Tuscan white bean soup filled with onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, kale, and a herby broth, served with an Italian melt on homemade rosemary challah bread, with mozzarella cheese, hard salami, Genoa salami, and pepperoni. Baked up an apple crumb bar dessert with freshly picked apples from the orchard and an oat and brown sugar crumb.
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#italianrecipes #tuscansoup #appledessert
Hi everyone, Elsie Jensen here. Today we are going to make some apple crumb bars and then a um Italian sausage tuskcin or white bean tuskcin soup. And we’re going to make a sandwich using the leftovers of our quick collar bread from yesterday. So let’s start by getting our um apple crumb bar um ready. So I’ve got two apples. We need about two cups of, you know, peeled and thinly sliced apples for our crumb crumb crumb bar. So, let’s get this kind of going here. I’m just going to, you know, pour it and then we’ll peel off the skin and then I’ll use my big butcher, my other knife to kind of trim it up and slice it thin. With this, you want to make sure you slice them really thin because you need them to cook up pretty quickly in the oven under the time. And if you leave them too thick, they’re not going to be soft and tender. And then your apple bar will have, you know, a crunch to it versus being like very soft apples. So, when we get to slicing them, we’ll do it nice and thin. I’m using um some Jonathan apples that we picked at the orchard um this past weekend. And um they’ve been actually delicious in the baked goods I’ve been making. You know, Jonathan is not a very common apple to get at the store. Um but they are delicious for both eating and baking. So we’ve got our first apple kind of peeled here. And again, I find it’s just easier to do it with a pairing knife than trying to peel it with, you know, a an apple core peeler. I used to have one of those like old school ones where you put the apple in and you cranked it and it decor it and like gave you this like really long snaky skin of apple skin, but it still took forever to do. I can peel my apple faster this way than going through that whole setup. Okay, and we’re just about there. These I think are going to be so delicious because I’m just really making kind of like a crumb topping base that’s going to be used on the top and the bottom of these bars. And then we’ll have our kind of spiced apple mixture in the middle. Um and then we’ll put the crumb topping on the top. And I love little like bars. It’s just so delicious. Um you know, it’s kind of like a half of a Dutch apple pie. Okay, we’ve got our little apples here peeled and ready. Again, we want to Woo! Well, lost part of my apple, but good thing I had more than enough. We’re going to do really thin slices on here. And so, I want them kind of, you know, nice and thin. And you don’t need to get out like a specialty tool like a mandolin to do it. You can really just do it with your chef knife as it is. You don’t, you know, I have a mandolin and I just never use it because it’s one of those things where it’s more of a hassle to set it up to slice everything thin for like two apples versus um you know doing it with your knife. Plus, I still remember my sister-in-law cut the tip off of her finger using one of those once. So, I’ll be safe with my knives. Again, again, nice and thin on here because if you leave them too thick, they won’t get soft and tender. And this will also allow them to pick up some more flavor, almost to the point where they start to get a little translucent. It will also allow them to lay nicely on your bar. We’ve actually gone through about half of our apples that we picked from the orchard. So, we’ve gone through about 25 of them since Saturday. Um, my kids have been loving them in their lunches. Evie has been having them in their lunch and at dinner every single day. She goes, “These are the best apples ever.” And I’m like, part of it I think they taste so good is because, you know, you picked them yourself, so they instantly feel better. Angel likes your cutting board. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I have these random cutting boards that I swear I’ve had for 15 plus years. And I’ve got like an orange, a lemon, a lime, and an apple. And they’re like the cheesiest thing. But I love them. And they’re perfect for when I just need a small cutting board. Um, but I I can’t even remember when I’ve got them. I’ve had them for so long. Here we go. Okay, it’s actually perfect. So, I need just about two cups of my thinly sliced apples. And then we’re going to toss these with a little bit of cinnamon um and vanilla just to kind of start with and a little bit of apple cider. So, I’ve got my cinnamon here. I’m going to sprinkle about I want to say a teaspoon over it. I want a good amount because I want that cinnamon flavor to pop in. And it looks more than it, but cinnamon puffs out very, you know, bigs and lays flat. We’re going to put in about a half a teaspoon of vanilla. And then we’re going to do about a tablespoon of apple cider. You could also use lemon juice if you wanted. And this is just going to help it kind of coat up our apples. And we’re going to put in just about, you know, a tablespoon to two tablespoons of brown sugar to kind of sweeten it up a little bit. But the most of the sweetness is going to come from the crumb topping that will be on the bottom and the top of this bar. Let me grab a fork here or spoon here. We’re going to toss it real quick and then just kind of let it sit. Here we