Pappa al Pomodoro

I had half of a baguette leftover that wasn't worth eating. Until I remembered that you could put dead bread in soup, as a way to thicken and a mark of frugality. Behold, pappa al pomodoro. I'm not sure exactly what 'pappa' translates as, but I think it's something like mush, hence: tomato mush. Not very appetizing, is it? I'll stick with pappa al pomodoro.

I used this recipe from Dana Treat, chicken stock instead of vegetable stock, and a little less basil because I didn't have enough.

Whatever you do, don't skip the garnish of baked basil and croutons. It's amazing. You could sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top if you wish, or even add some crispy pancetta. I didn't. And it was still good.

Pretty amazing for dead bread, huh?

Cream of Mushroom Soup

I picked up some gorgeous king oyster mushrooms at Mitsuwa the other day - they sat in my fridge while I pondered what to do with them. I had already breaded and fried, and had also sauteed and sprinkled with smoked salt. Hmm, what to do? I looked outside at the rain, and - bingo - soup.

This recipe is almost exactly like my husband's clam chowder, just substituting mushrooms for clams, and chicken broth for clam juice. Chop the shrooms finely, along with some onion and a little bit of celery. Sauté until the onion is translucent and the mushrooms lose most of their liquid. In the meantime, make a roux, then stir in some heavy cream, then some milk and chicken stock. Dump in the mushroom mixture, bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for a while. (Don't forget to stir!) To serve, dust with paprika, sprinkle with parsley (or both), and don't forget the crusty bread.

Clam Chowder

Due to the crappy rainy weather we've been having lately, I had a craving for soup. I thought about going out and picking up some pho, or maybe menudo, but then my husband said he'd make clam chowder. Score!

He finely chopped celery and onion, diced potatoes, and sauteed the mix in some olive oil. While the veggies were cooking, he made a roux, then added heavy cream, broke up the lumps, then added 1% milk. In went the veggies to cook for a while, then he added a few cans of chopped clams (rinsed!), the strained liquid from the clams, and an additional bottle of strained clam juice.

He simmered the soup slowly, stirring frequently. (Creamy soups have a tendency to stick to the bottom of the pot.) Pretty soon the soup thickened nicely from the combination of the potatoes and the flour in the roux. Salt and pepper to taste, and serve with crusty bread.

A Random Collection of Food

Once again, I bring you a random collection of stuff I've made.

Crab and green onion quiche, courtesy of Kathy from Cooking on the Side.

Some layered potato thing. It wasn't very good, except for the top layer.

Some sort of spiced glazed chicken. Meh.

Spicy tomato and blue cheese soup, from Leite's Culinaria via Desert Candy. Served with a grilled cheese sandwich, of course. I like that you can see the steam.

Macaroni and cheese (blue box) with ground beef, courtesy of my Youngest.

Clam Chowder

Hubby made clam chowder tonight. In the excitement of someone else cooking, I forgot to take a picture (sorry). Oh, and if you're looking for that abomination with tomatoes in it, you're not going to find it here.

Here's what he did:

Peel and dice 2 large Russet potatoes, along with some onion and celery. Saute everything for a while in a soup pot in some canola oil (I would've used olive), then dump it into a holding vessel. Make a roux with butter and flour in the soup pot (maybe 6T each, I wasn't really watching), then add 2 bottles of strained clam juice and about 1 quart of non-fat milk. Bring to a simmer very slowly, stirring constantly.

When it's simmering gently, add in 3 cans of rinsed chopped clams (liquid saved to add later if you want). Simmer for about 30 minutes, until it's thickened nicely and the potatoes are cooked to the point of almost falling apart. Salt and pepper to taste. We like a lot of pepper.

If it's too thin, add a little more roux. If it's too thick, add some of the reserved clam liquid.

Serve, topped with oyster crackers and crumbled bacon (my contribution - you didn't think I could stay out of the kitchen, did you?).

Split Pea Soup, Revisited

Every time I cook a ham, I make split pea soup. Which means I make it about twice a year, once after Easter, and once after Thanksgiving and/or Christmas (or both, if I'm lucky!).

With the crappy rainy weather we've been having, yesterday was the perfect day for pulling Thanksgiving's ham bone out of the freezer. Split pea soup couldn't be simpler. You can saute your veggies if you want, but you don't have to. Don't have a carrot? Leave it out. Let it get too thick? Add some water. Not a lot of meat leftover on the bone? Chop up a ham steak, or some kielbasa like I did this time. Easy peas-y. (Sorry)

My "secret" is to add about 1/4 to 1/2 of a teaspoon of curry powder to the soup. Not enough to really taste it, but just enough to give the soup a little something. I also add a little thyme. But shh, don't tell my husband, or he won't eat it.

