Oh, I do adore soups. I’m sure I’ve gone on and on before about why I like soups – just the simple ease of them, they warm the tummy, great to freeze for another night when I don’t feel like cooking, and you don’t have to make all those different things . . . a protein, a vegetable, a salad, maybe a carb . . . you get it all right in the pot. Sometimes I serve soup with a side carb like a biscuit. Rarely do I make a salad, because a green salad doesn’t always seem to go with a hot soup. Maybe a half a sandwich goes better with it, but I had had a half a sandwich for lunch. So, since there’s rice in this soup, the meal is complete just the way it is.I remember reading this recipe in a magazine back about 1971. It was probably Family Circle or something similar. I was still experimenting with curry powder back then, and this one doesn’t have all that much curry in it, so it just has a faint hint of it. But it was the addition of apple that intrigued me. Somewhere around the same time I’d encountered a savory cold apple soup that became a regular on my summer entertaining menu. One of these days I’ll post that one. I really enjoyed making things that surprised people. You just don’t expect apple in a savory soup.This soup comes together in a jiffy, actually. I had chicken ?, celery ?, carrot ?, onion ?, chicken broth ?, rice ? and the spices ?. Over the years I’ve adjusted the recipe quite a bit – more chicken, more curry, more onion, more carrot, more thyme. But the bones of the recipe remain the same. We went to see Atonement, the movie, the day I made this. It’s a kind of a downer, although exceptionally well done. It made me want to get comfortable in front of the fireplace and be cozy. Soup fits in perfectly.Mulligatawny Soup has its origins in India. Here’s what wikipedia had to say about it:

• Mulligatawny is a type of Anglo-Indian soup. It is regarded as the national soup of India. A literal translation from Tamil “pepper water” (‘Millagu’ is pepper and ‘Thanni’ is water). Despite the name, pepper itself is not a vital ingredient. Rice and noodles are commonly served in the soup; the real dish the Anglo-Indians call “pepper water” is closer to Tamilian rasam than mulligatawny. Variations differ very much. Sometimes, the soup has a turmeric-like yellow color and is garnished with parsley and chicken meat, and is more soupy, which takes on its Anglo-Indian adaptation to be a thick, spicy meat soup.

Interestingly, curry is not a specific ingredient listed above. But think India-n food, think curry. I really like the addition, whatever version this is. And it’s very low in fat and sodium, providing you use low-sodium chicken broth. You could eliminate the rice too, if you wanted to make this a low carb meal.
printer-friendly PDF

Tweet

The other day I was invited to a lovely ladies luncheon. A birthday celebration. It was great fun. The hostess, Robin, was gracious and full of laughter and humorous stories. She had prepared a delicious lunch for the 6 of us. I happened to have my little camera with me, so snapped photos of the soup. It was absolutely sensational. I can’t wait to make my own batch.

I didn’t know anything about Senegal (other than it’s on the African continent) or its cuisine. Fortunately wikipedia had plenty of information:

• Because Senegal borders the Atlantic Ocean, fish is an important staple. Chicken, lamb, and beef are also used in Senegalese cooking, but not pork, due to the nation’s largely Muslim population. Peanuts, the primary crop, as well as couscous, white rice, bananas, sweet potatoes, lentils, black-eyed beans and various vegetables, are also incorporated into many recipes. Meats and vegetables are typically stewed or marinated in herbs and spices, and then poured over rice or couscous or simply eaten with bread.
• Popular fresh juices are made from bissap, ginger, Buy (pronounce bouy) which is the fruit of the baobab tree also know as “monkey bread fruit,” mango, or other fruit of wild trees. Desserts are very rich and sweet, combining native ingredients with the extravagance and style characteristic of the French impact on Senegal’s culinary methods. They are often served with fresh fruit and are traditionally followed by coffee or tea.

