I’ve been making this Mushroom Soup for over 35 years and I love it every time I make it.  Because it is a hearty, creamy soup I typically make this recipe in the winter – but it always satisfies.  With so many mushrooms it has an intensely deep, rich, umami flavor and has become a favorite of friends every time I share the recipe.  It’s a wonderful dish to make for a dinner party too – tastes so fancy but really quite easy to make.

Many years ago, back in my college days, we used to frequent a restaurant called The Grape, located on Greenville Avenue, in Dallas, Texas.  The very reason we went was to order this wonderful and flavorful Mushroom Soup.  Thirty five years later, The Grape Restaurant is still going strong, it is still in the same location, and it still serves this favorite and now infamous, Mushroom Soup. (Update: sadly, The Grape closed its doors in October, 2019)

Over the years, I’ve adapted The Grape’s recipe in an effort to lighten it up a bit and I infused in some of our Glory Kitchen Provence nut & spice mix to add a bit of French flair to the Mushroom flavors.  The Provence blend adds just the right amount of herbs with the thyme, marjoram, savory, and basil and the little currants give it a touch of sweetness – a nice flavor burst.

Concerning the type of mushrooms to use in this soup, I don’t really fret with an exact variety.  When available, I do like to mix them up and try to include cremini, shiitake, oyster, and enoki mushrooms, but if all you can find is the typical button mushroom, don’t be afraid to go with that too.  Mushrooms of all varieties will work in this soup.  When they are sauteed and browned with the butter, the flavor becomes wonderfully intensified and makes a terrific soup no matter which variety mushroom you end up using.

I am a true soup lover and this Mushroom Soup recipe is made at least once a year – I hope you enjoy it as much as we do and make it on repeat year after year.

I’m excited for this week’s recipe of Bistro Braised Chicken Thighs coming from a friend who is passionate about her food.  She loves checking out new restaurants, experiencing new food trends, and is an avid home cook – a true foodie in every sense of the word.  Julie Wojciechowski is an East coast girl who hails from Connecticut and with whom I bonded immediately when she first moved to Charlotte.  She is a lover of all things outdoors, is a serious yogi, and is my morning walking buddy.

During a recent walk we chatted about our excitement for the onset of cool weather foods when Julie mentioned how much she loves to use her le Creuset braiser for her favorite slow cooked food recipes.  The term “braising” comes from the french word “braiser”, which is a combination cooking method using both wet and dry heats.  Typically, a protein is first seared at a high temperature to brown and bring caramelization to the exterior (this gives flavor), and then it is finished in a heavy iron pot with a lid and allowed to cook at a very low temperature alongside a braising liquid.  The result is a flavorful & tender, fall-off-the-bone dish.

Julie’s recipe is a light chicken dish which uses thighs, one of the tastiest parts of a chicken.  It is braised with carrots, celery, and a secret sweet ingredient (dried plums), then seasoned with our Glory Kitchen Provence nut & spice mix, a mix of french herbs, chopped cashews, and dried currants.

And although this recipe will tell you to serve this tender chicken over cooked egg noodles, Julie actually made homemade spaetzle as the base for her braised chicken.

When she first told me we were going to make homemade spaetzle, I thought it sounded interesting but complicated.  To my great surprise, however, the recipe included 4 simple ingredients: 2 1/2 cups flour,  1 cup of milk, 2 eggs, and a pinch of salt.

It literally took about 3 minutes to mix together with a fork, place the wet dough into her spaetzle maker, and boil the little pearl dumplings in a pot of hot water until they rose to the top, which meant the noodles were ready.  Total time?  No more than 3 minutes – and we had homemade spaetzle!

The tiny dumplings were delicious little puffs and took the dish from tasty to spectacular.  I can hardly wait to get my spaetzle maker and do it all again on my very own.  If you aren’t ambitious enough to attempt homemade spaetzle noodles, don’t let this hold you back – a dried egg noodle will work magic as well.

