A few months ago I made a soup using a packaged country gravy mix. It was a real hit. And ever so easy to make. I bought a number of packages of the gravy mix, fearful McCormick would take it off the market! I have no hint that’s going to happen, but one never knows. So, I used the same method, the same gravy mix, the same Italian sausage and onion and changed-up the other ingredients. I had celery, zucchini and dark red kale instead of cabbage. The preparation of the soup was generally the same, although kale does require a bit more cooking than the chopped, sliced cabbage. It took about 30 minutes to tenderize the kale, plus the time to sweat the vegetables and cook the Italian sausage. So, all in all, it took about an hour to make.

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Sometimes people make judgments about food when they haven’t tasted it. Like I have in some parts of the world. Like my daughter won’t eat mushrooms in any way shape or form. Sigh. And I don’t eat organ meats much anymore either (mostly because we know now how bad they are for us). But here I’m talking about the mingling of disparate foods. Like, let’s see, cheese on tapioca pudding. Or french fried broccoli on top of French fries. I’m making these up. Letting my mind drift into food oddities.

So it goes with this soup, except I learned about it at a cooking class. The bowl was put in front of me, and really I’ve rarely if ever turned down butternut squash soup. Even if it did have COOKIES on top. And it’s not as if I always like every recipe I taste at a cooking class, either. As many recipes as I’ve shared, I’ve not posted about an equal number. If this recipe had been in a magazine, I’d likely have flipped the page. I mean, honestly, I have about four good butternut squash recipes. Surely I don’t need another. Well, yes I did. This one. It is really, REALLY good. It’s different in a way – it’s a thinner style soup. More broth than thick squash, if you get my drift (and that’s because you strain out the solids). (Later note: the solids you strain out, though, are really good. Can be served as a side dish where butternut squash would be appropriate. It was really delicious.) And I thought the crumbled amaretti on top was just the icing on the cake. Well, the icing on the soup in actuality. The fillip of all. There’s not enough of the cookie to make the soup actually sweeter, even though the crumbs are sweet. You can barely see the little dollop of crème fraiche in the top right of the bowl.

The soup is not complicated – it has fresh butternut squash cubes, onion, fresh herbs, a tiny teaspoon of honey, a lot of chicken broth, and a cup of heavy cream. Oh, and some fresh squeezed orange juice. And I hope you have some rinds of Parmesan cheese stashed away in your freezer or refrigerator, right? Add one of those in the soup too (it’s discarded after cooking). The soup is only as good as the chicken stock you use, by the way. The teacher, Linda Steidel, made her own, but canned broth will work. I use Penzey’s broth (refrigerated concentrate), and have never been disappointed. I’m generous with the amount I use, which merely makes for a more flavorful base. The recipe indicates you need to whip the mascarpone. I don’t know that that step is necessary, but I’ve included it in the recipe. The squash solids are strained out of the soup, so it’s smooth. Take advantage of Costco’s big bags of cubed butternut squash – they don’t always have it. Tis’ the season for it, you know.
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One year ago: Chocolate Mousse in the Blender (easy, easy, but thinner than standard)
Two years ago: Aromatic Braised Lamb

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Lately it seems we can’t get enough of soups. All kinds of soups. Meat soups. Chicken soups. Even fish soups. But hot soups altogether. I don’t very often make vegetarian soups unless they have plenty of heft to them – not meaning fat or carbs – but chewiness or texture. This soup doesn’t really have either chewiness or a whole lot of texture. But it has some, and it’s got lots of gentle flavor. The flavor is regulated by the kind of sharp cheddar you put into it. If you want some heft, then you use a very strong Cheddar. I recommend an English cheddar, like a Cotswold, or some other kind of very sharp English type. See what your local cheese shop or market has to offer. Just remember: sharp, sharp, sharp.

This soup comes together in less than 20 minutes. Yes, really. Chopping the vegetables is the most time consuming thing you have to do. It contains chicken broth and half and half, some dry sherry, some thyme, cayenne, Bay leaf. Then the grated Cheddar is added in AFTER you take it off the heat. If you add most cheeses into a hot liquid, while you’re still simmering, it will separate. There are very few cheese that don’t cause that chemical reaction – Fontina being one of them. Can’t remember the others. But Fontina is not what you want in this soup – it’s far too mild tasting. This soup doesn’t have other strong flavors, so the Cheddar is IT. So anyway, you need to have the soup off-heat, then you whisk in the cheese. The soup is very hot, so it doesn’t take long for the cheese to melt completely. Ladle into bowls immediately and chow down. Ideally, you’ll serve this with some bread or savory muffin on the side. Even English muffins toasted with some cheese would be nice (and easy). In the class, Phillis served this with cornmeal, cheddar and sun-dried tomato muffins. I was lazy and didn’t do any of those, so we ended up having 1 1/2 bowls of soup instead.
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Lately I’m sounding like a broken record – seems like every recipe is a winner. Five star. This one is no exception. And it’s another one of those recipes that has nothing but ordinary food in it. Italian sausage, onion, garlic, canned tomatoes, broth, canned cannellini beans, orzo, then some fresh basil and Parmesan cheese. With the exception of the beans and orzo, it’s a lot like spaghetti sauce. But don’t forget that anything you make is only as good as the ingredients that go into it. That means, in this case, using good quality Italian sausage. Fresh garlic. Oh yes, there’s a bit of bacon in this too.