I have a problem photographing split pea soup in its finished state. So here it is mid-simmer. Pretty colors, huh? It's amazing what a few new light bulbs in your kitchen will do.

Split Pea Soup, version 12/12/09

1 leftover ham bone
1 carrot, diced fine
1 stalk celery, diced fine
1/2 onion, diced fine
1 clove garlic, diced fine
1/2 t curry powder
1/4 t thyme
black pepper
1 bag of split peas, rinsed
1/2 link kielbasa sausage, chopped into small pieces
a handful of parsley, chopped
a handful of celery leaves, chopped

Place the ham bone in a large pot and barely cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer slightly aggressively for about 30 minutes, skimming any nastiness. Remove the bone, let it sit until it's cool enough to handle, then remove any meat and chop into little pieces. Return the bone to the pot and continue to boil while you prepare the vegetables.

Saute the veggies in a little olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the curry powder and thyme and a lot of black pepper. Scrape the veggies into the pot of water, and add the peas. Bring back to a boil, cover mostly, and simmer gently until the peas are about half-cooked. At this point, add the chopped up ham and sausage, and the parsley and celery leaves, and continue to simmer until the peas are completely cooked and have fallen apart, and your soup is the proper split pea soup consistency.

Taste, add more black pepper if you want (I did), and salt if necessary (it wasn't because of the sausage). Serve with crusty bread or oyster crackers. Or those large gumball-shaped hard crackers you can break a crown on, I think they're called wine crackers - love them in soup.

Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup

For some reason I had a hankering for some soup. Yeah, in the middle of all this nasty humid heat. I had a package of TJ's dried wild mushrooms, and found this recipe from Culinary Disasters.

I followed the recipe exactly, except for leaving out the rosemary and thyme, since Hubby seems to be able to detect it in microscopic amounts. Hell, he thinks it's there even when it's not, sometimes.
















Verdict? Definitely not pretty, but very tasty. Earthy, creamy, perfectly suited for a cold winter's night, but not so bad on a hot summer evening, either.

Asian Style Chicken Soup

I made a batch of chicken stock the other day, and wanted to make chicken soup. But different. So I settled on chicken soup with an Asian flair, employing fish sauce, lime juice, and galangal. I used a variety of sources as inspiration, including this one from Rasa Malaysia, this one from Je Mange le Ville, and this one from Kalyn's Kitchen.

I wasn't sure I was going to like the soup, since it was almost completely foreign to my palate. I'm still slightly convinced that I don't like coconut milk, and I'm just recently coming around to mushrooms. But, fortunately, and surprisingly, I loved it. So did Hubby.

<recipe>

Asian Style Chicken Soup

oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
a few slices of ginger, minced
a few slices of galangal, minced
dried Thai chiles (substitute chiles de arbol, or hot sauce)
2 handfuls of brown mushrooms, sliced
zest of 1 large lime
1 can coconut milk
chicken broth, maybe 4 cups
fish sauce, about 2T
soy sauce
juice of several limes
large handful of snap peas, cut in half
handful of bean sprouts
1-2 cups of shredded chicken
1/2 t cumin seeds, crushed
1/2 t coriander seeds, crushed
green onions, sliced thin
cilantro, chopped
hot sauce, optional

Saute the ginger, garlic and galangal in the oil for a few minutes. If I had been able to find lemongrass, I would've thrown some in (minced super-fine) at this point. Add the chiles (broken in half), and the mushrooms, and saute a few minutes longer. Add the chicken broth, coconut milk, lime zest, shredded chicken, cumin and coriander, and bring to a bare simmer. Let simmer for about 10 minutes. (I used whole cumin and coriander, crushed, in a tea ball, but feel free to use ground and/or add directly to the broth.)

Just before serving, add in the pea pods and the bean sprouts, and season to taste with lime juice, soy sauce, and fish sauce. You'll need more than you think. Cook until the veggies are done to your liking.

I served the soup ladled over white rice, but brown rice or any kind of Asian noodle would probably work too. Garnish with green onion, cilantro, and hot sauce if you'd like.

</recipe>

What to do with a monster cabbage? (Part 1)

Hubby kept talking about a cabbage salad that he used to make, and I love cabbage, so I bought a monster. Seriously, I should've taken a picture of it next to my dog, because they were about the same size. But the cabbage wasn't furry (thank God!).

Said cabbage languished in the veggie drawer for about a week, so I had to take matters into my own hands.

I chopped up some cabbage, and made soup.

















