My wife makes a vegetarian onion soup that we had last night. The recipe is something like: caramelize 3lb of onions with butter. Add chopped fresh rosemary at some point. Bring veggie stock to boil. When the onions are ready, add the stock to the onions and simmer for a while. There’s also white wine that goes into there at some point (I’ve never made the recipe or really read it, so take the above with a grain of salt).
Add a tablespoon of brandy (or less, to taste) to each bowl as you serve it.
I also sliced a baguette, piled the rounds with freshly grated gruyere and a little cheddar under the broiler until they just start to get browned. Two rounds float on top per serving.
It’s a very delicious bowl of soup. And cooking it makes the house smell amazing.
My approach to onion soup – which is surprisingly tasty but I’m sure not as good as your homemade stuff – is to unwrap a cylinder of frozen French onion soup, plunk it into an oven-proof soup bowl with the cheese side up, and bake for 40 minutes. My priority is minimum effort!
Dinner tonight will also be minimum effort, exploiting the baked chorizo sausages from last night. Instead of repeating last night’s dinner with leftover mac & cheese, I think I’ll make some Bush’s Homestyle beans and simmer with barbecue sauce and slices of sausage and the onion and green pepper base the sausages were baked in, then serve with fries out of the air fryer.
ETA: I just had a quick look at the casserole dish in which I refrigerated the leftover sausages. There’s a ton of that lovely condiment-like stuff that results from baking the sausages on a bed of pizza sauce, chopped onion, and green pepper. Yes, I’m definitely going for the beans tonight – this is perfect for simmering them with, along with one or two actual chopped sausages.
My spouse loves Trader Joe’s onion soups, which are prepared in exactly that fashion . Home made is definitely when she’s in the mood and has the time to really cook something. And it does make the house smell amazing.
Heh, I’ll be doing exactly that tonight. I also have vegetarian (not vegan) French Onion Soup cylinders that I got from Costco (I’m 90% certain they’re the same ones sold at TJs) that will be ready to go soon.
I’m making fried mushrooms as well (mentioned this in another thread) - whole button mushrooms, well cleaned, dipped in a thinned, seasoned and spiced yogurt mix, and dredged with seasoned breadcrumbs. Misted with some olive oil and cooked in the air fryer, with malt vinegar and a yogurt based sauce on the side.
It’s nice because the wife and I will be sharing the same food, rather than me cooking for my omnivorous/carnivorous tastes and the wife doing something vegetarian.
And since we just had our (rather late) first snow overnight, a soup was a must!
I feel your pain. I’d rather have beer battered and deep fried mushrooms myself - sure the ones I made were darn tasty, but deep fried goodness would be better!
But these were good enough, and scratched the itch, and 24oz of mushroom being only 5 bucks, with everything else needed already being in hand, well, good AND cheap eats.
Tonight I’m planning to make a spaghetti Bolognese. Well, might be overly fancy to call it a Bolognese. More of a weekday spaghetti with meat sauce. But I want to turbo-charge it. I think I’ll start with a sofrito of finely diced onion, carrot, celery and bell pepper. Garlic of course. I might have some mushrooms that need using, so I’d dice them up finely for umami. Then I’d brown some hamburger meat and add tomato paste. Maybe some bacon (only have pre-cooked Costco bacon, but still). I might have anchovy paste for still more umami, and if not, I know I have Thai fish sauce. Red pepper flakes for a bit of heat. Add some wine and reduce? Maybe even a diced up fresh Jalapeño? Maybe not. Finally, a can or two of crushed tomatoes, and I think I can harvest some basil from a plant I brought indoors before the frost hit.
Any recommendations on my dinner plans? Am I doing too much, or any other ideas how I can level this up?
I would definitely eat that. I might say that mushroom AND bacon AND anchovy paste is maybe too much in addition to ground beef? Are any of those flavors going to come out? I’d skip anchovy paste, and maybe go very light on the bacon… use it for some smokiness and salt, but it can turn into a bacon-forward dish very quickly. I think the mushrooms are going to get lost, but if you’re using them to use them up, go for it! You can always sauté the mushrooms separately to get some stronger flavor into the pieces.
Otherwise, more spices and herbs (to your personal taste, of course). I’ve been enjoying the flavor of garlic powder in my tomato sauce in addition to fresh garlic. Also, dried oregano and basil (dried basil gives a nice basil sweetness to sauces that is different than fresh).
But really it’s hard to go wrong with a pot of meat, tomato, and onion.
Yeah, right now I’m kicking around ingredient combos-- I will whittle it down by cook time. Also, when I do go ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ mode and add a lot of ingredients I modulate what I add; say, just a little anchovy paste or fish sauce to give the meat sauce a bit more depth without making it taste fishy or too salty.
The mushrooms do disappear in the sauce when I dice them up finely, but, like a splash of anchovy paste or fish sauce, they add a little depth and complexity. When my kids were young I’d make them spaghetti and sometimes add finely diced mushrooms into the sauce. If they knew I added mushrooms they would’ve been horrified, but they never could tell
Well, today was cold and snowy (about 6" accumulating starting at midnight and still going on) so I wanted a hearty meal after all the cold and shoveling.
Dinner was from scratch pumpkin gnocchi in sage-butter sauce using the rest of the canned pumpkin I had on hand after making a pumpkin-cheesecake pie in a gingersnap crust. I made a pair of chicken thighs I had marinating in the leftover cilantro chimichurri I made for Thanksgiving, air fried and served on a bed of baby lettuce.
It turned out very nice, but (duh) quite heavy. I should have used more flour for the gnocchi, since it is super humid for Colorado Springs right now (80% outside, 30% inside) so my shaping was a little rough, but the taste was spot on.
Last night was an unplanned “make something up with what’s in the pantry” night. I made a lentil and butternut squash curry? Soup? An onion sautéed, then squash, fresh and powdered garlic, turmeric, cayenne, cumin, smoked paprika, lentils and veggie stock. After the lentils were done I mixed in a can of coconut milk.
It turned out great, good heat and flavor but not tasting too strongly of any specific spice. I’d make it again any time.
On this snowy night, fish’n’chips. Crisp beer-battered haddock which for some reason turns out better in the oven than in the air fryer, and has the advantage that I can do fries in the air fryer to be ready at the same time.
To be served with tartar sauce and anointed with malt vinegar. In a better world there would be a yogurt-based creamy coleslaw to go with it, but alas, there wasn’t any on my last shopping expedition.
Breakfast burritos. Originally picked because they’re super easy, but I did end up preparing a few different components.
Diced bell pepper, jalapeno, and onion, sweated with spices
Spinach, wilted
Veggie sausage patties, diced after cooking
Pre-made hash brown patties
Scrambled eggs, adding in the already cooked peppers, onions, and sausage once the eggs start to firm up
Grated cheddar
I heated up tortillas in a dry pan, then filled with all the ingredients above, plus some hot sauce and a spoonful of salsa. Put them back in the pan with a little olive oil to seal it, then wrapped them in foil and put in the oven on warm about 10 minutes before eating.
Is this a from-scratch situation? I’d love a recipe!
Alas, no, this was frozen President’s Choice brand “Haddock’n’Hops”. But if you want a from-scratch recipe, I have several times made this fried potato-flake pickerel recipe posted years ago by @swampspruce and I very highly recommend it. It specifies pickerel but works equally well with cod or haddock: It’s a bit more work than just popping a frozen fish in the oven, but the result is scrumptious!
. Home made is definitely when she’s in the mood and has the time to really cook something. And it does make the house smell amazing.
