Soup Season, I Want to Snog Your Face Off!!!

Right now, I have some sort of bastardy cold-slash-sinus-infection-slash-allergy thing going on, courtesy of the sudden chilly weather. And yet, I still blissfully proclaim: I LOVE YOU, FALL! Hoodies and crunchy leaves and autumn clouds and snuggling with the cats under mounds of blankets and stumbling across a bit of romance and car rides through the metroparks and Halloween and zombie flicks and soup soup and more soup. How can you not love fall?

So, to ring in these first few days of chilly, keep-your-windows-closed-and-snuggle-up-under-blankets-while-reading-The-Exorcist-and-watching-horror-movies weather, I whipped up the Ceci-Roasted Red Pepper Soup from Appetite for Reduction. It is beautifully autumnal in color and will fill your house with the delicious warming aroma of roasting red peppers. The flavors will also definitely please; it's a very aromatic recipe, despite the rather simple assortment of ingredients. And it makes for a fantastic soup for dipping bread. My only complaint is that I find rosemary and/or thyme in soup to be a slightly misguided choice. I love the flavor, but I absolutely hate picking tiny pieces of woody spices out of my teeth, especially in an otherwise velvety soup. I even tried chopping up the rosemary, but still: a bit too woody.

Nonetheless, it's a good recipe and an easy one, and it will definitely bring a smile to your autumnal pallet. Unfortunately no one has posted the recipe online quite yet, so for now, you'll have to track down the cookbook to try it out. But I promise you, it's worth spending the $10/$15 bucks on it. Promise.

Tortilla Soup!

Soup makes for pretty much the most boring photos ever, so I've added a nice rack for your viewing pleasure.

As for the soup itself, damn damn damn good. And super duper easy. Definitely don't skimp on the lime juice 'cause it adds a little bit of extra loveliness to it. Definitely has me excited for soup weather, that is for sure. And thanks to Jilly Bean for the recipe recommendation!


INGREDIENTS:

• 1 t. olive oil


• 1 small onion, sliced thinly


• 2 jalapeños, seeded and sliced thinly


• 1 poblano pepper or green bell pepper, seeded, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces


• 4 cloves garlic, minced


• 1/4 t. red pepper flakes, optional


• 1 t. salt


• 1 (24-ounce) can whole tomatoes, undrained


• 1 (24-ounce) can vegetable broth


• 1 T. ground cumin


• 4 ounces gluten-free baked tortilla chips (about 2 cups), divided (or just regular old tortilla chips)


• 1 (15-ounce) can pinto beans, drained and rinsed


• 1 c. frozen corn


• 1/2 c. chopped fresh cilantro, plus extra for garnish


• Juice from 1 lime


• Salt, to taste

DIRECTIONS

Place oil in a 4-quart pot and sauté onions, jalapeños and poblano pepper over medium-high heat until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. (Add a little more oil or broth if needed.) Add garlic, red pepper flakes and salt and sauté for another minute.

Break up tomatoes with your fingers and add them to the pot, including the juice. Fill the tomato can with vegetable broth and add to the pot. Stir in the cumin.

Crush half the chips into crumbs (some bigger pieces are okay) and add to the pot. Cover and bring soup to a boil. Then lower heat to a simmer.

Add beans, corn and cilantro and let simmer for 5 more minutes. Add lime juice. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding salt to taste.

Ladle soup into serving bowls. Crumble remaining tortilla chips over the top and garnish with cilantro.

(Recipe originally from Appetite for Reduction, reposted at Living Without)

What to Eat If You Never Want Anyone to Make Out With You Ever Again

On the weekend, my friend Peppermint came over for a LLP night, and we cooked. I've been wanting to try the Appetite for Reduction onion rings for a while, so she brought over some homemade veggie burgers to accompany them. To make matters worse for our breath, we added caramelized onions to the burgers as well, making it one hell of a stank dinner. However, both of us had to admit, the onion rings were really quite good. I used corn-flake "bread" crumbs instead of wheat, and the breading ended up kind of messy, but the one hand per bowl technique seems like a myth anyways since, as soon as you dip into the breadcrumbs, you end up clumping that shit up. Either which way though: oh man are they delish. And super easy. I'd definitely make them again. Even if that means not making out with anyone for a week as a result.