So, this soup dish utilizes a number of the staples of the Senegalese cuisine: sweet potatoes, peanuts, and chicken. Robin got the recipe from the food network site, and it’s an Emeril recipe from 2006. Usually I’m not inclined to try his recipes – purely a silly reason – I think Emeril appears to be more hype and entertainment than he is a good chef. But I have nothing to back up my claim. Just that I dislike his talking and demonstration style. So, thanks, Robin, for sharing this soup with us!
printer-friendly PDF

Tweet

So I had these leeks that had been in the refrigerator for about 2 1/2 weeks. DH had gone to the market before Christmas and he mis-read my list – I wrote 6 leeks. He thought it was 6 bunches of leeks. Sigh. So I had a heck of a lot of leeks. They weren’t all that attractive, I’ll admit, since the outer layers had become wet and mushy. But the interior, the part we use in cooking, was just fine. A couple of months ago I made a leek and Kielbasa soup, but I didn’t have any Kielbasa, so wanted to use what I had on hand. I found a recipe on Epicurious that utilized many of the ingredients I did have, so I altered the recipe some (added pancetta, coconut milk, and some fat-free half and half) and deleted the items I didn’t want (potato, whipped cream garnish).

Then I got out my magic (onion goggle) glasses. Ta-da.

If you haven’t seen these, you’re missing a VERY good thing. I was skeptical they’d work since I cry buckets when I peel and chop onions. What was wonderful, though, was that I could SMELL the onion, but I got none of the biting tears. They’re a wonder! I took several snapshots of myself with them on, but every one was so positively ugly I couldn’t make you look at even one. I look like an owl. But thankfully, you only have to wear them for a few minutes. They come in colors – mine are green and white, as you can see. Get thyself to a kitchenware store soon and buy a pair of these. And go chop some onions.
printer-friendly PDF

Tweet

My friends sometimes ask me, “how do you possibly come up with all the stories?” Or, “how can you write about every recipe?” Well, it seems that every recipe has its own story to tell. That’s what makes cooking unique to each of us. It’s how recipes are born. It’s how a recipe from a website, or a cookbook, your friend Linda, or your Grandmother, with a slight change here and there, becomes your own. A creation from your intuition (well, sometimes it’s just that you didn’t have any carrots, so you used butternut squash instead, and it totally changed the dish). That’s the start of a story.”You must spend hours and hours at your computer?” they quiz. Well, yes and no. I do spend many hours a day at my computer, but I’m not always writing my blog. The blog though – it doesn’t take that much time really, since I like to write.

Writing comes easily to me. I wrote for 20+ years in my career. Writing was a big part of the job – I wrote mostly newspaper and magazine ads for companies wanting to hire people. Those small, medium to huge ads you see in the help wanted section week after week. There are ad agencies out there that do just that. Not product marketing type advertising, but people hunters. Not head hunters, but ads to encourage and entice people to apply for jobs. A client, the advertiser, would give us, the ad agency, some sketchy phrases about the job requirements, and about what this person would do. It was our job to fashion those phrases into cohesive sentences and paragraphs. Make the words logical. And their sequence make sense. Sometimes we’d use some fancy graphics to make the ad stand out. Other times it was a simple 2-inch ad with very small type. There were times when the ads were very hard to compose, I’ll admit. Perhaps the client didn’t give us much to work with. But usually there was enough.

So, you see, writing doesn’t seem like drudgery to me. I always thought, years ago, that I’d find my inner voice – maybe a voice that would write a novel. But the reality is that my mind doesn’t dream fiction stories. My head writes food stories. When I began putting all of my recipes into the MasterCook software, in one of the text cells I find that it invites me to explain the recipe. No, it doesn’t ask that, but it seemed that with every recipe I entered, I had no difficulty at all writing up something about it. About when I’d served it. How I’d altered the recipe to suit a particular occasion. Or used the leftovers. Many of my recipes have long, evolved stories about their origin. Or who they came from. Like the Cold Green Pea Soup from our friend Pamela in England. Or the Bishop’s Bread I just posted early last month from my mother’s friend Mary. Or my mother’s Apple Crisp.

Spending hours at the computer isn’t hard work for me. (Hmmm. Just ask my DH how many hours a day I spend at the keyboard. Oh. No. Scratch that.) When I’m cooking, there are stages in most recipes when it needs to cook. So I flit over to my laptop that resides here in the kitchen and start a new story. Or finish one that’s in progress. Or input a new recipe. Or insert a photo. Or even take a photo. I usually have 3-4 stories in progress at any one time. It seems that there is a kind of a schedule we bloggers keep. Gotta write a story. Gotta write a story every day. Almost anyway. I do my best. Perhaps there will come a day when I will look at this screen and tilt my head a bit and say, I have nothing to write about. But so far, that hasn’t happened. I still have lots and lots of my own tried and true recipes to post here. It’s just that I haven’t made them recently, and I don’t like posting a recipe and a story without a photo. You know that adage, a picture speaks a thousand words. So true with cooking.

