Roasted Vegetable Soup with Cilantro Lime Cream

I LOVE roasted red peppers, I can't get enough of them!  I put them in everything from pasta sauce, to spinach artichoke dip (recipe coming soon), to a basic sauteed veggie side dish.  Yum!  Doing the roasting yourself is super easy, no need to waste money on the ones that come in jars.


Last year I discovered the art of roasting various vegetables, throwing them in the food processor with some stock or heavy cream and a few seasonings, and there you have it, a delicious concoction that can be used in a few different ways.  The consistency of the final product lends itself well to a creamy soup, or you can throw it over pasta or some chicken and make a larger meal out of it.


Lots of different veggies lend themselves nicely to roasting.  For this soup, I used Red Peppers, Carrots and Tomatoes.  The red peppers are the stars, and really you are adding other veggies to get some more nutrition and to make a little go a long way!  Start by prepping the veggies: cleaning, cutting the larger pieces into half, removing the seeds, and tossing them very lightly (1/2 tablespoon or so) of oil.  I use veggie oil, because I don't want to waste my olive oil on roasting (I am on a budget you know)!  Main reason for the oil: prevent the veggies from sticking to the pan as they roast.

The smaller cherry tomatoes are left whole, but the Roma tomatoes are cut in half lengthwise, and the seeds are removed.  The carrots are peeled, cut in thirds, and the thicker pieces (3/4 to 1 inch in diameter) are cut lengthwise.  Roast the veggies in the oven at about 350F for an hour or so, until they look like this:

The cherry tomatoes started to split, and there was some nice color forming on the peppers. Just look at those delicious tomatoes just bursting to see you!  Do your best to hold back from enjoying this yumminess at this step!!   

At this point you will want to remove some of the skins from the peppers and tomatoes.  Don't worry if you cant get them all, just get as much as you can so you don't end up with lots of skin in your soup.


Transfer all your roasted deliciousness to your food processor or blender (either would work fine for this).  Add some garlic, cilantro, lime zest, and cream and let the machine do its thing!  Blend until its a uniform consistency.  Taste test, adjust seasonings as needed, or add more cream if its too thick for your liking.  I ended up using a whole half pint of cream, but I started out using only about 1/2 of the container, and then slowly added more until I got to the best consistency for me.


Cilantro Lime Cream.  Sounds fancy doesn't it?  So incredibly simple you will be like - seriously?, Thats it?  To which I will say - Yup!!  Literally all it takes is some fresh cilantro (which you can get for about $1 a bunch at a farmers market), the juice of a lime (the same one you zested for the soup, can get 3/$1 at the farmers market or produce shop), and some sour cream.  Mix those 3 ingredients together, and BAM, cilantro lime cream!  Put the mixture in the fridge while your veggies are roasting to let the flavors develop and combine.


I served this soup as an appetizer when my family came for dinner a few nights ago and it was a huge hit!  Put the soup in a cute little bowl, and put a dollop of the cream on top.  Swirl it with the end of the spoon to make it look even more tasty than it already is!

Roasted Vegetable Soup

4 large red peppers - cleaned, seeds removed, halved lengthwise

4-5 carrots - skinned, cut in thirds, with larger pieces cut lengthwise

2 roma tomatoes* - cleaned, halved, skins removed

12 cherry tomatoes* - cleaned

1/2 tbsp vegetable oil

1/2 pint heavy cream

Zest of 1-2 limes

1 tbsp of chopped fresh cilantro

1/2 tbsp diced garlic

*You can use any tomatoes you have on hand, but make sure to remove seeds from the larger varieties.

Toss the red peppers, carrots, and tomatoes lightly in the oil and spread on a baking sheet.  Roast in oven at about 350F for an hour, or until the skins on the peppers blacken, and the cherry tomato skins burst.  (NOTE: while the veggies are in the oven, make the cilantro lime cream, recipe below).  