I hope you enjoy Julie’s delicious braised chicken dish.

An amazing way to bake fish is using this recipe for Alaskan Cod en Papillote, which means fish wrapped in a parchment paper packet or envelope.  Let’s face it, a fresh filet of wild-caught fish can be a pricey purchase and how many times have you tried to place it on the grill only to lose half the filet when it sticks to the grill or falls through the grates.  This is hands down my favorite way to work with a delicate piece of fish. The result is a tender, juicy and oh so flavorful dish.

This method treats the fish delicately and the veggies alongside steam in their own juices and cook to tender perfection.  When the envelope emerges from the oven, a little snip of the parchment paper releases the most beautiful aroma.  I like to serve the packet on the plate with just a bit of a nip in the paper and then allow each person to gently rip open the packet to reveal fish filet perfection.  This is a complete meal in one packet – how easy is that?

Don’t be afraid to use this baking method with all types of fish from salmon, to sea bass, to fresh-caught stream trout.  The choice of vegetables tucked inside your packet can vary with the seasons, zucchini, thinly sliced carrots, fennel, sliced cherry tomatoes, peppers, and the list goes on.  Our Provence nut & spice mix is the perfect seasoning for tender fish and fresh vegetables with aromatic french herbs and a touch of sweetness from dried currants.  The possibilities for this Alaskan Cod en Papillote dish are endless and the results – well, let’s just say I feel certain you’ll be wanting to make it again and again.  It is so, so simple and absolutely divine.  Enjoy!

I’ve always thought little Belgian endive leaves made a pretty and graceful presentation because of their delicate shape.  This Belgian Endive with Walnuts and Blue Cheese Recipe is wonderfully flavorful and uniquely different – it would make a great first course at a dinner party.  When these little lettuces are baked in the oven, the tender and somewhat bitter endive leaves turn a buttery, salty flavor, a bit like the flavor of a tender steamed artichoke dipped in butter.  The blue cheese, walnut pieces, and Provence nut & spice mix add a nutty crunch and a sharp note of herb flavor which together with the buttery endive create a mouth watering combination.

Belgian endive is a bitter lettuce from the chicory genus.  It has a small, narrow shape, white inner leaves and either yellow or red ruffled tips.  In this recipe I’ve used both the red and the yellow tipped varieties although the baking fades away some of the bright colorations you see when raw.  Sliced in half and baked, the bitter leaves mellow in flavor and become soft and tender.

This Belgian Endive with Walnuts and Blue Cheese Recipe was a pleasant surprise because it is such a diversion from your typical salad flavors.  I served it directly on small salad plates as a first course to our meal but you could add a few delicate greens such as arugula or bibb lettuce to the base and place these endive halves right on top.  Hope you’ll try this uniquely flavorful recipe.

There is hardly anything prettier than the bright orange hues of winter oranges – this citrus salad recipe highlights their beauty.  I love to mix them up: tangerines, blood oranges, Cara-Cara oranges, grapefruits, Valencia oranges, and the list goes on.  They all have that signature bright, tangy flavor but each one has its own sweetness level and color profile.

This Citrus and Arugula Salad is the perfect way to highlight the different varieties and create a bright, sunny platter during a cold and grey season.  Combined with tender arugula greens, sharp blue cheese, and a french vinaigrette infused with our Provence nut & spice mix, this salad can be a showstopper.

Every winter I pull out my juicer and routinely make fresh squeezed citrus juice, a combination of squeezed grapefruits and various oranges.  It is the most energizing way to begin the morning.  Even better than juicing, however, is making this bright and cheery Citrus and Arugula Salad.  The presentation of these warm, sunny colors gets your mouth watering.

I’ve kept the ingredients very simple so the oranges and grapefruit can take center stage.  Marjoram, savory, basil, and thyme are the perfect herbal addition to a typical French vinaigrette.  This dressing recipe is my go-to homemade dressing.  If you always have these basic staples in your pantry you can throw together the perfect salad dressing in just a few minutes.