———————

So, now that I’ve waxed on for 500 words, it’s time to talk about this recipe. This one started when I read a new cookbook I received for Christmas. I think I’ve mentioned that I constantly update my Amazon wish list with everything from cookbooks to kitchen appliances, etc. So our son and his wife gave me a book I’d requested, Cooking with Cafe Pasqual’s, by Katherine Kagel, the owner and mind behind the fairly famous restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is Kagel’s second book, and it’s a nice addition to my library. I read it from cover to cover and put little flags on the pages I wanted to return to. One recipe that intrigued me was her version of Pork & Green Chile Stew.

Saturday, DH offered to go grocery shopping for me (he loves it, aren’t I lucky?), so my mind immediately flipped to the stew. I put together a list. Now, in order to make sense of this whole story, you have to know that her recipe calls for 2 pounds of pork butt, corn, potatoes and nothing less than 16 fresh New Mexican or Anaheim chiles. I wanted to double the recipe, so that’s 32 chiles. I thought – whew, that’s a whole lotta chiles. But oh well. So, off my DH went. At his second stop, 20 minutes later he phoned. They didn’t have pork butt. What would I like to do? Also, they had not one single Anaheim (California) chile pepper. He didn’t have time to go to yet another store, so I said forget it, I’ll make something else tomorrow.

Next chapter: that same afternoon I was doing some catching up on blog reading (I read a LOT of food blogs, which you can see if you look at the list down my right column). And when I’ve been away for 11 days, the catching up took me a long time. So, I was reading over at CooknKate, one of my favorites, and lo and behold, she was cookin’ a Green Chile. Wow. Really? I studied the recipe. It was completely different than the one from Katherine Kagel. She had found the recipe over at Homesick Texan, another blog I read. I printed it out and decided to try THIS recipe instead of the other one. This one calls for 4 pounds of pork butt, poblano peppers (aka pasilla), jalapenos, tomatillos and beer! So today my darling hubby went out on another shopping expedition for me. He’s so wonderful. This time he found pork shoulder, poblanos, jalapenos, tomatillos, cilantro and a fresh bag of masa harina. I was off and running (in the kitchen, that is).

The prep on this recipe did take more time than I’d thought. I mean – this is just a STEW for heaven’s sake. The chiles had to be roasted, the tomatillos shucked, onion diced, garlic chopped, jalapenos minced, meat cut up in chunks. But the browning of all the meat was the most time consuming, and you wouldn’t believe the state of my wood floors when I was done. My rubber-soled shoes slid along. Time out to wipe paper towels all over the floor. Reminder to have that carpet cleaned.

And when Kate mentioned about the heat from this stew making her eyebrows sweat, she was right. She cut down on the chiles from Homesick Texan’s version, I decided to do the same. I used all five poblanos, but I used just two very large jalapenos. I shudder to think what this would taste like with more, or with the serranos. Five alarm for sure. More like ten alarm. I like spicy and moderately hot food, but this was too hot still. I’ve altered my version accordingly, and have upped the masa to thicken the gravy a bit more. We liked putting the mixture IN a flour tortilla, and the stew needs to be thicker for that. And I had a larger bottle of beer, so used all of it (probably 2 cups worth).

So you see, recipes evolve and morph. What’s right for Kate, or Homesick Texan, becomes right for you when you make your own additions (or subtractions as the case may be). In either case, this pork green chile stew is a winner in my book. I’m looking forward to the leftovers. We each had just one cup in our bowls (ample) with a hot flour tortilla. Delish.
printer-friendly PDF

Tweet

Talk about a sensational soup! This is it. Maybe we were just in the mood for something different, and maybe it was just because we were with friends that this soup hit the spot. At around lunchtime, we stopped to visit our good friends Russ & Stacey (pictured down below with one of their two children) in San Jose. They’d just returned from a trip the night before, yet Russ, who loves to cook but so often doesn’t have time, made this great soup for lunch. It didn’t look difficult, as long as you have all the ingredients. That may be the tough part – finding the lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime leaves. And the Thai chiles too.

