Category Archives: soups

Another happy accident

04 Tuesday Nov 2008

Posted by in barley, quick and easy, soups, tomatoes

≈ 5 Comments

Dinner: November 3, 2008

I’ve been off the mark for the last week as far as dinners go. The change in the weather here came on harder and faster than I had anticipated, leaving me in a considerable amount of pain, and while I cobbled together a few decent meals last week, none of them really lived up to what I hoped they would be.

So when the soup I was working on last night looked like yet another disappointment midway through the cooking process, I was annoyed. I had envisioned a rich and chunky roasted tomato soup, but the volume of tomatoes I roasted was too small for the amount of liquid I had simmering away on the stovetop. Inspiration struck, though, in the form of a container of leftover cooked barley hanging out in the fridge. I often cook extra when I make beans and grains like this – they’re good for quick, savory breakfasts, alone or topped with an egg, or, as here, as a last-minute addition to a soup or stew. The barley was just the thing to give my rustic soup the right texture, and you can never go wrong with adding another helping of a whole grain to your day.

The soup was built on a foundation of shallots, chopped and softened in olive oil with a sprinkle of salt. I added a spoonful of Pimenton de la Vera, stirred it through and let it get toasty, then added a splash of dry vermouth, the liquid from a big can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes, and a pint of homemade chicken stock (you could, of course, substitute veg stock or even water here). As for the tomatoes that had been in the can, those were roasting in the oven at 450 degrees, halved and sprinkled with salt, dried marjoram, and a drizzle of olive oil, alongside a couple of peeled whole garlic cloves.

squish

When the tomatoes were roasty and caramelized and the garlic meltingly soft, I pulled them out of the oven and crushed them gently with a potato masher before adding them to the soup. At that point, I added the barley (about 2 cups, cooked), let the soup cook for a few more minutes, tasted for seasoning, then served it up accompanied with a salad of mixed red leaf and butter lettuce and goat-cheese topped croutons. This may not have been the meal I had envisioned, but it was surprisingly good.

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I don’t generally bring politics up on this blog, but as you’re probably aware, we in the States have an election going on today. There’s a lot at stake, notably the right of friends to continue to have their marriages recognized as legal and valid, providing more humane living conditions for farm animals, and closer to home, the issue of preserving farmland and open spaces (that last link is an audio one). If you are eligible to do so, regardless of what your personal beliefs are, I’d urge you to get out there today and exercise your right to vote.

Golden

12 Tuesday Aug 2008

Posted by in soups, squash blossoms, tomatoes

≈ 5 Comments

Dinner: August 11, 2008

Sigh. Mike tells me I should blog this, but I’m tired and stressed and when I get home all I want to do is get dinner going and have our cocktail hour and eat and sip wine and watch the Olympics, and I just haven’t had it in me to write this up… but it was a soup, of grilled golden tomatoes and other good things, crowned with stuffed fried squash blossoms, and it was a little fussy but so good, and I hope to get some time to put more words to this soon. Bear with me?

Out of season

06 Friday Jun 2008

Posted by in chicken, harissa, lentils, pantry raid, peppers, quick and easy, soups

≈ 4 Comments

Dinner: June 5, 2008

Where did our June weather go? After a stretch of mostly sunny, beautiful and warm days, we woke to grey, gloomy and COLD. How am I supposed to play with light, bright springtime flavors when all I want to do is curl up under blankets with a mug of tea to get the chill out of my bones? I really must protest.

My crankiness about the weather aside, soup is often the first thing I think of making on damp, rainy days, and I suppose I could have gone with an elegant, light puree of peas or asparagus, but I wanted something a little heartier. Not winter-strength hearty, but a soup with a little more heft.

I rummaged through the fridge and pantry and came up with a pound of chicken and red pepper sausage, roasted red pepper strips with garlic and herbs in olive oil, some of my homemade chicken stock, canned tomatoes and a box of Puy lentils. I removed the sausage from its casings and crumbled it into my soup pot with a little bit of olive oil to brown while I chopped up an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. Those went into the pot next, along with the roasted peppers and a generous dollop of harissa paste for some heat. Once everything was nicely toasty, I added the tomatoes (half of a large can, plus juices), stock, and a cup of the lentils, lidded up the pan and let it cook away until the lentils were tender. I adjusted the seasoning and tossed in a couple of handfuls of another kitchen staple – some frozen chopped spinach.