go. Now, I like to use and a lot of times if I don’t have apple cider, I will use like fresh lemon juice. But when I do have apple cider, I like to use that instead because I feel like it really brings the apple flavor out even more in the apples. But here we’ve got our kind of nicely coated up apples. They’ll have lots of flavor with them. Now, let’s make our crumb topping here. And I’m actually going to be kind of doing this old school where I mix the flour and the butter together using my hands. Works, I think, better that way. You have a question. Have you used the apple cider to make any drinks or only for baking? Um, well, we’ve been drinking the straight up apple cider. My kids have loved it. I was sitting there like, we’ve got one more gallon in the fridge. Um, but if we run out and we still have apples, I do have a juicer, so I might make some more apple cider. But it actually turns out we’re going to be going back to Bowling Green, which is where this apple orchard is in about, you know, two or three weeks. My daughter has a soccer game there and they have pumpkin fest that weekend and there’s more apples. They have the other varieties that we can pick. So, I think I’ll be back to get more apple cider and more apples then because I will say I just love apples and apple flavored everything and it’s fall. It fits nicely. But I did read I was reading this magazine um and they were they were talking about doing this like apple cider bar where you actually like make create all these little mixins that you can add to your apple cider um in there and it’s like one of those things where I think the kids would really love that just adding the fun stuff to it. We’re going to start with a cup of allpurpose flour. And then we’re going to do a mixture of brown sugar and um granulated sugar. So a half a cup of granulated and a half a cup of brown. Now you could also do all brown sugar if you wanted more of that molassesy flavor in the crumb. I like doing it half and half. gives it a little bit blonder and makes it, you know, more mild. But if I wanted it to be like really fall tasting, I would use instead of cinnamon, I’d use um pumpkin pie spice and then do all brown sugar. So, we’ve got our two sugars in here and we’re going to add in our oats, but we’re going to add that in in just a little bit. We’re going to mix in first. Let’s kind of combine these. Again, I’m going to use do it with my hands because I’m going to be kind of squishing the flour in or the butter into the flour using my hands. So, I’m just breaking this up. Here we go. And now we’re going to add in about a teaspoon of cinnamon. And again, you could totally measure this out, but I feel like cinnamon’s one where you can go and double it and you’re not going to be that crazy off. That’s about a little bit more. So, we’ve got about a teaspoon of cinnamon in here. We’re going to mix it in. And then we’re going to add in about a half a teaspoon of salt. So, I’m just going to give it a light little pinch. We’re doing a lot of free measuring today. Um, I feel like this is one of those things where, you know, it’s going to bake up well no matter what. I’ve got a half a cup of softened butter. And pull it on here cuz I want to pull off all those little bits of it. And what we’re going to do is I’m going to kind of mix my butter in with my fingers where I am pinching it through it. So, kind of like an old school way of making a crumb like a pie if you don’t have like a pastry cutter. But we’re going to go in and just kind of keep pinching it through your fingers until it all kind of works up. Then we’re going to add in our oats. But you want to do it before you add in the oats because you want that butter to kind of crumble into the flour. And it works is you got to use softened butter. You can’t use cold butter for this. Here we go. And it honestly the method is you just kind of grind it through your hands like this. And what you want is you’re going to if you you got kids and you know what like kinetic sand is, it’s going to be like the texture of kinetic sand where when you pinch it together it holds together but then it kind of falls back down. And I’ve got kathetic sand on my mind because my kids were my little boys are playing with it today. And Jack, who is almost two and he acts as though he is two, felt the need that he was going, we have like a mini sensory table um for it and I have it filled up with kinetic kinetic sand and he felt the need to throw it all over our playroom this morning. No remorse whatsoever for his actions. And then he decided he was going to put it on his head and then on his brother’s head. I was like, this is why we don’t play with the kinetic stand when you’re awake. Okay, we’ve got our crumb mixture in here. So, just shake off my hands a little bit here. And we are going to add in a whole cup of oats. And this is going to be the base for our top and the bottom of our apple crumb bar. I’m using oldfashioned oats. You could also use um quick oats. Just don’t use steel cut oats or you’re going to have a very crunchy, hard, chewy um bar. Okay, I’m going to go in again with my hands and we’re just going to mix it through here. And the reason why I don’t add in the oats first is I want that butter to get mixed into that flour and sugar mixture first. But look how delicious this crumb is looking. Okay, now let’s assemble this. So, I got to put my baking spray over here. We’re just going to grease my pan. You can use an 8 by8 or a 9 by9 in pan. We’re just going to grease it up. And this is going to allow it to come