Friday, August 22, 2008

The Tale of Two Soups

There was yesterday's soup. And then there was last night's soup...

Let us begin...

There is fresh sweet corn!


Removed from the cobs.


Use the backside of your knife to scrape out extra bits from the cob, including some of the sweet corm milk.


Then begin the base of the soup. Butter. Good. Onions & Garlic. Great! A mild chili pepper (Anaheim in this case). Season with some Cumin and Coriander. And a wee bit of Chipotle chili powder (this will add barely a hint of smokiness and helps balance the sweetness of the corn, without bringing much heat.


Add the fresh corn and a splash of water, about a cup. Simmer until tender and fragrant.

Puree the whole thing in a blender or food processor until smooth.


Serve with a wedge of lime, green onions and some crushed corn tortilla chips.


Delicious. The corn flavor in this soup is out of this world. The creamy soup paired with the crisp, crunchy chips is a lot of fun! You don't have to have the chips, but you'll miss the excitment.

Creamy Corn Soup
inspired by the Everday Food recipe. The Everyday Food recipe really focuses on the corn as the sole flavor, which is nice, but I wanted a little extra depth of flavor with my soup, so I added the onion, garlic, chili and spices. I'm very happy I did. If I added extra of the chili and spices I could probably change the name to Spicy Creamy Corn Soup, but this dish is very mild, yet rich and full of great flavor...so I'm keeping the same name as the recipe that started this adventure.


Serves 2 for dinner

6 ears of corn, kernels removed
1/2 onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 mild chili pepper, diced
4 TB butter
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp chipotle chili pepper
Salt/Pepper to taste
Tortilla chips (optional)
Lime wedges (optional)
Scallions (optional)

Clean the corn by removing the husks and silk, then cut the kernels off the cob into a large bowl.

Melt the butter in a large pot and add the onions, garlic and chili. When they are soft, add the cumin, coriander, chipotle, salt and pepper. Allow the spices to become fragrant before adding the corn kernels. Add one cup of water and simmer for 10 minutes, until the corn is tender.

Working in batches, process the soup until smooth and creamy in a blender or food processor.

Return to the pot and simmer over low heat until ready to serve. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.

Serve with crushed corn tortilla chips, lime wedge and scallions if you like. Enjoy.

4 comments:

Dancer in DC said...

Sweet and warm, this soup is surprisingly filling! One bowl and I was done.

And for those following our local eating adventures, almost all of it came from our farmer's market, including the chips.

ScottE. said...

J-lo's right. The main ingredients of this soup are locally grown and purchased in our very farmer's market.

Corn!
Chips!
Chilis!
Garlic!

Wahoo!

The onions are east coast, Vidalias. The scallions are probaly from some far reaching land, like the limes.

The spices...well...I order my spices by mail! I'm allowed to do that and I don't feel guilty since the main ingredients are all local.

Stef said...

This sounds delicious, I totally vote for it for a future soup-er party. :-) I had a corn and green chili bisque soup earlier this week, and it's just so tasty and hearty.

Anonymous said...

I saw this on Dinner Tonight but it was just too much soup! Thanks for scaling down and adding some spice, I will be making your version very soon!