Pumpkin Curry Soup

I bought a small pumpkin for cooking this weekend. Even the smallest pumpkin available at our market was still bigger than I needed. So after I got what I needed (another post coming soon!), I had just over 4 cups of cleaned, diced pumpkin waiting for something delicious to happen to it. I could do pie, but I'm probably considered a foodie heathen, but I prefer Libby's canned pumpkin for pies! So that generally means something savory. So soup it was gonna be. But I didn't want straight up pumpkin soup, I wanted something more. Pumpkin Curry Soup! With only a quick search of my books, I didn't find anything adequate, so I just started with my own recipe. Shall we?

Pumpkin Curry Soup

I started with 2 TB of butter, 4 chopped shallots and 2 carrots, peeled and chopped. Saute until the shallots start to turn golden.

Add 1 1/2 TB of mild curry powder, 1 TB garam masala, 1/8 tsp of cayenne pepper, 1/4 tsp tumeric, salt & pepper. Add 1 TB grated ginger. Stir and let the spices bloom in the butter! Mmm, blooming in butter!

Add about 4 cups of diced pumpkin, 1/2 can of diced tomatoes and about 3 cups of broth. Chicken or veggie. Stir to incorporate. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, until pumpkin is tender. Working in batches, puree the soup in a blender or food processor until smooth. Return to the pot, taste and adjust spices. Optional, but OMG so good, add about 1 cup of coconut milk. Stir to incorporate. Taste and adjust seasoning again. Serve hot!

I had some left over toasted pumpkin seeds. I garnished with those. The texture was nice, but these were spiced and the flavors conflicted. If you have some plain roasted seeds, they might be nice. Or some fresh herbs. Enjoy!

More Green!

I've recently made potato salad with salsa verde. Then there is my pollo verde. And now more verde. Chili Verde! I love this dish. A unique, for me, approach to chili! This is no tomato/beef based chili that I grew up with. And it all starts with a tomatillo base!

Get a few pounds of tomatillos from your market. You want a firm fruit with limited blemishes on the papery skin. I give mine a good rinse in the sink, which in turn helps the papers peel off.

Here's a close up of the green tomatillo. When wet, the skin peels right off.

Cut the tomatillos into quarters, roughly, then put under the broiler until they begin to blister and burn.

The main flavor component and heat for the chili. A variety of peppers. There's ancho (dark green). Jalapeno (small and dark green). And the two pale green & yellow peppers...no idea what they are! Rinse and put under the broiler until well charred. Also include some garlic with the peppers. The garlic will sweeten when roasted.

Peel off the charred parts and remove most of the seeds.

Now the peppers and the tomatillos go into the food processor or blender for quick whiz to break everything up. You don't have to whiz the tomatillos, but I like the texture better. I don't go too smooth, but mostly.

Simmer for while with some broth and add some diced pork (I use porkchops I dice up.)

Yum! Serve with rice. But something's missing...

That's better looking. You might want a dab of sour cream to help tame the heat, depending on how hot the chiles are. And some diced tomato for a cool color burst. Finish with a little salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!

Hearty chicken & rice soup

I adapted my wild rice soup recipe to make this hearty chicken and rice soup. Very tasty and filling. The first main change was using a brown and red rice with barley and rye. I also used half beef broth and half chicken broth. The beef broth brought an additional depth of flavor to the soup that is lacking when using prepared broths vs. homemade. Oh, and the original recipe calls for milk, the only dairy in this soup is some butter to cook the onions/carrots and make a roux base.

Here's the rice close up. Lots of good stuff in there. I cooked it probably 75% of the way in the rice maker, then let it finish in the prepared soup. The rice then picks up some of the flavor from the broth.

Here's the rice package. I've found it in the store next to the regular rice, but have also found it in the organic/whole food section of the store.

