With a number of butternut squash soups as favorites in my repertoire (well, two, actually) I looked askance at this new recipe as an intruder. As if I were to say “no, I don’t need another butternut squash soup, thank you.” Well, I hang my head – this is one great soup. Different than my other two (the Roasted Butternut Squash Soup and the Butternut Squash Soup with Jalapeno & Ginger). This one, though, has a very nice subtle flavor – no strong flavors trying to vie for one another. It’s the crispy, fried pancetta that makes this soup, though.

During the cooking class last week with Carissa Giacalone, she talked about her cooking style. She uses a lot of classic recipes and rounds them out with her own little twists. She specifically talked about how she likes to combine different textures in nearly every dish she makes. And this one is no different. And she talked about how important salt can be in a any recipe. (She thinks most home cooks undersalt everything.) The soup is a combination of smooth and chunky (because you don’t puree it completely) and a combination of soft soup with crispy, crunchy pancetta sprinkles to decorate the top of the served soup. Carissa also topped it with a deep-fried sage leaf. Likely I won’t bother with that step, as nice as it is and was. Deep fried sage doesn’t have a lot of flavor anyway (well, in my book at least). And it’s extremely fragile, even in the cooking process. I’ll include it in the recipe below, though, in case you are willing to take the time. Fried sage doesn’t keep but a day, so it’s not like you can save it for a week or two. It’s make-it-and-serve-it tuit suite.
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Recently I went with a couple of my watercolor class friends to a Thai restaurant for lunch. I enjoyed my lunch so much I decided to try to recreate it at home. My entrée was a special that day, a creamy (coconut milk-based) sauce with fresh pumpkin cubes and shrimp. It had enough of the sauce/gravy to serve over a bed of rice. It was absolutely out of this world fabulous. I tried to close my eyes and analyze the flavors floating around in my mouth. I hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out how to make it.

Seeing sugar pie pumpkins at the market reminded me I wanted to try to prepare the dish. I did sleuth on the internet for a recipe, and found one that was similar, but different. I decided to make mine a soup without rice rather than the shrimp entrée sauce over rice I’d had at the restaurant. Since there were already carbs in the dish (the pumpkin) I thought it would be healthier for us anyway. The internet recipe called for shrimp paste (I used a fish soup base) and dried shrimp (I didn’t have them, nor did I buy it). It called for “green chiles,” so I used one Poblano (probably not traditionally Thai, but it was what I had) and one jalapeno. It had a perfect degree of heat for my taste. This other recipe called for basil. I used spinach instead. So I really changed the recipe all around, different proportions of most things and added ingredients plus deleted others.

The seafood soup base I bought from Penzey’s. You’ve read about them here before – their soup bases are just the greatest. I’m generous with how much I use. They don’t keep forever anyway. I’ve had my three jars for about 5 months now and they’re still just fine (stored in the refrigerator).

As I was making the soup I kept tasting the broth. Finally, after I added a jar of Thai red curry sauce I was pleased. The sauce came from Trader Joe’s, but I believe there are other brands out there . . . just seek them out. I purchased frozen already-cooked extra-large shrimp which got added to the soup at the very end. They slow-simmered just long enough to defrost and heat through. The coconut milk gets added at the very last also because it does not like to be boiled. I added the spinach and merely stirred it into the soup minutes before serving. The flavor comes from all the other stuff you put into the broth, though. The garlic, shallots, lemongrass (I used a paste from a tube since I can’t always find fresh lemongrass in my markets), the chiles, Thai fish sauce, and the soup base. There’s also just a tad of sugar in this. The soup is quite versatile – you could easily change the ingredients to ones of your choice. Don’t like pumpkin? Use butternut squash. Don’t like shrimp? Use chicken. Don’t like coconut milk? Use regular cow’s milk or soy (although the flavor will be really different). Don’t like chiles? Add green or red bell pepper instead. But, if you enjoy Thai flavors, this is one fantastic soup. My DH thought it was wonderful too.
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Waiting for the weather to turn Fall-ish seems to take forever here in Southern California. On our recent driving trip we even got up to snow level (in Mt. Lassen), and endured 4 days of rain in Oregon, but as soon as we headed south again it was back into Indian Summer. The air conditioning has been running some hours nearly every day. But, it does cool off at night, thankfully. It’s not warm enough to eat outside in the evening (besides, by the time we eat it’s pitch dark now), and because I’ve been very busy trying to catch up on “things,” I’ve done some quick and easy dinners of late. Whenever the weather turns cool, my mind turns to soup. Soup is probably my most favorite food to cook, believe it or not. I even considered naming my blog something related to soup. But then, I cook a little bit of everything, so that would have been quite misleading and far fewer people would read my blog.

