Summer Green Minestrone

This mean, green, vegetable-packed soup was a sure-fire hit to please The Mrs. Soup is a sort of odd choice for a hot & humid July meal, but the pictures sold me. I'm very visual when I pick out recipes -- which I realize is juvenile. But that's how my mind and stomach work.

This isn't your heavy, cream-based, meat-loaded, winter soup to warm you up during a soul crushing Midwest winter. It's a light and bright summer soup chalk full of greens that will treat you well.

Start by chopping the white & pale green parts of a large leek.

Then sliced up a fennel bulb, two stalks of celery, and half of a white onion.

Saute that all in some olive oil with salt & pepper for about five minutes until they soften and start to turn translucent, but before they brown.

Boil a small pasta in salted water for about 5-6 minutes until it is just al dente.  Meanwhile, add four cups of chicken or vegetable stock to your vegetables along with two thinly sliced carrots, and one cup of either lima beans or fava beans. Heat it all through while the pasta is cooking, then combine everything in the large pot.

Pulse together some parsley, olive oil, and salt & pepper in a food processor to make a very simple pesto. I added garlic scapes to the party to add a hint of garlic flavor.

Top it all with your fresh pesto, and maybe some sharp cheese. There is so much depth of flavor here, it's amazing. The fennel, leeks, and aromatic vegetables really make this soup sing. It's really light & fresh, but the beans add a nice heartyness to it so you won't be left hungry.

Israeli Couscous, Radicchio, & Blistered Tomato Salad

My wife picked this recipe out of our latest Bon Apetit magazine. I would have (and probably did) glanced right over this and never given it any serious thought. But I am really glad she found it. I have already given the recipe to someone at my office.

It starts by grilling some radicchio. Cut it in half, spray or drizzle it with olive oil, and season with salt & pepper. Then get a nice char on both sides. Radicchio is a bitter vegetable, and charring it will heighten that flavor even more.

I decided to use my cast-iron grill pan to help with blistering the tomatoes. It seemed a lot easier than worrying about them falling through the grates, and I thought it would be more effective than a saute pan. I drizzled some olive oil  and again seasoned with salt & pepper. Cook them over high heat until the skin bursts and the tomatoes blister.

Bring in the charred radicchio and let it cool. Then slice it thinly and toss into a large bowl.

Cook some Israeli couscous in salted water with a tbsp of butter. These little gems are great. They're like rich little spherical pastas. I love using them.

Next, I chopped up some fresh oregano from our herb garden.

...and some fresh parsley.  Thinly slice some onions and leave them raw. It would be best if you can get them sliced super thin so that raw onion taste isn't too offensive. Then combine everything together and toss with a little more salt & pepper. You could finish it with some toasted almonds if you have them. (We did not.) Add some ricotta or Parmesan cheese to finish.

We decided to add some fresh lemon juice to balance out all the bitterness from the radicchio and onion. There is also a nice sweetness from the tomatoes, and a great richness from the buttery couscous. If you need a good vegetarian dish with a lot of bold, contrasting flavors -- then this dish is for you.

Lemon-Basil Pasta Salad

Here's another great summer side that is bright and fresh. It is really easy to make too.

I started by thinly slicing some of my trusty garlic scapes. The crunchy, mild garlic flavored little gems can be very versatile. And a small pack for $1 will last a long time.

Next I grabbed some fresh basil leaves from our garden.

Stack them together and roll them up like a sleeping bag.

Then you can slice through them to make nice little strips.

Boil some whole-wheat spiral pasta in salted water and drain.

Slice up a bunch of cherry tomatoes. I have taken to quartering them lengthwise. I think they look cool that way.

Mix it all together in a larger bowl with equal parts olive oil & lemon juice (I used about 1/4 cup). Top it with some Parmesan cheese and you're ready to go! The lemon & basil provide a lot of freshness to this salad. The acidity from the tomatoes and the salty Parmesan cheese make it really quite tasty. I have actually made this twice already. I think it's a great fresh pasta salad for the summer that is a break from the mayo-heavy sides at most summer get togethers.

Pizza-Style Potato Salad

We were guests at our friends' house for dinner recently, so I decided to bring a side. I wanted to make an olive oil-based potato salad with fresh herbs. I went out to our fresh herbs, had a look in our pantry, and came up with something kind of bonkers. I knew the flavors would go well together; but I wasn't sure how the whole dish would play out. I think it was pretty darned good. And our friends were nice enough to say the same thing.

I started by slicing these "Klondike Goldust" potatoes in half lengthwise. They are really similar to Yukon gold.

I put on my big-boy pants (and my safety hat) and bravely used the mandolin to slice them thinly. Then I put them in a pot of boiling salted water for about 8-10 minutes until they were soft. I rinsed them off in cold water in a colander to get rid of all the starch that can be on the outside. I also wanted to stop the cooking process and cool them down. My goal was to have them keep their shape and not turn into a chunky smashed potato.

Next, I sliced up some green and black olives and added them to a large bowl.

I cut up a bunch of green onions.

I sliced the whites of the green onions even thinner, then I added fresh basil.

So I've got olives, onion, and basil. What would logically come next? Pepperoni ... right?