out uh nicely when we’re done with it. And then I’m going to take roughly half of this mixture and we’re going to put it on the bottom. And then we’re going to firmly press it down. And this is going to make the, you know, the bottom base of our bar. And you want to make sure you kind of press it down just like if you’re doing like a graham cracker crust or whatnot. Um, so that it holds together. And then as it bakes, this will form, you know, the bottom crust because it’s, you know, pushed down. It will actually form together almost like, you know, a bar. And then we’ll have our apples. And then the top crumb will be sprinkled over on top. You see, I’m pushing it down nice and firm, and it’s making its nice kind of little base here. And I think we’re good. Now, we’re going to take our apples here, and we’re going to lay them over the base of this. And again, you want about two cups of thinly sliced apples. And I’m just going to try to lay them as flat as possible. I don’t want them to have a lot of gap between them. And we’ll do our thin layer. Here we go. And again, pushing it down and making sure. And I used again a very simple, you know, cinnamon, a little bit of vanilla, and um some apple cider to season up our apples. But you could definitely go more uh folly, use like a pumpkin spice or add in some ginger, cloves, nutmeg um in here. And then if you don’t have apple cider, you can use lemon juice. Here we go. So, we’ve got our apples in here. I’m going to push those down. Kind of. Again, you want to just make sure they’re as flat as possible so you don’t have any big gaps between them. Oops. Have one more. Pop it right here. And now we’re going to go back in with our crumb topping. We’re going to place this right over the top. And with this, you’re not going to um pat it down. You’re just going to lay it right on top like this. Here we go. This is going to give you the nice crumb loose topping on there. That will be so lovely as that butter melts that we mixed into it will form together. Okay, let me wash my hands and we’re going to pop this in the oven. Okay, so I have my oven set at 350 and we’re going to let it bake for about 30 minutes and this should be done right when our soup is going to be done, our soup and our sandwich. So, I’m going to put it right here. I’m going to push it towards the back so it gets that most of that heat. And then I’m going to set my timer for 30 minutes. Um, it should never take it’s perfectly I’ve done it a couple times before and it’s right at 30 minutes. But some people’s ovens cook a little faster or a little high heat. Um, so if your oven, if you notice it kind of toast yours at top. After about 20 to 25 minutes of baking, put a piece of aluminum foil over it so you don’t get that super toasted top. But I like my oven. I know, you know, everybody gets to know their oven and mine. I know how it cooks well. So 30 minutes is perfect on it, but sometimes people say, you know, it could take like a little bit more or a little bit less depending on your oven. Okay, I’m going to start heating up my Dutch oven here and we’re going to start making our Tuscan white bean soup. We’re going to use Italian sausage in it. I’m going to add just, you know, about a teaspoon of olive oil. We don’t need much because the sausage already has a good amount of fat in it. You have a question about the apple bars. If you were to add a nut to it, what type would you I would say either a pecan or a walnut I find tastes really well with it. You could also throw in um raisins or craisins. Um those also kind of work well with it. Well, I know I was those I know those aren’t nuts. I was saying but those are additions that you could add into it. I almost was tempted to throw in some little caramel balls to do a caramel apple bar. And um but I said we’ll do a keep it simple now and then we’ll see if I want to do it later, you know. But we’re going to add these in or our sausage in here. A pound of Italian sausage. And then I’m just going to use my spatula to start breaking it up. And we’ll let that toast up and then we’ll start prepping our vegetables for our soup. Here we go. Well, you know what? You could also do slivered almonds. I feel like slivered almonds, if you mix them into the crumb on the top, would also be really, really delicious. Okay, so I stab the meat a little bit more. I’m just breaking it up because I want my Italian sausage to kind of have some big chunks to it for the base of our soup. Um, I don’t want it to be like super fine or massive ones, but kind of like in between. We’re going to let that start cooking and I’m going to start prepping our veggies. I’ve got one yellow onion here. And we have the the veggies in here that are going to really flavor up our broth. It’s going to be the onion, the celery, and the carrots are going to add some notes to it. I’m going to be using some chicken bullion with it, but those I think add really great flavor. And then our vegetables that are really going to add body are our potatoes and our kale. And then I have my again my white canali beans. Yo has a question for you. What’s for dinner tonight? I am formulating an idea and I have it. I’ve got my peppers outside that are ready to um be picked and I’m thinking about making some Mexican stuffed peppers for dinner tonight, but that might change. It might be Italian stuffed peppers. We’ll see. I think Mexican cuz I haven’t done Mexican stuffed peppers in a while. And then I’m going to make some homemade applesauce because tomorrow I want to make some applesauce bread. And um and