HotLinks

1.15.21

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Each week HotLinks will include suggestions for what to cook for the weekend and the coming week. The recipes will be a mix of dishes that make a great weeknight dinner and those that are more involved, projects for when you have more time in the kitchen.

All dishes have been tested in the Cooks Without Borders Test Kitchen, unless otherwise indicated.

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And now, to this month’s HotLinks!

Soup of the Week: Joan’s Chicken Soup

Normally this time of year, I’m thinking detox, focusing on phytochemicals and superfoods. This year, it feels more about nurturing, and healthy (or heathy-ish) comfort foods, despite the extra Covid pounds I’m carrying around.

It’s such a chicken soup moment, for obvious reasons, so why not lead off with my mom’s famous Jewish mother soup? We have plenty of chicken soups from around the world we’ll get to soon (links are collected at the end of this story).

Meera Sodha’s Sri Lankan Dal is a knockout!

Meera Sodha’s recipe for Sri Lankan Dal with Coconut and Lime Kale was featured in a New York Times story late last year, “19 Recipes Our Food Staff Cooked on Repeat in 2020 (it was Melissa Clark’s choice). When I spotted the dal, I couldn’t wait to try it — and it blew me away. I’d have never suspected lime with kale would be so wonderful. We’ll be making it again, and often.

We love this (flexible!) winter salad

You probably don’t even need a recipe for this simple salad of escarole, walnuts and Roquefort — nor do you have to keep to these exact ingredients. Take the classic French combo of pale winter greens, blue cheese and nuts, and you can put this together (in 5 minutes) with whatever you’ve got.

Want to riff?

Belgian endives (either sliced into rounds or torn leaves), frisée or curly endive are all perfect for this, as is any kind of blue cheese that’s not too creamy to crumble (Maytag Blue, Fourme d’Abert, etc.). Swap pecans or hazelnuts for the walnuts, if you like (just toast ‘em in a pan or in the oven to bring out their deeper flavors and emphasize crunch).

Our vinaigrette calls for nothing more than red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and walnut oil, but it’s also great with sherry vinegar, white wine vinegar or Champagne vinegar (or tarragon vinegar!). And extra virgin olive oil works great instead of walnut oil. Or, if you’re using pecans or hazelnuts, you can use pecan oil or hazelnut oil to match.

Want to toss in some chopped shallots or thin-sliced red onion? I’ve never tried it, but could be good! (You might want to soak thinly-sliced red onions in cold water for 5 minutes first to soften the bite.)

Miso-Butter Sweet Potatoes

Also super easy to make, roasted sweet potatoes slathered with miso butter have been regulars at our table since the autumn. On their own with just the miso butter (made by mixing equal parts unsalted butter and miso), they’re luscious and fabulous. Sprinkled with sliced scallions and the Japanese seasoning mix furikake, they’re even more special.

I like to serve them at dinner, either with just a soup, salad or sautéed greens, or pork chops or roast chicken if we’re feeling fancy. In any case, I always roast one or two extra sweet potatoes because they’re great re-heated for lunch. (Make a little extra miso butter, too, so you can slather the leftovers!)

Another to riff on: Smoky White Beans and Brussels Sprouts

I know what you’re thinking: Those don’t look like Brussels sprouts; they look like sausages. Right you are! That’s the recipe after I riffed on it.

Let’s back up: I found Lindsay Maitland Hunt’s recipe for Smoky White Beans and Brussels Sprouts, adapted from her cookbook “Help Yourself,” in a late-December Washington Post Voraciously story by the Post’s Food Editor Joe Yonan. I thought it looked and sounded wonderful, so I made it according to Voraciously’s adaptation — and taking Yonan’s suggestion to use home-cooked beans. That’s what’s shown in the photo at the top of this newsletter.

I loved it — particularly the combination of smoked paprika and lemon with the beans. (The recipe beautifully spotlighted a fabulous smoked paprika I treated myself to recently from Rancho Gordo.)

I did want to try it as well with canned beans, for those weeknights when you really want something quick and easy. But then I also thought it would be great with Italian sausages. And a bag of baby kale thrown in at the last minute would be less labor-intensive than searing the flat sides of halved Brussels sprouts, and maybe as delicious.

Of course you lose the wonderful vegan-ness of Hunt’s original, but this was really — something I’ll make again and again. What I did for the photo you see above is similar to the original recipe, but instead of searing Brussels sprouts, I browned a pound of Italian sausages in the olive oil. I drained all but a tablespoon of the fat, sliced the sausages and set them aside, sweated a diced onion in the fat until translucent, added the paprika, salt, red and black pepper, cooked half a minute, deglazed with 1/2 cup white wine, then added the beans and 1/4 cup chicken stock, cooked to warm the beans, threw in 5 ounces of baby kale, cooked (stirring and tossing) till they were completely wilted, then added the sliced sausages to warm, plus the lemon juice and sliced scallions (which I subbed for the chives I didn’t have, both times).

Excellent, as I mentioned. Next time, I’d add an extra can of cannellinis, and probably more kale (another 2 1/2 oz or so). The paprika and lemon will have to be upped as well.

I’ll work out a recipe, post it at Cooks Without Borders, and let you know when it’s up.

Until then, lots of love — and Happy New Year!!!

Leslie

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Have a comment, or want to tell us about something you’d like to see covered here? Drop me a line at leslie@cookswithoutborders.com.