I mixed it all together with some olive oil, salt & pepper, and topped it with some Parmesan cheese. I figured olive oil goes great with all those pizza ingredients: onion, basil, pepperoni, olives. And the sharp Parmesan cheese just make logical sense (in my mind, at least). So I had the makings of a pizza without the dough. My potatoes were what held everything together.

Like I said, it's kind of off-the-wall. But it was good. It's an interesting play on potato salad that is sure to raise a few eyebrows.

Marinaded Chicken Skewers

Nothing says summer to me quite like grilling.

I have written before about how under-appreciated I feel chicken can be. If given enough love, and proper cooking techniques, chicken can be juicy & delicious. I'm running the risk of patting myself on the back too much here, but I think this is an excellent way to showcase a really humble ingredient. In fact, I'm going to show you how to cook with bone-in, skin-on, chicken legs ... which are the least expensive kind.

That's right. $1.29/lb in a day when beef prices have never been higher. But if you're willing to do a little bit of work yourself, these are delicious. You can also just keep things really simple and fast, and cook what I believe to be really fantastic Blackened Chicken Drumsticks.

I grew up only liking dark chicken. It is more fatty & moist than the breast. I have evolved a lot over the years in my taste for food, but I still love chicken legs.

Grab a hold of the chicken skin at one side and pull really hard until you remove it all toward the other end. Get a sharp knife and cut all the skin off.

Then take some time and trim all the meat into bite-sized pieces ready for your skewers.

The key here is a marinade that I invented. (It is quite possible that somebody else has been using this for years. But the fact remains that I came up with it on my own without any outside reference.) I like to start with soy sauce and honey. That will get the chicken wet & sticky, and then I add the dry ingredients on top.  I love the combination of mustard powder & cayenne pepper.

I was committed to this dish being jam-packed with flavor, so I left mine covered in the refrigerator for 24 hours to marinade.

If you are using wooden skewers, it is best to soak them in water first so they won't burn on you. I used some old metal kebob skewers -- but you have to be careful not to burn yourself. They get really hot, so I use tongs to turn them over on the grill.

The dark meat stays juicy & tender, and the sweet, spicy, salty marinade really makes these things sing! I like to get just a little bit of char on the outside to finish it all off.

The best news is that my wife had some leftovers, which were excellent served in a cold wrap with Thai chili paste and kim-chi.

Horseradish-Bacon Dip

Need I say more?!

I was at an art's festival recently and one of the vendors had a booth with different dipping sauces he created. I sampled a few of them, but I was instantly attracted to the "Horsey Bacon" because I love bacon. Horseradish is a tasted that I have acquired over the years. So I thought this would be a really bold dip.

His company is called Epic Eateries and you can find him on Facebook. You just take these flavor packets and mix them with sour cream and you're ready to go! It's really simple and a lot more exciting than buying a dip off the shelf. (And I should tell you that I have a weakness for chips & dip.)

I first tried it with a pretzel since that was how I had it during the initial sampling. He said to use as much, or as little, of the seasoning packet as you wanted depending on how strong you want to make it. I was getting the bacon flavor, but I wanted to ramp up the horseradish. So I added about another Tbsp of horseradish sauce ... and I couldn't leave well enough alone so I added some green onions too.

I don't want to steal this guy's thunder, because he makes a good product. But I am now going to try to make this on my own. You can buy little jars of horseradish sauce at the grocery store, and there is this wonderfully awful product called "Bacon Salt" that I just adore. It is soy, though, so it's kosher, vegetarian, and vegan friendly. It basically tastes like powdered Bacon Bits, and it goes really well on baked potatoes, popcorn, or to season chicken and yes: pork chops.

I will post my home creation when I have it up soon.

This dip is great because it's rich and robust. That horseradish adds a nice spice level and the smoky bacon undertones balance it out nicely. I brought it over to some friends' house recently with a bag of potato chips and it seemed to be a big hit.

Fresh Rhubarb Chutney

We visited my parents up in Clear Lake recently and during one of our walks my mom suggested we pick some of her neighbor's fresh rhubarb. It was a really large plant, and she told my mom to take as much as we wanted.

As soon as we got home my wife decided to make a chutney with the rhubarb. Growing up my grandma used to make what she called "rhubarb sauce" that was a lot like applesauce. I loved it so much, she kept giving me jars for the next twenty years.  This chutney is very similar.

She started of by slicing some fresh ginger.

Next came what looks like 1/3 cup of brown sugar.

She added that to the chopped rhubarb in a saucepan and cooked it for 10-20 minutes until it bubbled away.

After those flavors had gotten to know each other pretty well, she extracted the ginger slices.

By this point the rhubarb had broken down and released a lot of moisture. The chutney is a lot like a jelly that you can use to top ice cream, waffles, or just spread on some English muffins.

It is sweet from the natural sugars plus the addition of some brown sugar; but there is also a nice tartness and acidity from the rhubarb that makes this a really enjoyable taste. The ginger kind of rounds out the flavor profile and gives you a really bold (condiment) if you will, that is versatile in what you add it to. As a kid I just liked to eat a small bowl of it.  Now that I'm an adult I will get to try it in bunch of new ways.