As I was baking Dana’s recent birthday cakes, my granddaughter Taylor asked me what was my favorite thing to cook. When I told her it was soup she gave me a funny look. When she comes to visit us I usually bake with her (cookies, cakes, desserts – I mean, what kid doesn’t love desserts . . . I always hope that one of my grandaughters or grandsons will have an interest in cooking).  So she was a bit mystified, I guess, that I said soup! Her mother (my daughter) doesn’t eat soup. Period. I don’t know where I went wrong there – she doesn’t eat eggs (or breakfast, for that matter), mushrooms or soup. Nor does she drink coffee or tea. Or wine. Or beer for that matter. Oh well. We eat/drink almost all of them. Back to soups . . . I’ve even written up a post about my soup “library” in my freezer – the vertical stack of flattened freezer bags full of soup. Twice this week I’ve pulled out bags from my inventory. I’m getting ready to start firing up the burners for a new season of soups.

I read somebody else’s blog this morning which gave me the idea that maybe some of you haven’t been reading my blog all that long. And maybe you haven’t read some of my older posts about my favorite soups. If you haven’t looked at my RECIPE INDEX, you can always go there and view a list of all of the recipes of all types that I’ve posted since I started my blog.

This soup list below isn’t all-inclusive . . . I’m only telling you about my favorite hot soups. The ones I make year after year after year. The ones I crave. Here you go:

Cabbage Patch Stew –  Kind of a cross between soup and stew. Simple to make and served with a topping of freshly made mashed potatoes. This is one of my all-time favorites because of the combination of hearty soup and the potatoes. Freeze the potatoes separately.

Cream of Tomato Soup –  From a cooking class I took last year up in Sonoma. Oh so much better than Campbell’s. This is the first soup I’ll be making very soon. I crave this soup, especially with a half of a toasted sharp cheddar cheese sandwich made on grainy wheat bread.

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup – a rather complicated fresh butternut squash soup. It also contains onions and apples, all oven roasted before concocting the soup itself. Succulent and a bit sweet. Freezes really well.

Roasted Poblano Asiago Soup –  the recipe I researched after going to Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen and having a similar soup. I crave this soup too.

Butternut Squash with Ginger & Jalapeno – a completely different soup than the above one – spicy, smooth and quite simple to make.

Tuscan Chicken Soup –  not a chicken soup at all. Very easy soup with ground beef and greens.

Sopa de Calabacitas – a favorite because I just l-o-v-e calabacitas (a Southwestern combo of corn, poblano chiles, onion, zucchini and cilantro). Usually served as a side vegetable, I like the mixture so much I made it into a soup.  

And just because I’m writing up a post about soups, here are two cold soups that are particular favorites too, which I probably won’t be making again until next spring sometime:

Cream of Cucumber Soup –  A cold summer soup from my friend Jackie. I must have made it 5 times over this last summer.

Strawberry Gazpacho –  from a cooking class a couple of years ago. Simply scrumptious. When strawberries come in season in the spring I’ll be making this right away quick.

I created the photo collage from photos in my archive. Once I finished it I realized the top left isn’t soup, it’s salsa. From the tiny thumbnail, it looked like tortilla soup. But the rest are soup photos from my recent cooking.

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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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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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Last week was my week to entertain two of my friends for Scrabble, and we had agreed from the beginning that we’d each eat lunch at home first. No pressure on the hostess except for some cookies and tea. After all, we’re getting together to play Scrabble, not to eat. But I was still sipping on a small glass of my new favorite cucumber soup (my third batch in a month) when the ladies arrived. I had plenty, so I gave both Gloria and Irene a small glass too. Gloria mentioned that it was similar to her favorite chilled zucchini soup. I promptly asked for the recipe, and the next day I had it in my hands. It is similar to the cucumber soup I make, but yet it’s different too. It’s a combo of zucchini and green onions, but this one is thickened with cornstarch, and has some curry powder to give it a little zip. And, you add a shot or two of some sweet white wine (Sauterne, if you have it) to it. So, it is different from the other one. I couldn’t wait to make it.