As soon as the vegetables are cool enough to handle, remove as much of the tomato and pepper skins as possible, but don't worry if you can't get them all.  Transfer all vegetables to a food processor or blender.  Add some of the heavy cream (can always add more, but can't take it out once its in!). Add lime zest, cilantro, and garlic.  Blend until consistency is smooth.  Taste, adjust seasonings as desired, and add more cream if needed to thin out the final soup.  Blend again, re-taste, repeat, until you are happy with the flavor.  Heat soup on stovetop if needed.

Cilantro Lime Cream

1/2 tbsp fresh cilantro - minced 

Juice of 1 lime

3/4 - 1 cup sour cream

Combine all ingredients while the vegetables are roasting in the oven.  Place mixture in the refrigerator so the flavors combine until the soup is ready.  Put a 1 tbsp dollop of this mixture on top of the soup before serving.

Ideas for the Leftovers

If for some crazy reason you end up with leftover soup, here are a couple ideas for using it up (other than having the soup again, which is always an excellent option!)

• Use as a sauce over pasta
• Combine with cheese, cooked ground beef or turkey, and use as a stuffing for baked shells
• Use instead of pizza sauce on homemade pizza

Enjoy!

Stuffed Chicken, Brussel Sprouts, and a Salad with Apple, Bacon and Feta

I really enjoy cooking with vegetables.  My husband and I watched a documentary a little over a year ago, and since then we have tried to change the way our family eats.  The mentality is - have the protein (i.e. the meat) be your SIDE dish, and showcase the vegetables.  I try very hard to incorporate veggies in everything we make, and so you will see a lot of veggies in my recipes.  You are probably thinking to yourself, seriously?  On $60 per week for groceries, you have room for veggies?  The short answer - YES!!!  With a tight budget the key thing is to prioritize, and find great places to shop!


We tend to go to one store for all our fruit and vegetable needs, and then hit other stores for the basics (milk, unsalted butter, juice, bread, etc).  Roughly one third of our budget goes to fresh fruits and veggies every week.  Rarely will my kitchen NOT have apples, bananas, grapes, red peppers, onions, green veggies (broccoli, spinach, or green beans), and we usually have others that are in season, like butternut squash in the fall, strawberries in the summer... you get the point! 

Both fruits and veggies pack a lot of flavor, and happen to have some great nutrients too as an added bonus!  I wont get too detailed in the nutritional benefit of all these great ingredients, but if you are interested in some links to bring you to my favorites, let me know!


I know Brussels sprouts on their own don't tend to spark cravings for anyone.  But what if I told you that I cook them in bacon fat?  Oh yeah!  I'm not messin' around!  After all, everything is better with bacon right?  I had this amazing salad at a restaurant while travelling for work, and wanted to recreate it at home.  It wasn't a complicated salad, but it was tasty!  Spinach, lettuce, apples, bacon, feta cheese, pecans, and dried cranberries.  I had to cook the bacon anyway to have in the salad, so decided not to let the fat go to waste.  Hello Brussels sprouts, meet bacon fat!


So this salad is super simple, and if you don't have all the ingredients on hand, please don't waste a trip to the store for this recipe!  Save it for next week!  That is another one of my tips for staying on the budget... do all your shopping for the week in one trip (hitting a few stores in that trip of course).  If it isn't in the house, its not for dinner.  No cranberries?  Try raisins!  No feta?  Throw in another cheese.  No one will know but you!


Start with a bed of lettuce and spinach.  Use all lettuce, or all spinach if you want, I just happened to use a 50/50 blend (spinach is under the lettuce).  Tip:  pulling the stems of the spinach is a great task for a little helper - my 4 year old daughter helps with that!

Slice your favorite apple into thin "potato chip" slices, and then in half to get semicircle pieces of apple.  Organize the apples into a pretty circle in the bowl, top with some crumbled feta and dried cranberries.

Cook the bacon until its crispy.  I cooked 4 slices, but that is only because I knew at least 2 slices would be consumed before they made it to the salad.  Retain at least 1 tbsp of bacon fat for the Brussels sprouts.