then I’m going to bake up a loaf of sourdough bread. So, I think those are Yeah, but again, it could change, but that’s kind of my idea of what I want to make tonight. Okay, I’ve got my onions cut up. I did a nice kind of smaller dice on it. And now I’ve got my celery. We’re getting down to the kind of the final bit of this celery. Big chunk of the celery. And what I’m going to do is I want it to be kind of cut up a little bit smaller. So, I’m going to kind of trim my stock so they’re not as massive. Keep your leaves. The celery leaves will add really great flavor to the broth. Um, as well as it’s just like a little bit of green color. So, I never just discard the celery leaves. I do notice when you go to the store a lot, you can just buy the celery that is the main stock or like, you know, the been trimmed up. But the leaves do add great flavor. That’s kind of a softer um flavor from the celery. So, I love them and always keep them or always get them whenever I can. There we go. Again, I’m just doing a smaller dice on my celery here so that it will kind of blend in with our soup. I don’t want anything to be too large because I like it to where you can get all different veggies on each bite. Okay. Give this a good kind of chop up. Okay. Once our sausage is cooked all the way through, we’ll start tossing in our onions and let them cook together for a little bit. And then our celery. And then finally, our carrot. I’ve got my I got four goodsized carrots here. We’re going to give them a good peel and then I’m going to probably have I might quarter some of them and then we’ll dice them up as well. Do you have a question for people that add turnups? Do you know what that adds? The turnup, well, it’s a great like fibrous veggie, so it can add a it’s not going to add so much flavor to the soup. Um, but it will add a lot more fiber to it. and um and bulk. So, it’s a good filling vegetable on it. Um I love turnups and um like in rudabaggas as well, which is the form of turnup. I think they’re great. I know they have a bit stronger of a flavor. Um but you can honestly use them just kind of like a potato in soups or whatnot. Um because they keep their body in shape. Um very similar. Same with parsnips. Parsnuts have a little bit more of a lemony flavor and they look like white carrots. Um, but those would also kind of be great. But turnups, you could definitely add them in here. Um, they do have, I will say, they’re pretty mild in a vegetable. They pick up a lot of their vegetable, but they have a little bit of that pungent flavor that you get with a, you know, a turnup, but are lovely. There you go. And got my carrots all peeled off. When you’re using whole carrots like this, you always want to peel them because that outer skin is going to be a bit more chewy. It’s going to be an earthier in flavor. Um, so peeling it up is going to leave the nice tender uh carrot behind. Okay, I’m going to start adding in our onions here and let them start to sauté with our Italian sausage. And again, this was one whole yellow onion that we diced up there. And we’re going to let it cook up. This is going to give the onions a nice flavor. Also, the onions will start to kind of get a little bit of caramelization. Not as much as if you were to cook the onions by themselves, but with this dish, you kind of really want that sausage flavor to really play a nice role. Okay, so we’ve got our onions kind of cooking up for our tuskcin white bean soup. Now, we’re going to kind of cut up our carrots here. I’m going to take the tops and the bottoms off. And then those onions are steaming into my eyes. And then we’re going to with my fat parts of it, I’m going to um probably quarter them. And then my skinnier parts I’ll have because I am going looking for a smaller again dice to it. That’s going to allow the vegetables one to cook up faster so your soup will be done faster and two it will allow you to get more veggies in every bite like the flavor of them all together. So get these chopped up. Now, you could always use, if you don’t want to go through the work, you can always get baby carrots and then just dice them up as well. You know, popular misconception, baby carrots aren’t actually baby carrots. They’re regularized carrots that have just been washed and trimmed down um into the little like bite-sized pieces. Um which then apparently ever since when they started doing that, carrot consumption like went up by like 500%. I think that started back in like the early 90s was when they started doing the pre-washed and the baby carrots. I just guess making it more convenient made people eat them more versus, you know, having to trim up your carrots at home or make them into little pites. Here we go. Get our last little bit. Okay, we got our carrots, our celery prepped. Let me give our onions a little bit of a stir. And again, any super big pieces of sausage. I’m just going to break up because again, you don’t want to get like a huge chunk of sausage when you’re trying to eat your soup. Okay, let’s get good scooper. And then we’re going to add in our celery. And then lastly, we’ll add in our carrots. I like to do my more aromatic veggies first with the, you know, my firm aromatic ones. So, the celery and onions first, so they let out their flavor more. Um, and then we’ll do our carrots in. So, give this a good stir and then we’re going to let those sauté for a second. Okay, now let’s start prepping up our potatoes. So, I’m actually think I might just use I’ve got three baby gold potato or not baby but Yukon gold potatoes here that I’m