Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

My mom doesn’t like tomato sauce. She likes tomatoes just fine, but she doesn’t put red sauce on her pasta or serve tomato soup with her grilled cheese. So I wasn’t introduced to grilled cheese with tomato soup until high school. I love it. This week, we decided to see if we would make it from scratch, and it was great.

The grilled cheese is really simple. You’ll need some good bread (we used Madison Sourdough’s White) and some good cheese (I’d recommend cheddar. Organic Valley’s Raw Milk Cheddar was a little too sharp—I think I’ll try the mild next time). Slice the cheese. Melt the cheese onto bread using your favorite method. I can’t seem to be able to fry a cheese sandwich without making it overly greasy or burnt, so I decided I would microwave them. (Yes, I realize it makes no sense to go through the trouble of making tomato soup from scratch and then microwave the grilled cheese, but after several failed attempts, I just wanted it to turn out well.) In 20 seconds, I had a couple open-faced cheese sandwiches, the chewy texture of the bread was maintained, and I increased the total soup-dipping surface area. Not bad!

Here’s the recipe for the soup. It’s much more complicated than combining Campbell’s and water, but it’s definitely worth it. Adapted from Cook's Illustrated's Ultimate Cream of Tomato Soup.

Tomato Soup
1. • 2 28-ounce cans of tomatoes, packed in juice (not puree)
   • 1½ tablespoons dark brown sugar
   • 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
   • 4 large shallots
   • 1 tablespoon double-concentrated tomato paste, which usually comes in a tube (you can also just use a tablespoon of canned tomato paste)
   • a pinch of ground allspice
   • 2 tablespoons flour
   • 1¾ cups chicken stock (recommended are boxes by Swanson, Better than Bouillon, and Imagine brands)
   • ½ cup heavy cream (we get ours from a local farm)
2. 1. Heat the oven to 450°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil.
   2. Drain the tomatoes, saving 3 cups of the liquid. Use your finger to remove any clumps of seeds. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer on the foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle with the 1½ tablespoons of dark brown sugar. Bake until all the liquid has evaporated and the tomatoes begin to color, about 30 minutes.
   3. Meanwhile, peel and mince the shallots. Wait until the tomatoes have about 10 minutes of cooking time left before you proceed. Place a nonreactive (that means not aluminum or cast iron) saucepan over medium heat and add the butter. When the butter foams, add the shallots, the tablespoon of tomato paste, and the pinch of allspice. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 7 to 10 minutes, or until the shallots are softened.
   4. Add the flour and stir for about 30 seconds, until thoroughly combined. Whisking constantly, gradually add the 1¾ cups of chicken stock. Stir in the reserved tomato liquid. Peel the roasted tomatoes off the foil and add them. Cover and increase the heat to medium. When boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes.
   5. Strain the mixture and rinse out the saucepan. Add solids to blender and top with a cup of the liquid. Puree until smooth and add to the remaining liquid.
   6. At this point, if you are eating all the soup at once, mix in the cream and serve. For leftovers, keep the soup and cream separate until serving. After reheating the soup, stir in the cream.

What happened to spring?!

May starts in 3 days and this is what it looks like outside.

Pirate laundry day

We have plenty of fun when Rich stays home from work because he's sick.

The Superest

It's hilarious. Two guys (and some guest artists) draw superheroes, where each new hero must defeat the current champ. We spent a good part of an evening clicking through them and laughing. Start here. (Hint: don't forget to read the comments for each superhero - they can be pretty funny, too!)

The Puzzler

Our library has a collection of donated jigsaw puzzles, which you can take home to work on. Last year, we spent an evening at the library working on a difficult puzzle (the pieces were double-sided and the same puzzle image was printed on both sides, with one side rotated 90°). We haven’t seen that puzzle since, but I found this even–more–difficult puzzle on Thursday. It’s called “The Puzzler: The World’s First Circular Jigsaw Puzzle of a Jigsaw Puzzle” by Springbok.

We started Thursday evening, spending four hours to get the border completed. Friday afternoon, we decided to continue, but thought it would be fun to take a time-lapse video (with iStopMotion, which we got in this year's Macheist bundle). So we did. One frame every six seconds, played at 10 frames per second, means that a minute in the video represents an hour in real life. It took almost ten hours to finish the puzzle on Satuday, so the video is pretty long – almost ten minutes. Background music is “Black” by Ambient Teknology.