Hot & Steamy Bowl of Awesome

Slurppppp. SLUUUUUURRRRRRPPPPP! There is nothing as comforting as a hot steamy bowl of soup. Something you throw your face over and gingerly bring the first hot spoon to your mouth...blowing gently to cool so you don't scald your mouth. Usually the first one still does no matter what. But that comforting bowl of soup becomes something magical when you take the time to recognize the years of wisdom and tradition that have gone into the soup by those before you. Even when if that wisdom and the tradition are not your own, they become yours.

During the past snowpocalypse, I took on the task of making Pho, a beef broth based Vietnamese soup. Pho has the power to take you away with it's beefy steam, silky noodles and rich, exotic flavors.

More than vegetable or chicken based broths & soups, beef based soups need time. At least six hours to extract all the flavors necessary to create a perfect bowl.

For more reading on Pho, check out this delightful story & another recipe at the SanFran Gate.


Before you start, make sure you have time to let a pot simmer for several hours. If you have a pressure cooker might be able to speed the time up, but really, why do that? Take the time! The first part of the recipe is to caramelize onions. Cook until they start to get dark brown on the edges. Scoop out and reserve them in a bowl.

In the same pot add beef bones. This is a good time about this soup. You're going to be using parts that you normally would just scoot on by. Bones and ox-tails and other scraps. This recipe also pulls in some chicken bones as well. I had less luck finding chicken bones, so I used a few things and wings. Cover with lots of water and bring to a simmer. What you see happen will be kind of disgusting. There will start to be a variety of foams and crud floating to the surface. You will need to scoop that out and discard. Get as much as you can. The more you can remove, the clearer the broth will be at the end.

Once you simmer and remove the scum for about 30 minutes, add the onions back to the pot as well as the rest of the aromatics. Ginger, carrots, star anise, cinnamon, cardomom and garlic. Bring to a simmer, cover most of the way and simmer for 6 hours.

When the broth is done, scoop out all the bits and pieces and discard them. Don't worry about trying to save any of the meat on the bone. Yes it will be tender, but there won't be any flavor left, it's all in the broth. Strain the broth two or three times through cheesecloth to get out any bits and crumbs leftover.

Part of the fun of Pho are the condiments. Basil, onion, peppers, limes, bean sprouts, hot sauce, hoisin sauce, cilantro. Traditionally the Pho is served with pieces of beef. The times we've had it in restaurants, we found we enjoy it more without beef, so once we have the broth, we move on to the noodles and condiments!

Noodles and fresh cracked pepper swirling in a shimmering broth.

Dressed up. Pho can be highly individualized. For me, my favorite condiments are lime juice, hot sauce and cilantro. Without those, it won't be the same. But with the addition of the onions and sprouts and basil, the flavor changes. It's undescribeable. It's unami. You start to taste things you didn't before. It's tradition.



Adapted from Serious Eats

Ingredients

For the Broth

1 tablespoon peanut oil
2 large onions, cut into 1/4-inch slices
2 1/2 pounds meaty beef soup bones
2 1/2 pounds cooked chicken carcass or chicken wings, backbone, and/or feet
5 quarts water
2 carrots, peeled and julienned
4 slices fresh ginger, peeled and julienned
1 small cinnamon stick
5 pods cardamom, lightly crushed (or 1/8 tsp ground cardamom)
2 star anise
2 whole cloves
2 whole garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon black peppercorns

Accent/MSG & Fish Sauce, to taste (start small, stir in additions, taste and adjust)


Serving Suggestions:

Salt and freshly ground black pepper
onion, sliced as thin as paper
scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced
fresh bean sprouts
fresh chopped cilantro
fresh basil, whole leaves
jalapeno chiles, sliced in rings or julienned
limes, quartered for squeezing the juice
Srirachi hot sauce
Hoisin sauce
Cooked rice sticks (thin rice noodles)


Procedure

1. To make the broth: The day before you plan to serve the soup, in a large stockpot, heat the peanut oil over high heat, then add the sliced onions and cook until browned on the edges, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove the onions and set aside.

