I just enjoyed two bowls of this soup for breakfast.

According to a Hatch Valley Chile Festival site: “Hot chile peppers burn calories by triggering a thermodynamic burn in the body, which speeds up metabolism.”

I’m not sure about the thermodynamic burn part. Sounds kinda wonky to me. Nevertheless, the quote eased my guilt as I ladled a second generous cup of this chowder into my breakfast bowl and watched a glistening gentle rain pelt the plants in my atrium. Life is good.

Recently, my Trader Joe’s started carrying frozen bags of Hatch chiles. On a try-a-new ingredient impulse (something that happens to me often), I bought a bag and tucked it away in my over-filled freezer. There is always room for one more frozen package, right?

But what to make with the chiles?

Then this recipe popped up in one of my nocturnal crawls through the recipe blogs. It’s wonderful–all the things a good chowder should be: thick, creamy, and flavorful with Just the right proportion of potatoes. As a welcome bonus, this chowder is gently spiced with a full cup of Hatch chiles.

I made it yesterday as the rains began and Juliet was contentedly napping. I find few things more pleasurable than cooking on a rainy day.

Don’t wait to try this recipe.

Who can’t use a good thermodynamic burn this time of year?

The link to the original recipe on the blog everydaysouthwest.com can be found at the end of this post.

Yields 6 to 8 servings

Caldo Con Queso

A gently-spiced potato, corn and tomato chowder.

15 minPrep Time

25 minCook Time

40 minTotal Time

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Ingredients

• 1 T. olive oil
• 1 yellow onion (diced)
• 1 carrot (diced)
• 1 stalk celery (diced)
• 1/2 T. oregano leaves
• 1 T. minced garlic
• 6 C. vegetable broth
• Kernels from one corn cob (about 1 cup)
• 2 medium red potatoes (diced but not peeled)
• 1 C. diced tomatoes (I used fire-roasted)
• 1 C. roasted green chiles (I used Hatch chiles from Trader Joe's frozen section)
• 4 T. butter
• 4 T. flour
• 6 T. milk
• 8 ounces queso fresco (grated or finely diced)
• 8 ounces mild cheddar (grated or finely diced)
• Chopped cilantro for garnish

Instructions

1. Heat olive oil in a large soup pot. Sauté onion, carrot, garlic and celery in the olive oil until the onion begins to soften. Stir in the oregano leaves. Pour in vegetable broth. Add corn, red potatoes, diced tomatoes and green chiles. Bring soup to a boil and then lower heat and simmer for about 20 minutes until the potatoes have softened but still hold their shape.
2. Meanwhile, in a large sauce pan, melt butter and stir in flour. Stir flour/butter mixture over the heat until the flour takes on a light brown color. Whisk in milk and continue whisking until mixture starts to thicken. Mine thickened pretty quickly, so watch your pan at this step. Add more milk if necessary.
3. Add flour/butter mixture to the soup, whisking it in and continuing to whisk until the soup thickens.
4. Add cheese to the hot soup by handfuls just before serving. Thin soup with additional milk or vegetable broth as necessary.
5. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

Notes

This chowder will get very thick stored in your refrigerator. Thin with additional milk or vegetable broth.

Nutrition

Calories

713 cal

Fat

18 g

Carbs

113 g

Protein

25 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

19

https://bluecayenne.com/caldo-con-queso-spicy-cheese-and-chile-chowder

The link to the original recipe can be found here:

http://www.everydaysouthwest.com/first-courses/rustic-veggie-soup-with-cheese-cubes-or-carols-caldo-con-queso/

When I can’t sleep (which is often), I read recipes or watch You Tube cooking videos with Juliet snoring contentedly by my side. I usually select a cooking theme and then I’m good for hours.

During one recent insomnia-stained night, I came across this recipe for Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese on the New York Times’ cooking site and the next day I transformed it into what I think is a pretty delicious vegetarian Italian sauce. My Costco carries chantrelle mushrooms seasonally and I used them and a few baby bella mushrooms to give this sauce a meaty kick.  (The original recipe calls for 3/4 pound of ground beef chuck.) I added some spices, too.

