For about 2-3 years my DH Dave and I have been eating a breakfast that consists of one pork sausage link, about 1/3 cup of Greek yogurt (2%) and a half a piece of grainy bread with a thin slather of peanut butter on it. I’ve never added up the calories or fat grams of that breakfast, but we’ve decided to try limiting, even more, the carbs we eat. And to eat more healthy fats. That meant trying to make some kind of (tasty) turkey breakfast sausage.

Eating turkey sausage will be ever-so-much better for us than eating higher fat pork every morning. Note that one patty (which was all we needed) has 4 grams of fat. And we’re probably going to eat more eggs than we have in the past. So, I did a lengthy search on the internet and my own cookbooks for seasoning mixes for breakfast sausage. Knowing that ground turkey has so little taste all by itself I knew I wanted a fairly high-spiced combination. Finally found one that I liked the sound of, over at recipeczar.com. But never satisfied with just one recipe, I took some ideas I found in some other recipes: one suggested adding olive oil to the turkey mixture (great idea, I thought, to give the meat more moisture); another mentioned finely minced red onion (I used onion powder) and some ground ginger.

I bought a big quantity of ground turkey at Costco and mixed up the sausage by hand. The photo at right shows the mounds of herbs and spices added. Once mixed up thoroughly, I patted them out into small patties and put them on a waxed-paper lined cookie sheet and froze them. Once frozen they went into a plastic bag for easy retrieval every day we want them. The plan is to remove them the day or night before, and just defrost enough for that next day. I know that ground turkey spoils very quickly, so they will stay in the freezer until needed. The photo above shows the patties – they’re much smaller than they appear – each one is about 1 3/4 inches in diameter, maybe 2 inches. And they’re quite thin.

Several recipes for turkey breakfast sausage cautioned about not overcooking the patties. After all, we know that turkey meat is very lean – and it will go from just right to overdone (meaning dry and inedible) in no time at all. So if you make these, keep that in mind. The first time you cook them, designate one as a test patty (cut it open to determine how long it really takes to be “done” on your stove and in your skillet). Then make a mental note of how many minutes that was – likely it will be less than you think. They definintely take less time than pork. And don’t saute them at a high temp. I heated the pan first, drizzled about a teaspoon of olive oil in the pan then set the patties in the pan. They lightly sizzled for about a minute on each side, then I put the lid on and allowed them to steam for about another minute or two.  Done. The texture isn’t as firm as pork, but it was so tasty I didn’t miss it.

I don’t recommend you pan fry them from a frozen state – by the time you get the inside cooked through the outsides will be dry and overdone. Not good. If you cook these right they’ll be tender and moist inside. If they are dry, you’ve cooked them too long or at too high a temp. My evaluation? Absolutely great. We both really liked them. Liked the flavorings. Just enough cayenne to give it some oomph. And hints of all kinds of other things, none of which you could pick out.
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Wanting a fairly simple dinner the other night, I knew I would use chicken. So I glanced at my newest cookbook, Ina’s Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics (her newest), and found this recipe for a chicken stew kind of dish but with bouillabaisse overtones. Bouillabaisse (pronounced boo-ya-bess) is a French seafood stew that I enjoy very much. So Ina took all the identity of the dish and adapted it to chicken. (Why didn’t I think of that?) It wasn’t difficult at all. It did take some time to brown all the chicken pieces (I made enough to feed 8), but once you combine ingredients to go into the oven, it’s very simple. But I only recommend it with some reservations. Read on.

What you get is a tender chicken dish with potatoes (I used yams just because I had them and didn’t have any potatoes on hand) in a tomato-based sauce. If I made this again I’d serve it with some pasta (instead of the potatoes or yams), because there is a lot of sauce.  I didn’t think the sauce lent itself well to yams, and I’m not sure the dish is the right fit for potatoes either. But, no sense in wasting the sauce, so I think I’d just make some pasta on the side and serve the chicken on top of it. My photo above I took after the fact and forgot to add the dollop of rouille to it. Sorry about that.

One of the key ingredients to bouillabaisse is saffron. This recipe calls for a LOT of saffron, so dig out your wallet. Fortunately, I had plenty on hand. It gently flavors everything about this dish.