Since I haven't posted an actual recipe of my own in a while, here you go. And since I like to be a pain in the ass, this is exactly how I made it.

<recipe>

Ham, Cabbage and Potato Soup

Chop slightly less than half of a monster cabbage. Slice the remainder of a bag of baby carrots, and 2 celery ribs. Mince 2 cloves of garlic, and chop half an onion. Dice 4 slices of a hunk of smoked ham. Dice 3 smallish Russet potatoes, dumping them into a bowl of water so they don't start turning brown.

Melt the chicken broth from your freezer, and discover you don't have enough. Search for some sort of chicken bouillon, and fail to find any. Pull out a leftover baked turkey wing from the fridge, and separate the meat from everything else. Make a quick unseasoned broth with the latter part. Dice the meat.

Saute the onion, garlic, carrot and celery in olive oil with a little salt and a lot of pepper. Drain the potatoes, dry them briefly in paper towel, and add them to the veggies after a few minutes. Dump in a bunch of paprika, remembering that it's fat-soluble, so you can't add it to the broth later. Saute until it starts sticking a little, then add in all your broth, a couple bay leaves, a bit of oregano, and the merest pinch of thyme, because your Hubby hates thyme.

Bring to a boil, and simmer until the potatoes are a little more done than you like, because you kind of forgot about it. Add the cabbage, and smoosh it down. Season with Vegeta (that's been in your pantry forever but still has flavor), because you're worried about the broth not being flavorful enough. Let it simmer until the cabbage cooks down a little.

Make Hubby try it. Smile when he says "That's good. Like holy shit, that's good."

</recipe>

French Onion Soup

After I braised my beef shanks, I had a lot of the braising liquid left over. Yes, the dogs would have enjoyed it on top of their kibble, but I'm a little selfish sometimes, and I thought that I'd appreciate the depth of flavor more than they would.

In addition to the happy almost-sticky shank-braising liquid, I was also lucky enough to have some jus left from a recent beef dip expedition. (If you live in north San Diego County, you must try Agrusa's Super Sandwiches in Escondido.)

With all that beefy goodness in my fridge, I knew I had to make French onion soup.

















Caramelize a couple pounds of sweet onions, add a few good glugs of red wine, simmer until almost all the liquid's gone. Pour in braising liquid and jus, toss in a bay leaf and some black pepper. Let simmer and reduce. Toast some good bread, grate some Gruyere. Ladle soup into ramekins, top with toast and cheese, and broil.

Now that's tasty.

Tuscan Bean Stew with Sausage and Cabbage

After making the Creamy Cabbage and Potato Stew, I had about 2/3 of my monster cabbage left. Lucky me, I also had "zesty" Italian sausages in the freezer. A quick stop at the market for a pound of dried Great Northern beans, and I was ready to make The Bitten Word's Tuscan Bean Stew with Sausage and Cabbage.

See this beautiful fond?
















It went down the drain. I'm so ashamed. I was prepping the night before making the soup, and decided I could save some time the next day by sauteing the sausage then refrigerating overnight. Stupid stupid me.

Anyway. Moving on. Here's a picture of sauteing veggies. Just 'cause.
















When it came time to add the cabbage, I got a little worried. My trusty Descoware was too small! But I forgot that cabbage wilts quickly. So I was soon able to add more. Then wait a little. Then add more. Until I had what I thought was an appropriate ratio of cabbage to other stuff.
















Verdict? Very good soup. Sausage, greenery, beanery. How could you go wrong?

Irish Beef Stew

In the ongoing effort to clean out my freezer, I defrosted what (I hoped) was about a pound of beef stew meat. Perusing the interwebs, I found Elise's recipe for Irish Beef Stew, and decided to go with it.

I had to make a few changes to Elise's recipe - for starters, the grocery store didn't have single bottles of Guinness, and what the hell am I going to do with a 6-pack, so I replaced it with Newcastle. Which I guess makes this an English Beef Stew. I added mushrooms because beef and shrooms go well together, and I forgot the parsley and tomato paste. I also had to improvise a substitution for Worcestershire sauce, since mine smelled moldy-funky and had to be disposed of. A smashed up anchovy, a little soy sauce, a little cider vinegar, and a dollop of oyster sauce - I'm not sure if it even remotely approximated W-sauce, but it seemed to work in the dish.
















After sauteing the veggies, I saw that I had all these delicious browned bits on the bottom of the saucepan, and couldn't bear the thought of all that happiness going down the drain. So I deglazed it with a little of the stew broth, and dumped it into the stew. Later, while simmering, I decided that the stew was more soupy than I wanted, so I ladled out a bunch of broth and reduced it, then added it back to the stew. Much better.
