going to cube up. I might just use two. I’m going to see how they look when I cut them up. But I’m going to cut them up into smaller cube like pieces. Now, when you’re going to use potatoes in a soup, if you’re not going to like blend the soup, then you want to use a waxier potato like a Yukon Gold or red potato and kind of avoid the rusted potatoes. Rusted potatoes, they’re less waxy, which means they disintegrate as they cook, and um if you cook them too long, they’ll just turn to mush in your soup. But waxier potatoes, like, you know, the Yukon will hold its shape. um and keep its form and will be tender but will keep its form. They’re more ideal for soups where you want chunks of potatoes in. There we go. And vice versa. I find mashed potatoes I prefer them with russetss over like a Yukon Gold or whatnot because it’s going to give me russets give you the really light and fluffy mashed potatoes. um where a Yukon Gold will give you a denser, more like sticky mashed potato. And I think yeah, I think we’ll be set with two. Okay, give this a good scrape around. And then we’re going to add in our carrots. Let those sauté up for a second. I always like to give my main, my firm vegetables a good sauté before we start adding in our broth. That brings out more flavor, gives a little slightly little better texture on the veggies, too. I never just like to throw them straight into the broth. Okay. And while that’s sautéing here, let’s get some of our spices in there to kind of cook up as well. We’ve got bay leaves. I’m going to use some Italian spices, thyme and oregano and pepper. So, let’s start with our bay leaves. I’m going to use um two bay leaves or like you could do one big one or two kind of small medium sized ones. And I’m going to crush these up in here and there. So, just going to kind of keep folding it. This is going to allow the flavor to get out even um more quickly than if you just let it seep in there. And when you crush it up, the texture of the bay leaf is going to be very similar to rosemary, which is a little bit of a crispier spice. Um, a lot of times people leave it um in a full leaf because it doesn’t get soft and you can fish it out on there. But I find when you crush it up, you don’t notice it because it’s just like some of your more, you know, firm spices. There we go. And then so we had, you know, either one large bay leaves or two small ones. Then I’m going to add in about a teaspoon of thyme, a teaspoon of oregano, and you could also use fresh herbs if you wanted. Um, but I’m just I didn’t feel like walking out to my garden and picking them today. It rained a lot yesterday, so it’s kind of a little muddy over there. So, I was like, “Yeah, that’s okay.” And then we’re going to do a little bit more of my Italian seasoning blend. I’m going to do about a half a tablespoon. So, we’ve got our spices. You want to add your spices in before you add your broth in so that they can toast up, hit that oil, let out their flavors, get a little bit of heat first. This allows them to one become more fragrant and two melds better into the broth. If you throw your spices in with the broth already in there, they like to float on top. Um, and then they just don’t they don’t let their flavors out quite as much. So, really toasting them up in here brings out a lot more flavor. And we’re going to add in a little bit of pepper. I’m going to do about I want to say a half a teaspoon. So, a couple good shakes. You have a question? Can you substitute in ground beef if you don’t care for sausage? Yes, you could definitely do ground beef or shredded chicken, ground chicken. Um, you could also keep it vegetarian and just uh have the beans be your protein source in there for it. Um, I feel like the Italian sausage of course gives you that little Italian flavor flavor to it, but you could easily just add in when you’re sautéing up the ground beef in the beginning, add in some garlic salt, onion powder, and Italian seasoning. Um, that’s going to give your ground beef more of that Italian flavor to it. Um, and you want to make sure you do that when you’re sautéing up the beef so that when you’re eating it in your soup or you’re getting it, you’re getting nice flavor out of it. You could also make, you know, some meatballs, like Italian meatballs, and throw them in there as well. Um, but then that adds a whole another step of work to it. Okay, let’s give these potatoes a quick sauté here. And then we’re going to add in our broth. And um, we’ll let that simmer for a little bit. And then we’ll add in our kale and our canonelli beans. And then it will just be simmering, letting those flavors merge together. Okay. So, let it sit there. For our soup, I’m going to use four cups of water. And then I’ve got some chicken better than bullion. We’re going to do a good scoop of that. I’m got a little left in one, so I’m probably going to have to go for both. And then while that’s simmering and whatnot, we’ll start working on our sandwiches to go in there. So, I’m going to add in a little bit of my broth at first and then I’m going to delaze my pan. So, I’m going to add in just about a cup at first. And what I mean by delazing is when you add that little bit of liquid in there, I want you to scrape the bottom of your pan off to take up any of those cooked on spices, little crispy bits of meat. That’s going to add a lot of great flavor into your soup and really make the broth. It must have just disconnected. It’s back on. Okay. Hopefully you guys can hear me, which is really never a problem for me cuz I’m a pretty loud