Cream of Fresh Tomato

I have not made this soup in quite a while, not sure why because it is one of my favorites. Actually, this is the soup that triggered my more intense interest in making soups. This recipe is from Ina Garten's show "Barefoot Contessa" on Food Network. If you watch any of her shows you know she is not reluctant to use cream and butter in her recipes. This soup is proof of that with a good dose of heavy cream. Not whole milk, not half & half, heavy cream. That's one reason it tastes so good.

This recipe makes 5 - 6 servings. This is the recipe that prompted me to buy an immersion blender. The first few times I made this soup I used either a blender or a manual food mill to puree the tomatoes. The blender was a pain because the transferring of the tomatoes to and from the blender was very messy. The food mill was an improvement because I could puree the tomatoes right over the soup pot which eliminated one transfer. The only downside was a fair amount of tomatoes didn't get fully pureed and it was a bit of a pain to take apart and clean. So, Berdie bought a Cuisinart immersion blender as a birthday present for me last April. What a great idea! This device is really powerful and works great! It has a few attachments that I have yet to use. Check it out on Amazon. This thing is powerful. You have to be careful when using in a pot because if you raise the blender too much you end up with a swirl of food stuffs being sprayed all over the kitchen and you. If you find yourself using a blender for different recipes you should consider an immersion blender. They don't take up much room in the cabinet when not in use.

A couple of tips on the ingredients. For the minced garlic I use the jarred stuff from Spice World. You find it in the produce section. I don't enjoy peeling and mincing garlic. I end up with very sticky fingers and knife along with a cutting board that carries garlic forever. I find the Spice World garlic very good and real easy to use. For the tomatoes I've used different types, romas, beefsteaks and several from our garden of different varieties and they were all good tasting. For the tomato paste I end up using a whole small can because the recipe calls for only 1 tablespoon and the rest of the can would not get used. An option would be to buy the paste that comes in a tube so you use only what the recipe calls for and reseal the rest.

INGREDIENTS
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1.5 cups of chopped red onions, about 2 onions
2 carrots, unpeeled and chopped
1 tablespoon of minced garlic (3 cloves)
4 pounds of vine-ripened, coarsely chopped, about 5 large fruit
1.5 teaspoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
1/4 cup of packed chopped fresh basil leaves
3 cups of chicken stock
1 tablespoon of kosher salt
2 teaspoons of freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup of heavy cream
Croutons for garnish

METHOD
Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy bottomed pot over medium heat.
Add the onions and carrots and sauté for about 10 minutes, until very tender.
Add the garlic and cook for 1 additional minute.
Add the tomatoes, sugar, tomato paste, basil, chicken stock, salt, pepper and stir well.
Bring the soup to a boil, lower the hear and simmer uncovered for 30 - 40 minutes until the tomatoes are very tender
Add the cream to the soup and process it with an immersion blender, food mill or blender. Reheat the soup over low heat until hot and serve with julienned basil leaves and croutons.

Cheddar Cheese Soup

I skipped soup last week and will also skip this week because there are just not that many people still working this last week of our plant's work year. I have enough vacation days left that I could take 3 days off this coming week but I'm thinking I'll likely stick around most of the week but may take a half day here and there to finish up some shopping. Tommy has an XBox game still coming, needs some new lacrosse gloves for the upcoming season and I'm still stumped for what to get Bertie. She broke her wedding ring a few weeks ago and it needed a few hundred bucks of repairs so she says that should be her present. I'm not going for that but am more than a little perplexed as to what to get her. I wished she loved to cook 'cuz there's all kinds of cool stuff to get.

So, the week before last I tried a new recipe. Cheddar Cheese Soup. This was a really great tasting soup. This was one that I could have just kept eating and then licked the bowl clean. I found this recipe on a website called copycat.com. This site specializes in providing recipes of dishes from well known restaurants. I've tried several of them and have had success with all of them. Check them out and let us know what you think. This recipe is formally titled "Gallagher's Cheddar Cheese Soup", I'm not familiar with who the Gallagher is or if it is a restaurant somewhere. I don't recall Googling it when I first found the recipe, if anyone knows anything please comment.

This recipe was very easy to make, so easy I felt guilty not doing more. The surprising thing in this recipe is that it uses cheese spread, the bottled stuff, rather than real cheddar cheese. I will try it with real cheddar the next time I make it but it tastes so good with the cheese spread I question the wisdom of changing but who knows it may be better with real cheddar. Hey maybe Velveeta!

The flavors that really stood out for me were the mustard and cayenne pepper. The mustard was very subtle but added a great zing and the cayenne really added a good bite and had a little delayed impact. In addition to using real cheddar next time another change I might try is adding some pickled jalapeños.

INGREDIENTS for 8 servings
2 cups of water
1/3 cup each of finely chopped carrots and celery
1 cup of finely chopped green onions
1/2 cup of butter
1/4 cup of flour
1 medium size white onion, chopped
4 cups of milk
4 cups of chicken broth
1 15 oz jar of pasteurized process cheese spread
Add salt and black pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon of yellow mustard

METHOD

1. In a soup pot over high heat combine the water, carrots, green onions and celery. Bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes. Set aside but do not drain.
2. In a large stockpot melt the butter over medium heat and add the onion. Saute for 1 minute then add the flour blending well.
3. In a large saucepan bring the milk and broth to a boil.
4. Whisk the milk-broth mixture into the flour-onion mixture in the large stockpot with a wire whisk.
5. Stir in the cheese, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, mustard and the cooked veggies including the water in which they were cooked.
6. Bring to a boil and serve immediately.

This soup was not as thick as I thought it would be so don't be surprised if it comes out that way for you too.

Swedish Meatballs

Last week's soup was Green Pea with Spinach. I didn't particularly like it. Kind of bland even though I tried real hard to improve the flavor but never got it there. The recipe called for fresh mint and it overwhelmed the soup in my opinion but I asked some of the folks at work about it but no one shared my feeling. There was a couple of cups left in the pot which doesn't usually happen so I'm not planning on a reprise anytime soon so I'm not going to post the recipe. I got the recipe from a book titled "The Complete Book of 400 Soups". I picked the book up at Borders for $5 in So. California over Thanksgiving. I'm should have looked through the book more carefully because the majority of the recipes aren't something I'm inclined to try but I figured for $5 what the heck.

So what do Swedish Meatballs have to do with this posting? Since I won't be posting about soup this week I figured I should post something, otherwise I might drift too far from the routine and lose momentum. I made Swedish Meatballs for our dinner Saturday night using a recipe I got from SimplyRecipes.com. I get regular emails from their website and I've found them to be really good so check them out and let me know what you think. If you already use them let me know some of your favorites. I read this one Saturday morning, printed it out and put it near my keys so I would remember to pick up the ingredients I was missing when I ran to Home Depot. Home Depot? The project for the weekend was to build a third garden box for our backyard. I've posted about our backyard garden previously and will have a follow up post on the subject very soon.

