Stuffed Avocado Creations

One of the more frustrating times to cook can be when you're trying to use up a lot of different ingredients. But I particularly like these times, as I can get creative and innovate a little. This week we're going out of town and next week we're moving, so we're trying to use up perishable (for the former) and non-perishable (for the latter) like they're going out of style. This all led to an extremely tasty dish last night that I made up off the top of my head, with only some stray ingredients as muse. Stuffed avocados.

Well who's ever heard of stuffed avocados? I hadn't, but I had these two ripe avocados and not a whole lot else to base a dinner around. But then I saw we had some leftover black beans, a can of diced tomatoes, some fresh tomatoes, a little bit of red onion…and before long I had the idea in mind.

I halved my avocados as neatly as possible and removed the large pits with a knife. Then I carefully scooped all of the avocado out of each half into a bowl, such that the skins were as clean as possible. I immediately squeezed a stray half lemon over the avocado flesh so it wouldn't brown. Then I added my black beans, a diced fresh tomato and some canned tomatoes, and the remaining eighth of red onion. I also added a large dollop of some tangy salsa verde that we had in the fridge. I added a small pinch of sea salt and pepper and a few swigs of Tabasco sauce and mixed the whole concoction together.

I then sprayed each empty avocado shell with nonfat cooking spray and sprinkled with a little sea salt for flavor. Then I filled each shell very full with the mixture and placed them on a cookie sheet. Lastly I grated a small amount of cheddar cheese that we had left in the fridge over the top of each stuffed avocado. I roasted these in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. When they were done, the cheese was perfectly melted and the stuffing had warmed and cooked together quite nicely.

I used up some remaining corn chips to be the avocado “utensils”/“scoops” and some margarita mix, seltzer, tequila and limes to make some light margarita spritzers. It turned into a nice, light Tex Mex dinner that was very easy to concoct. The flavor of the stuffed avocado was a nice combination of salty, tangy and savory. Julia just loved them and said they reminded her of a fancy, individualized seven-layer dip inside each avocado half. I thought they were quite tasty as well and happy that this new idea came out so well and so smoothly. Plus, I was even happier that I used up so many remaining bits of ingredients in the process.

Birthday Adventures: Chef Geoff's

The night after Zengo, we continued Julia's birthday celebration by going to an amazingly hilarious (and raucous) Lisa Lampanelli comedy show at the Warner Theatre. Since we went to the late show, we were able to go to Chef Geoff's, right across the street first for an interesting and delicious meal.

Chef Geoff's has one of the deeper, more creative and more intriguing menus in all of DC. With a litany of interesting, high-end versions of various small bites, appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, burgers and pizzas, you might think this a gastro-pub of sorts. But the other side of the menu has many mesmerizing entrees, steaks and chops that could compete with any haute cuisinerie. It's a meld of familiar and fancy that makes for a fun, different and highly tasty experience. And that's why we love going back. This dinner was not an adventure – it was money in the bank. You can order something completely new and evocative or an old standby and expect it to always be spot on.

This time we ordered some fabulous dishes with few complaints. We started with some truffle-parmesan popcorn, which despite not having much of a truffle hint at all, was extremely tasty, brimming with an explosion of parmesan. It was ever-so-slightly oily and so crisp and fresh that our paper-cone of it was gone well before our very fine shared red flight and white flight of wine were.

I ordered the crab bisque next in lieu of appetizers (which were tempting me so I don't know why), and I was served a thin and delicate version of the creamy soup with little else in its rich and flavorful broth besides a few succulent pieces of crab meat and a couple croutons. The flavor was very concentrated crab, and that is what I want in a bisque. It did seem a little ordinary, especially for Chef Geoff's, so it's nothing that I'll be dreaming about for weeks.

My surprisingly simple order continued with their sirloin steak. It came with a creamy horseradish sauce and a few crispy onions. It was a heavenly piece of meat, which the horseradish accented and the onions (while tasty on their own) did nothing to help and were quickly pushed to the side and eaten later. It was cooked perfectly, succulent medium rare, and as tasty and buttery as a $25 steak should be. I was content with my order, but felt that the price was a little high for a steak that came with nothing else, despite having a waiter trying to push me to order multiple $6 sides with it. Nah, not worth it.

Julia sometimes finds vegetarian dishes in nice restaurants that simply blow me out of the water. The handmade mushroom-stuffed raviolis in truffle butter sauce at Chef Geoff's was one of those dishes. It literally tasted like light little nuggets of a buttery, savory masterpiece with an extraordinary concentrated punch of wild mushroom. It was enchantingly good and is making my mouth water right now. I really hope Chef Geoff's holds on to that menu item, so I can return and order three plates of it! I would recommend this dish to anyone who appreciates an amazing bite of food – lifelong vegetarian or ravenous meat eaters alike. Needless to say, Julia loved it too and had to fend me off throughout the meal, siphoning off little bits every so often to satisfy my urge to steal her plate. Maybe if it wasn't her birthday…I would have tried harder.