person. Um, at least in person at home. Okay, so we’re going to add in the rest of our broth here or our water. We’re going to turn it into broth in just a second. And then we’re going to add in our chicken bullion. So, I want to have a nice big scoop of it. So, I’m going to use the rest of this one, which is actually just a small scoop. And then we’re going to open up a new jar of it to add in a little bit more flavor. And the reason I like to use um bullion over um like using a chicken broth or something like that is because I find that the bullion gives more flavor than the straight up um like chicken broth that you can buy at the store. Let’s get a little bit more here. Open it up. So you can add a little bit more chicken flavor with less liquid, which I find is makes your food a bit more flavorful, assuming we can open it, guys. Oh, let me break that. Got it. And so we’ve got our big kind of scoop in here. And so it’s about a tablespoon of bullion all together. And that’s going to add the saltiness to our soup. Um, we won’t need to add any like extra for the most part. I’m going to give it a quick taste. I still have beans and kale that we’re going to add, but I want to make sure it’s seasoned right. Beautiful. You’ve got that nice Italian sausage notes hitting in with that broth and all those spices. I’m going to add Do I want to add any more? No, I think we’re good. Okay, we’re going to let this simmer and in a little bit we’ll put in once it comes to a simmer, we’ll add in our kale and our our canonelli beans. But while we’re waiting, let’s get our sandwiches ready first or starting to toast up cuz I’m going to melt some first on here. So, I have left over my from last night. We ate about half of it. But this is my um kind of quick hala bread that I made. I did like a crazy kind of basket weave on it decoration for it last night. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to trim this in half and then I’m going to put it on a baking sheet and we’re going to toast it with a little bit of cheese. Then we’ll prep up the rest. We’ll take that out and build our sandwich. And I’m just keeping a kind of a really simple sandwich kind of for it. I’m doing an Italian sandwich. So, we’re going to use Genanoa hard salami pepperoni with our mozzarella cheese. So, I’m just going to trim off that end right here. And then I’m just going to really bict this in half to kind of cut through to make my sandwich. I will say leftover hala bread is so delicious on sandwiches. It’s a really soft yeast/e bread and um it just adds a lot of flavor. This one I seasoned up with um rosemary and black pepper. So, it has just this really great flavor on it. We’re going to sprinkle. Let me grab my baking sheet. And let’s put it on here. I’m hoping it’s big enough. Yes, that should fit. We’re going to just sprinkle our cheese on it. And then I’m going to let that toast up in the um oven so that it will get a nice melt on it. I’m using mozzarella as our base for it because I think it will pair really well with the pepperoni salami and genoa salami. So, just a thin layer. Put a little on this side. And we’re going to do a little top and bottom because got to love the cheese. And I think this soup is going to kind of did like a tuskanyany soup. And so, we’re going to have kind of like an Italian melt that I feel like they’ll pair well together on it. Plus, my husband was like, “Oh, a salami sandwich would be so good today.” And I was like, “You know what? It would.” It was one of those things growing up, I would visit my um grandparents and that was something we always had was hard salami sandwiches and um or head cheese. If you’ve never had head cheese before, I won’t even describe it. You can look it up. It’s a very interesting thing. But I grew up eating it and I really loved it. We can take a quick peek on here. I’m going to just slide this over so we can kind of cook it on the top. But there’s our apple crumb bars. And then we’re going to put that in here. And we’re going to let it bake up. And honestly, I think it probably that will probably take about 5 minutes or so to melt up around that. So we’ll check on it. Um, and then our crumb bar is going to be ready soon. So, we’re getting down to the final final few steps of everything. I’m going to turn my soup up and let’s start prepping up our beans and our kale for to go into it. So, I’m going to be using a white kidney bean or the can I always say wrong. The can I want to say canelli beans, but they’re it’s canolini. I never actually read it right. Um, but these ones, great northern beans, those are all really good ones. You want a white bean. I find the white bean works a little bit nicer um in the soup and it kind of just goes well. You could also use um a big butter bean um works well, too. Okay, with beans, if you’re ever using canned beans, don’t just pour your beans in here. The liquid, it’s starchy, it’s gummy, it’s going to change the flavor of your broth. So, you want to give it a quick rinse so that you get all that starchy liquid off. So, we’ll give it a couple of good shakes. You have a request. Can you go over the soup? Yes. So, we are making a um Italian sausage um tuskcin soup with white beans. We have in here, I’ll kind of pull things. We sauteed up a pound of Italian sausage. Then we have one large yellow um onion diced up. We have about four stocks of celery diced. Um four carrots diced up. Um and then we added in um potatoes. I have about two, you know, mediumsized Yukon potatoes diced up. and then bay leaves, Italian seasoning, thyme, oregano, and