Cooking Project, Day One
Posted by Moose on March 26th, 2006. Filed under: I Live to Eat.Outcome: Not Encouraging
My meal was thwarted. Even my blog post about my thwarted meal is thwarted. Cooking With Just Four Ingredients, a gift cookbook by Joanna Farrow, is impossible to locate on the internet. Today’s cookbook will not be linked. We all must march grimly on. While thwarted.
Four Ingredients is as easy as it sounds. It tends to cheat by listing “pesto” as one ingredient, but generally provides easy, edible meals. I say “generally” when I mean “I’ve tried one.” Incidentally, the Orange Soy Chicken was rather good. Ingredients: soy sauce, chicken and an orange. (Asparagus makes four.) You don’t even need to read the recipe – just read the title and voila! dinner plan.
You may now be thinking: Good for her – you can’t miss when you start out simple.
Kind thinker: Prepare to revise those thoughts.
The plan was to make Beef Patties with Onions and Peppers (yes, you guessed it: ground beef, onions, peppers, and as our mystery ingredient…olive oil). This plan was derailed by a decision from the only other member of our household allowed to use the stove (the dogs don’t have the necessary height or opposable thumbs). The ground beef was designated for white trash tacos at the last available moment.
I rally gamely and prepare to make the accompanying recipe:
~~~
Butter Bean, Sun-Dried Tomato and Pesto Soup
1. Put chicken stock (3 3/4 cups) in a pan with butter beans (14 oz can, drained and rinsed) and bring to boil. Reduce heat, stir in tomato puree (4 tbsps) and pesto (5 tbsps). Cook gently for 5 minutes.
2. Transfer six ladlefuls of soup to blender, scooping up plenty of beans. Process until smooth, return puree to pan.
3. Heat gently, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes. Season if necessary. Ladle into warmed soup bowls.
~~~
Easy, yes. I’m sorry to report that it wasn’t easy enough. I pulled out my ingredients, reread the recipe and rolled up my proverbial sleeves to make some deceptively simple kickass soup. I briefly registered that something seemed off, shrugged, and began to rip open the package of beans.
I realize the problem just as I’m about to shower beans (whole, unsoaked beans) all over the counter. The recipe calls for canned beans. Not raw, fresh-from-the-bean-tree beans, the ones you buy from Safeway in a plastic bag.
I bought the wrong damn beans. Shut cookbook in disgust, and reach for a plate of white trash tacos.
Not quite ready for Quince. Or even Denny’s.
Related posts:
March 26th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Testing, testing. Begging the comments to work.