The recipe is very straight forward – you sauté the onions in butter, add garlic, the sliced zucchini, some chicken broth, seasonings, then whiz it up in the blender. Then you add cold milk mixed with the cornstarch, bring it up to a boil, cool, add the Sauterne, and chill. I had some good Wolfgang Puck’s chicken broth, so added that instead of using canned granules, but then I also added a little spoon of chicken bouillon concentrate. I buy it from Penzey’s, and think it’s better than any others I’ve ever used. Really good chicken flavor.

I added a goodly jolt of curry powder to it – I’d purchased a new one, and it was much hotter than I’d anticipated. So I stirred in some sour cream to the finished soup, to bring down the heat a little bit. Otherwise, I made no alterations to the soup. My DH adored it – he had two bowls of it, and he really enjoyed the heat (curry) in it. Just be gentle unless you know how hot your curry powder really is. Next time I might serve it with a little sprinkling of fresh chopped mint on top. Zucchini and mint go together well. Thyme and zucchini go together well, too, if that sounds more interesting.
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When my friend Cherrie and I divided up the food prep for our luncheon tea last week, she opted to make the chilled soup. And what a lovely one it was. The recipe came from an article in the Los Angeles Times food section, and was a soup served at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort, a very luxury resort right on the Pacific Ocean in Dana Point, here in Southern California. When the resort first opened some years ago, Cherrie and I had breakfast there, and another time we went for lunch. But we ate in the café, which is pricey, to say the least. For a café. They did have a dinner restaurant there, called Aqua, but it’s since been replaced by another restaurant, Stonehill Tavern. I haven’t eaten at either one, but while the chef, Alan Ashkinaze was at Aqua, he provided this recipe.

The soup is so low in calorie it’s almost non-existent (yes, really, just 67 calories), it has zero fat, and is so refreshing. You make simple syrup with lemongrass as a subtle undercurrent. The soup itself is watermelon, cantaloupe, peach and blueberries. Then it’s also accented with cayenne, Cointreau, champagne, fresh mint, orange juice and club soda. Does that not sound unusual? I just loved it. Not everyone did, however (don’t know why, and certainly wouldn’t ask). But if you enjoy fruit, and you like some unusual combinations, try this. Sorry for the blurry picture – I had to snap it in a big rush as the ladies were about to sit down.

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Chilled Cucumber Soup, with just the hint of thickness to it. You can garnish it with fresh dill if you have it, or do as I have, sprinkle the top with some toasted sliced almonds (good for the crunch).

It’s been years – eons even – that I’ve been making cold cucumber soup. And I always thought my recipe was just the greatest. Well . . . until I tasted my friend Jackie’s soup recently. It was a lovely bridal shower at her home, and this cold cucumber soup was served as a first course. It was absolutely wonderful. Smooth. Extra smooth, with a different texture than mine has. Jackie graciously shared the recipe with me (thank you, Jackie!), and come to find out this is a COOKED soup (mine is a raw soup only, although it also has buttermilk added). And this one has the addition of Cream of Wheat (just a little bit) to thicken it very slightly. You have no idea it’s there, but that’s what the elusive texture was.

You cook up some green onions with butter, then add chicken broth, vinegar and dill weed (fresh), also some Cream of Wheat and finally the chopped-up cucumbers. The soup is smoothed twice in the blender and sour cream is added at the end. Then you garnish it with a bit more dill weed. I did make it with full-fat sour cream. Next time I might try it with low-fat just to see how it tasted. A lovely soup. Try it. Highly recommended.
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If you don’t know it already, I’m crazy about soups. I make them all four seasons of the year, although in our hottest months, I must say it doesn’t always appeal as much. This is a hearty one – for those times when you want something to fill your stomach. And if you need a really quick throw-together soup, here’s your e-ticket. I didn’t have quite all the ingredients on hand (I rarely buy frozen vegetables, let alone the “mixed vegetable” type) but I was in a hurry to get a meal on the table. My DH had invited a friend for dinner, and we were going to a concert right after dinner, so it needed to be a casual meal and one that I could prepare, serve and clean up quickly.