There’s a photo of the chiles that I found on the internet – they can be both red or green. They’re HOT little devils, I’ll tell you. But they add a great punch to the soup. You likely could substitute other kinds of chiles in this preparation, but the red color definitely adds beauty to the finished soup bowl. Galangal is not something that’s stocked at my local grocery store, so will have to search it out. Same for the kaffir lime leaves and the lemongrass stalks. But I will be on the hunt. Soon. We have several Ranch 99 markets in our area (Asian foods), and I assume I’ll be able to find all of those items there. I’ll be making this soup and putting up a stock of it in my soup library. The recipe came from a cookbook I’m not familiar with – called Red Hot Chili Pepper. It contained lots of beautiful photographs, and a variety of recipes using chiles. Russ served this with a side of white rice, which you could add to the soup, or not. But the rice helped temper the heat.

When I make this soup, I may not add the little bit of hot chiles at the end, as they are so very hot. Burned my mouth and throat. But I think if they had been added to the soup earlier they would have dispersed some of their heat. I may consider adding just one chile. But heat is such an individual thing. I’m just warning you, in case you’re sensitive to chile heat, that these little guys pack a punch. Thanks, Russ (and Stacey), for the fun visit with you, and for this great recipe!

printer-friendly PDF

Tweet

My friend Cherrie and I went to yet another cooking class this week. You’d think we’d get tired of doing this, but no. We went further afield than usual (about 1 1/2 hours away, to San Diego). Where there’s a cooking school and cookware store called Great News. It’s in Pacific Beach, about 2 miles from I-5. We drove south, stopping in Oceanside for lunch and to watch the wind and the waves, then shopped at a fabulous meat market called Tip Top Meats (that also has the glorious sausages, and tons of imported grocery items from Greece, Scandinavia, Germany – it’s introduced as a German meat market). Spent 45 minutes wandering the aisles and buying some fresh sausages (those wonderful Nuremburger ones, like we had IN Nuremburg last month). Check this link to information about Tip Top Meats .

Then we went further south to Little Italy (very near downtown San Diego) and shopped at Mona Lisa, a very old-school kind of Italian delicatessen. Oh, the wonderful aromas from cheeses and salamis. An Italian friend of ours who lives in Fallbrook, says he does all of his Italian foodstuffs shopping at this market (and restaurant). Lots of Italian wine you don’t find even in wine stores. Fresh vegetables too, including really large fennel bulbs and cardoons. A small gem of a store. I bought some pasta, some fresh Italian sausages (with cheese and their own herb mixture) and some herby olives.The class, titled “Entertaining with Style,” was taught by one of Cherrie’s and my favorite teachers, Phillis Carey. She lives in San Diego, but commutes to Orange County to teach occasional classes, which is how we learned about her. She’s very fun, witty, cute, and is a fantastic cook. An author of several cookbooks too. Phillis recognizes us now, we’ve been to so many of her classes. Great News is her favorite teaching venue, and I certainly can understand why: a gorgeous designer kitchen with a prep counter that must be 18 feet long, all granite. Lovely facility.

We had time to shop before in their incredible store – it has more merchandise than nearly any cookware store I’ve ever been in, and at intermission. You get a 10% discount on purchased items if you attend a class.So, this was the first course of our 4-course meal – soup, salad, entree [and sides] and dessert. It was a delicious evening, and contained recipes I will make. Maybe every one of them. So, on to soup. This is very, very simple to make, although it does require a few steps:

• create the soup (stock, cream, onion, cauliflower, garlic)

• blanche the leeks

• saute the scallops

• chop the chives

But, these are not hard, not a one of them. I’ll be making this soup soon. My DH really likes scallops, although you undoubtedly could substitute shrimp. Or ham, Phillis suggested, instead of the scallop. I did learn a bit about a muscle attachment on a scallop – called the “foot.” I am certain I’ve had scallops that still had this muscle (where the scallop itself attaches itself to its shell) still attached. It’s very chewy, so Phillis showed us how to find it and remove it. You run your finger around the outside edge of the scallop until you find a slight nub – it will usually open to a small flap. That’s it – and you use a sharp knife to remove it (and discard). Don’t dig into the scallop flesh much – just remove the nub portion. Go for it.
printer-friendly PDF

