French Onion Soup

What do you do when you have a sack of onions from Costco that you have to use right away? French onion soup! We had a lot of onions leftover from the crawfish boil two weeks ago and I didn’t want them to go to waste. Since we will be traveling for the next month, I have been on a mission to cook and eat all perishables. This has gone a little bit further than intended so we’ve also been eating through the freezer and pantry…probably could have used some fresh vegetables in the past few days, but oh well! I would call this mission a success.

I didn’t know what else to do with that many onions, we had some bread and cheese to get through, and I also had some beef broth in the pantry that I didn’t really know what to do with. French onion soup seemed to make sense, despite the fact that it is 85 degrees out. Luckily, we have air conditioning!

I found a recipe for French Onion Soup at Simply Recipes and went from there. Per usual, my modifications:

• Used half beef broth and half chicken broth because that’s what I had in the pantry. Obviously a homemade stock would have been better but at the very least, stick to beef broth…the flavor is more authentic.
• I used a thick slice of ciabatta, which I toasted before dropping into the soup and throwing into the oven. I don’t know if it made a difference, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I forgot that the bread would expand while soaking up the soup so I ended up with a bit more bread than I would have liked. Next time, I would only use enough bread to cover half (or less) of the top.
• Had some random cheeses in the fridge, so didn’t bother using “authentic” cheese. I think one was a Swiss Emmentaler from Fair Oaks Farms and the other was some grated parmesan.
• I used the smallest oven-proof dishes I had but it was a good size for a lunch portion (that’s all we had for lunch).
• My onions never caramelized…I think because I stirred too much. Or I got impatient…the next World Cup match was starting soon and I didn’ t want to be cooking after kickoff!

This is what 6 sliced yellow onions looks like

This is the 6 yellow onions that never caramelized

Despite no caramelization, it tasted good anyway! Cover anything in bubbling cheese and it is hard to fail.

Posts will be sporadic or non-existant for the next month as we explore London, South Africa and Namibia!

Graduation Cookout

I graduated! With friends and family in town from all corners of the country, we hosted a cookout the night before graduation. I didn’t take any pictures of the food since I was so busy prepping, watching soccer and hanging out with friends and family. Instead, I’ll just give you a list of food we served with links and comments:

• Rosanne Cash’s Potato Salad: I doubled the recipe and we had more than enough for our 20+ guests. I had never made potato salad before (love potato salad but its not really a staple for the West Coast cookout) but it seems like everyone in the Midwest has an opinion about what should or shouldn’t go into a potato salad. I used red potatoes, omitted the onions, added some creole seasoning and used both dill and sweet butter pickles (because that’s what was in the fridge). Next time, I would add some bacon. Otherwise, this recipe is pretty awesome as is…not too mayonnaisey, which is always my fear.
• Grilled Corn
• Grilled Korean meats from H-Mart
• Pesto Pasta Salad: Used whole wheat pasta and added tomatoes and mushrooms.
• Slow Cooker Pulled Pork: This is such an easy way to feed a lot of people with minimal effort! Only two ingredients to throw into a slow cooker and all you have to do later is shred the pork and throw in some BBQ sauce. I had intended on making BBQ sauce from scratch but I discovered a few bottles in the fridge and figured it would be wasteful not to use it. I used 4 pounds of pork shoulder but definitely could have made more (there were no leftovers).
• Cole Slaw: I’m not usually a big fan of cole slaw but it goes so well with pulled pork (and we needed some veggies).
• Fresh Pineapple: Since my Dad was in town, I bought three pineapples for him to carve up. Normally, it is too much work for me (well, I’ve never attempted it)…but I do love fresh pineapple…and now I know how to choose good ones, too!
• Freezer Cookies: Between the crawfish boil and the graduation cookout, all of the cookie dough hoarding paid off. We had delicious fresh-baked cookies (ginger snap, oatmeal peanut butter, snickerdoodle, oatmeal chocolate chip) without any of the effort required!

And of course, I couldn’t have done it without the help of my best girlfriends who all flew in for my graduation. THANK YOU!!

Red Beans & Rice

For the crawfish boil, I also prepared a pot of red beans and rice. I didn’t eat any at the party (gas!!) but the bite I tried was delicious…the pot was empty by the end and I got many thumbs up, so I guess it was a success! It was also very easy to prepare and I heard it went really well with the mac and cheese too (that a friend brought over). I didn’t get a picture of the red beans over rice as I had already had too much sweet tea vodka by the time we started eating, but oh well.

I used this recipe from Simply Recipes and the only adjustment I made was to use smoked ham hocks instead of shanks (because that’s what they had at the store). Oh, and I also chopped a few chicken andouille sausages into the pot.

Crawfish Boil

We hosted a viewing party this past weekend for the US vs England World Cup match for 20+ friends. After the game, we moved to the rooftop to boil 60 lbs of live crawfish flown in that morning from Louisiana (ordered from Louisiana Crawfish Company). I borrowed a huge crawfish kettle from some friends at school who had just hosted a 400 lb. boil over Memorial Day weekend and set up a big folding table with newspapers so everyone could drink Budweisers, peel crawfish and enjoy the potatoes, corn, andouille sausage, mushrooms, garlic and onions also cooked in the spicy broth.

It was a very fun way to spend the afternoon despite the random sprinkles (we just put raincoats on and continued eating). My fingers were a little sore and cut up after peeling all of that crawfish. I thought eating crab was a lot of labor but crawfish takes the cake!

We used to do crab boils when I lived in San Francisco and if I return to San Francisco, I think we should do a crab and shrimp boil but incorporate some elements from the crawfish boil: mainly the spices, sausage and veggies. Usually, we just steam the crab in beer, but I really did like the spicy seafood boil (which went down really easy with many cans of beer).

I also made a pot of red beans and rice, which I’ll show you in my next post!

Chicken, asparagus & spinach risotto

In an effort to clear out the freezer, I made stock out of three roast chicken carcasses. I had some asparagus and spinach that was about to turn and the only thing I could think to make was risotto. I also blended some asparagus and spinach with broth to infuse some vegetable flavor into the risotto…next time, I should put that in last. It turned the whole thing a grayish green hue because I put it in too early. It still tasted good and luckily I was just cooking for the two of us.

In retrospect, I could also have made sup mang (asparagus soup) but it just didn’t occur to me.