine for browning
1 tablespoon cornflour (US: cornstarch)
Good stock (broth), enough to cover all ingredients in the pot. A good low-salt liquid stock from the supermarket is fine, but we usually use stock or gravy left over from a previous meal and frozen for future use, which makes for a much more flavoursome meal. If you’re using store-bought, I suggest a mixture of varieties – beef, vegetable and chicken stock together. You can also throw in other liquids such as left over drinking juice, juice from tinned fruits, and red wine, to add to the flavour.

Method:

1. Cut beef into 2-3cm (1 inch) cubes, and coat in plain flour.

2. Heat margarine or oil in the base of a large saucepan, add beef and stir quickly until browned.

3. Add lamb, tomatoes, onions, carrots and herbs to the beef in the saucepan, add just enough stock to cover, and simmer on the hotplate for 2 hours.

4. Preheat oven to 100 C / 210 F.

5. Remove the meat and vegetables from the stock with a slotted spoon, retaining the stock in the saucepan. Place meat and vegetables in an open-topped oven-proof dish (such as a pie dish). Place in oven and proceed immediately to next step.

6. Peel potatoes and cut into thick, round slices. Place potatoes in the stock in the saucepan, and boil for 15 mins. Remove potatoes from stock and reserve stock in saucepan.

7. Remove dish from oven and pile or layer the boiled potatoes on top of meat and vegetables. Pour in as much of the stock as will fit without overflowing the dish. Reserve remaining stock.

8. Place dish back in the oven, increase heat to 180 C / 350 F and cook for 40 minutes. Watch potatoes carefully in last 10 minutes to prevent burning.

9. Just before the dish is ready, reheat the stock remaining in the saucepan to use as gravy. You can thicken the gravy by using a tablespoon of cornstarch dissolved in half a cup of water, and poured into the boiling stock while stirring briskly.

10. Serve immediately. We usually have this with some boiled or steamed vegetables such as peas, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, silverbeet etc.