Commit to memory these dressing ingredients and their approximate ratios and you’ll always have perfect dressing for salads, proteins, fruits, and so much more.  I hope you’ll brighten up your winter with this bright and tasty salad.

Persimmons are a wonderful winter fruit and I’ve begun seeing this mysterious fruit more often in recipes – hence I’ve come up with a delicate and bright Persimmon Muffin Recipe to highlight this pretty little orange fruit.  I love the way a thinly sliced persimmon is perched atop the muffin as its ruffled edges curled and crisped during the baking process.  I’ve also added a touch of french herbs from our Glory Kitchen Provence nut & spice mix to add an interesting dimension of flavor.

I was recently driving down the road in Charlotte and was caught by surprise as I whizzed by the sight of a bright, bare, orange-balled tree.  As I turned the car around to get a better view of this unusual sight, I realized it was a persimmon tree – and I had never before seen one in full bloom.

These trees are quite rare around here and they are certainly a sight when their bare branches are bursting with large, bright, orange fruit.  I stepped out and photographed the tree, however, what I really wanted to do was return with a ladder and basket to gather persimmons for jam making.  With just a few from the farmers market, I made these muffins instead.

I’ve heard the taste of a persimmon described in many ways: some say it tastes like an apple, others say it is like a mango.  Although I can see similarities to both of those, I actually think it has its own unique flavor.  The skin can be tough but for this muffin recipe I sliced it into horizontal rounds, then sliced it into sticks, then into cubes – all with skins on.  After baking in the muffin tin, the fruit was tender and very much resembled the texture of a chopped apple.

If you’ve never tried a persimmon, this is a great recipe to give it a taste and highlight the pretty orange fruit right on top of your muffin.

One of the very best flavors of fall is roasted vegetables of the season – and butternut squash is probably on the top of my personal list.  The flavors of this veggie are THE best.  Here I’ve tossed them into a delicious Butternut, Beet, and Farro Salad – which celebrates this beautiful season’s flavors and colors.

Let me begin by saying, butternut squash is amazingly tasty when roasted.  The only draw back, it has a very tough exterior and can be difficult to prep when peeling and slicing.

An easy solution is to purchase this veggie already precut in the grocery store.  I’ve seen it at Whole Foods and a few other stores already cut into cubes, and although I did hand cut this one myself, it is soooo much easier to skip this step and buy it pre-cut.

After it is roasted and softened in a hot oven, I also like to turn on the broiler for just a few minutes to brown and crisp up the top.  Remember, to never walk away from a broiler or you’ll risk burning your beautiful vegetables.  It only takes a minute to brown the tops so stand right by the oven with the light on and keep your eyes glued to the window.

As for the kale in this salad, it helps to “massage” your kale.  That means chopping your fresh kale, drizzling it with a bit of extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of salt, and a sprinkle of our Provence nut & spice mix, then working it with your hands, massaging and breaking down the tough leaves.

Set the large bowl of massaged kale aside while you prepare the rest of your salad ingredients.  The longer it sits, the softer and more seasoned your greens will become.  If  you thought you didn’t like kale because it was a tough and bitter green, this prep method might change your mind completely.

And finally, the dressing.  This is one of my very favorite french vinaigrette dressing combinations and it works on so many different types of salads.  If you commit it to memory and have the basic ingredients on hand, you’ll always  be ready to whip up a fresh and delicious vinaigrette instead of resorting to an old refrigerator jar most likely filled with unfamiliar chemicals.  This dressing is brought to life with a teaspoon of Provence nut & spice mix, dijon mustard, and a drizzle of maple syrup (you can always substitute honey instead of the syrup).

Don’t let the fall season pass you by without roasting a large batch of butternut squash and throwing it into not only this salad, but also in pasta, rice bowls, or even pureed to create a delicious sauce.