If you have all the mirepoix ingredients on hand (onion, celery and carrots), use that. I bought the quart-sized already-chopped one at Trader Joe’s. You render some bacon, add shallot, the mirepoix, a little flour to thicken, some thyme and ground bay leaves, some chicken broth (or fish broth, or vegetable stock . . . whatever you have), a load of milk, then add the potatoes, the vegetables (I bought an “Italian mixed vegetable” package at the grocery store that contained green beans, carrots, asparagus, red bell pepper, soybeans and corn). Cook until the potatoes are just barely cooked through, then you add the shrimp and cook just a short time. I added a splash of heavy cream and garnished with some Italian parsley. Done.

As I’m typing this it’s 95 outside, and even with the A/C on, I’m uncomfortable. Preparing hot soup over a hot stove on a hot night is not my idea of fun. But I didn’t have anything on hand in the freezer that seemed appropriate. Nor did I want to do a full-on dinner with a meat, veg and salad or something else. That seemed like way too much work. My dear friend, Linda, came up to visit (an overnight stay) the day before, and I was enjoying catching up with her, rather than doing food prep in the kitchen. Once she left I dashed to the market and bought what I needed before our other guest arrived. We were delighted to have this friend come by; it’s just that I was very pressed for time and knew I couldn’t do a very elaborate meal. Sometimes, though, those are the best.

In my view, adding bacon to almost any kind of soup just gives in a lot more character. More depth of flavor. Period. So, even though I’d not made this soup, I was sure it would be delicious. And indeed it was.
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Oh, yum. Oh yes, another winner of a soup. I think the recipe came from Gourmet Magazine, but am not sure, since I made no note on the clipping. (These food mags change their format so frequently lately that I no longer recognize the arrangements or layouts anymore.) I wasn’t able to find it online, so can’t confirm, however the paragraph with it says the origin of the recipe is Estela Salas Silva who runs a Mexican cooking school in Puebla, Mexico. If you search for her name online, you’ll find mention of her in several places.

One of my very favorite vegetable combos is Southwestern Calabacitas. I wrote up a post about it last year. I like it so much I could easily make it my entire dinner. So when this recipe went across my radar as a soup, well, I thought, how perfect. Calabacitas (cal-a-bah-see-tas) is/are actually a Mexican squash, very similar to zucchini, but normally smaller, a bit more squat in shape, and have a more mottled green and yellow skin. But taste-wise, they’re almost the same. However, when you say “calabacitas” in Southwestern cuisine, it means a mixture of corn, the squash, probably onion and poblano chiles. They’re one of those combinations that represent a food marriage, to me anyway.

Ideally you’ll make this in the summer when zucchini and corn are in season, but surely it would be good with frozen corn, especially the frozen grilled corn sold at Trader Joe’s, for instance. You will need access to the poblano (also known as pasilla) chiles, and at least some kind of hotter type like Serrano or jalapeno. I used jalapeno because the serranos at my market didn’t look all that great.

There is a bit of chopping and mincing, but if you don’t care about the size of the chopped stuff, do it in the food processor, and it would take no time at all. I was experimenting with my new Alligator chopper. It’s immensely cool. And easy. Love this new toy (except for finding a home for it in my kitchen since it’s a tad bulky). I took a photo of it – with a small red onion inside. First you peel the onion and I only put in a half an onion at a time, but with the slam of the chopper you have a bunch of perfectly chopped vegies. I’ve used it for onions, small celery stalks, squash, shallots, garlic, peeled fresh tomatoes, radishes, bell peppers and apples. As you chop, the chopped stuff goes up into the clear plastic box on the top. Once you’re done, or it’s full, you turn the whole thing over and flick the box off and empty the container into your pot, or salad, or whatever. In case you wonder – why do you need one of these? If you want perfectly cut minced squares of things, this is it. As wonderful as a food processor is, it doesn’t chop things up uniformly, which is fine in most cases, but if you want exactly 1/4 inch cubes, the Alligator is your answer.

Anyway, this is a simple soup, really: onions, zucchini, poblanos (that have been grilled, skins removed), garlic, corn, cilantro, some cream at the end, and a tad of dill. And, if you happen to have them, some squash blossoms to garnish the soup bowl. I made this full recipe – which says it serves 8 – well, maybe 8 small servings. We had it for dinner last night, and with our hungry son-in-law Todd on hand, the entire pot of soup disappeared. My DH said – please make this again. Soon. Okay by me, but I’m going to double the recipe and freeze half.

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