2. Place the beef and chicken pieces in the stockpot and cover with the water. Bring to a near boil over medium heat, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, skimming the surface foam, for 15 minutes. Add the reserved cooked onion slices and the carrots, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, cloves, garlic, and peppercorns. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to low and simmer, partially covered, for 6 hours, skimming the surface of foam when needed. Strain the stock through a strainer into a large bowl. Strain again through a cheesecloth-lined strainer back into the cleaned stockpot or bowl (I did this step twice). Refrigerate overnight or until the layer of fat forms on top, then remove and discard the fat. You will use 12 cups of broth. (The broth can be frozen at this point if you wish.)

3. When you are ready to serve, attractively arrange a platter with the sliced onions, scallions, bean sprouts, basil, cilantro, chiles, and limes. Place sriracha and hoisin sauces in small bowls for serving.

4. Meanwhile, bring the beef broth to a boil over high heat. Serve with prepared rice noodles and garnish as you wish. *A little bit of everything is very tasty and a great unami experience. My favorite though is a little onion, basil, cilantro, lime juice and sriracha.

Mulligatawny Soup

Yesterday's dinner was a pot of Mulligatawny Soup. A spicy Indian curry soup. With just a few steps, you too can have a bowl of this exotic soup; warming your belly and clearing your sinuses!

The recipe starts by making an elixir of ginger and garlic. This brings a very robust punch of flavor to the finished soup. I'm not fond of it and in the future, I plan to skip this step. I will maintain the quantity of ginger and garlic, because I like those flavors, but the intention is that they remain uncooked at the end. Uncooked garlic and ginger taste metallic and sharp to me, so I'll pass in the future.

The main recipe starts with butter, onions and tomato paste. Season with salt and pepper.

Add garlic and ginger. Stir in some unsweetened coconut and all the spices and flour (to thicken the soup.) A note on the coconut; I can't find unsweetened coconut at my grocery stores. We're not that sophisticated. So I bought the regular, sweetened coconut and steeped it in boiling water and rinsed in hot water. I did this three times. Here's what happened; the extra sweetness was removed, AND the basic essence of the coconut. If you can't find unsweetened coconut, skip it altogether from the recipe. In its place, perhaps add a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of coconut milk to the soup at the end, for flavor.

After you get the spices into the mix, add the broth of your choice. I used chicken this time, as it's what I had on hand. Use vegetable broth to make a vegetarian soup. Simmer until the vegetables are tender. Oh, and there's banana in the soup! It's there for texture and slight sweetness. You don't taste banana when you taste the soup. No hint of banana at all!

After the soup has cooked, give it a whiz through the food processor or in the blender. Serve with rice if you like, dollop of plain yogurt and chopped cilantro. You can also serve with cooked lentils for an authentic, protein rich, vegetarian meal!

Soup and Bread

What a great dinner on a chilly Snow Day*...

Fresh loaf of French Bread. I tried to make a more traditional loaf shape this time around, but through rising and cooking, the loaf flattened out, more of a Ciabatta loaf instead of a French loaf. But still really good!

And hot Tomato Soup.

*Snow Day will be defined as a sunny, clear Monday that you have off of work because the entire region is still digging out of 20+ inches of snow we received from Friday night to Sunday early morning.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Make some soup! We treated ourselves to a big pot of Corn Chowder the other night. Very tasty, filling and totally hit the spot on a chilly day. This is my vegetarian version of the recipe. Use vegetable broth! That's it. Otherwise, I don't generally add any meat or seafood, just broth and veggies.

Corn Chowder

Butter, Onions, Potatoes, Spices. The recipe calls for 2 tsp of Cayenne pepper. That can be too much. I used 1 tsp this time and it was just right, but that still might be to hot for some folks.

Add the corn and broth.