If you were to go onto the Food Network’s site for this recipe, you’ll find lots of people think there are some mistakes in the printed recipe. I agree. I’ve corrected them in my recipe below. (1) the chicken needs to be baked at 350 or 375 in order to get the potatoes to cook. After 90 minutes at 300, the yams I used were still quite firm so I ended up simmering the pot on the stovetop for another 10-15 minutes to get them tender enough to serve; (2) the rouille (a mayonnaise kind of sauce you dollop on top of the stew) contains too much oil (most people thought 1/2 cup was sufficient). It definitely didn’t need a full cup of oil. I did the full amount, and the rouille was very thick. Plus, I have way too much left over, so perhaps the reduced quantity is correct; and (3) adding the Pernod is optional (I don’t happen to like it, but if you like anise, go right ahead).

The rouille added a really nice garlicky high note. It also contains additional saffron. I would not eliminate that part of the dish – it needs the little cap on the stew with the garlic zing. I was a bit puzzled by my recipe software with the high calorie content of this dish. I guess it’s high because you use chicken pieces with skin, even though I don’t eat the skin. Ina’s recipe indicated it served 3 people, but I think it would serve more unless you buy a really small chicken.

A note about leftovers: A couple of days later when I reheated this to serve as leftovers, I was quite disappointed. The saffron flavor had completely disappeared.  How very sad, because I think it added something distinctive to the flavor. Especially sad because saffron is so darned expensive. And the garlic flavor had completely disappeared too. Bizarre. So, my advice is to make this only for the number of people you’ll serve at one meal. I also didn’t like the red sauce leftover. It lacked oomph – tasted too much like tomato paste right out of the can. I knew it wasn’t but that’s what it tasted like. I think I wanted to add salt, but knew there was plenty in it already. And the yams tasted next to awful with it left over. I threw them out and used the rest of the chicken in something else. I did end up using the sauce for a moussaka casserole (will post tomorrow), which was a great way to get double-duty out of the quantity this made. So, next time: make to serve over pasta, no Pernod again, and bake at a higher temp. And plan for no leftovers. So, I’m only recommending this with reservations.
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Until a few months ago I’d never even HEARD of Alabama White Sauce. I read about it over at the Blue Kitchen blog, but the sauce recipe comes from some fella called Big Bob Gibson, dating back to 1925. I’ve had the Blue Kitchen recipe in my to-try pile for awhile, but just needed the right group of diners here at home to make it. After sleuthing on the internet about Alabama white sauce, they all have somewhat similar ingredients (mayo, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, hot pepper of some kind and horseradish) although some recipes I found didn’t have horseradish or lemon juice. It seems that slathering it on chicken is the most popular use, but I’ll tell you that when I served the leftovers with some hot steamed baby broccoli, I also drizzled just a tad of the sauce on the vegetable. Oh my was that good.

Here’s what you do – grill some chicken – brown it over direct heat/fire, then cook it on indirect heat until it reaches 165° F. Then slather the sauce on both sides, continue cooking for about 5 minutes, slathering it again. It should be done, or nearly so. Remove from the grill, loosely cover with foil and let it sit for about 5 minutes and serve with another dollop of the sauce on top of each piece. And maybe on any vegetables you happen to be serving with it. L-o-v-e-d it. Even l-o-v-e-d it better with the leftovers, I think. The sauce had time to sink into the meat a bit more and I just reheated the chicken pieces in the microwave.
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My cousin Gary, from Northern California, is visiting for the holidays. He’s retired now after a career at Hewlett-Packard, and divides his time between active membership in Mensa (maintaining his local Mensa website) and being a mentor to high school competitive robotics teams through First Robotics, a U.S.-based non-profit organization encouraging science, technology, engineering and math education. If you’re interested, there may be teams in your area who need mentors too, he has encouraged me to write. Go check it out. Gary was a programmer by profession, and gets a huge charge out of helping kids program a robot. Each season these high school teams must construct and program a robot to perform different actions on a tennis-court-sized field, and do it in a very tight time schedule. He also mentors teams around the country via email when they need help. And, he always helps me reconfigure electronic things around our house (we stayed up until 1 am last night while he moved a Tivo from one part of the house to another, and a cable box to my setup in my upstairs office.) Bless him!

As a bachelor, he’s never done all that much cooking, since he ate out a lot. But he just got tired of restaurant food. He’s somewhat famous in some of his social circles for his chili. Every time he serves it at potlucks or whatnot, he’s asked for the recipe. So given the opportunity, I asked him if he’d make his chili for our family for dinner. “Sure,” he said. So the ingredients were purchased and with me as his sous-chef, we made his chili.