Tweet

The other day when Cherrie and I attended a cooking class, we were served Tortilla Soup. That got me to thinking that all my leftover turkey could be put to good use in a big batch of this soup. Sarah’s soup was very easy, requiring only about 45 minutes of preparation, perhaps. I liked her soup very much – it hit the spot on a nice, cool day. But having made Tortilla Soup many times before, I decided to pull together several recipes that I have. My usual go-to recipe is from America’s Test Kitchen, and I’ve made it lots of times. At the moment, the recipe is available, but you have to register (free) to use their site. Their recipe is a bit more complex than this soup, but the flavors are similar. I like a variety of vegetables in my tortilla soup, so this time I added corn, and celery. If I’d had some zucchini, I’d have added that too.

If you still have some turkey in the freezer, from Thanksgiving, this would make a lovely use for it. It’s delicious. You can make your own tortilla chips, if you have the tortillas fresh. Otherwise, just use packaged, but crush them up a little bit on top of the soup when it’s served. I had about a quart of drippings and stock from the turkey. All that went into my soup pot with the fat scraped off. That gave a little different depth of flavor to the soup. The dried chiles I chose are ones that give more flavor than heat – guajillo and ancho. Since I have a collection of dried chiles in my pantry, I make notes on the package so I know which ones lend heat and which ones do not. Then I added a single Jalapeno chile at the end to give the soup some heat. If you don’t have any fresh Jalapeno on hand, use a little bit of chipotle instead.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, once I open a can of chipotle in adobo sauce, I put little mounds of it on foil, then pop it in the freezer. Once frozen, I pull the little mounds off the foil and chuck the whole batch in a freezer bag and back in the freezer. That way I can pull out as much as I want. Chipotle goes a looooong ways, so be careful if you’ve not used it before.

If you don’t want heat, eliminate the Jalapeno and remove all the seeds from the dried chiles (if there’s any heat in them, most of it will come from the seeds). With fresh chiles, a lot of the heat is in the ribs, but once chiles dry, most of the ribs disappear.

This soup was just outstanding. Probably because of the flavorful turkey broth. Here’s one of my big helpful hints: whenever you serve turkey, remove most of the turkey meat first and set aside. Break up the bones and put in a tall stockpot. Add water (and an onion, a carrot or two, a clove of garlic, some parsley) to cover. Heat it on the stove until it’s a simmer, cover, then put into a 225 oven (yes, 225). You want the pot to just barely simmer for hours and hours. The lid is on, so you won’t lose any of the fluid. Bake overnight – or for about 18 hours. Or 12. Or 10. Whatever your overnight timing needs to be. Remove from oven, take lid off and allow it to cool. Remove all the bones, strain, then place on the stove and bring to boiling. Continue to boil until the liquid has reduced by at least half or 3/4. I usually end up with about 3-5 cups of concentrated turkey broth. Cool, chill, remove the fat. Then you’re ready to use it.
printer-friendly CutePDF

Files: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click link to open in MC; 14 contains photo)

Tweet

Parsnips are a hugely under-rated vegetable. My mother never served them. In fact, until I was an adult I thought a parsnip was another one of those root veggies like turnips and rutabagas, i.e. round, globe shaped, which I didn’t like, really. But parsnips are a completely different animal. They look like anemic carrots, but they’re very firm. But also extremely tasty. I forget to buy them. But then, my local grocery store doesn’t carry them except on an occasional basis. Probably because lots of other people THINK they don’t like them, either. Or, they don’t know how to prepare them. Parsnips have a lovely, sweet taste when cooked, kind of like carrots do. They blend beautifully into soups, as a matter of fact, and add another layer of flavor if you’re making a carrot or potato soup. They also make a very nice vegetable (a carb, albeit) to serve with a roast or a grilled piece of meat. You can mash it just like potatoes once they’re cooked. Just peel well, simmer and mash with a little butter and salt and pepper.

I’ve had parsnips several times when I’ve visited places in the United Kingdom. The Brits know all about parsnips. I think our friend Pam once served us a parsnip soup as a first course for a lovely Sunday dinner. Sometimes you’ll see them in long quarters beside a big juicy roast – like we’d serve carrots.