It doesn’t take all that long to prepare this soup, either. The recipe is yet another Phillis Carey one. Wow, that gal is one stupendously good cook. I liked this at the cooking class, and liked it almost more so when I made it myself. I used Niman Ranch no-nitrate/nitrite bacon. I used Italian specialty meat market sausage. I used high quality frozen beef broth and some of Penzey’s concentrated pork broth. Trader Joe’s canned beans. Muir Glen fire-roasted canned tomatoes. Real Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Fresh basil leaves. I made a double batch – made enough for entertaining friends, and two portions for freezing, and some for another meal this week. If you make this as a main course, you probably won’t get 8 servings. You’ll have no trouble getting rid of it, I guarantee.
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A year ago: Chicken Hamburgese
Two years ago: Heavenly Cream Cheese Brownies (yum, makes my mouth water, guess I need to make these again soon)

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I’m SO ready for fall weather. We’ve had a few days of cooler weather – very welcomed since October is often a warm month for us here in Southern California. As soon as I heard we were going to have a day with a high of 69 degrees, well, it needed to be a soup day. We’d offered to take dinner to our son’s home, and it needed to get cooked and finished by about 4pm, so I wasted no time at all getting this soup cookin’. I had a pork shoulder in the freezer, so that defrosted in the morning, and into the crockpot this went. No browning of the meat or onions. Just pile in all the stewing ingredients and let it burble away for a few hours.

You can see some of the nice ciabatta bread sopping up the juice.

This soup was very easy. Pork, onion, some prosciutto, some bacon, broth (I used Penzey’s pork broth, which is VERY flavorful, although you can use canned beef broth), later some rutabaga and kale or Swiss chard, and some cannellini beans.  Served over a thick slice of country bread that was  toasted under the broiler. See? Easy. You do need to remove the pork shoulder at some point (once it’s cooked) and shred it in coarse pieces. It gets added back in at the end just to heat through. And you do need to clean the Swiss chard, remove the center ribs, then chop it up coarsely. I used canned beans, just because they’re easier. I bought a nice loaf of sourdough bread (whole) and cut thick pieces, broiled those just to get them brown, then they went into the soup bowl. Then you just ladle the soup over the bread. The thick pieces of bread, although they soaked up the broth big time, the crispy edges still had some texture, which I liked a lot. We all thought this soup was a winner. A keeper. It should freeze well, although I don’t have enough hardly to freeze since I gave half the leftovers to our kids. We have enough for another dinner. I added some Parmesan cheese on top the 2nd time I served it (the pictures are from those seconds), although the cheese is not in the recipe.

The recipe was out of a soup cookbook I have, but I’ve changed the recipe so much, it’s not really James Patterson’s recipe anymore. But the concept is. His recipe called for beef brisket. I didn’t want to use beef, but pork. So I improvised some. Whether the Spanish really make a soup with pork shoulder, I’m not certain, but I decided to give them the credit for it – it’s called Caldo Gallego in that country. The recipe below is for stovetop cooking, but am sure you can figure out easily enough how to adapt it to a crock pot, as I did. My crock pot insert will go right on the stove, which is what I did to cook the rutabaga and the Swiss chard at the end. Otherwise in a crock pot you’d want to add those ingredients about 30-45 minutes earlier, maybe longer. So anyway, go get yourself some pork shoulder, some chard and make a soup. I’m going to be making this again soon, with fresh pork, then I’ll divide it up for freezing. For those cooler winter nights when I don’t feel like cooking. You probably think I never have those kinds of nights, but I DO.
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A year ago: Traveling near Mt. Shasta
Two years ago: Anise Pound Cake (a specialty of the American Southwest)

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A happy camper am I. Last week, mother nature provided us with a few days of temps only in the low 80’s. Hallelujah. And the nights have been cooler too, which makes for better sleeping. My mind had been turning to soup already even with the summer temps. So when this recipe appeared in our local paper recently, credited to Karen Collard of Anaheim, CA, it sounded so easy. And tasty. In fact, it’s so easy I almost didn’t clip out the recipe. But, I’m telling you, as simple as it is, the flavor is really good.