So, how many chili recipes can one person have, I ask? Never too many is the right answer. Gary’s chili is delicious. A soupy kind of chili with all the usual things in it. But, there are two things that are a bit unique: (1) he adds big chunky slices of black olives to the mixture; and  (2) he uses an unusual method for cooking the turkey. When he was making this chili one time, he had forgotten to defrost the ground turkey. So he put the frozen turkey chunk (the rectangular chunk, not the tube type) in a pot, added a bit of water, brought it to a bare boil, then allowed it to simmer/steam for about 15-20 minutes until the meat was no longer pink. But you DON’T STIR IT. So when it’s cooked through, it’s still sitting in this kind of loaf shape. He chops it a bit with a spatula to give off small bite-sized pieces. That way the turkey has a lot more form than little tiny crumbles you usually get cooking it like ground beef.

Add whatever you might prefer for seasonings – his calls for chili powder, cumin and cayenne.  We added a bit more of the cumin to our batch, but the recipe you see below uses his normal seasonings. Note that there is no added salt. The juice from the olives generally contains plenty of sodium. It’s enough, actually. Thanks, cousin, for sharing your recipe. After cooking for several hours in my well-equipped kitchen he’s decided he needs to buy an alligator chopper (dices onions, peppers, etc.), a pair of onion goggles, a kitchen scraper (to pick up big piles of cut-up stuff), maybe a ceramic knife (I have just one of those), and also a new large pot of some kind. I’m going to recommend he look at buying one of the big Le Crueset pots. I gave him a short culinary lesson about garlic (removing the green sprout in the middle, and about how to smash it easily), about only cooking it a short time in the frying process, about different kinds of peppers (including chipotle and ancho), and why you’d use one type vs. another, and about letting soups/stews sit overnight to “meld” the flavors.
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Maybe you, like me, are already tired of looking at anything even related to turkey. We’ve had our leftovers of mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry relish. We’ve had turkey sandwiches with real mayo and relish inside. We’ve drunk the last of the sparkling cranberry juice, the pinot noir, and all the myriad of appetizers. So, I’m sorry to bore you with yet another recipe for using up leftover turkey. But I liked this so much I can’t NOT share it with you.

Most years in the past I’ve made a southwestern turkey chili that’s been a staple in my repertoire. I just never wanted to try anything new. But then I got my weekly email from America’s Test Kitchen, which linked to a Cook’s Illustrated recipe from 2007. It was a white turkey chili recipe. It was a bit different – it is more like a chile verde dish with the poblanos (also called pasillas), Anaheims and jalapeno chiles. There are a LOT of chiles in this recipe, but believe me when I tell you it’s not hot. Yes, really. And if you have any sensitivity to chile heat, just leave out the jalapenos.

What I did like about this recipe is that it’s quite easy. Not exactly stir and serve, but certainly a lot easier than the old standard I’ve made for years. The recipe was slightly adapted by me, and I added some grated Cheddar as a garnish too. Our family group who ate it last night, liked the cheese. The dish isn’t overwhelming in beans – there are 3 cans in the whole dish and one of the cans gets whizzed up until smooth in the food processor, so you don’t even know they’re there except for making the broth a bit thicker. Please note that without the garnishes, each serving is just 10g of fat.

The original recipe called for cooking a raw turkey breast. I just adapted it to utilizing the leftover cold turkey we had, so some of the directions have been changed. I also didn’t choose to serve raw jalapeno as a garnish, so included all the chile in the cooked mixture. And, I didn’t have just turkey breast, but all kinds of white and dark meat. It was just fine. But if you prefer all white meat, by all means go for it.
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We’ve driven out to our house in the California desert for a week. Family members begin joining us tomorrow and will come and go for about 5 days. But for the moment, my DH and I are alone. My blog guru has completed stage one of my blog conversion. You won’t see any difference yet. I’ve been busy (in the background) updating every blog post I’ve ever done. First I revised categories (so you can search on my site – correctly – for all my salad recipes, for instance) and tags (that help people find my blog when they do an internet search). The second part is opening every post I’ve ever done [ugh] and correcting font code problems. My guru guy is going to write a little program of some kind that will make all the old posts look better, but that means all the posts have to be coded the same when he writes the override. The first project took me about 10 hours to do. This one (regarding fonts) will probably be weeks of work because it takes me about 10-15 minutes per post to get just one corrected. It’s so very tedious (adding and deleting code). It will be several more weeks before there is a new design, and THEN you’ll see new fonts. Until then you won’t notice much difference.

