Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Black Bean Chipotle Soup



Delicious Delicious
Great soup for cold weather. Uses up leftovers from your fridge and is a nice twist on chilli. Serve with corn bread or good bread for dipping or flax seed tortillas as I did here.

Ingredients:
Box of vegetable stock/broth
1 can black beans
1 small can diced fire roasted tomatoes or diced tomatoes and green chilles
1 red onion
2 ribs of celery
2-3 carrots
1 zucchini
2 cloves garlic
2 chipotle peppers
1 TBS cumin
1 tsp coriander
1tsp chille powder
3-4 cups kale leaves
1 cup frozen corn
2-3 small potatoes cooked (I had some leftover baked potato)
cilantro and scallions for garnish
salt to taste (note about salt: make sure to salt each layer of the dish so it is not over or under salted. ie. salt veggies while cooking, then add liquid, taste, and salt again if needed, cook then taste salt again and so on. I find if you salt components as you cook them you wont need much when liquid is added and remember the more spice and flavor the soup has the less salt you need.)

Saute onion until soft, add diced celery, carrots and zucchini. Add garlic and cook together for 5 min. Add chipotles, salt and spices and cook for an additional minutes. You can do this sauteing in EVOO I like to use just a little and if pan gets dry add some of the canned tomato liquid. When all veggies are soft add broth, tomatoes and beans. Bring to a boil and cook together for 30min. Add cooked potatoes, frozen corn and kale 15 minutes before serving. You could also put pasta in here or really any veggies you have on hand. Spinach, peppers, squash, sweet potato and peas come to mind! Happy fall!

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Italian Flag Pizza



Delicious Delicious
Obviously named because of it colors, this pizza is satisfyingly tasty and pretty healthy.

1 package pizza dough regular or whole wheat
Spinach pesto (recipe below)
sundried tomatoes
kalamata olives
fresh tomatoes
1/2 cup extra firm tofu crumbled and mixed with garlic powder, dried oregano, salt and fresh ground pepper.

Spinach pesto:
2 cups baby spinach
handful basil leaves
1 clove garlic
1-2 TBS EVOO
salt and pepper to taste
pinch of red chile flakes

Combine in blender or food processor until smooth. Spread on prepared pizza base and add toppings in order listed above. Bake according to package directions ours was 12min at 425.