Sicilian Chick Pea Soup

The soup itself is Sicilian, not the chick peas. Most Italian soups feature cannellini beans but in Sicily, chick peas are the favored legume. The recipe comes from the Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook, Volume 2. You can make it in 7 hours in the slow cooker, or in 45 minutes on the stove top. It's not very attractive, but it's yum. It features fennel, garlic, oregano and red pepper. It also calls for anchovies, which I did not use, and escarole, which I did not have.

Stove Top Version

• 2 fennel bulbs, cored and chopped
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp dried red pepper flakes
• 2 8-oz cans chick peas, dried and rinsed
• 7 cups chicken broth
• 1/2 head escarole, chopped coarse, or 1/2 bag of frozen spinach

Heat olive oil in soup pot or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add fennel and saute 7-8 minutes. I found the soup very savory and kept looking for a sweet note.   think if you really get the fennel caramelized it will bring that sweetness.

Add garlic, oregano and red pepper flakes, saute another 2-3 minutes.

Add chick peas and chicken broth. Cover and simmer 20-30 minutes. Add spinach or escarole and cook until wilted, another 15 minutes.

Serve with a glug of olive oil and a big dollop of parmesan cheese

Slow Cooker Version

• 2 fennel bulbs, cored and chopped
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp dried red pepper flakes
• 2 anchovy fillets, rinsed and minced
• 8 oz dried chick peas
• 7 cups chicken broth
• 1/2 head escarole, chopped coarse, or 1/2 bag of frozen spinach

Microwave fennel, oil, garlic, oregano, anchovies and papper flakes in bowl, stirring occasionally, until fennel is softened, about 5 minutes. Transfer to slow cooker. Stir in chick peas and broth. Cover and cook until chick peas are tender—10 to 11 hours on low or 7 to 8 hours on high.

Stir in escarole or spinach, cover and cook another 15 minutes.

Serve with olive oil and parmesan.

Smoky Carrots & Fennel

My friend Potter got married a couple weeks ago on Governor's Island. It was an exceptionally lovely wedding withe three (3) kinds of cake: red velvet, carrot and key lime. One of them had bride-and-groom rubber duckies on top.

On the way home, we had time to kill in Grand Central before catching our train. The boys went into the MTA museum while Panda and I wandered through Pylones, which is a funky little store with no end of cool things. Often they have great little books. And sometimes great great books. I got a present:

I read it the whole way home, with visions of vegetables dancing in my head. This is a great book—awesome recipes and mouth-watering photos. Vegetable porn. It's too great, actually, because I end up dog-earing every page and then when it comes time to actually cook, I can't make up my mind. I want to make everything. Or I lack some essential ingredient to make the one thing I've been dying to try.

Finally tonight I told myself to be sensible and use up the oldest vegetables in the fridge, which in this case was a head of fennel. I thumbed the pages and decided upon...(drum roll):

Smoky Spanish Carrots and Fennel with Toasted Hazelnuts

Minus the hazelnuts because I did have them, but not toasted. Toasting hazelnuts is a thankless, high-maintenance job which involves babysitting the nuts in the oven, and then giving them a brisk rubdown with a dish towel to remove all the skins. My cleaning lady came today and the last thing I wanted was bits of hazelnut skin all over my pristine kitchen, it was bad enough I was making breaded chicken. Always, always the day Celia comes to clean, I end up making breaded chicken on my immaculate stovetop.

So this dish, sans hazelnuts, uses the "Walk-Away Sauté" method.  As Susie Middleton says:

“It does take time—about 30 minutes—to get the carrots and fennel to the perfect texture. But like most of the walk-away sautés, there’s not a heck of a lot you have to do during that time. Stir. Sip wine. Stir. Sip wine. That’s all. Oh, and you can fret a little when you think the pan is getting too brown. But it isn’t really a problem, I promise.”

I'm in love.

Susie Middleton's Smoky Spanish Carrots and Fennel

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 lb (455 grams, and bless her heart, she gives measurements in standard AND metric) carrots, peeled, trimmed, and sliced.
• 1 small fennel bulb, trimmed, cored, and cut into 3/4" slices
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tbsp sherry or rice wine (I used sherry)
• 1/2 tsp Spanish smoked paprika (I don't know if mine is smoked paprika or sweet or what, I just used what I had)
• 3 tbsp coarsely chopped toasted hazelnuts (blah blah blah)

In a straight-sided sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the carrots and fennel and season with the salt. Stir well with a silicone spatula to combine. 

Continue to cook, stirring occasionally at first, and more frequently as the pan begins to brown. Be patient, as it will not look like much is happening in the beginning. Keep stirring and cooking (and don't worry about the pan browning), until the carrots have shrunken quite a bit, are tender (test with a paring knife) and somewhat browned, and the fennel is tender—28 to 30 minutes.

Add the sherry to the pan and stir until it has almost evaporated. Sprinkle the paprika over the vegetables and stir for just a few seconds to incorporate the spice and release its flavor. Remove the pan from the heat and let cool a minute. Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with the toasted hazelnuts.

This was a perfect dish, Jeeps and I ate every bit. The fennel was smooth as silk and it and the carrots had great, smoky autumn flavor. This would be amazing over polenta. I can see where the hazelnuts would have added that extra something special so I will make a point of having them, pre-toasted, on hand, to make this again. Oh yeah, I'll make it again.

Springing Forward

Always fun to put the clocks ahead on a night when you're partying hard. Makes for an exhausting Sunday but I do love the extra hour of daylight.Between hangovers and lost time, we were all hitting the wall around 5:00 tonight. I knew it wasn't going to be anything more strenuous than toasted cheese and tomato soup.

Now, that gap that the spoon is lying across was supposed to be filled with something. See, I was jonesing for something toothsome like a slaw, and DeCicco's had these really cute bunches of easter egg radishes—white, pink, red, purple. I remembered seeing somewhere a recipe for radish-celery slaw. I had celery. I also had a bulb of fennel.

In the spirit of "don't make a lot of what you haven't made before," I sliced thin 4 radishes, and the very interior heart of two bunches of celery, leaves and all. Then half a bulb of fennel, core removed and sliced thin thin thin, then I chopped up some of the fronds as well for flavor. I tossed it all with the 1/2" of vinaigrette that was left in the bottle. It tasted awesome, and I took a small forkful over to Panda.

"Celery-fennel-radish slaw," I said. "What do you think?"

She wrinkled her eyebrows. "Should be creamier, like cole slaw. Can you put some mayo in it?"

Dammit, she was right. I put in a squeeze of mayo and it was totally, completely perfect.

Now, I set the bowl aside on the kitchen counter and went in search of my camera so I could capture this for the blog. When I got back, here's what I found:

Between the two of them, Lovely and Dovely here polished off THE ENTIRE BOWL!! ON CHIPS!! I could barely get in over their shoulders to take a picture of it, and the one I got is very washed out so you can't see the pretty red, pink and purple edges of the radishes.

I was going to file this under "salads" but I guess I'll file it under "appetizers" instead?