So, back to dinner last night. In reading all my old posts, my mouth was watering over any number of them – things I’ve made in the last year and haven’t made since. So many recipes, so little time. I’ll tell you, it’s tough being a blogger of food. The one recipe that kept popping up in my head was the stuffed vegetarian Poblano (pasilla) chiles with corn that I made earlier this year. They were so awesomely good. Spying some lovely, big poblanos at the market was all it took for me to try it again. Only problem was I didn’t remember what all was in it (of course, in my own defense, I didn’t know I was going to make these until I saw the chiles, so how could I know the ingredient list . . . really). So I had to guess. I bought some fresh corn on the cob. [A little backstep here – I should know better than to buy fresh corn on the cob in November, for goodness’ sake . . . sometimes Trader Joe’s, or any other market that tries to sell these in November, are suspect. I should have put the package back and gone for the frozen corn. So, you’ll know better when you try the recipe, okay?] I decided to put some ground turkey in them this time (not in my original), and some mushrooms.

Now, knowing that most everybody here in America is going to have some leftover turkey this week, this recipe is timely. Instead of the ground turkey I used, substitute about 1 ½ – 2 cups of cubed leftover turkey. Don’t cook it, though, just add it into the mixture at the end.

Every time we drive to our desert house I stand at the open refrigerator at our main home and try to anticipate what I might need. I can’t keep both houses (cupboards and refrigerator/freezer) stocked with everything known to a home cook. So I forgot a couple of key ingredients and had to improvise. My DH said these stuffed chiles were better than the first time. I’m not so sure, but they were totally different, so even though they may look the same, they weren’t. These were less spicy. More like stuffed bell peppers in a way. These had ground turkey in them. What was missing was the chipotle chiles in adobo sauce that I think enhance so many, many dishes. They pack a wallop of heat if you use very much, but in moderation (meaning very little) it adds a depth of flavor unlike other enhancements. I didn’t have limes (used lemon instead). I also had no regular red and yellow bell peppers to add. None at all. So, this version is different – much more moderate in spicy heat. Still tasty, though. The poblanos were very mild this time – they had virtually no heat to them at all. I added a half of a jalapeno chile to the mixture too.
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I wrote up this post before we left on our trip in September, and I’ve posted a bunch of stories in the interim. No matter, read on . . . I kid you not, folks. I am in l-o-v-e with Penzey’s Soup Bases. You just won’t believe how flavorful your soups and stews will be when you add just a bit of this to them. And I seem to be riding on the tails of the successful chicken posole I made last a few weeks ago. I must not have made enough of that – I’m craving more. So . . . since I was making dinner for us to take to our local kids and grandson, and decided it was cool enough yesterday (in the 70’s) that it felt almost, sorta, kinda like Fall,  chili and cornbread sounded like the ticket to me. I didn’t want to go buy stuff at the grocery store. Sure enough, I had everything to make this chili.
Researching, I read a recipe on the Food Network (from Ina Garten’s section) and used it as a kind of guideline. This particular version doesn’t have any beans in it, but you could certainly add them. I might add a can of kidney beans, just to give it some dramatic color. It has a bunch of corn in it (I had a plastic bag of Trader Joe’s fire-roasted corn in the freezer) so probably doesn’t need beans.

Frozen chicken breasts I had, canned tomatoes (yep), red bell peppers (yep, two left in the crisper) and onions. Everything else was just icing on the cake – yep, had some cheddar cheese, a little container of sour cream, and some about-to-be-stale tortilla chips. Hooray. No trip to the grocery store!

The chili came together very quickly – really. I made it my own with omission of a few things (basil, yellow bells, cayenne). I had some cute little chile peppers from our garden (the four-legged squirrel and ground critters don’t like chiles, I’ve learned – hooray). They weren’t jalapenos, but something close, so the recipe below indicates jalapenos. You can use your chiles of choice for the heat you’d prefer! And I added my Penzey’s turkey stock concentrate and some chipotle chile in adobo sauce, plus some ancho chili powder. And the corn. Garnishes can be of your own choosing. I used grated cheddar, sour cream, tortilla chips and cilantro. Green onions? Fritos? Jack cheese? Yogurt instead of sour cream? Lots of choices here.
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Since we ate exceedingly well on this trip, we decided that we should make every effort to eat some lighter meals once we got home. I went to my soup file and tried to find something new and different, lower in calorie, but also full of flavor. I have recipes in that file (and all the other ones as well) that go wa-a-a-y back. This one did. I have no idea where the photocopy came from, but I changed the recipe some anyway, so I guess I’m clear with the recipe police.