The history of spaghetti is pretty interesting. While much is made of the story of Marco Polo bringing spaghetti back to Venice from his wanderings in China, food historians believe that pasta’s origins in Europe are much older, dating back to the Roman Empire when Romans ate a soft-wheat pasta called lagane (that’s where we get the word lasagna) . That pasta was oven-baked, though, rather than boiled. Modern-day spaghetti is made of hard-wheat semolina and historical records indicate that, by the 9th Century, the Arabs were consuming a hard-wheat pasta dish, itriya, that was shaped into strings. Itriya was one of the main sources of nutrition for Arab traders who carried it with them on their journeys and who probably introduced the pasta into Spain and Italy.  Early in the 12th Century Abu Abdullah Mohammed Al Edrisi, a North Africa-born and Spanish-educated geographer to Sicily’s Norman King Roger II (what kind of name is Roger for a King?), penned (you guessed it!) The Book of Roger in which he detailed spaghetti production in the Sicilian town of Trabia. Subsequently, spaghetti was carried around the world during the Age of Discovery. By the 19th Century, semolina pasta was being mass produced in Italy and, when Italians migrated to North America, they brought pasta with them.

In modern times, spaghetti is ubiquitous in America. From that famous and endearing Lady and The Tramp spaghetti scene to the gloppy canned Chef Boyardee spaghetti that my mother served to the trattorias that inhabit every upscale dining area in America, spaghetti (and pasta generally) has insinuated itself into every corner of American life. Americans are pikers, though, when compared with Italians who consume sixty pounds of pasta a year; we consume a measly twenty pounds per person per year.

In addition to the fascinating history of spaghetti, there is some great spaghetti trivia out there.

The Buca di Beppo Restaurant in Garden Grove, California, for example, set a world record in 2010 when it filled an above-ground swimming pool with 13,780 pounds of spaghetti. The restaurant bested the previous record of 9767 pounds of pasta in a pool that was set in Doha, Qatar. (If you are sitting there reading this and getting a little huffy over the apparent food waste, don’t. Buca di Beppo donated the spaghetti to be used as animal food. Picture Bessie and Clarabelle out there in the pasture living it up and slurping spaghetti to their sweet little bovine hearts’ content.)

I think the award for the best spaghetti trivia, though, has to go to those crazy joksters at the BBC in Great Britain. In 1957, the BBC staged an elaborate April Fool’s Day hoax with a broadcast about the annual spaghetti harvest in Switzerland. Their broadcast showed a family from Ticino, Switzerland, harvesting long strands of spaghetti from spaghetti trees. It was a joke worthy of Monty Python. Some straight-laced viewers complained that the BBC shouldn’t noodle around with the news (sorry!), but others contacted the network to inquire where they could buy spaghetti trees. Here is a still photo from the BBC spoof and one of the Buca di Beppo spaghetti extravaganza.

I’ll end this here with my favorite pasta photo. I remember getting teary as a young girl when Lady shared her spaghetti with Tramp. That had to be what true love was like, I thought. Come to think of it, I still get a little weepy over Lady and Tramp and I still believe in true love.

The link to the original recipe in the New York Times appears at the end of this post.

Bluecayenne.com

Yields 2 Cups

Serves 6

Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese Sauce…sort of

A delicious mushroom-laden take on traditional spaghetti bolognese.

30 minPrep Time

30 minCook Time

1 hrTotal Time

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Ingredients

• 1 T. vegetable oil
• 3 T. buttter plus 1 T. for tossing the pasta
• 1/2 C. chopped onion
• 2/3 C. chopped celery
• 2/3 C. chopped carrot
• 3 C. chopped chantrelle mushrooms (if available. If not, substitute baby bellas or use a mixture of both)
• Salt
• Black pepper
• 1 C. whole milk
• Whole nutmeg
• 1 C. dry white wine
• 28 oz. canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice (San Marzano tomatoes, if possible)
• Pasta
• Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
• 1 t. Italian seasoning
• 1 t. granulated garlic
• 1 t. whole fennel seeds