Now back to Swedish Meatballs.

I don't recall having Swedish Meatballs before. I'm sure my Mom must have prepared them for us growing up. My Mom was a really good cook and feeding six kids and my Dad on a budget I'm guessing she prepared them for us considering ground beef was inexpensive and a staple of ours. Anyway, the recipe sounded good and with pretty standard ingredients, except the cardamom, and didn't sound too time consuming. The only ingredients we didn't have on hand were a white onion, ground pork and the cardamom. I picked them up on a side trip to Fry's before going to Home Depot.

This was the first time that I had a recipe call for the onions to be grated rather than diced. Not wanting to deal with the tears of grating a whole onion I opted for a food processor with the grating attachment. This generated a lot of liquid with the onions which I didn't expect and was concerned about making the meatballs too wet to hold together. Oh well, forging on. After sauteing, the onions had a nice brownish color from the butter and were more watery than I'm used to but they smelled good.

Next up was prepping the meatballs. I have used cut up bread in meatballs and meatloaf before but this recipe called for soaking the diced bread in 2/3 cup of milk for 20 minutes and then "pulverizing", their word, the bread in a food processor. So by now I'm even more concerned about too wet meatballs because of the soggy onions and the milky bread. But, forge on! After "pulverizing" the bread mixture and transferring to a very large bowl you add the sauteed onions to the bread along with the eggs, ground pork, ground beef, salt, nutmeg, cardamon and pepper. Be sure you use as large a bowl as you can because mixing the meat is a lot easier with more room in the bowl. Use a squeezing action with the meat mixture and keep rotating the whole mound through and through. A good 3 minutes of mixing will get a good blending. If the meatball mix has warmed up too much it will be very sticky and difficult to make the meatballs. If this is the case just place the bowl of meatball mixture in the freezer for 10-15 to get the mixture to firm up.

Use a tablespoon to measure out the meatballs. I usually vary the size of the meatballs quite a bit because sometimes I like picking up a bite sized one every now and then and also like having a huge one to serve up to the big guys in the group. You should get about 40-50 meatballs. To brown the meatballs use a large frying or saute pan with 6 tablespoons of butter heated up. Over medium heat, any higher will burn the butter, add enough meatballs to have about 75% coverage of the pan being sure not to crowd the pan. Brown on all sides. To turn the meatballs I found a large spoon more effective than tongs. Tongs tended to break up the meatballs especially early in the browning. Once the meatballs were browned on 2-3 sides they could hold up to being moved with tongs. Remember you're only browning them not cooking through. You'll need to work in batches, removing the browned meatballs and setting aside on a large plate. You may need to add additional butter to the pan as you get about halfway through all the meatballs.

For the sauce you'll be using the same pan and butter used for the meatball browning. Check the butter for taste. If it tastes burnt discard the butter and start with a new 6 tablespoons. Now heat the butter on medium until it gets hot. Slowly whisk in the flour using the whisk to break up the fond on the pan (that fond is the good flavor stuff). Stirring often, let the flour cook until it is the color of coffee with cream. Believe it or not, you've now got a classic roux, you're channeling Julia Child!

As the roux is cooking, heat the beef stock in a large soup pot (one you will use as your final cooking pot), until it simmers. Slowly add the roux to the simmering stock. The mixture will become silky and smoother. When the stock and roux have been thoroughly mixed and getting to a simmer you can start adding the meatballs. Turn the heat to low, cover the pot and cook the meatballs for 10 minutes. You may have to do this in batches. To finish, move the meatballs to a large serving dish. To the sauce in the pot add the sour cream and stir. You can either add the the jelly to the sauce or serve it on the side.

I cooked some linguine and served the meatballs over the linguine and spooned the sauce over the meatballs and linguine. You could also use rice or just have the meatballs and sauce and save the carbs.

INGREDIENTS
Meatballs
1 large yellow or white onion, peeled and grated with a cheese grater or food processor
2 Tbsp butter
2/3 cup milk
4-5 slices of bread, crusts removed, cut up into pieces
2 eggs
1 pound of ground pork
1.5 pounds of ground beef
2 Tsps salt
1 Tsp freshly ground nutmeg
1 Tsp ground cardamom
2 Tsps black pepper

Sauce
6 Tbsp butter
1/3 cup of flour
1 quart beef stock
1/2 to 3/4 cup of sour cream
Salt
2 to 4 Tbsp of Lingonberry, cranberry, red currant or raspberry jelly, more or less to taste (optional)

METHOD

1. Saute the grated onion in the butter over medium high heat until the onions soften and turn translucent and much of the liquid has been cooked off, about 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool.
2. In a medium bowl, mix the bread pieces with the milk. Set aside for 15-20 minutes, or until the bread soaks up all the milk. When it does, pulverize the bread in a food processor and pour it into a large bowl.
3. Add the cooled onions to the bowl of bread and milk. Add the rest of the meatball ingredients -- eggs, ground pork, ground beef, salt, nutmeg, cardamom and pepper. Using your just washed hands, mix well for about 4 minutes until the ingredients are well combined.
4. Use a tablespoon to measure out the meat for the meatballs. As you form the meatballs, set each one aside on a sheet pan or plate. You should get 40-50 meatballs. If you mix up the size as I noted in my posting above the number of meatballs will vary.
5. Heat 6 tablespoons of butter for the sauce in a large saute' pan over medium heat. When the butter has melted add some of the meatballs. Do not crowd the pan. Work in batches, browning them on all sides. As I described in the posting above be gentle when you turn them so they don't break apart. Don't cook them all the way through, only brown them. They'll get cooked later in the sauce. When they are browned use a slotted spoon to remove them from the pan to a plate setting them aside so you can make the sauce with the remaining butter and fond.
6. Heat the beef stock in another pot until it simmers.
7. To make the roux, taste the butter to see if it has a burnt taste. If it does taste burnt discard it and replace with 6 new tablespoons. Heat the pan butter on medium until hot. Slowly whisk in the flour. Stirring often, let the flour cook until it is the color of coffee-with-cream.
8. When the roux has cooked add it to the beef stock a little at a time while stirring. The sauce will thicken and become silkier when done.
9. Add the meatballs to the sauce and turn the heat down to low. Cover the pot and cook on low heat for 10 minutes.
10. To finish, move the meatballs to a serving dish with a slotted spoon. Add the sour cream to the sauce and mix well. You can add the jelly to the sauce or leave it on the side.
11. The meatballs are served with the sauce ladled over them. You can serve them over pasta, rice or without.
12. Serves 8-10.

