Minestrone Di Verdura

(Tuscan Vegetable Soup)

This typical Tuscan dish is the perfect thing to heat yourself up after a cold winter day spent outside!

(serves 6)

2 medium onions
500 grams (approx. 16 oz) cannellini beans (white beans)
4 medium carrots
8 big leaves of cavolo nero (black cabbage)
3 pieces of celery
2 ripened tomatoes
Italian parsley
1 vegetable bouillon
4 zucchini
extra virgin olive oil
3 potatoes
salt and pepper

Wash the cannellini beans (or other white beans like Great Northern) and soak them in water overnight. If you have a pressure cooker it will take 10 minutes to cook.

After they are cooked, puree 5 to 6 cups of cooked beans in a food processor. Save the cooking water -- you'll use it later.

Chop the onions, celery, parsley and carrots, and let them cook in 6 tablespoons of olive oil over a slow flame. In Italian this is called the soffritto, the basis for almost all dishes.

When the onions start to turn brown, add the other vegetables (diced or chopped, as you prefer).

Now add the bean paste you made earlier, and add the water from the cooked beans.

Add the bouillon; if more liquid is needed, add hot water. Salt and pepper to taste.

Note: pasta or rice can also be added to this dish, but if you really want to go Tuscan, cut very thin slices of bread, the thinner the better, 3-4 days old. Put one layer at the bottom of a big bowl and then add 1 layer of minestrone, then another layer of bread, followed by another layer of minestrone. Depending on your bowl, it could be 2 or 3 layers. Don't add too much bread. Remember it is a minestrone soup, not a bread one! Let it sit for 5-10 minutes. This soup can also be served cold.

Serving Suggestion
After pouring the soup into bowls, add a ring of extra virgin olive oil and some grated Parmesan cheese.

Courtesy of Healthy Cooking Tips

Chef Tim Johnson

Remember...Grace is upon you so eat to live!

Spicy Chipotle, Portobello, and Hominy Chowder
 

 

Mushrooms:

1 1/2 pounds large portobellos, stems and black gills removed
3/4-cup kosher salt
3/4-cup sugar
1 1/2 quarts water

Chowder:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound slice yellow onion
2 stemmed and seeded chopped chipotles
1 tablespoon finely slivered garlic
2 cups husked and quartered fresh tomatillos
1/2 teaspoon whole fennel
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 cups diced and seeded tomatoes
7 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 cups cooked white hominy
Salt and pepper

Instructions:

1. Rinse the mushrooms and set aside.
   
2. In a saucepan, add the salt and sugar to the water, and simmer over moderate heat until salt and sugar are dissolved.
3. Remove from heat, cool to room temperature, and add mushrooms to brine. Allow to marinate for at least 2 hours.
   
4. Remove mushrooms from brine and gently press between towels to remove excess moisture. On a barbecue or stovetop smoker, over moderately low heat, gently smoke mushrooms until just cooked through. Set aside to add to finished chowder.
   
5. To make chowder, heat the olive oil in a deep soup pot. Add the onions, chipotles, and garlic. Saute until soft, but not brown, about 5 minutes. Add the tomatillos, fennel, cumin, coriander, oregano, cinnamon, tomatoes, and stock.
   
6. Simmer gently for 15 minutes. Add the hominy to pot, and simmer to heat through. Correct the seasoning with salt and pepper.

To serve, slice the smoked portobellos at an angle, and place in warm soup bowls. Ladle the chowder on top and serve immediately.

Thai Coconut Soup with Lemon Grass and Sugarcane Chicken Dumplings   Thai Coconut Soup 2 cups Soup Base, recipe follows 1 cup coconut milk 6 Kaffir lime leaves Salt and pepper Lime juice, to taste About 1 tablespoon palm sugar, to taste Sugarcane Chicken Dumplings, recipe follows Garnish 1 ounce glass noodles, soaked in water until softened 1/4 cup julienne carrots 1/4 cup julienne leeks 4 Thai chiles, stems removed, split in 1/2 lengthwise, seeded 4 Kaffir lime leaves, cut in a thin chiffonade To the soup base, add the coconut milk and lime leaves. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt, pepper, lime juice and sugar. Add the dumplings and simmer until done, about 3 minutes. Divide the softened glass noodles on 4 soup bowls. Place 2 dumplings crisscross on top of the noodles, leaning to the side of the bowl. Divide the soup onto the 4 bowls. Garnish each bowl with julienne of carrots, leeks, Thai chiles and a lime leaf. Serve immediately. Yield: 4 servings Soup Base 2 1/2 cups lobster stock 1 tablespoon chili paste 1 lemon grass, cut into 2-inch sticks 10 fresh Thai basil leaves 1 Thai bird chile In a saucepan, combine the lobster stock, chili paste, lemon grass, Thai basil leaves and Thai bird chile and bring to a boil. Reduce until only 2 cups remain. Sugarcane Chicken Dumplings 4 ounces ground lean chicken 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic 1/2 teaspoon minced ginger 1 teaspoon mushroom soy sauce 1/2 teaspoon fish sauce 2 teaspoons potato starch Pinch freshly ground black pepper 8 (4-inch) sugarcane sticks In a mixing bowl, combine the ground chicken, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, fish sauce, potato starch and black pepper. Mix until well blended. Divide into 8 portions. Wrap each portion around the end of each sugarcane stick. Reserve. Courtesy of Healthy Cooking Tips Chef Tim Johnson Remember...Grace is upon you so eat to live!

