It lives!

Yes, Virginia, there is still a XLARE.  Ye olde Giraffechef just isn't as active as she used to be.  But when someone prods me into posting, I post, dadburnit.  From (I'm assuming, from the e-mail address) TheWoobDog:

This dish is neither healthy nor low-calorie, but it is delicious and very simple to make.  Provided you can find smoked salmon and marinated artichoke hearts for less than an arm and a leg.  Well, it's not like you can afford to eat it every day, anyway.

And no, I didn't actually cook with vermouth.  No offense to vermouth, but I don't exactly keep the stuff on hand.  I used mirin, but there are other substitutes, if you can't or don't wish to use vermouth.  I'm afraid I don't know if it's supposed to be dry vermouth or sweet vermouth--not knowing much about the subtleties of vermouth and copying the recipe from someone who didn't bother to make the distinction either.  Use something slightly sweet and winey and it'll come out fine, I'm sure.

Fettucine with Smoked Salmon and Artichoke Hearts

2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons minced shallots
1/4 cup vermouth
2 cups cream
1 13-oz. can marinated artichoke hearts, quartered
8 oz. smoked salmon
1 cup diced fresh tomatoes
1/2 cup freshly snipped parsley
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 lb. egg fettucine
1/2 lb. spinach fettucine
2 Tablespoons olive oil

Cook fettucine according to package instructions.  Drain and toss with olive oil.

Meanwhile, melt butter in saucepan over medium-high heat.  Saute shallots in butter.  Stir in vermouth; cook until reduced to 1 Tablespoon.  Add cream, cook at rolling boil until thick (about 6 minutes).  Add remaining ingredients; heat through.  Serve over hot fettucine.

What, this old thing?

I bet you all thought I'd forgotten about the good old XLARE.  Actually, what I bet is that you all forgot about the good old XLARE and thought I would do the same--or would have thought that, if you hadn't forgotten about the good old XLARE yourselves first.  Whatever.  I feel inspired to post the recipe for the dinner I made last night.  It is ultra-easy and extra-good.  Trust me.

Sugar Daddy got it from allrecipes.com.  SD is very good at picking out recipes, mostly because he's never intimidated by the amount of work involved.  As there is only a teensy-tiny amount of work involved in this recipe, I willingly made it myself the first time and found it so non-traumatic that I agreed to make it a second time.  That's a winner, gentle readers, in case you didn't know.

The recipe calls for ground turkey, but we used ground pork, as I have post-traumatic stress disorder from eating so much ground turkey in graduate school.  Can't touch the stuff now.  Anyway, we found that the ground meat adds more in terms of texture and volume than it does in flavor, which means that theoretically--ahem--you could leave it out altogether and have a vegetarian meal.  Just add some non-meat...textured...thing.  More pine nuts.  I dunno.  Dammit, Jim!  I'm a doctor, not a vegan gourmet! 

If you do use the meat, though, here is an important note:  Season the meat with the same spices (in the same amount) as you do the rice.  (Which means that, yes, you will need double the amount of spices altogether.)  It will be too bland otherwise.  Do not fear the whole teaspoon of cayenne pepper.  This meal is so carbalicious that it absorbs all but some tiny non-zero amount of heat.  If you are super-wimpy about spicy food, I guess you could halve the cayenne, but don't reduce it any more than that, or you may as well not use it at all.  Seriously.  If you like your food on the spicier side, you will certainly need to add more.  But SD and I think it is delicious as is. 

Also, we found that one can each of the chickpeas and black beans is sufficient for anyone's legume-y needs.  Unless you're cutting out the meat, in which case maybe you will want that many beans.  Unless you don't have that many beans, in which case you can certainly get by with fewer. 

This recipe serves 8.  If you want to scale it down, click the link to the allrecipes page, and there will be a little box that will do the math for you.  (Unless you're too proud to admit that fractions intimidate you, in which case, go ahead and do it old-school.)

Middle Eastern Rice with Black Beans and Chickpeas

INGREDIENTS

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup uncooked basmati rice
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
• 2 (15 ounce) cans garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained and rinsed
• 2 (15 ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 bunch chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 bunch chopped fresh parsley
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 1 pinch salt to taste
• 1 pinch ground black pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in garlic, and cook 1 minute. Stir in rice, cumin, coriander, turmeric, and cayenne pepper. Cook and stir 5 minutes, then pour in chicken stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 20 minutes.
2. Place the turkey in a skillet over medium heat, and cook until evenly brown.
3. Gently mix cooked turkey, garbanzo beans, black beans, cilantro, parsley, and pine nuts into the cooked rice. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve it with pita bread and a green salad, and rejoice!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, XLARE FANS!

I have a bunch of new recipes to post--but not right now.  For now I just have one recipe, from gwennieg, for soup fans.  Soup, as they say, is good food.

Best Potato Soup Ever

Cube one good sized potato per person, put in medium pan, add water to
cover.  Add a handful of baby carrots, sliced, to pot.  Toss in about a
teaspoon of salt and bring to boil.  Boil until the potatoes are tender
and the liquid starts to thicken (20 minutes?).  Add 1/4 cup butter or
margarine and stir until melted.  Add 1 tablespoon flour, bring back to
boil, and stir until thickened.  Add milk (up to 1 quart) to reach
desired consistency.  I like thick soup, so I only add about a cup and a
half.  Add chopped cooked bacon (ham also works, or leave it out if you
are vegetarian) and about a tablespoon of dried parsley.  Stir.  Grind
fresh pepper over the top to taste.

Is this a festive fall color, or just brown?

Sugar Daddy and I are cooking our first Thanksgiving dinner this year, so I thought we'd talk turkey here at the XLARE.  Heh heh.  Heh.  Oh, I'm too clever.  Yes, with all the spare time you have in the 48 hours before the biggest cooking day of the year, I expect you to give me Thanksgiving recipes.  Chop chop.  I have my shopping to do, you know.  Just kidding!  No, I just thought it would be fun to share what we all eat for Thanksgiving.  And what we do with all the leftover turkey.  Of which we should have plenty, since SD bought, like, a thirty pound turkey or something in that neighborhood of absurdity. 

SD and I are gonna be doing it old-school--just your basic turkey-mashed potatoes-stuffing-some green vegetable for color meal followed by pumpkin pie and his Grandma's cheesecake.  For a while I felt morally obligated to make candied yams, but since I'm the only one in the family who can stomach them, it really doesn't make much sense to go there when I'll be overwhelmed by the mere thought of having Thanksgiving in my own house as it is. 

Anyway, I'm curious to know if any of you all are going to be eating something more interesting.  I had Thanksgiving with a friend who made a pineapple stuffing, which was good, but would have gone better with a ham, we all decided.  I also had Thanksgiving with a family who had about 47 side dishes, including macaroni and cheese, which I thought was interesting.  Not that they would serve macaroni and cheese at Thanksgiving, but that they actually wouldn't have dreamed of having Thanksgiving without it. 

What say ye?