Won Ton Soup

My family loves Chinese food. Good Won Ton soups and Hot & Sour soups are especially great to find. In Tucson the best restaurant version of Won Ton soup I've found is at Cheng's in Oro Valley. A great tasting broth, lots of veggies and really good tasting won tons. The absolute best Hot & Sour I've had is at China Bay in South Tucson on Valencia near the intersection of 12th Ave. It is really good and spicy, I order a double size bowl whenever I have lunch there.

With such a love of Chinese soups it is always with much reticence that I venture into making one of the two soups. Measuring up to the pros is a daunting challenge but what the heck. I took a huge shortcut with this Won Ton soup by using store bought Won Tons from my favorite Asian international market, Lee Lee Oriental Supermart on La Cholla and Orange Grove here in Tucson. They've got dozens of different types of won tons along with Chinese dumplings (not sure of the difference) and things called buns. This market is really different from conventional American grocery stores in both the products they carry and the layout of the store. The prices of their produce and meats are actually lower than our usual store I noticed today. So with store bought won tons this soup is really easy to make. Here we go:

Ingredients for about 12 cups of soup or 96 ounces

8 cups of chicken broth

1 2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and julienned or cut into match sticks

1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce

1/4 cup of rice cooking wine

1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

2 teaspoons dark sesame oil

1 teaspoon dark brown sugar

Pinch of salt

1 pound of pork shoulder sliced thinly in 1/2 inch by 2 inch strips

2 carrots, thinly sliced on the bias (diagonally), about 1 cup

24 frozen won tons, any kind or a mix (seafood, pork, beef, chicken, vegetable)

3 scallions, white and green part sliced diagonally about 1.5 inches long

4 cups of baby spinach

chopped cilantro for garnish

Asian chili paste for garnish

Directions

Put the broth, ginger, soy sauce, rice wine, vinegar, sesame oil, brown sugar, salt and pork in a soup pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Adjust the heat so the broth simmers and cooks to lightly flavor with ginger, about 10-15 minutes.

Increase the heat to medium high and add the carrots and cook until they are not quite crunchy, about 3 minutes. Add the frozen won tons and cook another 7 minutes until the won tons are heated through. Stir in the scallions and spinach and cook until they are wilted, about 1 minute. Serve with the cilantro and chili sauce on the side.

Just for fun I'm bringing fortune cookies with the soup for tomorrow's Wednesday's Soup At Work. I found there are custom fortune cookie companies that will use your own custom fortunes, how cool is that!

Beef Stew Soup

Stew Soup? Well which is it, stew or soup? I'm calling it a soup because that's what I do, soups. As I was looking for recipes and ideas for today's Soup At Work Wednesday I couldn't find any recipes for soups that had chunks of beef in them but there were plenty of stews. So, one of the modifications I made to this recipe was to add more broth which resulted in more of a soup then stew.

The soup was a big hit for Soup At Work Wednesday today. I was out of the building all morning so I wasn't there for the serving but there were lots of compliments and the pot was bone dry. I was told someone was spotted with a straw sucking the last of the broth from the pot. Fact or fiction, who's to know?

As I mentioned in my earlier post this week I got this recipe from Food Network, specifically from Tyler Florence's page. What drew me to this recipe was the orange peels, cloves and pearl onions. This recipe was not especially difficult but a bit time consuming. If you're not familiar with cutting beef and/or don't have a good knife or knives to do the cutting then you will be more challenged with this recipe. My suggestion is to become more familiar with working with beef and invest in at least one good 10 or 12 inch chef or butcher knife. My recommendation is to pick one up from a restaurant supply store rather than one from a retail store. You'll likely pay more in a retail store and may have to buy a whole knife set in order to get the knife you need. I like a wood handle but when I was a meatcutter I had several knives with plastic handles and they were just fine.

The other part of this recipe I really enjoyed was the browning of the beef. Seasoning with salt & pepper, dredging in flour and then browining in butter and olive oil yielded a bunch of wonderful beef cubes when they were finished. Tasty, tasty! I'd like to figure out a way to not cook the meat in the soup with the veggies and broth and put it in towards the end because I like the beef better when it is not stewed to the point of easily shredding. But a lot of the beef flavor would be lost this way so maybe not. On to the recipe...

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup of extra-virgin olive oil for browning the meat plus more as required as the browning proceeds
• 3 tbsp of butter for browning plus more as required for the browning
• 2 cups of all-purpose flour
• 3 pounds of boneless beef chuck shoulder roast cut into cubes about 2 inches in size. Chuck is a well marbled piece of beef so you'll want to remove some of the larger chunks of fat but leave a good amount on the cubes for flavor.
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 bottle of good quality dry red wine. Ina Garten always says that you shouldn't cook with any wine you wouldn't serve to guests.
• 8 fresh thyme sprigs about 4-6 inches long tied in a bundle with kitchen twine
• 6 garlic cloves, smashed (I use the jarred minced garlic from Spice World you can find in the produce section and smash it with the back of a spoon. Peeling, slicing and smashing whole garlic cloves is too time consuming and sticky for me)
• 1 orange, zest removed in strips (I had never done this before so I just used a vegetable peeler and took it to an orange from top to bottom and had my zest strips! Taa Dahh!!)
• 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 4-6 cups of beef broth (this is where I modified the Tyler Florence recipe. The original recipe calls for 2.5 cups but I wanted more of a soup than a stew so I ended up adding 6 cups of broth. This will depend on the size of the pot you're using so start with 4 cups and go from there).
• 9 small new potatoes, scrubbed clean and cut in half (I bought the little cute ones in small mesh bags so I didn't end up with more potatoes than I could use)
• 1/2 pound of carrots, peeled and sliced diagonally in 1.5 inch chunks
• 2 cups of fresh pearl onions, peeled and left whole
• 1 pound of white mushrooms, wiped clean with a paper towel and the stem ends removed, not the stems just the dried ends. Depending on the size of the mushrooms I sliced some in half to be more bite size (I added some sliced portabellas here just because I like them in soups)
• 1/2 pound of peas, fresh or frozen