When the soup comes to a simmer, I add the peppers. I don't like to overcook them, so I add them about half way through the cooking. Once the potatoes are tender, you're good to add the milk and cream, warm it up and serve it up.

We each had a large bowl of soup and there were about three larger servings for leftovers.

Soupe à l’Oignon Gratinée

I continue to be a slow poke in posting things to the blog. Perhaps its my new way of doing business? I hope not...

Anyway, in continuing to share Post-Thanksgiving recipes, let's move on to the French Onion Soup.

To lessen the amount of time spent in front of the stove caramelizing onions, I use a roasting pan and the oven! Make sure you have a good quality roasting pan for this...

We need some butter.

I used 10 large onions for my soup. Two red ones and 8 sweet Vidalia onions.

The onions will start to sweat in the oven.

I could have stopped here, but I felt the onions weren't dark enough yet.

Here we go. Caramelized Onions!!!

Now, I put the roasting pan on the stove top to help dissolve the sugars and get the onions slopping around. Add the various types of broth, wine and cider.

Once the roasting pan is cleaned up, I simmer the soup in the big pot with a bouquet garni and start tasting to adjust the seasoning.

The soup simmers for about 20-30 minutes, developing the flavors. Notice that color! Dark and souper rich! I had to add additional broth prior to serving, as the soup almost had the texture of a thick stew.

Serve the soup in an oven safe bowl, top with bread and grated Gruyere cheese. Place under the broiler until golden and bubbly! Serve hot!!!

French Onion Soup
10 large onions (combination of red and sweet)
4 TB unsalted butter
Salt/Pepper
2 cups dry white wine
1 cup beef broth
1 1/2 cup chicken broth
1 cup unfiltered apple cider
Fresh thyme, Bay leaf and Parsley wrapped in cheese cloth for a Bouquet Garni

Fresh Bread cut into 1/2-1 inch pieces
1-2 cups grated Gruyere cheese

Preheat the oven to 350, place the roasting pan in the oven while you prep the onions.

Slice onions in half from end to end, the slice each half, in half, finely slice into thin slices. When the onions are sliced, remove the roasting pan from the oven and add the butter. The butter will melt, add onions and stir to coat with the butter. Season with salt and pepper.

Place onions in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove and stir. Return to the oven for one hour. Check about half way through the cooking time. After an hour, stir and return to the oven for another 30-60 minutes until the onions have reduced and taken on a dark, rich color.

Place the roasting pan over two burners on your stove top. Over high heat, add the wine. Stir to incorporate, bring to a boil and reduce by half. Add the broth and cider. Scrap up any bits of onion stuck to the pan. Pour all of the onions and broth into a large pot.

Place pot of low heat and add the Bouquet Garni, bring a low simmer, cover and cook for 20-30 minutes. Adjust seasoning as needed.

To serve, pour soup into oven safe bowls. Top with bread croutons and grated cheese. Place under a broiler until golden brown and delicious. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve hot.

Soup and Bread

In continuing the cheap dinners, I made bread and soup. All with items we had on hand, unplanned! No shopping list for these items. Rosemary from the garden. A squash from the last farmer's market...everything else was here.

Rosemary & Caramelized Onion Focaccia and Butternut Squash & Apple Bisque!

A great fall meal.

My first note...I LOVED the bread. The soup was great, but it was missing something...and I know what it was. Continue.




The bread is super easy. Flour, water, yeast, olive oil. Mix, rise, stretch and dimple! Then you add some rosemary and caramelized onions on top with a little sea salt for flavor and crunch.


Back until golden and delish. I would have liked a little more topping, but as it was, I loved it. We ate half a pan the first night and the next day ate almost the rest of it!


The outside bottom crust gets crispy from the olive oil, almost like a pizza crust. It's amazing and paired perfectly well with the soup...


Butternut Squash & Apple Bisque. This was really good, but I felt something was missing. It wasn't salt or flavor, everything was there. I think I figured it out after the fact. I need a hint of some acid. Next time a little apple cider vinegar, I think that will give the POP I was looking for.