Copious amounts of black pepper, a little salt, and done. Delicious. Although if you make it, I recommend you don't forget the tomato paste and parsley like I did, it seemed to need that extra punch. Maybe tomorrow I'll pick up some of each and doctor up the leftovers. Can't hurt, and beef stew always tastes better the second day anyway.

New Year's Menudo

Happy New Year, everybody!

MIL made menudo for New Year's - a day of prepping and chopping, followed by a day of cooking. It's a hell of a lot of work, but so good.















She started by washing tripe and pig's feet (which she had the butcher cut into manageable pieces), then boiled each one twice to remove the yuckiness. Dried chiles had to be rehydrated and seeded, then blended with garlic and onion.

Because I didn't get to see any of it, and MIL's always rather vague when it comes to sharing recipes, I'm not sure what happened next. I know the tripe got chopped into bite-size pieces. I know 3 large cans of hominy were used. And I'm guessing the blended chile sauce was diluted with water to create the soup. Maybe she added stock cube or 2, maybe some MSG. (Yes, there's a bag of MSG in my pantry.)

Toppings were chopped and sliced - radishes, cilantro, green onion, white onion, lemon wedges. Plus oregano and chile flakes for sprinkling.

End result was a huge pot of tasty deliciousness. I even ate a pig's foot, which I had previously sworn I'd never do, because of the texture. But this was good. Damn good.

Turkey, Cabbage, and Rice Soup

I hope you made turkey stock from your leftover bird. Even if you didn't, you can use chicken broth to make this soup, or even water with a bouillon cube or two.

For the rice, I used Camargue red rice. Brown or wild rice would also work well. I'll bet barley or wheatberries would be tasty also.

This soup is great as a sort of de-tox, nothing heavy like stuffing, potatoes, etc. Just soup. With veggies. It's good for you.















Slice carrots and celery, chop onion, mince garlic. Saute until slightly softened. Add stock and chopped up leftover turkey, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer until the veggies are almost as soft as you want them. Add chopped cabbage and cooked rice, and simmer until the cabbage is wilted. Season with salt and pepper as desired.

Red Lentil Soup with Lemon

Still feeling like I had the plague, I decided on a quick delicious soup for lunch.



















This soup is loosely based on this recipe from Melissa Clark in the NY Times. I say loosely, because I didn't stick to the quantities, omitted the cilantro, and added some crushed coriander seed.

For the carrots, I used my veggie peeler to get thin strips, then chopped those up. That's probably the best idea I've ever had for soup - no matter how small you dice carrots, you always get chunks of carrot. The peel and chop method worked perfectly, giving the carrots the same consistency as the lentils. (Definitely use red lentils, also called masoor dal, any other kind won't break down enough.)
















Since all the veggies were really small already, I didn't use a blender (immersion or otherwise), just mashed with a spoon until it was slightly thicker.

If you haven't tried lemon juice in soup - not just lentil, it works in chicken too, and would probably work in a beans & greens soup - I strongly urge you to go out and buy a lemon.

Israeli Couscous Soup

I had a bag of Israeli couscous in my pantry, and finally put it to use, by making Mograbieh, from Anna of Morsels & Musings.

Mograbieh, from what I gather, is the name for Israeli or Lebanese couscous. It's bigger than your "normal" couscous, about 1/4" in diameter.

The recipe was simple - saute garlic and onion, add parboiled couscous and chicken broth, simmer until done, then add herbs, lemon and butter.

One of the called-for herbs was mint. I honestly don't think I've ever cooked with mint before - all I can think of is mint gum, and who wants that in their food? (Turns out I was wrong, and I'm so glad I didn't leave it out! I am still a little miffed, however, that I spent $2 on a stupid plastic package of mint.)


















This soup? Wow. Parsley, cilantro, mint, lemon zest and juice, added to the chicken broth, made for an amazing soup. (Hubby drank almost all the broth, Youngest finished it off.)

The couscous, unfortunately, wasn't so great. But I think that's because the bag I had was probably past its shelf life - the centers never really got cooked (little bit crunchy, little bit crumbly), while the outsides were ready to fall apart.

I can't wait to try this again using fresher couscous. I can also see using the broth minus the pasta, with shredded chicken and green onion.

I love soup weather.

White Bean and Escarole Soup

Three days ago it was 96 degrees at 6pm. Now it's 68 degrees. Talk about a change in weather!

Having grown up in Chicago, I'm used to temperature swings. But almost 30 degrees in 72 hours is pretty strange for southern CA.