I like fairly substantive soups. They need to have lots of texture and layers to make me happy. I don’t make clear soups at all. Never have; probably never will. That’s a “why bother” in my book. So when I read this recipe I figured I could make it more my own by adding vegetables and revising the seasonings. I could tell by looking at it that it would be low in calorie (the bacon is the only no-no in it).

The toughest part of the recipe is cutting up the chicken. I read this recipe all the way through, then went back and read it through again. It was so unusual. So I went on the internet and researched the word “hamburgese.” It appears it’s the word for the people who live in Hamburg. That’s it. I found no mention of any soup. So I really don’t know the origin of this. The chicken pieces (minced finely) are the dumplings. This isn’t any traditional kind of dumpling, trust me. There is a little bit of chopped up fresh bread crumbs, but you hardly know they’re there. I know why I saved the recipe – it has nuts (I used walnuts instead of pistachios called for), green peppercorns, minced ginger, cumin and cinnamon in the seasoning. I mean, gee whiz, where does that combination come from? Not likely from Hamburg, Germany. I’m sure that’s what intrigued me.

So anyway, you have to cut up the chicken. Words of advice here – if you have frozen chicken breasts, partially defrost them and mince them up while they’re still mildly frozen. That will be a whole lot easier than doing it once they’re totally defrosted like I did. The recipe said you can’t use a food processor (wrong texture), but if you have a meat grinder that will do. Otherwise it’s mince it by hand. I’ll just tell you that it took longer than I wanted to spend mincing the slippery strips of chicken.

The soup is a broth (I used some more of the Penzey’s soup base), but I wanted the soup to have more to it than these chicken dumpling things and broth, so I added onion, carrot, celery and mushrooms. It reminds me of albondigas, the Mexican meatball soup that’s similarly made, but has totally different seasonings in it. Anyway, the veggies just simmer in the broth, then you add the little blobs of dumpling (hand formed gently) and they simmer in the broth at just BELOW a boil (otherwise they’ll all break apart).

I must say this soup is different. Good different. My DH didn’t get it when I dished it up – I’ve never served him a soup with chicken dumplings before. But once he tasted it he liked it. I followed the proportions for seasoning, but I think it should be more highly seasoned, so have increased the amounts in the recipe below. Please note that a 2-cup (approx.) serving is only 247 calories. You place the dumplings in a wide bowl, ladle the vegetable soup over the top and garnish with Italian parsley and some of the bacon bits.
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It’s always been a tradition in our family that on birthdays the celebrator gets to choose what he/she wants to eat. When my daughter Dana was young, before birthday parties became the huge mega-big-deal they are these days, she got to choose her dinner. Often it was my spaghetti and meatballs. Or homemade pizza. And she also got to choose what kind of birthday cake or dessert she wanted. Sometimes we’d go out, and as all of our kids have grown, moved out on their own and married, those traditions have changed somewhat. But for Dana’s big 4-oh, she wanted a Mexican food feast. She’s been a huge Mexican food fan from a very early age. And fortunately for her, her husband and his family have some Mexican blood, so they all crave Hispanic food with great regularity. For special occasions Todd’s mother Ann makes a variety of traditional Mexican dinners for all of her children, and this time she made crispy chicken tacos, Mexican rice and refried beans. Then she also made a huge platter of taco additions (tomatoes, sliced radishes, shredded cheese, lettuce and home made salsa and guacamole). My, oh my, was it ever good. Dana fried up a couple of gallons or more of fresh tortilla chips, and we all nibbled on chips and Ann’s home made tomato salsa while we waited for dinner.