Directions

1. Heat your soup pot over medium high heat with the first application of olive oil and butter.
2. While the pan is heating, arrange the flour in a large dish. Salt and pepper the beef cubes generously. Toss the beef cubes in the flour, shake off the excess and place in the hot pot in a single layer without crowding the cubes. Working in batches, thoroughly brown the meat on all sides but don't cook through since you're going to be cooking the meat in the soup also. Remember to add more butter and olive oil as needed to keep the browning process from drying out the pan. As the cubes are browned remove them to a plate and set aside.
3. Add the wine to the pan and bring to a simmer while you scrape the pan to create your fond from all those tasty bits left from the browning of the beef. Fond is relatively new cooking term for me and I love it. Once the wine has gotten hot and all the scraps have been scraped from the pan bottom and sides, add the browned meat, the thyme bundle, smashed garlic, orange zest strips, ground cloves, bay leaves, stock and salt & pepper to taste. Bring the mixture to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook uncovered for about 15 minutes. Cover the pot and cook on low heat for 2 hours.
4. At the 2 hour mark add the halved potatoes, sliced carrots, pearl onions and mushrooms along with a pinch or two of sugar to balance the wine. Turn the heat up slightly and simmer uncovered for 25 minutes more until the veggies are tender but still firm (I hate mushy veggies). At the 25 minute mark add the peas and cook for 5 more minutes. Season with salt & pepper to taste and remove the thyme bundle and bay leaves if you can find them.

A great topping is made from a cup of sour cream, a tablespoon of prepared horseradish, a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Mix thoroughly and add chopped chives.

Beef Stew For Soup At Work Wednesday 11/3

Except for Albondigas, I haven't brought a soup with beef as the featured ingredient since I started Soup At Work Wednesday last January. So this weekend I looked for some beef soup recipes. Most of what I found are beef stew recipes so that's what I'm going with. I'm thinking I'll thin it out a bit if needed with more stock. The recipe I chose is from Food Network's Tyler Florence, it's called The Ultimate Beef Stew.

The soup calls for chuck roast, red wine, some good herbs, orange zest, pearl onions, many of the usual veggies and some un-usual ones. I like the sound of the ingredients and the tartness they should bring. I'm looking forward to this one because it is not close to anything I've made before.

A couple of personal notes for this posting. The first is that this coming Wednesday the 3rd is Bertie's and my 25th anniversary. We are very proud of this coming special day. We have learned how difficult it is to keep a marriage alive and thriving. You have to be determined to stay together and work through all the challenges. A good long marriage is not for wimps. My advice to new couples is to expect highs and lows throughout your lives together. Growing up I used to wonder what my parents had to argue about after all the time they had been together (almost 54 years married)? My goodness, there can't be anything left, can there? Now I know there is and there always will be, it just depends how you handle them.

The second item of note is the wonderful gift my co-workers gave me last Friday. I received a very generous gift card from Cost Plus World Market. They gave me a nice card filled with very kind sentiments in appreciation for Soup At Work Wednesday. I appreciated this gesture more than words can describe. I am looking forward to spending more time at World Market spending the gift, I love that store. Thanks to all of my friends at work.

Yucatan Lime & Chicken Soup

I got this recipe from Food & Wine magazine. I got a free subscription to F&W somehow, still not sure how. Actually I got two subscriptions because I get two copies every month. The green part of me says I should contact them and let them know but they'll probably cancel both of them so I'm holding off. I really like the magazine, there are lots good recipes with plenty of soups in the bargain. We are not wine drinkers but I'm thinking of getting more familiar with the vino.

As you can probably tell from previous postings I favor chicken based soups and this is another example of that. I'd rate this soup as a moderate in terms of difficulty because of the roasting of the vegetables you need to do simultaneously with the cooking of the chicken. Other than that it's pretty easy.

Ingredients
4 medium tomatoes
1 large white onion, unpeeled, plus 1/2 cup minced for garnish
21 garlic cloves, peeled, about 2 heads (see note)
3 whole chicken breasts on the bone (about 1.25 pounds each)
3 quarts chicken broth or water
2 limes, zest finely grated and limes halved, plus more for garnish wedges
20 allspice berries (see note)
1 tbsp dried oregano (see note)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 large minced scallions
2 banana or jalapeno chiles, seeded and minced (see note)

NOTE: The peeling of the 21 cloves of garlic is probably the most time consuming part to the recipe and is tedious. Consider using already prepped and minced garlic for the 15 cloves called for in step 2 below, I use garlic from Spice World which is usually in the produce department's refrigerated section. For the allspice the best approach for buying it is to find a store that sells spices in bulk so you don't buy a whole jar for just 20 berries. Here in the Tucson area our Sprouts store has a bulk spice section that is really great for these types of critical but infrequently used spices. For the oregano try to find a Mexican oregano because there's a bit of a stronger bite to this variety. You can find the Mexican variety on the aisle with Hispanic foods. For the chiles be sure you are careful when seeding them. I use rubber gloves because the burning of my fingers that lasts for what seems like hours is a pain. Even with gloves you have to be very conscious of not touching your nose or eyes until you've had a chance to thoroughly wash.

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. You'll be roasting the onion, the four tomatoes and six of the cloves of garlic. Use a large pan like a metal casserole or a metal pizza pan if you have one. Put the onion in for 30 minutes, with 20 minutes left add the tomatoes and then with 10 minutes left put in the garlic. Remove the veggies and cool them slightly. Cut the onion in half and remove the outer layer of skin if it has blackened. Press the tomatoes through a coarse strainer or puree them in a blender or use an immersion blender.
2. In a large pot cover the chicken with the stock. Add the lime zest and lime halves, allspice, oregano, the remaining 15 garlic cloves, one teaspoon each of salt and pepper and bring to a boil over high heat. When it is at a boil, add the halved onions and reduce the heat to low, simmer until the chicken is cooked through, about 30 minutes.
3. Transfer the chicken to a platter and let cool. Gently simmer the broth for 10 minutes, then strain so the lime halves, onions and allspice is removed and return the pot to the stove.
4. Remove the skin from the chicken and then remove the meat from the bones. Tear the meat into thick shreds.
5. Heat two tablespoons of the oil in the pot. Add the scallions and roasted garlic cloves. Mash the garlic with a fork so they get close to a paste. Cook over moderately high heat for about four minutes. Add the strained tomatoes and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the strained broth and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.
6. Add the chicken to the broth and cook until heated through.
7. After serving you can sprinkle tortilla chips and oregano along with the lime wedges and diced chiles.

When I made this recipe the first time I used a whole chicken and boiled the chicken in water with four carrots, 4 celery stalks, oregano and salt & pepper. So I made my own stock rather then use packaged stock. In recipes that call for chicken and chicken stock this is what I usually do especially if I'm doubling the recipe for "Soup at Work Wednesday". When the chicken is cooked, about 40 minutes, I let it cool and then remove the skin from the bird along with the meat and leave it in thick shreds. The broth gets strained and you're good to go. In this recipe I also added the roasted onions, lime zest, limes and allspice to the cooking of the chicken.