OMG Oven Baked Onion Rings

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 vidalia onions (about a pound), or other sweet onion like Walla Walla


• 1/2 c. plus 2 T. all purpose flour


• 2 T. corn starch


• 1 c. cold almond milk (I used soy milk)


• 1 t. apple cider vinegar


• 1 c. whole wheat bread crumbs (I used corn-flake "bread" crumbs)


• 1 t. kosher salt


• 2 t. olive oil


• Cooking spray

DIRECTIONS

Slice onions into 3/4 inch thick rings. Separate the rings and place in a bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel or something, to keep the onioniness out of your eyes.

Preheat oven to 450 F. Line a rimmed 12×18 baking sheet with parchment paper, spray with cooking spray and set aside.

Now you’ll need two bowls for batter and breading. If you’ve got large, wide cereal bowls that’ll do the trick. In one bowl, dump in the flour and cornstarch. Add about half of the almond milk and stir vigorously with a fork to dissolve. Add the rest of the almond milk and the apple cider vinegar, and stir to incorporate. Set aside.

In the other bowl, mix together the bread crumbs and salt. Drizzle in the oil and use your fingertips to mix it up well.

Assemble the onion rings:

Get a conveyor belt going. From left to right, have the onions, the flour mixture, the breadcrumbs mixture and lastly the baking sheet. Dip each onion slice into the the flour, letting the excess drip off. Transfer to the breadcrumbs bowl and use the other hand to sprinkle a handful of breadcrumbs over the onion, to coat completely. This may take a bit of practice. Carefully transfer each onion to a single layer on the baking sheet. Make sure you use one hand for the wet batter and the other for the dry batter, or you’ll end up with club hand.

Spray rings lightly with cooking spray and bake for 8 minutes. Flip, and bake another 6 minutes. Rings should be varying shades of brown and crisp. Taste one to check for doneness. Serve as soon as possible. With ketchup if you must.

Note from cookbook: Coupla things. You have to use sweet onions for this, like vidalia or walla walla. Otherwise the taste won’t be as special and the texture won’t be as juicy. Also, if things go as planned, you’re not going to use all of the onions or all of the coating. Just use the nice big rings and use the tiny inside rings for something else. For the batter and coating, you need a lot to get everything breaded, but there will be a bunch left over. Them’s the breaks.

(Recipe from Appetite for Reduction, reposted at Go Dairy Free)



WHAT YOU SHOULD SERVE IF YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO GET SOMEONE DRUNK ENOUGH THAT THEY WON'T NOTICE ALL THE ONION ON YOUR BREATH:

(Ginger beer, vodka, lime juice, muddled mint)

First Pesto of the Season

I love me some pesto. Short of avocado--which is the sexiest beast alive when it comes to food--pesto is one of my very favorite foods of all time. Needless to say, I love basil season. And although we're not quite there yet, in excitement and preparation, I decided to try the Appetite for Reduction edamame pesto.

I've fiddled with many different pesto variations over the years. And I love edamame, so I figured it'd be an easy success. And it was. Not only is it much cheaper than most homemade pestos (this required less basil than most, and edamame is cheap as hell if you go to the right place to buy it, especially in comparison to pine nuts which are INSANELY expensive right now or even walnuts) but it also has a lightness and brightness to its flavor that sings of spring and summer and sunshine and gardens. It was really damn good is what I'm saying. So much so that I can't wait to bust it out in the summer knowing that it'll also definitely make my basil stretch further (1 cup of basil yields about the same amount of pesto in this recipe as 3 cups does in most standard pesto recipes). And it's way healthier too, of course.

So yes, for those of you bumping about in Appetite for Reduction cookbook trying to figure out what to cook next: this should definitely be at the top of your list.



INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cloves garlic, chopped


• 1 cup packed basil leaves


• 14 oz package shelled edamame, thawed


• 1/2 cup vegetable broth


• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice


• 1 teaspoon olive oil


• 1 teaspoon salt


• optional: 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

DIRECTIONS

Place garlic and basil in food processor and pulse a few times to get it chopped up. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until relatively smooth, scraping down the sides with a spatula to make sure you get everything. Add a little more vegetable broth if it seems too stiff. Set aside until ready to use.

(from Appetite for Reduction, reposted at The PPK)

This Just in from El Biblioteca:

And now you will tell me your favoritest favorite Appetite for Reduction recipes and also the ones I shouldn't touch with a 15.5-meter pole.

Annnnnnnnnnd go!