THE CHICKEN TACOS: For the tacos the family all prefers chicken. Ann roasts a chicken (or cooks up a bunch of chicken breasts), and cuts or shreds all the meat. Ann made sure the chicken was very moist – no dried-up chicken allowed here! Standing around watching her she finally let me prep each corn tortilla. And I found out something interesting. Did you know there is a “right” side and a “wrong” side of a tortilla? It was news to me! There’s a rough side and a smooth side. You want the smooth side out, because it crisps-up better in the hot fat than the rough side. Now who woulda known, I ask you? The packages of tortillas were all stacked up one direction, so I didn’t have to check each and every tortilla. The ones I checked had kind of rough stripes, almost, on the so-called rough side. The other side was much smoother and no stripe. So, I laid out each tortilla and gently scooped about a heaping ¼ cup of chicken meat onto the tortilla. I didn’t take any pictures of Ann frying the tacos – I should have. She has a technique . . . you lay the whole flat tortilla (with the chicken kind of in a strip across the middle) in the large sauté pan with about ½ cup of hot corn or canola oil and you let it sizzle just for about 10 seconds, then using tongs you gently fold half of the tortilla over and hold it in place for another few seconds until the taco will maintain the fold. Continue frying for about another minute or two, turning the taco over so it just barely gets golden, then drain on paper towels, and keep hot (oven or chafing dish) while you continue frying.

Meanwhile, you need a large platter with all the trimmings (list in first paragraph) and set them out. There were fourteen of us, and Ann must have made about 60 tacos – we kept making them until the chicken ran out. Everyone likes a different combination of trimmings, so you make your own. Ann has a lovely big chafing dish that keeps the tacos hot, then you build them yourself.

THE MEXICAN RICE: Having never made Mexican rice myself, I was interested to see what Ann did to hers. I’d never had anything except exceedingly bland rice at some Mexican restaurants, and always thought it was pretty awful. So I hoped Ann’s would be different. Oh yes, indeed. I loved it. Knowing her technique, it’s really more like a pilaf than a steamed rice. She described what she did, so I don’t have proportions. She sautés some green onions (including the top part) in some corn oil, then adds some red bell pepper and garlic. Maybe she added a little tomato too. I can’t remember. Then she adds the rice and allows it to almost burn in the oil – in other words she continues to sauté the mixture for awhile until the rice has turned a dark golden brown. She adds LOTS of salt. She thinks salt is the most important ingredient in her rice. Usually she makes the rice to accompany chicken tacos, so she has some good juices and fat from the chicken. That’s an important component of the rice – using all those drippings and a little bit of chicken meat too. She adds broth (and the liquid from poaching the chicken if she’s used breasts only) and water for the proportion of rice (look at the rice cooking instructions for quantity). Cover and steam until the rice is almost done, but not quite. Remove lid and continue to let the rice cook over very low heat, stirring frequently, until all the liquid is gone and the rice has “dried out,” she said. That took about another 10-15 minutes. It might depend on how large a batch you made, however. Taste for seasoning and serve! I could have made a meal of that all by itself.

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The first time I had posole was my first visit to Santa Fe, New Mexico. That was about about 20 years ago, I’d guess. It was a culinary tour, and the guide packed in 4 days of day and night eating, shopping, museums, tours and more food. It was heavenly fun. The food was out of this world. If you’ve ever had a food epiphany, then you can relate to what I felt on that trip. I realized I was truly enamored with Southwestern food.

I’d never even heard of posole (poh-so-leh) until that trip, and hence learned that traditionally it’s a pork and hominy stew, typical of that region. Likely you can find it in Texas too, probably Arizona as well. In the stores there you can buy posole mixes (yes, I bought one). Hominy isn’t something I buy at all – I bet I’ve only purchased it a couple of times in my life (canned). But hominy is a requirement for this recipe. However, I didn’t have any. What to do? I used garbanzo beans instead. Not exactly authentic, but close.

In my repertoire of recipes I found one for posole made with chicken, so it at least gave me the formation of this recipe since chicken was what I had defrosting for the evening meal. The soup came together in rapid order – maybe not quite 30 minutes, but almost.

The recipe I was reading suggested you add a can of enchilada sauce. Well, I didn’t have that either. So I made my own. Well, actually, I just added the ingredients to the soup. Then I added in my own tweaking here and there (chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, some powdered cocoa), and now I’ve got a new soup recipe for my collection. This soup was fantastic if I do say so myself.

Now, I will say, I used Penzey’s turkey soup base concentrate for this recipe. And, if you read my blog piece a few days ago, you know that I’m a huge fan of Penzey’s soup bases. And once again, it provided a delicious depth of character to what was a relatively simple soup. The spinach is added in at the last and is barely cooked. I used baby spinach, which made the bites manageable. If you buy regular spinach, you’d best chop it up a little.

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