While the soup cooked I sliced a couple of thick pieces of the sourdough loaf Mike baked yesterday and re-warmed them in the oven. (I’ll let him go into more depth about the bread if he wants to – but trust me when I say it’s pretty awesome to come home from work and walk directly into a kitchen filled with the smell of bread baking, and sharing the first slice still warm from the oven is pretty freaking amazing. I think we’ve eaten half of the loaf already. It’s delicious and I am, as ever, a lucky girl.)

This soup was a winner with its light and savory broth, the lentils and spinach providing a little earthiness, and the sausage lending a satisfying meatiness. The heat of the harissa was definitely present, but it was more of an overall warmth in each spoonful rather than a knock-you-over-the-head pepperiness. This was not the most seasonal dinner, but I can see us coming back to this in September and October, when autumn’s chill is in the air and we’ve got an abundance of late-season, home-roasted peppers.

Stinging Velvet

06 Tuesday May 2008

Posted by in nettles, soups

≈ 13 Comments

Cooking with an ingredient that bites you back? Hey, why not.

I had been curious about stinging nettles for a while now, so when I saw them at the farmers’ market on Saturday, I decided to pick some up and figure out what to do with them later. Prepping them was a bit of a challenge, but in the end it was well worth the effort.

Since I hadn’t worked with them before, my first order of business was to check Food Blog Search for inspiration. Soup appeared to be the most popular preparation, and it seemed like a straightforward dish that would enable me to really highlight the flavor of the nettles.

proceed with caution

Figuring out how best to clean the prickly little buggers was my next step, and I decided not to leave anything to chance. I donned a new pair of thick latex gloves while I pulled the leaves from the stems, and I made sure the prickly bits were safely discarded before proceeding. I had read that a quick dip in boiling water also helps to neutralize their sting, so I planned to blanch the nettle leaves as well.

I started the soup the same way I do my potato soup, melting a chunk of butter in the Le Creuset, adding chopped leek and cooking it until soft, then adding diced peeled potato (3 smallish ones), salt, pepper, water and thyme leaves. While the soup base cooked, I got a smaller pot of water boiling in which to blanch the nettles.

puree

When I had removed all of the nettle leaves – carefully! – from the stems, I added them to the boiling water and let them cook for two minutes. I removed the leaves from the water using a spider, gently pressing out the excess water with a wooden spoon, and placed the softened leaves into my food processor. While the blade turned, I dribbled in about ¼ cup of cold tap water, just to loosen up the mixture and cool it down a bit.

I then added the nettle puree to the potato/leek base, simmering it another 10 minutes or so before blending it with a stick blender until velvety smooth. The soup could have taken a bit of crème fraiche or heavy cream, but I decided to preserve its vivid green color and float a couple of chevre-chive toasts on top of the soup instead.

Dinner: May 5, 2008

This looked and tasted like springtime in a bowl. We finished every last drop.

Everything’s Gone Green

18 Tuesday Mar 2008

Posted by in close but no cigar, leeks, meatless, potatoes, quick and easy, soups, watercress

≈ 5 Comments

Dinner: March 17, 2008

In another lifetime, I was all about celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. There were far too many black and tans at the Gaelic League, “shaking my shamrock” with my best girl at the Old Shillelagh, big boiled dinners of corned beef, cabbage, carrots and turnips, but honestly, I’m just not that into it anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Irish food, drink and music, but I prefer my celebrations on the quieter side these days.

Still, I decided to cook up something green, a simple potato and leek soup with fresh watercress just wilted in and the whole thing pureed right before serving. It was inspired by the soup on Suzanne Goin’s St. Patrick’s Day menu in Sunday Suppers at Lucques, and I had originally planned to serve it with her “Gentleman’s Relish” toasts but in the end I went simpler and made cheddar and chive toasts instead.

I’m not sure if it was because I’m fighting off the cold that my darling husband is trying to share with me, but this didn’t quite hit the mark. I kept adjusting the seasoning, adding a bit more salt, a splash of wine vinegar, and finally whisking in a blob of sour cream (which, of course, decided to separate), and while the end result was okay, it wasn’t delicious. That being said, I’m having some of the leftover soup for lunch today – hopefully the flavors will have improved overnight.

In the soup

11 Tuesday Mar 2008

Posted by in meatless, pantry raid, soups, split peas

≈ 6 Comments

Dinner: March 10, 2008

A week or two ago, my friend Kelly Sue asked for a split pea soup recipe. I told her about my version, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually made a pot of split pea soup in far too long. I knew there was a bag of split peas lurking in the back of the cupboard somewhere, so I resolved to dig it out and cook a batch of soup for our meatless Monday dinner.