One caution to using celery in the cooking of the broth and that is that a little celery goes a long way, one to two stalks is the max to use. If there's too much celery you can really taste it in the soup and it leaves a bitter aftertaste to each spoonful.

Enjoy this one. I loved the lime and roasted onion flavors!

Revist of Potato & Swiss Cheese Soup

Back in early September I made a pot of this soup and had mixed feelings about it. I took it to a pot luck party and there was almost a full pot left. I took the remainder to work as a second soup and it was a huge hit!

My problem with the first batch was the swiss cheese being all lumpy and chewy. I dumped the full portion of the grated cheese in the pot at once and then stirred it in. This resulted in a bunch of chewy cheese lumps, not good.

I made this soup for a second time today as a thank you gift to my Brown's Boot Camp friend Anna J for her help in checking in on our house and cat while we were in Hawaii last week. This batch came out perfectly! I portioned the addition of the swiss cheese in small batches this time and stirred each really well. This really helped the texture of not just the cheese but the entire soup. The flavor was also really good, rich and creamy. The onions and bacon really added wonderful flavor.

This is a really easy and quick soup to make. One of the keys is thinly slicing the onions and potatoes. We have one of those mandolins where you can adjust the thickness of the slices. I bought it about 20 years ago on Home Shopping Network. I don't use it very often, only when I need really thin slices. It scares me! My wife Bertie uses it frequently but she does not use the vegetable holder, preferring instead to hold the veggies with her hand. I am always begging her to use the holder because I dread the day when she slips and takes off a couple of finger tips and off the the ER we go. It's gonna happen sooner or later.

Try this soup and let me know what y'all think.

Perfect French Onion

Back in the mid '90s I was doing quite a bit of traveling for work that took me to Washington DC. I found this old french bistro in Georgetown, Au Pied Cochon, that had the most wonderful French Onion Soup. I'll never forget sitting in that place and people watching. The restaurant was famous because a Soviet spy surrendered to the CIA there during the cold war. They had a copper plaque in the booth commemorating the event.

Anyway, I gave French Onion Soup a shot for Soup At Work Wednesday today. I have been reluctant to make French Onion because I wanted to do it the right way by roasting the bowls to melt the cheese for each serving and there's no way to do that when I'm serving out of a 7 quart crock pot. I decided to step into the breach anyway after watching an episode of "America's Test Kitchen" on PBS a couple of weeks ago where they made a French Onion Soup that looked really good and simple to make. I also learned a new term, fond. That's the good chunky, crispy stuff that accumulates in a pot of food while cooking and comes off while deglazing. That's what makes this soup so flavorful and hearty. This is a hearty soup, especially considering the only ingredients of note are onions and broth.

I doubled this recipe and ended up with a full 7 quart crock pot of soup, there's more info on doubling the recipe at the end of this posting. Be sure you give yourself at least 3.5 hours to devote to this recipe from beginning to end. Most of that time doesn't require any attention because the onions are cooking in the oven but you still have to devote the time.

Sweet onions like Vidalias don't work for this recipe because it becomes too sweet. For the best flavor make the soup a day or two in advance. Another approach is to go through step 1 and refrigerate the onions in the prep pot for up to three days and then finish the recipe.

Ingredients

3 tbsp butter cut into 3 pieces

6 large yellow onions, about 4 lbs, halved lengthwise and then cut into 1/4 inch thick slices

Salt

2 cups of water, plus extra for deglazing

1/2 cup of dry sherry

4 cups of chicken broth (I prefer Pacific Natural Foods Organic Free Range Chicken Broth which I get at Costco or Sprouts)
2 cups of beef broth (Pacific Natural Foods also)

6 sprigs of fresh thyme, tied with kitchen twine

1 bay leaf

Black pepper

1 baguette cut into 1/2 inch slices

8 oz shredded Gruyere cheese, about 2.5 cups

1. Adjust your oven rack to lower-middle position and heat the oven to 400 degrees. Generously spray the inside of a heavy-bottomed large, at least 7 quarts, pot or Dutch oven with nonstick cooking spray. Place the butter in the pot and add onions and 1 tsp of salt. Cook, covered, for 1 hour (onions will be moist and slightly reduced in volume). Remove the pot from the oven and stir onions, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot if fond has been created. Return the pot to the oven with the lid slightly ajar and continue to cook the onions until they are very soft and golden brown, about 1.5-1.75 hours longer, stirring and scraping the bottom and sides of the pot after the first hour.
2. Using oven mitts, carefully remove the pot from the oven and place on the stove top over medium-high heat. Cook the onions while stirring intermittently and scraping the bottom and sides of the pot until the liquid evaporates and the onions brown, about 20-30 minutes. Intermittent stirring allows the fond to form so don't be afraid to let the onions cook without stirring. The dark stuff is what you want so don't fear that you're burning the onions. The dark stuff is the good flavor.
3. Continue to cook on the stove top and scraping the fond with your spoon and also scrape the fond off of the spoon back into the onions. Stir in 1/4 cup of water, scraping the pot bottom to loosen the fond, and cook until the water evaporates and the pot bottom has formed another dark crust of fond. Repeat the process of deglazing with 1/4 cups of water 2 or 3 more times until the onions are VERY dark brown. Stir in the sherry and cook, stirring frequently, until the sherry evaporates.
4. Stir in both broths, 2 cups of water, thyme bundle, bay leaf and 1/2 tsp of salt, scraping up any final bits of fond from the bottom and sides of the pot. Increase the temp to high and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low and simmer covered for 30 minutes. Remove the thyme bundle and bay leaf, season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. While the soup simmers, arrange the baguette slices in a single layer on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and bake in a 4oo degree oven until the bread is dry, crisp and golden at the edges, about 10 minutes. Set aside.
6. Adjust the oven rack so that the it is 6 inches from the broiler element and heat the broiler. Set individual broiler safe crocks on a baking sheet and fill each about 3/4 full with soup. Top each bowl with 1 or 2 baguette slices without overlapping them. Sprinkle somewhat lightly with the Gruyere. Broil the crocks until the cheese is melted and bubbly around the edges, 3-5 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.

As I mentioned previously, I doubled the recipe for Soup At Work Wednesday. I made the mistake of cooking all 12 onions in one pot for the first hour in the oven. There were too many onions in the one pot and they didn't cook down well enough so I split the onions into two pots and cooked in the oven for another 45 minutes. I then continued to use two pots until the onions were completely cooked and took on the deep dark brown color called for in the recipe.

I'll reiterate that you need to leave yourself plenty of time for this recipe and be patient because it does take more than 3 hours.

