TheKitchenSinkRecipes.com

Friends, we’re taking this show on the road. Or, more accurately, I already took it on the road. To work, to be exact, on Monday. I took the photo up there just before I slurped down that cup of soup—a chipotle chicken chowder—for lunch yesterday. And all I can say is that it’s a good thing my office has a door, or I suspect I would have gotten some strange looks from passersby for photographing the lunch I’d just microwaved. Oh, and also that I’m glad I just bought a ridiculously large gym bag that has more than enough room for my rather bulky camera (not to mention an unwieldy tupperware of chowder).

Somewhere between tucking my camera back in my bag and unsheathing my plastic spoon, my phone rang, so by the time I got around to my first bite of this chowder, it had cooled a bit. But it was still delicious. I knew it would be, because this was the third batch I’ve made. In less than a month. It’s that good. But because, these days, the sun starts to set at 4 PM (I really, really wish I were kidding), I made the first two batches in the dark of night. And since I try not to take photos after dark, we spooned up the first two big pots of this chowder with not even one photo to prove it.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipe.)

(more…)

Celeriac (or celery root, if that name is more to your liking) has been courting me for some time. At first, it threw come-hither looks my way from its perch in the produce section at Whole Foods, tucked among the rough-and-tumble root vegetables, many of which sport long, floppy, leafy mohawks and all of which are spotted with clumps of earth. It was round, but not perfectly so, with a mottled pale flesh brushed with light strokes of lime green. It was an unlikely suitor, but, still, I was intrigued.

Next, it caught my eye at the farmers’ market, where it sat in a heap next to bundles of the tiniest celery I’d ever seen. There were even a couple bulbous rounds of celeriac with the celery still attached, which led to quite an aha! moment (sort of like studying one of those illustrated diagrams of a cow, showing where each cut of meat comes from). You could say we made eyes at each other, that celeriac and me. But, something about it made me shy (how does one prepare it? what would it taste like?) and I ended up going home alone.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipe.)

(more…)

I’ve told you about my food magazine addiction before and I think I even mentioned the cause of it: it’s a trait I inherited from my parents. This feature of the gene pool was on vivid display during my parents’ visit last weekend, while we sat around the living room lazily sipping coffee and each flipping through the magazines that normally litter my coffee table. My mom had somehow missed the January 2008 issue of Gourmet and I was delighted to call her attention to must-read essays and must-make recipes.

We do the same thing back at their house in Minnesota, only the back issues there hark back to the mid-90s. And the stacks of old magazines are supplemented by shelves full of cookbooks, ranging from spiral-bound recipe booklets published by Lutheran churches to slip-covered, glossy-photoed tomes from the world’s hottest chefs.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipe.)

(more…)

Midway through making this soup, I thought about giving up: throwing in the towel and tipping the entire pot into the trash.  Let me explain.  First, I’m not crazy about black bean soup to begin with.  I always get the feeling I’m spooning something that is meant to be scooped up with a salty tortilla chip.  Something made for dunking, not slurping.  But I found a recipe that looked hopeful (because (a) it included chipotle chili powder, which I happen to adore, and (b) it included canned tomatoes, which promised to remove the soup from the chips-n-dip category, and (c) called for bacon, which is all I will say about that) and took a chance.

And, then, halfway through, the pot looked like chili.  Identical, in fact, to the chili I made while we were in Canada.  And while that chili was very good, if I’d wanted chili, I would’ve made chili.  And I got to thinking that a ruined dinner, or even just a so-so dinner, was no way to start a week—which is always how I feel about Sunday night: on the verge of a brand new week, with no idea how exactly it will unfold.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipe.)

(more…)

It’s not unusual to arrive at my parents’ house in Minnesota for a visit and find the kitchen a buzzing hub of activity and people. In fact, the first time Kevin came to Minnesota with me, the first time he’d ever met my family, mere weeks after we’d started dating, we walked in the front door only to find a party in full swing. Apparently, my parents’ friends had wanted to meet my new boyfriend. This situation can be a little overwhelming (just ask Kevin), but it works out pretty well if, during your travels, you’ve worked up an appetite. There is always something delicious to eat.

Last Thursday, when Kevin and I got to Minnesota, we weren’t there five minutes before my mom was rummaging through the refrigerator and ladling something into a bowl. She’d made corn chowder the night before and wanted us to have a taste. I dutifully took the spoonful she passed to me, still gathering my bearings after a long trip in the car. But with one bite, I knew I was home and that I was in for a delicious weekend. And that I would have to make the soup as soon as we got back to Chicago.