Hamburger Buns

So, last week we decided, for the first time in a long time, to start working with ground meat. We made a meatloaf which, while not as good as my old standby Lipton soup recipe, was decently tasty. The recipe called for a mix of sirloin and chuck, which proved to be slightly difficult to find in the correct proportions - I had to get 1/3 pound more sirloin than needed. What else is there to do with more sirloin than mix it with some ground bison (which I just happened to pick up) than make burgers, which I had been craving for a couple of days. Well, the problem with burgers is that we rarely have bread on hand, since we don't eat it on a regular basis, and when we have it, it disappears quickly, and what good is a burger without a bun? So, I searched and came up with this great recipe. Thanks to Charlene Kaunert for posting this recipe at AllRecipes

Tasty Buns
1. • 5 c flour
   • 4½ tsp bread machine (instant) yeast
   • 1 c milk
   • ¾ c water
   • ½ c vegetable oil
   • ¼ c sugar
   • 1 tsp salt
2. 1. Stir together 2 cups flour and the yeast. In a separate bowl, heat milk, water, oil, sugar and salt to lukewarm in microwave. Add all at once to the flour mixture, and beat until smooth, about 3 minutes.
   2. Mix in enough flour to make a soft dough, 2 to 3 cups. Mix well. Dust a flat surface with flour, turn dough out onto floured surface, and let rest under bowl for about 10 minutes.
   3. Shape dough into 12 slightly flat balls, and place on greased baking sheet to rise until doubled in size.
   4. Bake in a preheated 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

Apparently the mixer thought the floor made a great surface.

I will say that these turned out extremely well - I didn't grease the pan, but instead used parchment paper. I probably would also try (when making these again) brushing the tops with egg or milk - they just didn't have the color I was looking for. However, they were extremely soft and pretty good as burger buns, though they turned out a little flat for me (maybe I didn't let them rise long enough, or maybe our yeast is starting to get old…).

So, though the burger recipe wasn't that great (sorry Elise, I just don't think rosemary, especially in that quantity, is all that appealing), the buns were fantastic.

One final note - when storing these, let them breathe. I stored in an air tight container on the counter, and apparently when Jess opened it up, the air inside was warm and moist - a great environment for growing moldy. Fortunately for us, Jess opened it the next day and these disappeared completely within a couple days flat.

Cats

A few photos of our cats:

Corned Beef Hash

I had never tried corned beef hash until high school, when Rich’ made corned beef hash and eggs for dinner one night. Having liked corned beef from the moment we first met, I certainly enjoyed that dinner. But we haven’t partaken in canned meat since OneDay ’03, when we spent Memorial Day weekend camping in Texas and the only meat was canned sausages.

In any case, we went camping this past Labor Day weekend and were in charge of cooking breakfast one morning. For some reason, corned beef hash and eggs came to mind, and I decided to make a “fresh” version, using fresh potatoes and onions, as well as corned beef from the deli. The consistency is definitely different – canned corned beef hash is like a thick paste with diced potatoes in it, while I diced my beef and shredded the potatoes. It turned out pretty well.

We bought a cast–iron skillet on Saturday, and decided to initiate it on corned beef hash. Here’s how I did it. (You'll notice that I'm not one to mise en place; I don’t tend to have the patience. I usually cook once I’m already very hungry, and I want to prepare something delicious as quickly as possible.)

Corned Beef Hash
1. • 1 pound corned beef, thick sliced
   • 4 medium Russet potatoes
   • 1 medium onion
   • 4 tablespoons butter
2. 1. Boil water for the potatoes. Make sure you use a large enough pot to fit the potatoes and enough water to cover the potatoes when they're added. When the water reaches a rolling boil, add plenty of salt. I just take the salt container and pour a circle into the pot. Then add the potatoes. They will need to boil for 15–20 minutes, or until a fork pushed into the center of a potato comes out easily.
      
   2. Meanwhile, chop your onions. We didn’t have any medium onions, and we only had a few small red onions, so we used combination of onions and shallots:
      
   3. Dice the corned beef. The easiest way to do this is by cutting thin strips in one direction, then turning the cutting board to cut cubes in the other direction.
      