So, when Cherrie and I were served this apple and parsnip soup the other day (at a cooking class at Our House, South County in San Juan Capistrano), we both did our best to lick the inside of the cups clean. We couldn’t quite, but we tried. It’s a simple soup, really, with a nice gentle undercurrent of curry powder (eliminate it if you don’t like curry). This would freeze well, except for the garnish, although you could toast the pecans and put them in a small plastic bag inside the soup bag.

Everyone at our table raved about the soup too. It was a stunner. The winner in my book, if there was one, of all the recipes in the class. It was served with a cheddar and apple panini (pictured with the soup, above). My hats off to Sarah, the chef at the cooking school (who reads my blog, she told me!). Well done, Sarah! I’ll be making this soup next week without a doubt.
printer-friendly PDF

Tweet

At the brunch we had last weekend, I asked Susan L. to bring some kind of pre-brunch nibble. Her choice. She brought a scrumptious soup, that she served in her grandmother’s beautiful bone china teacups (see picture above). You can’t see the interior of that teacup, unfortunately, with the soup nearly to the top, but it’s just lovely, as were all the others. She had 10 different ones. No spoons needed, since we just sipped it from those cups. And she served the cutest little rolled up nibbly bites along side – a dough with a piece of apple inside. Delish also.

And the soup, called a Tomato Bisque Sip Soup, was so very tasty. It came from Sunset Magazine, she said. From the taste, I wouldn’t have known that it was such a super-quick one, merely using canned tomatoes and a few ingredients, heated up and served. 1-2-3. Done. Don’t you just love those kinds sometimes?
printer-friendly PDF

Tweet

Depending on your leftovers, here was my solution last night, before we knew what our night would be like:

• Open refrigerator and scope out everything that is still usable (dispose of slimy, moldy, smelly and questionable items)

• Line everything up and do an overview of the situation

• In my case, this meant look, smell and taste the following: chicken and onions topping from the pizza last week, the twice-baked cauliflower take 2 from a couple of nights ago, the raw carrots languishing in the produce drawer, the lemon crusted chicken from another dinner and the butternut fries.

• To the pot add a quart of boxed chicken broth, and add raw carrots. Cook for awhile, then add any cooked vegetables and a few cups of water. Use an immersion blender once the soup has reached simmering.

• Add 1 cup or so of milk, taste for seasonings, add the meat (chicken) and heat through. Scoop into bowls and serve.

The next order of business was to turn on the television and watch approaching wildfires in our area of Southern California. At about 6:30 pm last night my DH spotted a huge, black smoke cloud as it spread east and south of us. He’d been watching football games, so we switched to news, only to find the only fire they were reporting was the very serious one in Malibu (which is still raging out of control as of this morning). It was at least an hour or more before they began reporting our fire, by then raging out of control, virtually no firefighters on tap because they were mostly sent to Malibu.

We’ve known that our area is a potential tinderbox after the very dry spring. Throw in a relatively hot summer, and only one day of showers a week or so ago, and you have a potential for disaster.

After dinner, we lost power. Quick hunt for candles and candle lighters. Knowing the fire was within about a mile of our home, we began packing up our most precious belongings (using flashlights), evacuated our station wagon full of valuables, mostly paintings and artwork. We took turns driving to a ridge near us (along with dozens of other lookie-lous) to watch the fires as they whipped more our direction from the further ridge. Scary. Very, very scary. Our firefighters are taxed beyond comprehension with fires that are blazing all over Southern California. As I write this, there are 10 fires, major fires, here and the winds have already picked up now that it’s dawn. Today we’re expected to have continued very high winds and temperatures in the high 90’s. Bless the firefighters for holding the fire line beyond our homes.

Spent a very wearying night, listening to these Santa Ana winds just whip around our home, toppling potted plants and trees, leaves everywhere, the pool a mess of dirt and leaves. We lost power for about 11 hours, so only had battery operated radios. Power was restored at about 5:45 this morning, so we now have TV reception again. It’s going to be a long day. The fire is far from contained (5% contained at 6 am this morning), but at least it’s not burning our direction. Thank you, Lord, for sparing our home.

Tweet