Now, I’m aware that soup—a chowder, no less—might seem like an odd choice for August. But, since I am not a fan of cold soups (not for lack of trying; I’ve hopefully made one batch of gazpacho after another, only to be disappointed time and time again), the only exception I make to summer’s moratorium on soups is for a broth studded with sweet corn. To me, it is August’s only acceptable soup.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipe.)

(more…)

Sometimes it works out that the a recipe that turns out to be delicious just doesn’t photograph all that well. And, then, of course, there are the finished products that are plenty photogenic, yet lackluster when it comes to taste (yesterday’s focaccia ringing any bells?). Today, I’m sharing two recipes, one in each of these two categories.

Let’s start with the ugly. Well, actually, “ugly” only in the sense that I have thrown out the recipe (and the leftovers) and deleted the link from my semi-out-of-control recipe spreadsheet. This deeply, brilliantly green soup you see here here jumped out at me from the pages of last month’s Eating Well, magazine. The hue and the flavors just seemed too springy to resist. So I whipped up a pot, delighting in the smell of the rosemary, the healthy promise of the spinach and, of course, the color. But it just fell flat. The flavors were muted and kind of muddy tasting. I managed to spruce it up by adding tiny diced (really tiny: 1/8 inch) sauteed potatoes, shreds of smoked turkey that I warmed quickly in a dry pan and a hefty dallop of Fage yogurt. That all detracted from the pristine puree that had allured me in the first place, but—hey—at least it was edible.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipes.)

(more…)

There are times when I look forward to having dinner guests because it’s an excuse to craft intricate menus and take on wow-factor recipes. But there are also times when I feel lucky to have the kind of friends coming for dinner who won’t mind when you announce that you’re making tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Not only that, but they assure you they have been craving just that very menu. Even if they’re lying, these are my kind of dinner guests.

Of course, I wasn’t planning to pop open a can of Campbell’s or unsheath a stack of Kraft singles for the occasion. In fact, I’ve been on the prowl for a new tomato soup recipe because, while the one I’ve been relying on for a few winters now is quite lovely, eating it always feels a little bit like slurping down a bowl of marinara. Um, yeah, time for a new recipe.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipe.)

(more…)

The recipes that have been populating this blog lately are definitely in our “weekend” category. Truth be told, we do not eat ribs, cheesecake and cookies on the average Monday through Thursday. For the most part, our everyday meals are things I’ve already told you about (like this, which I baked on Sunday morning; this, our weekly installment of Salad Monday; this, which went straight into tupperware, brown bag lunches and our bellies; and this, which was just the re-fuel I needed after I nearly died during my first Bikram yoga class on Tuesday).

Sundays, though, exist in a kind of purgatory between week and weekend. If you ask Kevin, who has a chronic case of Sunday Blues, it’s depressingly closer to week than weekend. But, cooking-wise, I never feel quite right making a plain ol’ weeknight meal on a Sunday night. I’m not about to undertake homemade pasta, mind you. But I still like to end the weekend with something at least a little special.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipe.)

(more…)

I feel an teensy bit guilty posting about French Onion Soup on this very American Super Tuesday. I thought about baking an apple pie (as American as it gets, sure, but also a little late summer/early fall) or something red, white and blue (but, really, shouldn’t such tri-colored treats be limited to the 4th of July or banished for good?) or, more aptly, something just blue (wink, wink). But since I’ve been too glued to CNN’s Ballot Bowl to have time to make anything new, I’ll have to share the French Onion Soup we made last weekend instead. Call it Freedom Onion Soup, if you must.

My favorite part about making French Onion Soup is watching the onions transform from a pile of crisp half moons to a limp mass of soft caramelized curls. Take a peek at the transformation, which takes about 45 minutes:

And once you get yourself a pot lined with caramelized onions, you stream in even more delicious richness (red wine and beef stock, in my recipe), which will lift up the caramelization the onions imparted on the surface of the pot. Wouldn’t want to let that go to waste, now would we?

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos and the recipe.)

(more…)

I accidentally fell in love with split pea soup recently. Let me explain. One of my favorite pastimes is wandering around the little market a couple blocks from our house. Every time I’m there, I discover something else that I’d never noticed before. For instance, yesterday I found an extremely impressive array of pickles (not just cucumbers, but all manner of pickles) tucked away in a small corner. I’ve been to that nook of the store dozens of times, but there is so much to look at it, the pickles somehow alluded me.

While I could go on and on about my love for this little market, I’ll get back to the split pea soup now. Like the pickles, I somehow failed to notice that the market offered up several homemade soups every day. Perhaps it’s the weather that’s called such a thing to my attention. But the other day, the handwritten sign listing the soups of the day suddenly called out to me. And among the offerings, split pea soup inexplicably beckoned.

(Click “more” for the rest of the story, more photos & the recipe.)

(more…)