This is not a “recipe” per se, but rather the basic method I use for most of the bean or legume soups I do. I always start with a base of onion and carrot, diced and sautéed in your lipid of choice (generally olive oil or butter in our kitchen). Since I had the last of a bunch of celery in the crisper, I chopped that up and added it as well. The chopped veggies go into the hot fat in a large heavy-bottomed pot with a pinch of kosher or sea salt, then cook over medium heat until they are beginning to get tender. If you want to add garlic, do so now and let it go for just a minute until golden and fragrant, then and add your split peas (or lentils or soaked beans or canned/drained/rinsed beans). Add a bay leaf and a few sprigs of fresh thyme and cover with liquid. The amount of liquid will vary depending on how many peas/beans/whatever you use, and how brothy you like your soup – I used five cups of homemade chicken stock to my 1.5 cups of dried split peas. Vegetable stock, canned or boxed broth or even plain water all work well.

Cover the pot, reduce the heat to low and simmer until the peas/beans/whatever are tender – about 45 minutes to an hour, in this case. Fish out the bay leaf and thyme stems, taste and adjust the salt if necessary. At this point I generally add a dash or three of hot sauce, and since I wanted a little hit of acidity to balance the earthiness of the split peas, I splashed a couple of teaspoons of sherry vinegar into last night’s version. If you want to guild the lily even more, a dollop of crème fraiche added at the end is lovely.

Some people like pork in their pea soup. If that’s what I want I generally go with pancetta, half a pound, thick-sliced, diced into about 3/4- to 1-inch pieces and sautéed in a small amount of olive oil before the onion and carrot go into the pan. The rendered pancetta fat then becomes part of the cooking fat and gives a subtle porky flavor to soup.

As with most soups, a green salad, some crusty bread and a nice glass of wine (or three, if you’re glued to coverage of the latest political scandal while dining) are all you need to round out your meal, and the flavor of the soup is even better the next day.

Souper Duper

05 Tuesday Feb 2008

Posted by in escarole, pasta, quick and easy, soups

≈ 1 Comment

Dinner: February 4, 2008

New York City finally saw a little snow yesterday, though by lunchtime it had turned to a steady rain. By the time I got home from work I was tired, damp, cold and a little cranky – and not terribly motivated to do much in the kitchen. Luckily, I had plenty of freshly made chicken stock in the fridge, which would be the perfect foundation for a simple meal. I chopped up a head of escarole and rinsed it well, then sautéed it with garlic and chile flakes in a bit of olive oil. I added two quarts of stock to the pot, tossed in a parmesan rind from the freezer and brought it to a boil. I added a bag of cheese tortellini from Ceriello’s, letting them boil just until tender, tasted and adjusted the seasoning, and then ladled the soup into bowls. I grated a little bit of Parmagiano Reggiano on top of each, then sat down to what has to be one of the easiest soups ever – soothing, satisfying, just what the doctor ordered.

Use it or lose it

30 Wednesday Jan 2008

Posted by in broccoli, cheese, quick and easy, soups

≈ 7 Comments

Dinner: January 29, 2008

I wasn’t in the mood for the dinner I had planned for Tuesday night, so once again I decided to switch things up. The thought of wrestling with a Kabocha squash with achy hands was pretty unappealing, and besides, I had the better part of a bunch of broccoli in the crisper drawer that was starting to look less than perky. What I really wanted was soup, and this easy, cheesy version was a big hit.

I started by sautéing about a cup of chopped onion in a little olive oil, then adding a couple of smashed garlic cloves and cooking them just until they were fragrant. Next I added my broccoli – the florets as well as the peeled and chopped stems. I poured in about 8-10 cups of my homemade chicken stock, added a pinch of salt, a few shakes of Tabasco, and two heaping tablespoons of Colman’s mustard powder, then covered the pot and let it simmer about 30 minutes, until the broccoli was very tender. I turned off the heat and pureed the soup with my stick blender, then stirred in about 1/2 cup of crème fraiche and my cheese – about 2/3 cup of grated Grafton 2-year aged cheddar, and 1/3 cup of Grafton 4-year.

I ladled the soup into bowls and served it with some of the winter mesclun blend that Mike has been picking up at the Greenmarket, but what I really wish we had had was some crusty bread – the tiny slices of leftover baguette we had weren’t quite enough to mop up the last bits of soup from our bowls, so in the end we just resorted to using our fingers (we’re classy like that). This one’s a definite keeper.

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