Crumble the cooked bacon and add it to the salad.  Add the pecans, and its done!

Salad with Apple, Bacon, and Feta

1 cup spinach, stems removed
1 cup lettuce
1 medium apple, sliced
1/4 cup feta cheese
2 sliced bacon, crumbled
1/4 cup pecans
1/4 cup dried cranberries
Combine all ingredients in a bowl.  Serve with your favorite vinaigrette (like Raspberry Vinaigrette). 

Now on to the Brussels sprouts.  A few years ago my brother, who is a great cook, trained in culinary arts, made this fantastic side dish for Thanksgiving with Brussels sprouts, which, sad to say, was my first introduction to the vegetable.  This recipe is a spin on what he did.  


Start by sauteing a little diced onion in the bacon fat.  Peel and dice an apple.  After the onion has become transleucent (about 2-3 minutes), add diced apple.

Prep the Brussels sprouts.  Run them under some cold water, and remove any of the loose outer leaves.  Cut off the bottom stalk, and then in half lengthwise.  I find this dish especially tasty with a smaller dice on the sprouts, so that the leaves start to separate and caramelize as they are getting happy in the pan!

It may not look like a lot now, but when you chop them all up, you end up with a decent amount.  See how all the leaves are starting to come apart?  That's a good thing!

Add these to the pan with the apples and onion.  Do a light stir and just let them go, on medium-high heat for about 10-15 minutes, or until they are tender and some of the leaves are starting to brown, stirring every couple minutes.  For an extra kick of flavor, drizzle a little maple syrup over them as they cook.

Brussels sprouts just added to the saute pan with the apple and onion

After about 10-15 minutes.

 To serve, put them in a bowl with and garnish with a slice of bacon.  (You can of course, crumble it up and mix it in when you dish it out!)

Brussels Sprouts

Bacon fat (from cooking 2-3 slices of bacon)
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 medium apple, sliced and chopped
8 Brussels sprouts, chopped
1/2 tbsp maple syrup
Cook the onion in the bacon fat in a medium frying pan on medium-high heat.  After 2-3 minutes add the apple.  As the Brussels sprouts are chopped, add them to the pan.  After all are added, give the mixture a light stir and drizzle with the maple syrup.  Continue cooking, on medium-high heat, stirring occassionally, until cooked through, about 10-15 minutes.  Makes about 4 servings.

So now we have a salad, and a veggie dish.  Now we will do the stuffed chicken.  Since the chicken isn't the centerpiece, one boneless skinless chicken breast will feed my family of 3.  Want leftovers? Double the recipe!  NOTE: if you are going to make all these items in this post together, do the chicken FIRST so it can bake while you are working on the other two recipe's!


Start by making the stuffing.  Drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil in a medium frying pan, and add diced onion, cooking over medium heat.  "Bake" 2 sweet potatoes in the microwave, using the "baked potato" button.  Totally a cheat, I know, but it works!  After the onion starts to get translucent, add some minced garlic to the pan.

Spoon the sweet potato out of the skins, and add it to the pan.  Let it cook for a couple minutes.

Add some fresh spinach to the pan, and let it cook with the rest of the mixture, until it looks like this:

Transfer this mixture to a small food processor, and add some shredded cheese (I used an "Italinan blend").  

Blend until smooth.  This mixture will be a little sticky.  That's OK.  This is your stuffing mixture.   

Cover one boneless skinless chicken breast loosely with plastic wrap, and pound it to an even thickness, roughly 1/2" thick.  Time to take out some aggression from a rough day at work!  Season the chicken with some pepper and other dry seasonings (I used Emeril's Italian Essence).  Spread the sweet potato mixture evenly over the chicken.

Use the plastic wrap to help you roll the chicken up to form your stuffed chicken.  Put it in a square baking dish, that you oiled lightly with extra virgin olive oil, so the chicken doesn't stick.  Bake at 350F for about an hour, or until the juices on the chicken run clear.

