We made a Fettuccine and Garbanzo soup from Molto Italiano. It called for a whopping 1 tsp. of saffron threads, which (of course!) gave it a lush, decadent flavor — even though the soup was entirely vegetarian — and turned the fettucine pieces a lovely shade of gold. It was very simple and tasty, although the quantity of pasta seemed way too generous; next time, I will reduce the pasta by half.
Jumping the gun on Mardi Gras a little bit, we made gumbo this weekend.I followed Mayhaw Man’s step-by-step from his eG foodblog, scaling down to about 1/3 of a recipe (4 chicken thighs and 13-oz package of Aidell’s andouille). Had to wing it a bit on the veggie ratios — it’s more of a pictorial than an actual recipe — but it turned out fabulously.
Another gumbo recipe said that you really want the veggies (onion, garlic, celery, pepper) to be really well chopped before adding them, and apparently using a food processor is more than OK in this case. I took that advice, and ended up with a gumbo with plenty of good mouthfeel and body.
Even with the scaled-down recipe, we had enough for 2 generous bowls last night, plus 3 lunch-size servings. We’ll definitely be adding this to the regular soup repetoire.
Last night, I made the world’s simplest Chinese soup: Egg Drop Soup.
Now that I know how easy it is, I’m sure I’ll make it a lot more often. Let’s see if I can resist the temptation to tinker with simplicity.
It took about 2 minutes… this was the sum total of my mise-en-place, not including 3 cups of stock.
The small dish is soy, a pinch of sugar, and a pinch of salt; the large one is simply a beaten egg.
We ate a lot of soup in thailand… many were noodle soups, as one-dish meals, and we also had soup just about every night with dinner. Some of them were the hottest dishes of the evening!
Chiang Mai-Style Curry Noodles (Kao Soi) is actually more like a brothy noodle dish than an actual soup, but I loved them so much on the trip that I feel compelled to include a recipe.
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Update:I finally managed to scare up all the ingredients I needed to make Kao Soi! I pounded the curry paste this morning (and have the bright-yellow turmeric-stained digits to prove it).
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Update again: The kao soi turned out a bit too thick. It was nice, but it definitely didn’t qualify as a soup, or even “soup noodles”, so I thinned it with about 1 cup of chicken broth before refrigerating the leftovers.
At breakfast this morning, it was just like I wanted it.
I cleaned out the freezer this weekend — in preparation for the Thailand trip — and found a huge Honeybaked ham bone (with meat!) that I need to use up, so we’re having Senate Bean Soup.
I started cooking it last night after dinner. It’s currently sitting in the fridge, melding flavors for tonight’s dinner.
We made Mexican Turkey Soup tonight with our stock and carcass meat.
I liked this soup, but I didn’t love it. There was too much broth for the amount of ‘stuff’ in it — we had to scoop the turkey and veggies into the bowls with a slotted spoon to get the balance right.
Before portioning out the leftovers, I ladled off 2 cups of turkey/tomato/chipotle broth (out of the original half-gallon of stock, plus the tomato liquid) and froze it separately for later use. The remaining bowls seemed closer to the mark. It also needed a lot more salt than the recipe called for. It’s a nice, easy weeknight recipe, and a nice way to use up turkey. It was reminiscent of tortilla soup, but not as good.
We made turkey stock today, here at my mom’s house. It was a 22-pound bird, so we ended up with a lot of very rich stock.
I’ve set aside a half-gallon in the freezer that I’ll bring home with me on the plane on Monday, along with some of the meat we pulled off the carcass. So, even if we don’t get a chance to make soup while we’re here, we’ll probably squeak a soup in right at the end of the fortnight once we get home.
I had planned last night to make Julia Child’s Garlic Soup with Potatoes (Soupe à l’Ail aux Pommes de Terre from Mastering the Art of French Cooking) but then Cameron got invited to a business dinner, and I had a work projet that was going to keep me busy all evening. So, instead I made… uh, soup from leftovers.
I had a half dozen or so boiled new potatoes left over from Saturday’s corned beef and cabbage, so I put them in a small pot with some chicken stock and a splash of cream. Once they were warm, I buzzed them all together with the immersion blender, added some salt, pepper and a little more stock, and tasted. Yummy, but a little bland. I added a small amount of jack cheese, which helped, but it still needed more.
Then I remembered I had some roasted pepper garnish left over from Sunday night’s salad: roasted red, poblano, and anaheim chiles, thinly sliced red onion, a bit of cotija cheese, all bound together in an olive oil and champagne vinegarette. I garnished the soup with the chile-onion mixture, and — ta dah — Crema de Papas con Chiles Picantes y Dulces
(Sounds a lot better than Soup from Leftovers, doesn’t it?)
Last night we — and by “we” I actually mean Cameron — made potato soup: Potato, Bacon and Gruyere Soup.
It was a pretty odd preparation, and the end result needed a fair bit of salt (perhaps due to the use of homemade stock rather than prepared broth). Once it was properly seasoned, you could taste the bacon and the cheese, but before that it was all texture and very little taste.
Next time, I would mash or blend some of the potatoes to get a creamier texture, too.
Tonight we made Crab & Crimini Bisque — What a disappointment! Expensive, time-consuming, and ultimately blah. There were too many mushrooms and way too much crab for the amount of soup… the garnish was overwhelming.
Also, they didn’t have you season as you went — only asked for salt & pepper at the very end — so the whole thing was flat and bleh. Too fishy and stringy from the crab, too.
