For a combination of six ingredients, eight if you count water and salt, this soup has amazing flavor. I wanted a hearty, wintery, bean soup, and I was willing to expend the energy to soak the beans, chop vegetables, and stir for hours while it simmered. Then, I found this recipe, and almost none of that was required. Did you know you don’t even have to soak baby lima beans before cooking them? I didn’t. They’re big enough, even though they’re babies, that I would have assumed they should be soaked overnight like other dried beans. In less than an hour of simmering, they were cooked through and tender. As they cooked in plain water, a head of garlic bobbed along with them and added flavor. Sauteed onion and chipotles were added once the beans were cooked, and other than squeezing in some lime juice, that was all the effort that was needed. This soup is found in Super Natural Cooking
, and it was part of a nice, light meal with a citrus and celery salad.
As I mentioned, the baby limas were not soaked. They were simply washed and then placed in a pot with water. The top was cut off a bulb of garlic and it was added to the water. This was left to simmer for 40 minutes. Meanwhile, I finely chopped an onion and a few chipotles from a can, and those were sauteed in clarified butter. The beans really don’t demand any special attention while they cook, but you should check them for doneness just before 40 minutes have elapsed to be sure they don’t get to a point of mushiness. When they were just cooked through, the sauteed onion and chipotles, some adobo sauce from the can of chipotles, and salt were added. After a few more minutes of simmering, the soup was ready.
The soup was so easy to prepare that I actually went ahead and made the suggested garnish as well. Crunchy topopos were made from a multi-grain tortilla which was thinly sliced, the strips were tossed with some vegetable oil, and they were baked for a few minutes. They were a nice textural contrast on top of the spicy, brothy soup. The butter sauteed onions added richness while the chipotles’ smokiness and spice worked some kind of magic. This tasted far more complex than it actually was, and I might not have believed how simple the recipe was had I not prepared it myself. 
Fresh, crisp, light, and brightly-flavored aren’t terms that are used to describe winter food very often. But, this is a winter salad, and it’s all of those things. Those cute boxes of clementines in all the grocery stores had been calling out to me for weeks, and I finally brought one home. I haven’t yet decided how to use the remaining 50 or so clementines other than for snacking, but seven of them were delicious in this salad. There are also kumquats, hence the name, celery slices, and crunchy walnuts. I found the recipe in Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson.
The clementines were peeled, and the segments were pulled apart. Celery stalks were thinly sliced on a diagonal. I really like celery leaves, and I tend to use the interior stalks with leaves intact for salads. So, the slices and chopped leaves joined the clementine segments in a large bowl. Then, ten kumquats were thinly sliced, seeds were scooted aside, and those slices joined the salad followed by toasted walnuts. A quick vinaigrette was made from lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. The vinaigrette was carefully mixed into the salad by hand so as to prevent the citrus pieces from breaking. Last, the plated salad was topped with parmesan shaved from a block of cheese.
There’s nothing wrong with typical, slow-roasted and braised winter dishes, in fact there’s one I’m planning to mention soon, but this salad was a nice bit of freshness in the midst of this season. It was sweet, tart, nutty, and fruity all at the same time. As I served it, I thought it might also be nice on a bed of baby arugula leaves to add a peppery note, or fennel slices might be a lovely addition to it. I don’t mean to overcomplicate it though because the simplicity of its mix of flavors was great just as it was.
Out with the old and in with the new. That’s what made me finally try a different recipe for cinnamon rolls. I had been making the same cinnamon rolls for years. I’ve changed the recipe to include pumpkin puree at times, but other than that, my homemade rolls have always been made the same way. Many moons ago, my cookbook library consisted of one book and that was The New Basics. The New Basics does not have a recipe for cinnamon rolls, and that’s why my collection grew to two books. Note: that book does have a recipe for sticky buns, but I wasn’t smart enough to think of checking for that at the time. I was at a bookstore, flipping through a few different general cooking types of books, and bought the tenth edition of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook because it did have a recipe for cinnamon rolls. It served me well for years until I decided it was time to try the Saveur cream cheese cinnamon rolls that Joy the Baker made. The key ingredient, cream cheese, is in the dough not the frosting.
After trying these twice, I didn’t completely sweep out the old. I realized there were a couple of details from my stand-by method that I couldn’t abandon. The dough ingredients were much like those for my old rolls other than the use of cream cheese, but there was a difference with the butter. For the new rolls, the butter was to be softened to room temperature and then kneaded into the dough with a dough hook on a mixer. It didn’t work itself into the dough very well, and the first time I ended up kneading a bit by hand to be sure the butter was incorporated. The second time, I warmed the butter to almost but not quite melting as I always did in the old version and then didn’t have to knead by hand. Then, after the dough had doubled in size, it was rolled into a ten inch square, and this is where the cream cheese was added. Softened cream cheese was spread on the square of dough, and the dough was folded almost like folding butter into homemade puff pastry which I still haven’t attempted. So, the dough was folded into thirds like a letter and then turned and folded again. Then, it was rolled out into a large rectangle to be topped with fillings. This new recipe suggests brushing the dough with melted butter, but again I reverted to my old ways with the butter. The first time around, the melted butter seemed to run out of the rolls and the bottoms browned too quickly as they baked. So, the second time, I spread very soft but not melted butter on the dough just like old times. A topping mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, maple syrup and granulated sugar was spread on the buttered dough, and I included pecans and raisins one time but not the other just to mix it up. Then, the dough was rolled and cut and the rolls were placed in a buttered baking dish. You can either let the rolls rise for two hours and bake them, or you can place them in the refrigerator overnight. If refrigerated, they should come to room temperature before being baked.
Old recipe or new, it’s hard to beat the aroma of homemade cinnamon rolls in the oven. When they were baked and cooled, they were topped with a simple confectioner’s sugar frosting with some maple syrup in it. This is a richer version of a cinnamon roll than my old recipe, and the dough was tender and incredibly good. In the end, I don’t think the old will be thrown out since it almost seems like a light recipe now, but I’m definitely keeping the new.
I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.
For a combination of six ingredients, eight if you count water and salt, this soup has amazing flavor. I wanted a hearty, wintery, bean soup, and I was willing to expend the energy to soak the beans, chop vegetables, and stir for hours while it simmered. Then, I found this recipe, and almost none of that was required. Did you know you don’t even have to soak baby lima beans before cooking them? I didn’t. They’re big enough, even though they’re babies, that I would have assumed they should be soaked overnight like other dried beans. In less than an hour of simmering, they were cooked through and tender. As they cooked in plain water, a head of garlic bobbed along with them and added flavor. Sauteed onion and chipotles were added once the beans were cooked, and other than squeezing in some lime juice, that was all the effort that was needed. This soup is found in Super Natural Cooking
The soup was so easy to prepare that I actually went ahead and made the suggested garnish as well. Crunchy topopos were made from a multi-grain tortilla which was thinly sliced, the strips were tossed with some vegetable oil, and they were baked for a few minutes. They were a nice textural contrast on top of the spicy, brothy soup. The butter sauteed onions added richness while the chipotles’ smokiness and spice worked some kind of magic. This tasted far more complex than it actually was, and I might not have believed how simple the recipe was had I not prepared it myself. 
