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Chicken Soup, Fast and Easy

Nov 11th, 2009
by Chef Deb.
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Healthy Chicken Soup with Vegetables and Noodles

Healthy Chicken Soup with Vegetables and Noodles

The news is filled with all kinds of scary flu stories, flu shot shortages and media hysteria bordering on panic in the streets. Phffft! Baloney. Swine flu, chicken flu, Hong Kong, King Kong, or Ho Chi Min, the flu is the flu I don’t care what fancy name you put on it. The flu, common colds and all sorts of transmuting bugs and viruses,  get a toe hold in your body when your immune system isn’t up to snuff. If you are stressed out (and who isn’t in this economy?), not getting enough sleep or exercise (or both), not eating right and not washing your hands often enough, you are a target for ugly bugs. The best way to keep the flu away, in my humble opinion, is to eat Chicken Soup with plenty of onions and garlic and a load of vegetables.  Onions and garlic are great anti-viral, anti-fungal and anti-bacterial agents.  They are the front runners in my personal anti-cootie campaign.

Is Chicken Soup hard to make? Nah. It’s fast and it’s easy and it’s healthy.  Here’s the basic recipe:

1 tbs. of olive oil

2 tbs. of butter

1 onion, chopped fairly fine

2 carrots, peeled and sliced rather thin

2 stalks of celery, cleaned and sliced

1-2 cloves of garlic, mashed or minced

1 zucchini, ends chopped off, and quartered

1 bay leaf

1 1/2 qts. of Chicken Stock or Broth (homemade is best. If you don’t have any, shoot for Organic)

1 cup or more left over cooked chicken, shredded or diced (those supermarket chickens work wonders)

1 tsp. of chicken soup base (Better Than Bouillon Organic Chicken Base is a good brand)

1/4 bag of egg noodles or 1 cup of left-over rice (optional)

Salt and pepper to taste

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Posted in: Soup.
Tagged: chicken · Chicken soup · chicken stock · colds · flu · immune system · Soup

Building a Better Pie Crust

Nov 6th, 2009
by Chef Deb.
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It’s finally a calm day. The catering events are over, the clients are fed, the checks are deposited and the bills are paid. Cat box cleaned, floors mopped and chopping boards bleached. Okay, I’m good to go!

Today, I thought I’d follow up on my Pie Crust article. We need to take it out of theory and give it a whirl of practice. The following recipe is from the article Pie Dreams by Nicole Rees featured in the October/November 2009 issue (#101) of Fine Cooking Magazine (page 58). I will give you Nicole’s original recipe and make my ingredient adaptions in the parenthesis:

Basic Pie Dough (makes one 9 inch pie crust)

6 ounces (1 1/3 cups) of unbleached all-purpose flour (we’ll use Bob’s Red Mill White Pastry flour)

1 tsp. granulated sugar (we’ll use C&H Baker’s Sugar…it’s finer)

1/2 tsp. table salt (we’ll use Morton’s Kosher salt)

4 ounces (8 Tbs) of cold unsalted butter, preferably European style, cut into 3/4 inch pieces (we’ll use Plugra)

3-4 Tbs. of ice water (no substitutes here. I’d rather drink the Vodka that Cooks Illustrated recommends than put it in the pie dough).

Side Note:  The article that this recipe is adapted from is excellent. I highly recommend that you go and drop $7.00 and pick up Fine Cooking Magazine. Nicole has better pictures.  I took all my own photos for this article and my camera was covered in pie gunk when I finished. Read more →

Posted in: Pastry Dough, Pie Crust.
Tagged: making pie crust · Pastry Dough · pie crust · pie dough

Pie Crust: The Holy Grail of the Holidays

Oct 30th, 2009
by Chef Deb.
2 comments

I don’t know what it is about pie crust dough but every year about this time, as the holidays start their engines, the cooking magazines begin the quest for the perfect pie crust.  The hunt is either on (at Cook’s Illustrated) or over (at Fine Cooking). There’s a deep-seated belief that the ‘perfect’ pie crust exists and, like the Holy Grail, the Cooks of the Round Table are on the search. Well, tally-ho!

The truth is, pie dough is really quite simple to make. The dough consists of flour, fat, sugar, salt and a liquid (usually ice

The best ingredients for pie crust dough

The best ingredients for pie crust dough

water). You can certainly add a couple of other things to make it richer, such as an egg yolk or sour cream, but the basic dough is fairly straight forward.  The real quest however, comes down to two qualities: tenderness and flakiness. Therein lies the art of creating the ‘perfect’ pie crust. If you can achieve both tenderness and flakiness in your pie crust you are the Master of the Universe. Tenderness is a quality that comes from both the type of flour and fat you use. Flakiness is a quality that is achieved by the type of fat used and how it is distributed throughout the dough. Read more →

Posted in: Pastry Dough.
Tagged: making pie crust · Pastry Dough · pie crust · pie dough

Welcome to Let’s Eat!

Oct 27th, 2009
by Chef Deb.
1 comment

Welcome to our website at Let’s Eat! Personal Chef Service and Catering. I’m Chef Deb and you can read all about me in About the Chef to the right. There’s information regarding our services, menus, testimonials and prices if you are looking to hire us for chef services and catering.  Our front page here is our blog and we’ll be writing about the food we cook for our clients and about our adventures in preparing those menus and meals. I’ll be giving you recipes to try at home because, basically, we are a service of home cooked meals. Since we are located in Portland, Oregon and are a big supporter of Oregon agriculture, small farmers, our own Farmer’s Markets and the local food scene, from time to time we’ll take you on field trips around the area. We enjoy profiling all the exciting and delicious food that comes from Oregon and the wonderful farmers, bread bakers, artisans and providers that contribute to our local cuisine. Read more →

Posted in: Welcome Page.

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