a little bit of black pepper um for the spices in it. And then, of course, we use some chicken bullion to flavor up our kind of our broth. Now, we’re going to add in our white beans, one can of I’ve got cantalini beans, and um and then we’re going to add in our kale. We’re going to let those simmer together. Um, and then I’m going to prep my kale here. So, I’m just going to remove all the stocks first. And the really the best way to do that is you’re just going to grab and then firmly pull and you’ll get your little twigs out. You can leave the stockier part if you want to, but that’s not going to get as soft and tender in your soup. Um, and it has a bit more of that um, sulfury flavor. Here we go. And again, and I like to, you could always buy the bag like baby kale would work well in here. That’s a little bit more of a delicate, tender one. Um, but I just buy a bunch of big stocks cuz they last forever. And you only need I think I use what, six, maybe seven leaves here. Um, and then we’re going to just chop them up into smaller bits because unlike spinach, kale is going to keep its form in your soup, which makes it a great like green addition to soups. And it has a pretty mild flavor. So, it kind of just melds in, but gives you again, you know, a little bit more fiber, some flet folate, and um, just makes it a little bit healthier. Here we go. We’ve got my soup is down to a good simmer. So, I’m going to turn it down now to about I’m going to put it on about a five. Let it simmer. My Dutch oven’s going to keep it at a pretty consistent nice high heat so it will uh continue to simmer well. That’s one thing that’s nice about using a Dutch oven to cook with is it does keep it nice and hot and retain it. So when you use like a metal pan or whatnot, every variation that you turn it, it changes pretty drastically quick the temperature of your pan versus the cast iron really allows it to um stay consistent with more gradual changes. Okay, we’ve got in our kale. Make sure you push it under and submerge all of it. You want it to cook for a few minutes to get nice and tender. It’s not like spinach where you add spinach in at the very end. Kale needs a little bit to cook up to get tender. Here we go. So, now we’re just going to let this simmer on our temperature. Let me peek over here. I think we can go check to see if our bread is our cheese is melted. It might We’ll see if it needs a little bit longer. I don’t want it to be like completely toasted, but a soft kind of melt to it. So, oh, perfect. That’s kind of exactly what I wanted. Enough to make it gooey, but I don’t want it so much that it’s going to kind of separate the fats out and are is crispy. So, we’ve got our melted mozzarella cheese on our homemade um rosemary holo bread that we I baked up last night for dinner. turn my soup down even lower because we’ve got again a good gradual. You have a question. Do you like the coated cast iron pans? I actually do like the coated cast iron pans. I’m using this one is a stab which is just an actual like has a cast iron base on it. But a lot of my my Lelay Cruset ones are the enamel coated and I do like them because that gives you a nonstick surface um that does cook up really well. Um, and I have quite the collection of Lakers. I think I have like 20 different types of pots and pans from them. Um, I’ve just collected them over the years. I still remember the first one I got I got on eBay when I was like 17 years old. That’s why I said I’ve been loving cooking since I was a kid. Um, and it is still with me and it was definitely a relic when I bought it. And that just kind of shows you the test of time that a really good pan can um keep you. Let me grab my meat over here. There we go. Okay. So, for our sandwich today, again, I’m keeping it fairly simple. Kind of doing like an Italian melt on here. I’ve got genoa salami and hard salami which taste very similar. Hard salami has a stronger spice profile to it, but I think it’s all going to go really work really well together. And we’re going to just put again a nice kind of layer through all this. This will make more than I’m making one big sandwich, but we will trim it up into multiple because this would be a big big sandwich. So, we’ve got our layer of genoa and now we’re going to do hard salami. And I will say, I mean, hard salami just brings it back for me cuz I always had it as a kid. And then also, you know, growing up, it’s very common um in Europe to have like sliced meat on bread for breakfast. Before we put this on here, let’s go grab our um apple bar out of the oven. Okay, let’s see. Grab my bearpaw. So, here is our apple crumb bar. So, the base of this and the top are the same, but with the bottom, we pressed it down firmly to allow it to kind of form a nice crust. Um, and again, this is made with um a cup of flour, a cup of oats, a half a cup of butter, half a cup of brown sugar, half a cup of sugar, cinnamon, pinch of salt, and then of course, we have two uh thinly sliced Jonathan apples that we seasoned up with apple cider and vanilla and cinnamon. So, it’s going to have again this lovely kind of like an apple pie bar. Okay, let’s finish up making our sandwich here. So, we’ve got our hard salami going on. And again, the main difference between hard salami and Genanoa salami is hard salami has a more of a spice to it. So, think about the difference between like hot dogs and Polish sausage. Polish sausage has a spice, strong spice to it. That’s the same thing with the hard salami. And then to bring out a little bit of that kick, we’re going to