Posts Tagged ‘beans’

Ribollita — Italian for “reboiled” — is a hearty Tuscan vegetable and bread soup with peasant origins.  Its name comes from the practical reheating of yesterday’s minestrone soup, throwing in whatever leftover vegetables and stale bread you had lying around, and reboiling the whole concoction. I’m happy just to start from scratch and wind up with the same lovely, warm, comforting soup, since leftovers are so rare with four teenage boys eating us out of house and home!

If I had to pick my favorite cuisine, it would be rustic Italian or French. Nothing fancy, just simple, traditional, slow-cooked, handcrafted dishes that you know are made with a whole lotta love. Ribollita is a perfect example…

Category: Recipes

Looking for a comforting, hearty, winter dish that you can pull together pretty quickly? Look no further! This simple one-pot wonder can be enjoyed as either a delicious soup or a belly-warming stew, depending on how long you reduce the broth. And leftovers—if there end up being any—are a most welcome sight and reheat easily over a low flame.

The recipe comes from a favorite old cookbook called American Brasserie by Chicago chefs Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand. With my lifelong penchant for collecting cookbooks, my library has long since outgrown a shelf in my kitchen, and I have to be selective about which books make it to the shelf of honor and which live a…

Category: Recipes

Big football weekend = big pot of delicious chili!

A few cold Sundays ago, knowing it would be an afternoon spent watching football in front of the fire, I had a hankering for chili. It had been in the back of my head since we had seen the chili cookoff episode of Top Chef earlier in the month, and knowing that chili is a process rather than a “yikes, it’s 5:30 on a Thursday…what should I whip up?” kind of dinner, I decided the time had come. I searched for a meat-and-beans version that I could cook all afternoon, and the recipe I chose was from Bobby Flay: Beef & Black Bean Chili with Toasted Cumin…

Category: Recipes

Ain’t gonna lie to ya, folks. This recipe is fairly time-consuming and involved. BUT…these babies aren’t even remotely related to your standard bar fare, and in our opinion, it’s more than worth it for scrumptious, over-the-top nachos that make you vow never to order pathetic “super nachos” at your local brew hall or chain restaurant again.

I’m waving good-bye to the two-thirds of you who will promptly stop reading when I reveal that you actually fry up your own chips from quartered corn tortillas. So ta-ta, and we’ll catch you next time.

Okay, you lone talented, bad-ass kitchen hottie: now that it’s just you and me, I’ll tell you the secret is that it takes literally five…

Category: Recipes