Before baking

When you take the chicken out, let it rest a few minutes before you slice it.  

Stuffed Chicken
Extra virgin olive oil
1/2 medium onion, diced
1/2 tbsp minced garlic
2 sweet potatoes, baked
1 cup spinach
1/2 cup shredded cheese (mozzarella or similar)
1 boneless skinless chicken breast
Pepper, other dry seasonings (whatever you prefer)
Cook onion in extra virgin olive oil in a medium frying pan on medium-high heat.  Add mixed garlic.  Spoon in the sweet potato (without skins).  Add the spinach.  Cook until the spinach is wilted, about 2 minutes.  Transfer mixture to a small food processor.  Add cheese.  Blend until uniform.  Pound the chicken until about 1/2" thick, and season on both sides with pepper and other dried herbs.  Spread the sweet potato mixture on the chicken, and roll up.  Bake at 350F for about an hour, or until juices run clear on the chicken.

There you have it.  I added an extra baked sweet potato as another side dish for this meal.  The finished plate, all dished out, is below.  Enjoy!

Stuffed Chicken, Brussel Sprouts, Salad with Apples and Bacon, and a baked sweet potato.  YUM!

Green Smoothie and an intro to me

I have been kicking around the idea of writing a food blog for a few months now.  I mean, how hard can it be right?  I like to cook, I like to experiment, so we can take a couple pictures and throw it all together.... piece of cake!  I guess we'll soon find out!

So now, here I am, my first post on the Economical Entree.  Why that name?  Well for one thing, we live on a tight budget.  Not because we have to, but because we want to.  We started our frugal life almost 2 years ago, when we relocated for my new job and my husband was unable to find work.  So, he became a stay at home dad, and so became our life on one income.  It was tough, I am not going to lie.  We were a family that liked to eat out... A LOT.  Our daughter was well behaved in restaurants, simply because half her dinners a week were in one!  Not so nice on the budget, but back then I can honestly say we had no clue what we spent our money on.  

We have come a long way in the last 2 years.  My husband and I are on the envelope system, and most of our day to day is done with cash.  Bills are all set up online ahead of time, and we use cash for all other purchases, including food, household cleaning supplies, pet supplies, even gas.  I fully intend on devoting some of these posts to how we made the evolution, and what we are doing now, but that detail is for another day.

For the first recipe I figured I would do something simple, and honestly I can say not terribly original, since I first learned about it from a friends post on one of those social networking sites.  The idea of a green smoothie was very odd to me at first... how can something green be tasty?  Ick!  But hey, I am brave, I'll give it a whirl.  Besides, its super healthy.

Not the best picture, but you get the idea.  I will be the first to admit that it doesn't look terribly tasty, but if you like banana and peanut butter, this is right up your alley.

Super simple ingredients: milk, yogurt (I happened to use Greek, but not required), banana, peanut butter, and spinach.  I started making this Green Smoothie because we had a big bag of spinach that hadn't been used up yet, and with our $60 a week grocery budget there is no room for being wasteful!  

This smoothie is highly customizable.  Don't like peanut butter and banana?  Try strawberry and banana.  Throw in some protein powder to make up for the peanut butter you take out.  The banana is just a means to make it creamy... if you cant stand bananas you could always use avacado to get that texture (though you are wasting a great chance to make some guacamole using them here).  Note to self: do a post about guacamole soon!

Blend it all up and enjoy yummy deliciousness smoothie style.

To be completely honest, I am not much of a measurer, but I know you cant write a recipe without amounts, so I will do my best to be in the ball park.

Super Healthy Green Smoothie

1 banana

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons peanut butter

1/2 cup vanilla yogurt (Greek or otherwise)

2 cups spinach

3 ice cubes

Put all ingredients in blender, in order listed.  Blend until smooth.  Enjoy!

There you have it, my first blog!  Not too shabby for my first go of it right?