Giving Insta-famous chefs The Capsule Pantry treatment
Time for something a little bit different
Have you come across Laurent Dagenais on Instagram? He’s a Canadian chef making some of the best food I’ve seen on the internet.
And he’s freaking cool.
I love Laurent’s recipes, they’re the sort of food I love to cook. But making some of them in a smaller, simpler kitchen than his glorious setup could be hard. He’s a chef - he has the blowtorch and the beautiful Le Creuset pots and the outside pizza oven.
I - and maybe you - do not.
Today, I’m going to take some of Laurent’s recipes and simplify them when needed and give alternatives where alternatives can be given.
In other words, I’m going to TCP them.
Carrot Soup
The Capsule Pantry treatment
The carrots / onions / garlic
Laurent fries his carrots, onions, and garlic in butter before adding some stock to boil. You could also roast these veggies.
The herb sauce
Pureed herbs with olive oil to drizzle on top? Yes to this! You could use parsley, thyme, oregano or a mix. If you don’t have fresh herbs to hand, just omit. Or you could make a gremolata - parsley, garlic, salt, and lemon zest finely chopped and mixed with olive oil.
The croutons
I love croutons and make them a lot. They’d give texture to the smooth soup. But if you don’t want to make them, crusty bread on the side would work just as well.
The cream
Laurent adds cream to the mix which is excellent but you can make good carrot soup without it if you don’t have any / don’t eat cream / don’t want the extra calories. Milk can also work as an alternative.
Lasagne
The Capsule Pantry treatment
The soffrito
For those not in the know, a soffrito is a base of vegetables used in a lot of Italian cooking, especially in red sauces. Laurent makes the OG - onion, celery, carrot, and garlic. I’ll often omit the celery and carrot if I don’t have them to hand, but I would always keep the onion and garlic.
The meat
If you want to make this vegetarian, you could use an alternative to ground beef like Quorn but I‘m not a fan of that stuff, so I would pack it out with more vegetables. Zucchini, red peppers and extra soffrito work well.
With regards to the ground meat, you can use all beef or a mixture of pork and beef.
The wine
Laurent uses white wine which is really traditional but I’ll often use red. You can omit it entirely if you like.
The tomatoes
Laurent uses tomato puree but I don’t always have it to hand - you can always leave it out. With regards to the tomatoes, good quality canned tomatoes or passata both work great.
The stock
Laurent doesn’t seem to add stock - just wine - but you absolutely can. Beef, vegetable or even chicken works fine.
The aromatics
Laurent adds dried chilies and bay leaves. I’d leave the chilies out. If you don’t have bay leaves, oregano, rosemary and / or thyme works well. Either dried or fresh.
The white sauce
His white sauce is really classic but there is a weird alternative I picked up during some travels about a decade ago.
You can use crème fraîche spiked with a grating of nutmeg, salt and pepper. Sounds weird (and please, Italians, don’t kill me) but it works super well and is a little lighter than a Bechamel.
The lasagne sheets
Laurent makes his own, you of course don’t need to do this. Just use store-bought.
The layering
I like to omit the white sauce from the in-between layers, using only red sauce and lasagne sheets. Then I put the white sauce on the final layer only, finishing with a ton of cheese (ideally a mix of parmesan and sharp cheddar).
French onion soup
The Capsule Pantry treatment
The stock
Laurent makes one of the most impressive stocks I’ve ever seen - 12 hours simmering?!! Ooof.
But for most of us, 12-hour stocks are not realistic. You can use a good quality fresh stock for this instead.
The onions
There isn’t much to change here. Chop your onions, use a load of butter, and very slowly simmer them down. It takes a while - around an hour - for them to finally color up and caramelize which is part of where the soup gets its deep hue.
The aromatics
Laurent uses thyme which is what I would use too. Oregano is fine in a pinch but if you don’t have any fresh herbs, just leave them out.
The cheese croutons
Laurent does it SO well here - crusty bread on top of the soup topped with cheese and stuck under the broiler. You can also make cheese on toast to put on the side of the soup if you like. Melty cow cheese works best, like flavourful cheddar. If you’re vegan or don’t want (or have) the cheese, the soup is delicious on its own with crusty bread on the side.