use a little bit of pepperoni on here to make our little pepperoni layer. You have a question. Do you have a cookbook available? I do not have a cookbook. I feel like I get asked that question a lot. Um, I I really love cooking and I feel like it’s definitely something I need to do. So many people have asked me about it. Um, so it’s on one of my goals for the future, hopefully in this next year, to create one. But I do send out recipe cards for my members. Every week I make a post of about three recipes from the week that we’ve made um for them. Um, but I also have all of our videos are from our streams. We download and um add to the link on our page. So, anybody can always watch and recreate these um meals by just watching the videos. Again, I try to make sure I go through every single step so that people can truly recreate them. Okay, we’ve got our layer pepperoni. I’m sure my husband is like even more, but we’re going to keep it simple. You could throw on a million different things. Pesto, a sundried tomato pesto would be great. tomatoes, red onions. I’m keeping it simple because my husband really loves a nice simple sandwich and I, you know, like it when it’s simple because I’m going to dip it into my soup and if you have too much on there, then it falls into your soup. It’s the kiss principle. I’m not familiar with the kiss principle. Keep it simple, stupid. Oh, that one. I was like, I don’t know. I’m sitting here thinking about the band kiss and I’m like, are they known for their sandwiches? Did I miss something? I said wrong generation. Maybe let’s give our soup a little taste. Perfect. I’m going to try my vegetables. Make sure they’re soft. But you can see I cut them up really small so that they’ll be tender. Mhm. Perfect. Well guys, we are ready to serve up our lunch today. Let me get my sandwich here. We’re going to cut it. So, I’m actually going to cut it into four cuz I told you this is a big sandwich and you want to be able to have it in our soup and whatnot. You have a question. How do you come up with all your recipes? What’s the thought process? Um, I think about what ingredients I have in my house and what I’m feeling like for the day. And that’s kind of what I knew I had leftover bread. So, I wanted to make a sandwich. And then I wanted to make Italian sandwich. So, then I was like, what soup goes good with Italian sandwich? And I was like, okay, I want to do an Italian soup, but I didn’t want to do a tomatobased Italian soup because I just made ministrone last week. And so, this deductible of like, oh, tuskcin soup. I love a good tuskcin soup. And then I’m like, “Okay, pop.” I’ve been cooking for a really long time, since I was 13 years old. So that’s coming up on 25 years. And um once you’ve been cooking for such a long time, you just know what vegetables and flavor pallets go together to bring you to the right kind of seasoning that you want or the broth or the flavors that you want. So I throw my soup out here. So, that’s kind of the process is I take what I have or what I’m feeling like and then I create from that. Um, and that’s kind of it’s a random thought process. There’s really no logic behind it, but it’s a delicious thought process. I’m going to use again I’ve got my brand new soup bowls. Grab our plates out. Got to get ready to serve up. But don’t you guys love them? These came today. My new bowls. They’re from um Magnolia Hearth and Hannah. I’m never going to say it right, but they’re really cool. I just feel like they feel like fall. So, of course, I have to use them. And then we’ll have them with our sandwich. Sit this over here for my husband in a little bit. Okay, let’s serve up. Going to move this. So, we will start out with our lunch today. We have our Italian melt. We used our homemade um hala bread that we seasoned with um rosemary and black pepper. That’s what we baked up last night with our dinner. And then we have on here melted mozzarella, pepperoni, genoa, and hard salami. So, you’ve got all of those delicious salamis. And then we are going to have it with our delicious Tuscan white bean soup made with Italian sausage, potatoes, carrots, celery, kale, and this just delicious fragrant broth that is full of spices. We’ve got thyme, oregano, bay leaves, and just all these fall flavors in it. And then for dessert, we have our apple um pie bars or apple crumb bars, which is made with a really rich crust of, you know, we use butter, flour, oats, brown sugar, and white sugar and cinnamon. And then, of course, two Jonathan apples that we seasoned up for just this delicious kind of hybrid between a pie and a crumb. And it’s going to be delicious. Well, guys, thank you so much for joining us here today. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. I try to do live cooking shows every single day, kind of show you what we’re making for our family and hopefully teach you guys something along the way. Again, we do upload all of our videos to the link on our page. So, if you ever want to recreate any of our recipes at home, you can just go to that link, search for what we made, and you can watch and cook along with us. Again, we also have a link to our Amazon storefront that has all the different cooking gear and gadgets that I use in my kitchen. And I’ve got my cutting boards, my knives, I’ve got my Dutch ovens, um all the different gadgets that I use, my pots and pans, um for you to check out if you’re interested in what we use. But again, thank you so much for joining us here today. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.
Dining and Cooking