The soup was a big hit at work. My friend Shannon offered to bring the grated Gruyere which was a great help. As I mentioned, I was reluctant to bring in a French Onion soup because there's no way to broil the soup with the cheese and croutons like you would at home. So the approach I took was to serve out of the crock pot with the cheese and baguettes on the side. The soup was hot enough to melt the cheese well enough and it worked out really well.

A Success!!

Backyard Gardens

We live in southern Arizona, Oro Valley to be exact, and have tried for several years to grow vegetables of different types with less than overwhelming results. All of our previous attempts have been in pots and mostly tomatoes and herbs. With the heat in southern Arizona trying to keep the pots well irrigated was a challenge without rigging up a permanent watering system which meant I would have to do some serious digging and plumbing to put that in place. This was not something I wanted to do.


So over Christmas and New Year's holiday of 2009/2010 I built a 4'x8' wooden garden box from plans I got from Sunset magazine. The design is pretty simple and easy to build. The box is made up of six 2"x6"x8' boards stacked on top of each other. The 8' sides of the box have two 8' boards and the 4' sides have one 8' board cut in half. The corners are made up of 4"x4" posts cut into 2' lengths. The 2"x6" boards are bolted onto the 4"x4"s and bingo bango you've got a 4'x8' garden box. The boxes hold about 1 yard of soil which I got from a local material supply yard.


After building the first box and putting it into place I decided to change the design by doubling the height of the box from two lengths of boards to four. The higher box is easier to work in since you don't have to bend over as far. I use a five gallon paint bucket as my working stool when necessary and the revised height is better.


As I mentioned, I didn't want to go to the trouble of installing a permanent automatic watering system for a couple of reasons. One reason is that the nearest water source is too far away from the garden box so a new hose bib would have to be installed which would require more work than I wanted to do at this point. The other reasons have mostly to do with general laziness. So I ginned up a poor man's system by setting up a battery operated timer on the closest hose bib and running a regular garden hose from the hose bib to the garden box. I ran the hose up the side of the garden box and attached a really cool sprinkler called the NoodleHead which I bought at the L.A. County Fair in September 2009. This sprinkler head has a bunch of short black tubes like the ones used for drip irrigation which you can bend to fit any watering pattern you may have. A really cool item, check them out on their website.


So, I've got the box and the watering system set up ready to go all I needed was soil. I had two choices, one was to buy a bunch of bags of soil from Home Depot or go to my favorite material supply yard, Bob's Materials, and buy what I figured would be about two yards of soil to fill up the two foot high box. The bags of soil would cost too much so I went with the loose soil from Bob's. I have a 1998 Nissan Frontier pickup and love it for just this kind of job. One yard of soil costs only $33 and fits perfectly in the bed of the pickup. Of course I look like a low-rider with my back end dropped pretty low but I can mosey on home just fine. Since the closest I can get to the backyard is the street out front I am left with hauling the soil from the truck to the garden box by wheelbarrow. I rigged up a ramp with a spare 2"x6" board and a few bricks so dumping the soil into the box was pretty easy once you got the hang of hitting the ramp and getting under the wheelbarrow handles to dump. With my son Tommy's help we had the first yard of soil offloaded in about 30 minutes and back to Bob's we went.


I amended the soil with some all purpose vegetable fertilizer and watered the soil really well and let the soil settle for a week. The one box yielded a great crop of lettuce over the winter along with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, radishes, spinach and dill. Success!


So in early spring I added another box and also prepared a corner of our yard for some zucchini and melons. For the summer, in one box (picture on the left) we planted three tomatoes, a japenese eggplant, two sweet basils and a thyme. In the second box (pictured below) we planted three tomatillos, an eggplant, a yellow chili, an Anaheim chili, a rosemary and peppermint. In the corner spot, not in a box, we planted two kinds of zucchini and some sort of melon that we lost track of.




We've got a few lessons learned from this summer's plantings.

• The conical tomato cages are not big enough if you're planting in something other than a pot, I'm going to create my own next year.
• One tomatillo plant would have been plenty for a whole 4'x8' box, they really get big and spread like a bush.
• We really don't like eggplant all that much.
• Squash plants make you itch when you harvest them, long sleeves and gloves are recommended.
• Giving away homegrown veggies is a great way to spend time with neighbors.

So, we're in early October and it's getting close to the time to plant winter stuff. Our zucchini is just about done as is one of the two remaining tomatoes. We have no idea how long the tomatillos will continue so we'll have to wait and see. The basil will last through Thanksgiving at least depending how quickly its get cold here in the desert.

As we plant our winter veggies I'll give an update.

Albondigas!!!!

This coming week's soup is the Mexican meatball potion Albondigas! This is one of the first soups I ever made years ago. Our daughter Shawna loved Albondigas soup when she was little, especially when we visited our favorite Mexican restaurant in Pomona, Xochimilco's on Indian Hill. Bertie's Mom, Maria, also made Albondigas on a regular basis for the Saturday get-togethers at her house for their huge family.

I never got Maria's recipe for her Albondigas but the one I have is pretty good. I got it from allrecipes.com. I add more pork sausage than originally called for and use our own green salsa instead of store bought. This time I added chorizo to the meatballs so we'll see how they taste.

Making the meatballs is always fun especially if you've got kids around, be sure you plan far enough ahead so you have a chance to chill the meat because it is much easier to work with when cold versus room temperature.

Here's the recipe as I've modified it except for the chorizo twist:
Broth Base
84 oz. of beef broth (I recommend Pacific Natural Foods broths)
10 oz. of green chili salsa (recipe below)
1 onion, chopped
2 14.5oz. cans of diced tomatoes (I recommend Muir Glen brand)
1/2 teaspoon of dried basil
1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup of white rice

Meatballs
1 pound of lean ground beef
1 pound of pork sausage
1 onion, chopped
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup of milk
1/4 cup of chopped fresh basil
1/2 cup of corn meal
1/2 cup of white rice

Green Salsa
1 lb of tomatoes (any type) with stems and cores removed
3-4 yellow chills, 3 if they are large or 4 if they are smaller
1 tablespoon of salt
1 teaspoon of garlic powder

1. Boil the tomatoes and chilis for 40 minutes
2. Remove the tomatoes and chilis with a slotted spoon and place in a blender, reserve the water
3. Add the salt and garlic powder to the blender mixture
4. Blend until the mix is smooth
5. Taste and adjust spices accordingly
6. If the salsa is too spicy use the reserved water to dilute until the taste is to your liking

Soup Directions

1. Mix together beef broth, salsa, 1 onion, tomatoes, dried basil, dried oregano, and pepper. Bring to a boil and keep at a low simmer for 20 minutes.
2. Combine the ground beef, pork sausage, 1 onion, egg, salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, garlic powder, milk, fresh basil and cornmeal in a large oversized bowl. Mix by hand very well. Grab bunches of the meatball mixture and squeeze through your fingers until the mixture is thoroughly combined.
3. Cover the meatball mixture with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, overnight is fine.
4. Form the chilled meat into meatballs by grabbing about a tablespoon's worth of meat mixture and roll into meatballs. You can vary the size of the meatballs from smaller ones to the large ones you get with a tablespoon's worth of meat.
5. Add the meatballs and rice to the broth. Simmer covered very slowly for 1 to 1.5 hours. Test the meatballs for doneness.