Instructions

1. Heat oil and butter in a large pan and sauté onion over medium heat until translucent. Add the chopped celery and carrot. Cook for about two minutes more, stirring to be sure vegetables are well-coated with butter.
2. Add chopped mushrooms, a generous pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper. Stir and sauté the mushrooms. Add the spices.
3. Add the milk and simmer until milk is reduced by half. Add 1/8 t. freshly grated nutmeg and stir.
4. Add the white wine and simmer until wine is reduced by half. Add tomatoes and stir. When the mixture begins to bubble, turn the heat down and let the sauce cook at a low simmer. You can add additional water to the mixture if it reduces too much. Cook for thirty minutes.
5. Serve over pasta. Garnish with basil leaves and grated cheese.

Nutrition

Calories

164 cal

Fat

5 g

Carbs

25 g

Protein

6 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

6

https://bluecayenne.com/marcella-hazans-bolognese-sauce-sort-of

Here is the link to the original recipe:http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015181-marcella-hazans-bolognese-sauce

It is overcast, drizzly and gloomy in Huntington Beach today. Cooking weather!

My good friend Sarah is an Ina Garten devotee. Well, actually, she is an “Ina ♥ Jeffrey” devotee. Show Sarah a good romance and she’s hooked. Connect the romance to good food and Sarah is lost. (I do have to admit that the Ina loves Jeffrey meme is pretty compelling. I’d cast Barbra Streisand as Ina and Robert Redford as Jeffrey in the movie.  No! Wait! That’s been done. Then, again, I’d cast Robert Redford as the romantic lead in just about every movie.)

I do have to admit that this cauliflower gratin is food for the gods! The Gruyere and Asaigo-laced white sauce is to die for and who doesn’t love cauliflower? My kitchen smells wonderful. And the counterpoint of the crunchy-cheesy topping and the smooth cheesy white sauce is spectacular.

This is an adaptation of a recipe from Garten’s Barefoot in Paris book. Buy it. It is a great book.

Sarah convinced me to buy Garten’s newest book, Cooking for Jeffrey. Sarah is an enabler for my cookbook-buying addiction. Bad Sarah.

I’m trying a new piece of software that will permit you to print Blue Cayenne recipes without all the narrative. I tried a different program earlier in the week and it didn’t work out. Cross you fingers that this one doesn’t conflict with any of the other widgets I’m using on this site. A year ago, when I started this blog, I didn’t even know what a widget was.

Yields Serves 4 to 6 persons.

Cauliflower Gratin

A rich and wonderful cauliflower gratin. Perfect served with a sliced pear salad and a glass of wine.

15 minPrep Time

30 minCook Time

45 minTotal Time

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Ingredients

• 1 large head of caulifower (cut into florets)
• Kosher salt
• 4 T. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter (divided)
• 3 T. all-purpose flour
• 2 C. hot milk
• 1/2 t. freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 t. grated nutmeg
• 3/4 C. grated Gruyere cheese (divided)
• 1/2 C. grated Asiago cheese (grated)
• 1/3 C. fresh sourdough bread crumbs

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Divide cauliflower into large florets and cook in boiling water until cauliflower is al dente (tender but firm). This will take 5 or 6 minutes. Remove from water and drain. Set aside.
3. Melt butter in a medium saucepan and whisk in flour, stirring constantly for about two minutes. Pour hot milk into the butter and whisk until smooth and thick. This will happen quickly. Remove thickened sauce from heat and whisk in salt, black pepper, nutmeg, 1/2 C. Gruyere cheese, and all of Asiago cheese.
4. Pour one third of sauce into a large 8 x 11 x 2 inch baking dish. Arrange drained cauliflower on top of sauce and cover with the remainder of the sauce.
5. Combine bread crumbs with the remainder of the Gruyere cheese and sprinkle this mixture on top of the cauliflower. Melt remaining two tablespoons of butter and drizzle over the bread crumbs.
6. Bake in a preheated 375 degree F. oven for 25-30 minutes or until the top of the gratin is browned.
7. Serve cauliflower gratin hot or at room temperature.

Nutrition

Calories

578 cal

Fat

15 g

Carbs

82 g

Protein

26 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

4

https://bluecayenne.com/cauliflower-gratin