                     Tricks or Treat

 

Trick #1: Outright lying. Technically, it's illegal, but somebody has to catch them first. The FDA told us that they don't have the time or the resources to do anything about it! Sometimes you'll see the word "organic" on the label, and the product doesn't have a single certified organic ingredient in it. One manufacturer of chemical products, when we called them on the phone, told us that all of their ingredients were certified organic. They weren't. Here's the bottom line: organic ingredients are plant oils or extracts, or other unadulterated agricultural products. They are not chemical names!

Trick #2: Natural water. There's nothing wrong with water, but it shouldn't be used to cheat customers. Here's how it works: most personal care products have a lot of water in them. That's OK. (We use distilled water. In our products, the remaining portion is truly natural and organic ingredients - certified organic sunflower oil, for example.) If you want to make a chemical product have the appearance of being natural, make the water portion a ridiculously dilute infusion (weak tea) of a huge number of herbs, preferably organic. The herbs don't have to really do anything. Throw in all sorts of exotic sounding things, and don't forget trendy things like kava-kava and ginseng that have no place in a body care product. Since they're in the water, they'll come first on the label, even if they barely exist in the product. (Is the product white, or clear? Real herb tea isn't clear - it's brown.) All of those herbs sure look great on the label, don't they? Use any sort of chemicals for the rest of the product. Most people aren't familiar with conventional product formulation, and they focus on the plant names and the pictures of leaves on the bottle, glossing over the words they don't understand. By the way, watch out for the word "Tea." Sometimes it's triethanolamine, an industrial chemical. Sneaky!

Trick #3: "Organic" water. Water can't be organic, because it's not an agricultural product. That's why the USDA, in their regulations, say that you're not allowed to count the water portion of a product when calculating the percentage of organic ingredients. Because if you could count it, you could use that to be very deceptive. How? Imagine if you made a product from a very weak herbal tea made from certified organic herbs, along with a blend of synthetic chemicals. You might say "contains 78% organic ingredients" and the remaining 22% of the ingredients are synthetic chemicals. Would you eat an organic food product that was 78% water and 22% chemical ingredients? You could also use a hydrosol (floral water), a by-product of the essential oil industry to inflate your "organic" percentages of ingredients in your product. While there is nothing inherently wrong with hydrosols, they are still around 99% water and, according to the USDA organic rules, can't be part of the organic ingredients calculations. The actual certified organic content of a hydrosol, if you could remove the water, would be very small indeed. Did you ever let a cup of tea evaporate? There isn't much left in the cup, just a little residue. A very important thing to know about the USDA organic regulations is that the non-organic portion of an organic formula can't contain synthetic petrochemicals. Sadly, most body care companies (even some of the ones you trust) have chosen to ignore the current organic regulations.

Trick #4: Oleochemicals. There are two kinds of synthetic chemicals: petrochemicals, made from crude petroleum, and oleochemicals, made from plant oils, most often coconut oil and sometimes from conventionally-grown, genetically-modified corn. (Did you know that a new version of canola (rapeseed) has been genetically engineered to produce "coconut" oil?) They're all processed in factories and chemically turned into a wide range of different substances through the use of high pressure, extremely high temperatures of thousands of degrees, and combinations with various solvents, catalysts and other chemicals. They all come under the official USDA definition of synthetic. They'll say that they're "derived from" natural sources. Every man-made object or substance on earth or in outer space is derived from natural sources, if you think about it. To really fool people, put the name of a plant in parentheses after the chemical, like this: "methyl paraben (blueberries)". You can say "no petrochemicals" and still use cheap synthetic chemicals - detergents, foam boosters, emulsifiers, thickeners, the whole works. They call them natural but they really aren't. Why not call petrochemicals or gasoline "natural?" They're "derived from" natural plants and dinosaurs! (It's been done!) Remember, petrochemicals and oleochemicals aren't permitted in certified organic foods. They're synthetic.

Trick #5: Word games. Some manufacturers say things like "made with 100% organic botanicals," meaning that a few of the individual ingredients are "100% organic"...but the others could be synthetic. Makes you think the whole thing is certified organic! Some say things like "no sodium lauryl sulfate" or mention some other chemicals, to give the impression that they don't use any chemicals. They just don't use those chemicals. Sometimes they say "made without any unsafe chemicals" - they just use chemicals that they consider to be safe. Often you'll see "made with" or "contains" this herb and that herb - to make you think that's all they're made of. Ha! How about the ones who say they're "environmentally-friendly," and put their products in vinyl bottles and bags? With friends like that, who needs enemies?

One last thing. According to the USDA National Organic Program (NOP), food products that are labeled as "organic" are not permitted to be made in chemical factories. In fact, organic ingredients are not even permitted to come into contact with synthetic chemicals not permitted by the NOP. The USDA defines synthetic ingredients in their rules and says that a synthetic ingredient is one that was "altered" in a chemical or non-biological process - in other wor grow in and, of course, water is a necessity. If you look in a seed catalog, could you find seeds for each ingredient? You've got to look out for yourself. It's not necessary to use any synthetic chemicals to make body care products.ds, something "derived from" something else. So, how can you have a product that is labeled "organic" that contains unapproved synthetic petrochemicals and oleochemicals? According to the USDA organic rules for food, you can't. Body care ingredients are absorbed, rapidly, through your skin. It's a lot like eating food. Always choose the less questionable products - look for products in which all of the ingredients have names like organic foods that you eat, or natural, nontoxic minerals like clay, or water. Natural clays and minerals can be a portion of the soil that organic plants.

Courtesy of Healthy Cooking Tips

Chef Tim Johnson

Remember...Grace is upon you so eat to live!

This is a great recipe for a  light and quick meal! I hope you enjoy it as much as i do.