The other thing – this soup may not look like much, but appearance doesn’t matter. Trust me on this one. The original recipe was intended to be very low fat – just cabbage, onions, chicken broth, and a packaged gravy mix mixed with some milk. I decided to ramp it up a little by adding some spicy Italian sausage and some parsley for garnish. Otherwise the recipe is essentially the same. You could substitute turkey sausage (although I wouldn’t advise it as the pork/sausage provides a ton of good flavor), or eliminate it. I added a bit of olive oil too, to caramelize the onions just a little bit. This doesn’t cook a long time – in fact I think it’s better if it’s NOT cooked for hours. You still want just a bit of texture to the cabbage. But what it is, is EASY. Trust me on this. You’ll have dinner on the table in about 45 minutes.

It’s a rare day when I use any packaged mix for anything. I had to shop at a couple of grocery stores to even FIND the McCormick sausage flavored country gravy mix. Look in the big grocery stores for it. It just made the preparation so simple. It’s mixed with more liquid (milk and chicken broth instead of water) to give it a soupy consistency. So, go make this, okay? We just LUVVVVED it. I had a hard time keeping my tasting spoon out of the pot as it simmered at the end. We had leftovers two nights later and it was just as good, maybe better, the way soups often are. I gave the recipe to my friend Cherrie, who made it a night or two later. She and her husband slurped up two bowls of it the first night. More testimony that this is a keeper.
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Two years ago: Drop Biscuits (delicious, rich and easy)

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When we arrived home late yesterday I had nothing much in the refrigerator. Not even enough lettuce types to make a big green salad. So I turned to the freezer’s soup library. Fortunately, we’ve had a few days of cooler temps here in the California southland. Unseasonably nice. Usually September is our hottest month. Shhh. I don’t want to say it too loud. So, soup even sounded good. I looked through the stack of frozen soups. . . lentil, no. It’s not THAT cool. Pork chile verde? No, we had pork for lunch. Ah, some Red Thai curry shrimp, butternut squash and pumpkin soup with spinach. I remember it well. I concocted the recipe myself from several I found on the internet. It was sensational when I made it last year, and I had just enough for us to have for dinner. I microwaved the flat Ziploc bag for about 75 seconds, broke up the frozen chunks, dumped them in a big pot and heated it over a very low flame for about 20 minutes.

Recipe? Yes, indeed. Thai Pumpkin Shrimp Curry Soup

We spent the weekend singing and singing and singing. At our church choir retreat in the California mountains. Tahquitz Pines, in Idyllwild. My voice is very out of practice, but I didn’t get hoarse, which means I restrained myself some. It feels so good to be singing again.  At the church camp, well, not the spiffiest of accommodations, I will say. Five meals, two nights for $150 each. Oh yes, and provide all your own bedding (sheets, blankets, pillows) and towels. I won’t be advertising that as the newest budget weekend getaway, though. The food was relatively awful. Dave and I had an individual cabin. I use the word loosely, though. Don’t go thinking cute, homey, country, etc. This is just plain spartan. But the scenery was gorgeous, what we saw of it, because we were singing from early morning until late night. The board-hard bed was barely sleep-able. Our home beds felt so good. Just molded for us! Anyway, here are a couple of pictures.

There’s Dave sitting on the front stoop in the late afternoon on Friday. I did not take any photos of the room. Too awful. The places are clean – I don’t mean that – they’re just primitive. The camp is affiliated with Wycliffe Bible Translators – a Christian organization that translates the Bible into mostly obscure languages. Many of the translators and their families live and work here (briefly) immersing themselves in a new language and culture before flying over yonder, where they live and work for several years translating.

There’s Dave with 3 other choir guys. Music folders in hand. Ready for a long day of singing. I think I mentioned we have 113 members in our choir.

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In the summertime I enjoy serving a cold soup to guests – in a short glass as pictured above – when we’re enjoying conversation and wine on our patio. Not everyone likes cold soups, I’ve found. So you have to know your audience, your eating companions.

I hunted around for an appropriate recipe. I’ve made several cold soups over the years. My regular gazpacho is a favorite, but it is quite a lot of work. More than I felt like doing. Besides, we were having a lebanese layered salad with dinner that contained many of the same veggies. One of my favorites is a strawberry gazpacho – perfect when strawberries are at their peak (they’re past that now). But my DH doesn’t love that soup as much as I do, and since this was a party in his honor, I had to scratch that one off the list. I also have a citrus gazpacho that I concocted many years ago, trying to copy a soup I’d had at Cafe Pasqual’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now I have Katherine Kagel’s cookbook and it contains the real recipe – different than mine. But that wasn’t what I wanted either. Then I also have a white gazpacho – actually it’s an almond and cucumber combo – delicious – but I realized that was the soup I made for this same group of friends two years ago. We also needed a soup that would stand up to a Cabernet, which was what we’d be drinking. What to fix?

