Glutenfreedelicacy

Beef and Mushroom Soup

Recently we bought the book New Flavors for Soups at Williams Sonoma, which features all sorts of interesting and delicious looking recipes using fresh, local and seasonal ingredients while combining global flavors. The book is categorized by seasons, with many dishes we can't wait to make and post on this blog.

So we decided to kick-off our 2011 tastebud adventures to the country shaped like a boot, aka Italy. We selected a Beef and Mushroom Soup with Farro recipe, and in place of farro we used arborio rice to make it gluten free. 

We began by making our own beef stock, which took over 2 1/2 hours of careful nurturing in creating the backbone for this earthly wonder. This was the first time we've made our own stock and it was definitely well worth the wait.

This soup was a kick in the palette pants chock-full of woodsy, earthy flavors, plump texture and meaty richness. It was a memorable hearty party indeed — one that we look forward to savoring again.

For the soup recipe, click here: Beef & Mushroom Soup with Farro

For the beef stock recipe, click here: Rich Beef Stock

Pig and Figoliscious

We love cooking with pork, not only because it’s perfect for grilling, it’s lean, juicy and works well with a variety of marinades and seasonings. So after searching online for an interesting recipe, it was this Fig and Chile-Glazed Pork Tenderloin from Cooking Light that tantalized our tastebuds.

We’re seeing figs used in a lot of unique dishes and cocktails these days, and since we love the taste, we were really looking forward to this meal. 

This recipe calls for fig preserves, and we used this quick and easy recipe by Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network website as a base, with a few of our own tweaks. For ours we cut the sugar down to ¼ cup, and added about a ¼ cup of water to reduce thickness, and 4-5 tablespoons of bourbon. For an extra kick, we used the flavor injector filled with approx. 2 tablespoons of bourbon to marinade the pork minutes before grilling. We served collard greens as a side from Trader Joe’s, and washed it all down with our own Fig Sidecar. 

Wow — we felt like we were eating a gourmet celebration dinner with this super-tasting meal. The pork was cooked to perfection, very tender and juicy with it’s charred outer crispiness that we love so much. The fig sauce was absolutely divine — an amazing luscious and savory blend of tangy, zesty, smoky, sweet, and woody flavors that intensified after each blissful bite. By all the oohhhing, uummming, and aahhhing being said, our neighbors probably thought that someone was getting porked! Actually it was our tastebuds getting porked, and we loved every bite of it!! 

 

For our Fig Sidecar, we added two heaping tablespoons of the leftover fig sauce to an ice-filled martini shaker. Then added two shots of bourbon, and two shots of our very own date and raisin infused bourbon that we had on hand. Toss in a tablespoon of bitters, a squeeze of one juicy lemon, and a splash of orange juice. Shake like crazy, pour into a cocktail glass, garnish with a few peach slices, and get ready for a fabulously tasty (and potent) treat! Feel free to reduce the bourbon if you like less kick.