So since it's so much cooler (yay, fall!), I made soup! A few days ago, Faith at I Pray to Gouda posted a recipe for White Bean and Escarole Soup. Just like with Peabody's Cheese Twists, I had to make this quickly, or risk it falling into the bookmark-abyss (currently at 360 items, and rising every week).
















While at the market today, I found cavolo nero for the first time, so I used that in place of half of the escarole. I also used bacon instead of pancetta, since that's what I had, and omitted the rosemary, because Hubby hates it. My beans were Sun Vista white beans, which I believe are Great Northern - for canned beans, Sun Vista is the best (but if anyone wants to send me some Rancho Gordo beans, I won't say no!).

I loved the slight bitterness of the escarole, combined with the almost-meatiness of the kale. Cavolo nero cooks up a little differently from "regular" kale, completely retaining its form - I don't think it would disintegrate even if cooked for an hour. The tomatoes provided some nice acidity, complementing the richness of the crispy bacon sprinkled on top. If you make this (and I highly recommend that you do!), please make sure to use a good broth, chicken or veggie, since it's a relatively quick-cooking soup, and the broth is key.

Happy fall!

Spinach and Rice Soup

The next cookbook in line on my shelf is More Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. I don't know why it was so difficult to choose a dish to cook from this book. Ms. Hazan is, after all, one of the foremost authorities of Italian cuisine.

So I narrowed it down to the following:
Spaghetti alla Carbonara
Frittata con le Patatine Fritte (Open-Faced Omelet with Pan-Fried Potatoes)
Carciofini Gratinati (Gratin of Artichokes)
Crocchette di Patate all Romagnola (Potato and Ham Fritters)
Spinaci e Riso in Brodo (Spinach and Rice Soup)

The ingredients for all of the above were readily available, so that wasn't a factor. I've already made a frittata, so I nixed that one. We just recently had steamed artichokes for dinner, so the gratin was out. I'm not sure I trust the freshness of my eggs, so no carbonara this time. And my last attempt at anything fritter-like was a disaster. So I went with the soup. Can't screw that up, right?

You start by sautéing spinach with a pinch of salt, and just the water left on the leaves from washing, until barely wilted. Drain, reserving the liquid, pressing as much of it out of the spinach as possible. Then you sauté some chopped onion in butter, add the spinach and raise the heat, and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add in broth and the reserved spinach liquid, and bring to a boil. Add arborio rice, cover and simmer vigorously until the rice is al dente. Adjust salt and pepper, and serve with parmesan.

Verdict? Meh. I wasn't expecting anything earth-shattering. It's just spinach and rice soup, after all. The arborio gave a subtle velvety-ness to the broth, but I wish I had chopped the spinach instead of leaving it whole - it's rather difficult to get one cooked spinach leaf on a spoon without getting a big massive clump.

So, not a disaster, but nothing to get all excited about either. Therefore, this book gets a 2nd chance, and can stay on the shelf until the next cycle through.

Ham Shank, Kale and White Bean Soup

Once again, I found myself in possession of a hunk of protein for a very low cost. In this case, a ham shank.

I figured that the shank could be cooked the same way as the hock, since they're just different parts of the piggy leg.

So I boiled said shank for about 90 minutes, removed it from the resulting porky broth, cooled, and separated meat from doggy bits.

After that, the broth was refrigerated until cold, in order to remove the fat. Then I clarified the broth using 2 egg whites mixed with a little cold water and the crushed up shells. (I found various ways to clarify - I picked the easiest, simmering broth, dump in cold beaten egg whites, cover and let simmer 10 minutes, remove from heat, let sit 10 minutes, strain through cheesecloth, or, in my case, paper towels.)

The whole clarifying thing probably wasn't necessary, but if you've ever made piggy broth before, you know it's cloudy with unattractive protein.

For the soup, I sautéed onion, garlic, carrot and celery for a bit with a lot of paprika, then added most of the broth and the chopped up meat. Simmered for a while to soften the veggies, then added chopped kale, simmered a while to wilt it, then a can of white beans, and simmered just to heat through.

Of course salt and pepper were added along the way.

Hubby, who normally dislikes my soups, loved this. Went back for a 2nd bowl, and packed himself leftovers (!) for lunch for the next day.

Post #80 - Stuffed Cabbage Soup

I just finished my first bowl of Stuffed Cabbage Soup, recipe courtesy of Chuck over at Sunday Nite Dinner. Oh my, is it delicious!

I followed his recipe, using beef, but omitted the thyme and lowered the salt slightly.

And, in my impatience, my first bowl was rice-less, accompanied by the end of a baguette.

Rice is now cooking, second bowl to come.