Rosemary & Caramelized Onion Focaccia
Recipe adapted from Epicurious.

Ingredients
1 (1/4-ounce) package active dry yeast
5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour plus additional for kneading
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small to medium onion, diced
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt

Special equipment: a standing electric mixer with paddle attachment and dough hook
preparation

Stir together 1 2/3 cups lukewarm (105 to 115°F) water and yeast in bowl of mixer and let stand until creamy, about 5 minutes. Add 5 cups flour, 1/4 cup oil, and 2 1/2 teaspoons table salt and beat with paddle attachment at medium speed until a dough forms. Replace paddle with dough hook and knead dough at high speed until soft, smooth, and sticky, 3 to 4 minutes.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead in 1 to 2 tablespoons more flour. Knead dough 1 minute (it will still be slightly sticky), then transfer to a lightly oiled bowl and turn dough to coat with oil. Let rise, covered with plastic wrap, at warm room temperature, until doubled in bulk, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Press dough evenly into a generously oiled 15- by 10- by 1-inch baking pan. Let dough rise, covered completely with a kitchen towel, until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Saute onions in 2 tablespoons olive oil until soft and they start to caramelize. Stir in the rosemary with the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil, let cool.

Make shallow indentations all over dough with your fingertips, then sprinkle the onions and rosemary, letting them pool in the indentations. Sprinkle sea salt evenly over focaccia and bake in middle of oven until golden, 20 to 25 minutes.

Immediately invert a rack over pan and flip focaccia onto rack, then turn right side up. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Summer Soup

Up front honesty...I've never had gazpacho, never made it, never had any desire one way or the other. When I came across a recipe recently, my aging wisdom suggested that I give it a whilrl...

Some "vine ripened" tomatoes, seeds removed, and whizzed in the processor. "Vine ripened" in some factory somewhere I'm sure...still have some time before really good local tomatoes are ready!


Add in some bell pepper, cucumber and a little Hungarian hot pepper. Whiz in some garlic as well.


Chill and serve. Garnish with some diced cucumber, freshly cracked black pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.


Our dinner...some grilled/toasted bread, proscuitto, Parano cheese and a bottle of Black Ankle Chardonnay. Well done.

Gazpacho for One
by Everyday Food

Makes 1 serving.

1 large tomato, cut into chunks
2-inch piece cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped
2-inch-wide strip bell pepper, chopped
1 small garlic clove, finely grated
1/4 tsp sherry vinegar
1/4 tsp red-wine vinegar
1 TB extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
Coarse salt and ground pepper
Toasted country bread, for serving
Shaved Manchego cheese, for serving

Directions
1. In a food processor, puree tomato until almost smooth. Add cucumber, bell pepper, garlic, vinegars, and oil and season with salt and pepper. Pulse until mostly smooth.

2. Chill soup in the refrigerator 30 minutes (or up to 8 hours). Adjust seasoning; thin with water if necessary. Brush bread with oil. Serve soup drizzled with oil and topped with cheese, with bread alongside.



Feedback/Comments:
I mentioned in my photo comments that I used a Hungarian hot pepper. I only used about half of the pepper, next time I would use the whole and/or add some hot sauce or cayenne pepper to spice this up a bit. It was tasty, very cool and refreshing, but I needed a a bit of a kick in the pants.

Regarding the garlic. I know how my gastro system handles raw garlic...it rudely revisits me for hours after consumed. So, I grated the garlic into some olive oil and put it over the lowest heat setting on my stove until it was fragrant and translucent, then stirred that into the gazpacho before chilling. The brief bit of cooking mellows the garlic flavor and it doesn't haunt me later! Totally unnecessary, but helpful.

I really look forward to making this again later this summer when I have farm fresh tomatoes! Do make sure to add some bread and cheese for a wonderful meal. The proscuitto was nice, but next time I'll skip it, unless I can get some high quality goods from somewhere other than Giant...blah!