Leek, Apple & Thyme

This week's soup comes from a recipe I came across in the Food section of the LA Times. I grew up reading the LA Times in So. Cal. and still read it online several times a week. Granted I am focused on the Sports section but at least once a week I browse their Food section. They have a cool regular feature where readers write in asking for recipes from their favorite LA area restaurants. The Food writers somehow get the restaurants to give their recipes over and share with everyone. I like the concept of sharing recipes for free. Some might feel you're giving away trade secrets but my thinking is that sharing good recipes only enhances one's standing and reputation and draws more business. Granted some folks might stay home and eat the results of the recipes but I believe most folks enjoy going out and having the dining experience just as much. I am also much more inclined to give my business to a restaurant that shares all aspects of the dining experience which includes the preparation of the food. Those are my thoughts on the subject.

Here's Wednesday's Soup:

Leek, Apple & Thyme

7 Leeks, divided into a group of 4 and a group of 3

3 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons of olive oil, divided

1 large onion thinly sliced

2-3 large garlic cloves, pressed

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and diced

1 Red Delicious apple, peeled, cored and diced

2 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced

1 quart of vegetable stock

1 quart of water

3 bay leaves

3 sprigs of cilantro

1.5 tablespoons of fresh thyme leaves roughly chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Fresh grated nutmeg to taste

1. Remove the roots and tough outer layers of 4 of the leeks, slice them lengthwise and rinse thoroughly. There's lots of dirt in the inner layers of the first couple of leafs so be sure you work these well. Slice thinly. In a heavy bottom pot, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium-low heat and cook the leeks and onions until they soften. Add the garlic and cook for only one more minute, stirring the whole time.
2. Stir in the chopped apples, potatoes, water and vegetable broth. Stir in the bay leaves, cilantro and thyme leaves. Bring the mix to a boil and cook until the vegetables are soft, about 45 minutes to an hour.
3. Remove the bay leaves. Add the thyme and cilantro to the soup and stir. Puree the soup with an immersion blender or use a blender/food processor.
4. Season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
5. To make the garnish, heat an oven to 400 degrees. Clean and slice the remaining 3 leeks as was done in step 1. Toss the sliced leeks in a bowl with the remaining 2 teaspoons of oil, salt and pepper. Transfer to a baking sheet and bake, stirring every few minutes, until the leeks are crisp, about 10 minutes.
6. Serve the soup in bowls with the crispy leeks sprinkled on top.

Posole - Tomatillo, Chicken & Hominy

With the three day weekend and a Boy Scout meeting Tuesday night I deferred Wednesday Soup At Work to Thursday. I remembered to put my usual sign up early Tuesday so people know not to expect soup on Wednesday. It's kinda cool that there's an expectation and people look forward to the soup. Of course it's free so the bar might be pretty low.

Anyway, I've brought the Posole in before and it was gone pretty quickly with good reviews. The stock has a really good tangy flavor from the hominy, tomatillos and lime juice.

As I've mentioned before when a recipe calls for chicken and chicken stock I boil a whole fryer in a tall pot and de-bone the chicken for the meat and use the stock as called for in the recipe instead of store bought. To the chicken pot I add a couple of cut-up carrots and stalks of celery along with an onion, a couple of bay leaves, dried oregano and dried basil. I strain the stock and have plenty for the recipe and usually some leftover to freeze.

Here's the recipe for 8 servings using store bought stock. For the large quantity I bring to Wednesday Soup At Work I double the recipe and use the boiled chicken I note above:

1 pound of tomatillos

6 cups of chicken stock

2 cups of chopped onion

3 pounds of shredded chicken

4 chopped garlic cloves

2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and julienned

1 can of white hominy (30 oz), drained

juice from 1/2 of a lime

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

1/4 cup sour cream

8 lime wedges

Remove the husks and stems from the tomatillos and boil them until they are tender, about 10 minutes. Drain the water and process the tomatillos until they are smooth. An immersion blender is the best tool for this but using a standard blender is fine.

Meanwhile, into the stock add the onion, chicken, garlic, jalapeno and hominy. Bring the mix to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer 35 minutes or until chicken is done. Remove the chicken from the bones shred and set aside. Stir in the pureed tomatillos, the lime juice and salt to taste. Cook the stock mixture for 5 minutes until heated. Stir in the chicken and heat the entire mix.

Serve with the cilantro, sour cream and lime wedges.

Potato & Swiss Cheese Recipe

I found this recipe on copykat.com.

I made this soup for a pot luck party at a friend's house and the responses were underwhelming (except for Judy J). So, I added this soup to my usual offering at work the following Wednesday. I brought this soup in addition to my Cream of Tomato. Well, the response from the crowd at work was great! The Potato & Swiss Cheese drew raves!! I was really pleased it was such a hit because the response from the pool party crowd really had me wondering. Here's the recipe for Potato & Swiss Cheese that serves about 10-12:

2 (32oz) cartons of Chicken or Vegetable Broth
2 lbs of Yukon Gold potatoes unpeeled and sliced thinly
1 yellow or red onion sliced thinly
1 qt of heavy cream
1 cup of shredded Swiss cheese
1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese (Trader Joe's Parmesan/Romano is the best)
1/4 cup of real bacon bits
2 tbsp green onions diced

Into a large pot pour the broth and yellow or red onions. Bring the pot to a boil and cook on medium for about 20 minutes until potatoes are tender. Add the cream, Swiss cheese, Parmesan cheese, bacon and green onions.