I finally decided to try this chilled avocado soup. In retrospect, perhaps it really wasn’t the right pairing with Cabernet – the avocado has too delicate a taste – or I should say the Cab overpowered the soup. But the soup itself was really good. Thick. Tasty. Not really like thick guacamole – it’s much thinner than that. I added some garlic powder to it – to give it a little kick. The other nice thing about this soup is that it must be made ahead, so it can chill. At least 24 hours. It will still good 48 hours later, and we had the last of it in tiny shot glasses 72 hours later. It was still bright green and tasty. Would I make it again? Yes, with the right meal. So keep that in mind if you decide to try this. Maybe serve it with white wine – I think it would pair better that way.
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A year ago: BBQ Macaroni Salad (so easy, so good)
Two years ago: Halibut Osso Buco (a lot of work, but worth doing)

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Seeing a rendition of this soup over at Tortefeasor blog got me interested. There are lots of versions of white gazpacho out there on the ‘net, and several in my recipe to-try file as well, but this one sounded more healthy than many. The original was from Ellie Krieger (Food Network), but I made some alterations to the recipe, so it’s not really hers, or mine either, at this point. But it is based on Krieger’s recipe. It’s a combination. And it’s probably not authentic, either, since I ended up adding some fat free half and half (not much, though) to it. And a tetch of sugar too. Most likely that’s not authentic either.

What’s nice about this soup is that it’s all made in the food processor. No cooking involved, and relatively little chopping either. I used the hothouse cucumbers with skin (more nutrients, I’m certain), so it has a greener cast to it. True white gazpacho is really white or creamy colored.

It was some years ago that I read an in-depth article about gazpacho and learned that the Spaniards add some firm-type white bread to the soup to give it some substance, some body. What a thought – bread! That’s exactly what the bread does in this soup as well – gives it texture and body. The sourdough bread (crusts trimmed) was fresh, the grapes from Mexico not very sweet. The original recipe called for 1/4 cup of white wine vinegar or sherry vinegar. To my tastes it made the soup way too tart and acidic, so since I’d already added it, I had to make adjustments somehow. That’s why I added the fat-free half and half and a bit of sugar.

Chilling helped mellow the soup too (just a couple of hours), but it’s a delicious soup. Our daughter Sara came to have dinner with us, and she thought it was really good too. Only 12 grams of fat in a 1-cup serving. I think I served about 2/3 cup to each of us, then topped with the minced grapes, more cucumber, some green onion, then garnished with the toasted almonds. I’ll make this again. It’s healthy and very tasty, especially for a nice outdoor dinner this summer.
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A year ago: New Potato Salad with Chipotle Vinaigrette
Two years ago: Classic Brownies (called “Best Ever Classic Brownies”)

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So maybe instead of wasting a paragraph of text telling you how I came about making this into a soup, perhaps I should just say – instead – I wanted to try this recipe for pork shanks and made it with more chicken stock and planned on making a soup. But I’d be lying. I wanted to make the Spanish Pork Braise which is kind of like osso buco, except it’s pork instead of veal. But after defrosting what I thought were pork shanks from our 4-H pig, I discovered the two packages were ham hocks. The packages said “pork shanks.” And the other package I thought was going to be nice smaller pieces of pork chunks, ended up being ground pork sausage. Sigh. So what to do? Improvise, of course.

The recipe calls for all kinds of interesting herb and chile flavors, and they all sounded wonderful. I didn’t have prosciutto, so knew from the get-go I wasn’t going to add that. I cut way down on the beans since it was going to be a soup. I used pinto (pink) beans instead of garbanzo, and the gremolata I had was leftover from the night before made to go on grilled chicken.

All the chiles and herbs added a lovely depth to the broth. The celery, onions and carrots gave it texture. The meats (both) gave it good flavor. The chili powder gave it just a little bit of bite, but not much. Perfect, actually. And the gremolata sprinkled on the top (you can barely see it in the photo) gave it a little zing. It went together easily enough, simmered on the stove for an hour or two (I made the beans from scratch in a separate pot), and provided a tasty repast with a nice slice of ciabatta to go with it. And I have enough for at least two more meals. Yes, I’d make it again and I’d double the amount of vegetables. If you would like to make the original recipe, head over to epicurious. There are a variety of other things added to their recipe.
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A year ago:  Ham & Asparagus Frittata

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