vegetable broth Archives ⋆ Our Growing Paynes

I’ve lost count on how many days I’ve been saying I need to do a blog post! It’s been the typical craziness with the holidays and all the prep that goes along with it. We had a lovely Christmas with the kids. It was our turn to have them for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning which I love. We have Chinese food at night and sticky buns in the morning. Other than that it was a very quiet day with my husband.

For one of the dinners before the holidays I wanted to make a nice comfort type of dinner to go along with the very cold nights we were having. I am so ready for spring. My MIL has been emailing me telling me how the grass is growing and how she is trying to keep up with weeding. Harrumph!

I had some boneless pork ribs and I decided to do a slow cooked dish with mushrooms and tarragon. Heat up a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet. Season the pork with sea salt and pepper. Brown all sides.

While this is browning chop half a red onion and a few cloves of garlic. Remove the pork and cover. In the skillet saute the onion and garlic.

Quarter several mushrooms until you have about a cup or 8 oz. Add them to the skillet. Chop a handful of fresh tarragon and add that as well.

Saute for a few minutes then add half a cup/4oz of sherry or dry white wine. Simmer for a couple of minutes then add the pork back in. Next add 3 cups/24oz of vegetable stock and bring to a simmer. It was at this point I got a text from my boss wondering when I was coming in. Erm, not working this week? Turns out, yes I was. Nuts. Turned off the dish and dashed off to work the evening shift. It also turns out to be a happy accident. It allowed the flavours to really deepen. The next day I slow cooked it for several hours which reduced the broth.

Cook the pasta and add to the skillet just before you are ready to eat. My husband made a delicious quick bread to go along with this dish.

Top with a dollop of sour cream and serve. If you want this to be more like a soup don’t reduce the broth so much.

Happy New Year’s everyone, I hope it is a safe and enjoyable evening.

I was looking through my “pins” and came across this recipe for Mushroom Soup and thought it would be nice to make for dinner. I didn’t have cream and decided to tweak it for our tastes. There were a couple of speed bumps but in the end it was a lovely soup which I’ll make again.

To start I minced about 3 cloves of garlic and about a tablespoon of fresh thyme. Then I took about 2 cups of mushrooms and chopped them. I kept some sliced and then varied how chopped up the rest was for texture. I used a bit of olive oil and about a tablespoon of butter to saute the garlic and thyme.

After a couple of minutes toss in the mushrooms. I allowed them to brown a bit.

Next I added 1 cup of vegetable broth, 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, and a bay leaf. I brought this up to a simmer.

Now here comes the first speed bump. I should have listened to my instinct but for some reason I followed the recipe here. It called for dissolving 1 tablespoon of flour in 1 tablespoon of water. I thought this weird but did it anyways.

I put it into the soup and got lovely clumps of flour. Sigh. I managed to work in most of it. What I should have done was taken a few tablespoons of water for this. Next I added a full cup of 2% milk as that is what I had. This soup would work with cream, I mean what wouldn’t, but we don’t always need the extra calories.

At this point I tasted for seasoning and it didn’t need any salt so I just added a bit of pepper. My second speed bump came when I was reheating it at dinnertime. I turned my back to do something and it boiled. Facepalm. So while the flavours were there it did come out a bit grainy.

One thing that was nice about this recipe is it said it was for two and that was accurate. I’ve come across recipes on my blogging journey that say it serves two and you look at the ingredients and you can tell it serves upwards of five! I don’t mind leftovers but a key to keeping your food budget down is portion control. Keeps your trouser size down as well. 😉

Our Growing Paynes

A journey about cooking, traveling, gardening, and crafting.

Tag Archives: vegetable broth

Mushroom Tarragon Pork Pasta

Mushroom soup