Potato Soup

Each week I sit down and plan out a menu for home, day by day. I have a spreadsheet to help me! Yes, I know I'm a geek and I embrace it. I plan for when we're home, when we'll be out for a evening. Then I map out the grocery store and get the items categorized. On a good day I can get through the store, with a weeks worth of ingredients in 20-30 minutes. I also save a good deal of money this way. I know what I need and I dilly-dally around looking at stuff I don't need for the week. It's a good plan and works for me!

This week, I didn't do any shopping. I wanted to save us some additional money, so we stuck to the pantry and the freezer. We did pretty good. There was pasta, some leftover butter chicken and some other frozen junk...yes, we make a meal out of tater tots and fish sticks sometimes. What of it?

That got us to Wednesday. I still didn't have a plan for Thursday. More pasta? No!

Yesterday while sitting at work, it hit me. Potato Soup. I have everything I need. It came together easily, quickly and was pretty dang tasty. Even if I went a little overboard on the roasted garlic!

I started with some bacon, for the garnish at the end. In the bacon fat, I sauted some onions and added some fresh thyme, on the stem.

Once the onions were translucent, I added one carrot and five potatoes. Add four cups of broth and simmer until the potatoes are tender.

Whiz the potatoes and vegetables with the broth until smooth. Work in batches and let the last batch be a little more lumpy, for a little texture. Stir in shredded cheddar cheese and some heavy cream for a silky soup.

Serve hot in a large bowl and garnish with some crumbled bacon. The soup was thick, creamy, filling and full of great flavor. The cheese was mellowing out in the background. The bacon brought a nice smoky chewiness to the party. And the potatoes did their job of filling and warming the belly.

Potato-Cheddar Soup

6 strips of bacon, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 small onion, finely diced
3 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 medium carrot, peeled and diced into 1/2 inch pieces
2lbs potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/2 inch pieces (about five medium potatoes)
4 cups chicken stock
4 cloves of roasted garlic
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup heavy cream
Salt & pepper to taste

1) Fry the bacon in a large pot until crispy and the fat has rendered out. Reserve bacon on a paper towel lined plate. Pour out all but one tablespoon of bacon fat.

2) Add the onions to the pot with the one tablespoon of bacon fat. Saute until tender and translucent. Add the fresh thyme, carrot and potatoes. Pour in the chicken broth and bring to a simmer, until the potatoes are fork tender. Prior to the next step, remove the stems of thyme.

3) Working in batches, puree the soup in a food processor or blender. Add the roasted garlic to the first batch of soup to be pureed. Process until smooth. If you would like some texture to the soup, other than silky smooth, don't process until fully smooth, leave some bits and pieces of potato.

4) Return the pureed soup to the pot and add the cheese and cream. Stir until the cheese is melted and the cream is incorporated. If you wish to thin the soup out, add some additional broth or cream. Season with salt and pepper.

5) Serve hot and garnish with the cooked bacon and if you have them, some fresh snipped chives.

NOTE: If you wish to make this soup vegetarian, skip the bacon. Just cook the onions in olive oil. And instead of chicken broth, use vegetable broth. For some additional flavor you could add about 1/2 a cup of beer. Also, if you don't have a food processor or blender, you can make this soup more rustic by mashing the tender potatoes and vegetables with a potato masher. You will have a hearty, textured soup that is a little less creamy and maybe a little more brothy.


As mentioned, this soup was really good. However there were some things I will do differently next time and those adjustments are reflected in the recipe. One, I used a full head of roasted garlic. It was too much and often overpowered the other mellow flavors. In addition, that much roasted garlic kept coming back for a visit later in the evening. Two, I used a bay leaf in the soup. I added it at the beginning and simmered it in the broth with the thyme. In the end, the bay leaf flavor didn't play well with the rest of the ingredients, so in the future I will skip it.