   4. By now, your potatoes are probably done. Get them out of the hot water and do whatever you can to cool them down. Ideas include running cold water over them or submerging them in an ice bath.
      
   5. While the potatoes cool, set your cast–iron skillet over medium heat and add half of the butter. (I cooked it in two batches, so only half of each ingredient will go in the skillet. The other half went into a container in the fridge for tomorrow.)
      
   6. Add half the onions and let them cook while you shred the potatoes.
      
   7. When the onions are translucent, add half the beef and half the potatoes. Mix together and cook until everything is browned to your liking.
      
   8. Taste it an make sure it’s seasoned enough for your liking – I find the the corned beef is plenty salty (as it should be – the “corns” to which its name refers are coarse pieces of salt used to preserve the beef).
   9. Serve the first batch and either repeat the cooking process, beginning with melting the butter, for the remaining half of the ingredients, or refrigerate your pre-cut ingredients and cook up the second batch later. My only warning is that the flavor of raw onions tends to strengthen after sitting in the fridge. A solution would be to cook the onion ahead of time and add them to the cut beef and potatoes before storing.

Crumb snatcher

Charlie sidled up next to me as I was working at my computer. Then he stretched out and peeked over the top of the desk, as if he were interested in what I was doing. But soon his real motive became clear. I had just finished eating prosciutto-wrapped pear slices and I had left a couple pieces of fat on the plate.

A recipe for Janet

This recipe is dedicated to my just-married sister, because when planning her bridal shower a few weeks ago, I learned that one of her favorite foods was corn chowder. So when I flipped through a cookbook looking for an easy soup I could make for a group, this recipe caught my attention. The added bonus was that we got to use the new blender we got for Christmas.
The now-out-of-print cookbook I was looking at, Cooking Great Meals Everyday, was written by Richard Sax, late chef and older brother of one of my mom's old flames. But my mom hunted down a copy of the book to give to Rich for one of our first Christmases together, and we use it quite often. Here's my take on his awesome corn chowder recipe, which took about an hour to prepare and served six to eight (he says four to six):

Hearty Corn Chowder
1. • ½ pound bacon, thickly sliced, cut into 1-inch squares
   • 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil (he calls for vegetable oil)
   • 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
   • 2 ribs celery, coarsely chopped
   • 2 carrots, trimmed and thickly sliced
   • ¾ pound boiling potatoes, cut into ½-inch dice
   • 2 cups cold water, or more as needed
   • ¾ teaspoon salt
   • 1 sprig fresh thyme, or 1 large pinch dried
   • 1⅔ cups whole milk (he calls for 1 cup milk and ⅔ cups heavy or light cream)
   • three cans (15 ounces each) corn kernels, drained (he calls for 5½ cups fresh corn kernels (8 to 9 ears) and advises that "[t]his is one of the times when canned seems to provide more flavor than frozen")
2. 1. Place bacon and oil in large pot. Slowly bring up to heat; cook bacon over medium heat, tossing often, until light golden but not crisp, and fat is rendered, about 10 minutes. Remove bacon with slotted spoon to paper towels to drain. Reserve.
   2. Sauté onion in bacon fat over medium heat, tossing often, until light golden, about 8 minutes. Add celery and carrot; toss for another 2 or 3 minutes.
   3. Add potato, enough cold water to cover ingredients, salt, and thyme. Bring to boil; lower heat and gently boil, uncovered, until potatoes are just tender but not mushy, 20 to 25 minutes.
   4. Heat milk and cream together in saucepan until almost boiling. Stir into soup along with corn kernels. Simmer gently, partially covered, for 5 minutes.
   5. Remove 2 cups of solids with slotted spoon. Purée coarsely in blender or food processor. Stir back into soup. Add reserved bacon. Correct seasonings. Simmer, uncovered, 5 to 7 minutes.
   6. Serve hot with buttered bread and oyster crackers, with a green salad on the side. (He recommends, "Serve hot with a pat of butter, if you wish, a sprinkling of paprika and pilot crackers or biscuits," and I accomplished the first by accidentally dropping butter into my soup while trying to butter my bread.)