We finished up at Chef Geoff's feeling full and happy after sipping on a little Bailey's and sampling some of the house ice cream (coconut) and sorbets (mango, and piña colada, which was tasteless). Couldn't have asked for a better restaurant to have right across from our show, or for Julia's birthday, or just to have around!

Soup Kitchen Test Kitchen

One of my favorite parts about cooking is the mystery. The fact that, to at least some degree, I have no idea how or why flavors mesh together the way they do makes it exhilarating to try new things and have them blend into a beautiful and interesting taste. My flavor-melding testing favorite is with a soup. A soup can be as complicated as any dish or as simple, but can be very forgiving -- if you at least know how to massage the texture and flavor, evening things out until they're perfect. I've heard many times on shows like Top Chef and others that if you can create a great soup, you can be a great cook. I would love to say that I have created a perfect soup recipe that I have tested 100 times, but I do not. For now, that's probably not even my style. I'm content flexing my creativity, working out the details as I go, and then, if it really seems like a winner, perhaps trying to formalize it a little bit more.

Recently I had the urge to make a meal out of soup. I wanted it to be hearty but not heavy and contain all the elements of a good meal for me (protein, fiber, vegetables, healthy fat and taste). For some reason I immediately thought of a black bean soup. It seemed to fit the bill. It wasn't going to be easy, but I was prepared to get into war mode (or test kitchen mode) and make it work no matter what happened.

I started by heating up a base for my soup in a smaller pot. I wanted it to be a little rich, but not overly fattening, so I used equal parts low-sodium vegetable stock, skim milk and water. It was probably a cup to 1.5 cups of each. I added a little pepper, Tabasco and about 4 ounces of Tequila to the stock as well. I wanted to give it some character and zing, and those were my secret ingredients for adding those elements to the base of the soup.

While this was heating up, I sautéed some smashed and chopped garlic, half of a chopped onion and half of a chopped jalapeño in a little extra virgin olive oil at the bottom of my large soup pot until they were soft and emitting aromas and juices (5 minutes). I then added two cans of low-sodium black beans un-drained to the soup pot to mix them with the flavors at the bottom and heat them up a little. Then I added one 15-ounce can of low-sodium crushed tomatoes to the mixture as well. I did this to add some tang, some more Mexican flavor as well as a little more body. I also wanted to add another really nutritious element to the soup, and cooked tomatoes are about as nutritious an ingredient as there is. Plus it went great with the context – kind of important for the whole taste part.

After just a couple minutes of warming the beans and tomatoes with the aromatics, and when the base was warmed up but not boiling, I carefully added the base to the ingredients and brought the heat to just above medium. I then stirred the pot very well for a minute or so, so that all the flavors, textures and colors of the ingredients could mix within the base. At this point, I noticed that the soup seemed thin. I knew it was going to thicken more when I pureed it and didn’t want it to be like chili, but also wanted it to have a slightly thicker constitution. So I added just a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch to the soup. I stirred it in very well, as cornstarch lumps up very easily. The only reason I didn’t try to mix the cornstarch with something else (like butter) to eliminate the lumpiness was because I was going to be pureeing the soup shortly, which would solve my problem without resorting to an unnecessary ingredient like butter.

Before pureeing, I added the zest and juice of a lime for more flavor, along with a small pinch of salt, small splash of red wine vinegar and generous amounts of pepper, cumin and some fiery, green Habañero sauce to taste. I kept adding little bits of the spices and tasting it until the taste was great. And then let go on the heat for another 10 minutes or so. Tip: cumin is killer in anything Mexican. Use generously and do not omit – or you will likely not get the flavor you desire.

Now for the fun (and messy) part! I wanted a smooth texture but not applesauce, so I wanted to use the food processor to puree the soup. This would give it that texture but not kill all the chunks, and also do the real thickening for me. I carefully (remember – HOT!) ladled soup into the processor, about halfway up the machine and whazzed it (my homage to Jaime Oliver). I transferred it to my serving bowl and continued whazzing the soup in half-full batches until I had finished with the entire pot.

At this point, the consistency of the soup was great – just a little thick, but not chili. I tested the flavor again and adjusted the spices (pepper, hot sauce, cumin, salt) to perfect the flavor. Then I added in one small can of sliced green olives (rinsed) and mixed it through one more time.

I ladled the soup into bowls and gave each one a little grate of gruyere cheese, a little spattering of fresh salsa and a little dollop of reduced-fat sour cream and served with some low-fat Toasted corn chips I had made quickly in the oven (see post 7/30/08: Tangy Toastadas… ).

My test kitchen soup was better than I thought it would be, and got excellent reviews from the rest of the tasting committee (of one, for now). I think it is important to play with big flavors like I was trying to do here to see what works and what doesn’t and what is just awesome! It helps to expand our food culture and knowledge. And knowing how to adjust the texture and smaller flavors along the way will allow you to “test” things yourself and still come out with a pretty darn good final edible.