Currently cooking from The Best Simple Recipes from America’s Test Kitchen

I may have said this about other recipes from this book, but I think this dish is my favorite. Really and truly.

At least for now.

Anyway, pasta, beans, pancetta, tomatoes and carrots. What’s not to like? As the days get shorter and the nights cooler, this is the kind of food I want to eat. And coming from this book you know it will be good and take less than 30 minutes to make.

The base of the soup is pancetta and onions, cooked until softened and browned. A bit of garlic is added, then canned, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, Parmesan cheese and a sprig of rosemary. Once the liquids have come to a boil, a can of cannellini beans and pasta (any small pasta will do – I used macaroni salad pasta) is stirred in. The soup simmers until the pasta is done, about 10 minutes or so.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe. First, I added another can of beans. After I stirred in the first can, it looked pretty skimpy, bean-wise. Fortunately, I just happened to have another can of small white beans in my cupboard. I also added a couple of chopped carrots for color and sweetness. I would keep both of these changes.

The soup was hearty and filling, but not dense, if that makes any sense. I loved adding the rosemary sprig at the beginning. Because you fish it out before serving, you get a hint of rosemary, but you don’t have  the woody pieces to deal with. Because the soup is only cooked until the pasta is al-dente, the carrots stayed firm and the beans didn’t dissolve into mush. Leftovers were even better, as the flavors kept developing. The pasta started to get a little mushy, but it was still very, very good.

Currently cooking from The Best Simple Recipes from America’s Test Kitchen

Fall has hit North Idaho, bringing with it falling pine needles, an end to my sad little tomato plants and a craving for warm soups and home-made bread. Who am I to resist?

This soup is easy, easy easy. You start off by browning some kielbasa sausage. That gets set aside while a couple of pounds of cleaned, chopped leeks are added to the pan, along with butter and red potatoes. Once the vegetables have started to soften, a little bit of flour is stirred in, followed by chicken stock. As the soup cooks, the flour starts to thicken it. Once everything is tender, part of the soup is pureed to give it more thickness and body. To finish it off, the browned sausage is stirred back in and heated through.

When I told Bryan we would be having potato leek soup for dinner, he said he didn’t like leeks — this coming from a guy who eats raw onions with gusto. After a couple of spoonfuls, though, he decided that leeks weren’t too bad, and in fact, he did like them.

This soup is comforting and filling. I wasn’t a big fan of the sausage and would either cut down the amount or replace it with something else, maybe some bacon or cubed pork loin.

Currently cooking from The Best Simple Recipes from America’s Test Kitchen

This is what happens when I take a break from cooking — Bryan steps in and knocks out a winner. Maybe I should take a break more often . . .

I warily approached the preparation of Sunday’s dinner. I had offered to cook in a rare show of generosity to my wife. Let’s face it: When one person kinda sorta enjoys something, and another person oh-my-goodness loves loves loves it, the person who loves it is going to do it more often. Plus, on weeknights I’m not home until 6 p.m., and neither of us wants to eat at 7:30 or 8, so dinner duties have fallen heavily on my wife. That doesn’t mean I feel no guilt about it.

The beef chili dinner from The Best Simple Recipes was a great choice. It truly is a simple recipe, not just in preparation, but in the ingredient list. It’s got meat! Each of the other ingredients (an onion, beans, cumin, chili powder, garlic and just a touch of sugar) serves a specific flavor purpose. Nothing is added unnecessarily.

It’s a “mix together and stir” recipe, with two exceptions. The first exception is to cook the meat (hamburger in this case) and onion for a few minutes before mixing everything else in. That’s a no-brainer, unless you like mad cow disease.

The second exception is Cooks Illustrated’s trick to pulling this recipe off in 30 minutes instead of two hours. Puree half of the beans and tomatoes before adding them to the meat and onions. The puree allows the chili to be thick without adding hours of cooking time.

Top it with cheese and sour cream, and you’re done in a half hour to 45 minutes. Trista made cornbread to go with it, and I will let her add her own thoughts on that. (Hint: It was delicious.)

The chili itself is quite good. We enjoyed two dinners each from it, so it’s certainly fit to be eaten as is. But I see this recipe as merely the starting point. The paucity and sheer efficiency of ingredients provide lots of room to customize this to your tastes. Make it hotter, make it thicker, add black beans, use steak or chicken instead of hamburger – the list goes on. Will we cook this again? Yes, but it probably won’t be the same way twice.

My wife, bless her heart, mostly stayed away from the kitchen. I did detect once that a burner had been adjusted slightly, but she insists that she didn’t touch it, blaming it instead upon a “wascawy wabbit.” I’m not sure if I should believe her, but since she is the Best! Wife! Ever!, I choose to take her at her word.