When I made this soup I added the Swiss cheese all at once by sprinkling it evenly over the top of the soup and then stirred the cheese into the soup. The cheese didn't melt into a creamy consistency the way I expected. It came out in clumps and had the consistency of clams when you chewed it. I looked online for some advice on using cheese in soups to see if I did something wrong but didn't find anything. Next time I make the soup I'm going to try adding the Swiss cheese a little at a time and see if that changes the consistency. If someone makes this soup I'd be interested in hearing how the cheese comes out.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

A few weeks ago I made a pot of Chicken Tortilla Soup for my friend Anna from Brown's Boot Camp. Anna had moved out into her own apartment and the soup was a housewarming gift. Anyway, she and her roommate liked the soup and asked for the recipe. So, here's the recipe for 4-5 servings:

• 1 onion chopped
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 (28oz) can crushed tomatoes
• 1 (7.75oz) can of El Pato Mexican Tomato Sauce
• 1 (10.5oz) can chicken broth
• 1.25 cups water
• 1 cup cooked whole corn kernels (Trader Joe's)
• 1 cup white hominy
• 1 (4oz) can chopped green chili peppers
• 1 (15 oz) can black beans rinsed and drained
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 boneless chicken breast halves (cooked and cut into bite sized pieces)
• crushed tortilla chips, sliced avocado
• shredded Jack cheese, chopped green onion
  

1. In a medium stock pot, heat oil over medium heat and saute the onions for 10-15 minutes until tender. Add garlic and saute an additional 2 minutes.
2. Stir in the chili powder, oregano, tomatoes, El Pato, broth and water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Stir in the corn, hominy, chills, beans, cilantro and chicken. Simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Serve soup in bowls topped with tortilla chips, cheese, avocado and green onions.

When I make a large pot like the one from one of my crock pots I do two things differently 1) I double everything and 2) For the chicken and broth I use a whole chicken boiled in a stock pot large enough to hold the whole chicken and enough water to cover the chicken with water plus another inch over the bird. To the pot I add a couple of bay leaves, a tablespoon of dried basil, a tablespoon of dried oregano, salt and pepper. I boil the chicken for 40 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pot and put it aside on a plate or platter to cool. Use the broth as the soup broth in step 2 above but double the quantity. When the chicken has cooled enough to work with begin pulling the legs, thighs and wings off the bird. This should be pretty easy since it is fully cooked. Remove all the skin and discard. Debone the chicken by pulling all the meat from the bones. You can either leave the meat in larger pieces or dice smaller, I prefer larger pieces. Presto, you have your chicken called for in step 3 above.

2 Soups, Mixed Success

I'm finding it interesting trying to analyze people's feedback on the soups. Take this evening for instance, as I mentioned in the last post I made two soups for a pool party potluck of about 30 people. One was Potato & Swiss Cheese and the other was Jalapeno & Cilantro.

Personally, the Potato and Swiss Cheese was okay. The Swiss cheese didn't melt into a nice creamy consistency, it clumped and was more chewy than I would have liked. The soup tasted fine but I couldn't get over the Swiss cheese and that ruined it for me. Based on the lack of compliments from the folks at the party and the amount of soup left over I'm guessing my opinion was shared.

The Jalapeno & Cilantro was really good, even though I forgot to bring the cilantro to toss in before serving! So, the better soup was missing a key ingredient but I did get several compliments on the Jalapeno & Cilantro. There was soup left over but not as much as the Potato & Swiss Cheese.

My opening comment about trying to figure out people's reactions to the soups has to do with getting criticism from friends about the soups. Will friends give honest criticism of a soup if it is not good? Are there comments and critiques that I'm missing out on because people are reluctant to hurt my feelings when I'm bringing soup to work or to a party?

Two Soups For A Pool Party

The fitness boot camp (BrownsBootCamp.com) my son Tommy and I have been attending for the last 14 months is having a pool party tomorrow to celebrate the completion of August's classes. I'm bringing two soups for the crowd. One is Jalapeno & Cilantro and the other is Potato & Swiss Cheese. I found these recipes while Googling for Sweet Tomatoes/SoupPlantation soup recipes. Naturally, with my short attention span and the nature of roaming the internet I never finished looking for the recipe I started out looking for but came across a nice recipe site called CopyKat.com, check it out. Lots of recipes not just soup.

So, this pool party will be my first foray into a larger offering of my soups. I've got a long term plan for doing something serious with my soups but I'm not quite ready to share my ideas with a larger audience yet. One of the steps in my plan is to move into providing soups to small parties and gatherings first. I provide the soup and bread you provide the wine and other beverages for an informal get together. Anyway, I wish I had some business cards ready to go but I'm not quite there yet. I'll go with my usual table tent of ingredients, name and I'll put my blog URL on there for the first time.

The Jalapeno & Cilantro looks pretty easy to prepare. Saute diced jalapenos and Spanish onion. Add a diced avocado and 16 oz. of diced tomatoes and their juice. Bring that mixture to a boil. Add 8 cups of cream, salt, black pepper & white pepper to taste and 1/2 teaspoon finely diced garlic. Reduce over a happy simmer by 25 percent. This yields about 8 cups. Adjust seasonings and add 1/2 bunch of chopped cilantro. Note on the garlic: I've mentioned before that I take a shortcut with the chopped garlic. I use already chopped garlic I find in our grocery's produce section. The brand I like best is Spice World minced garlic. Between peeling all the garlic cloves and then chopping enough for some of the recipes I make this is a real time and effort saver.

The Potato & Swiss Cheese looks even easier than the Jalapeno & Cilantro soup. Start off with 64 oz. of chicken broth, 2 pounds of yukon gold potatoes sliced thin (unpeeled) and 1 yellow onion sliced thin. Cook those 3 ingredients on medium for about 20 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add 1 quart of cream, 1 cup of shredded swiss cheese, 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese, 1/4 cup of real bacon bits and 2 tablespoons of diced green onions and simmer for 20 minutes. The recipe didn't state how many servings you get from this but I'm guessing about 8. For grated Parmesan cheese I go for Trader Joe's brand. Their Parmesan-Romano mix is my favorite.

Well off to do some shopping for these two soups.

Spicy Zucchini Soup

This week's soup uses several ingredients from our very own backyard garden!

I got the recipe from SimplyRecipes.com which is one of my favorite sites for recipes. They have an email alert of new daily postings of recipes which is about the only such alert that I like.

This is a pretty straightforward recipe. You start off sauteing, in 4 tablespoons of olive oil, a whole onion that is chopped and one half of a jalapeno chili. You remove the stem, seeds and ribs from the jalapeno before cooking. I've learned the hard way that when you work with chilis using rubber gloves is a great idea! Even if you're very careful about not touching your eyes or nose the chilis still can leave a burning sensation on your hands for hours even after repeated washing.

Back to the sauteing. You saute until the onions are translucent not browned, about 4-5 minutes. To the onion and chilis add 5-6 cups of chopped zucchini. If the zucchinis you use are very large ones you'll need to peel and remove the seeds before chopping. This was the case with one of the zucchinis I used from our garden. If you use smaller zucchinis your can leave the skin and seeds. Along with the zucchini add 3 chopped garlic cloves. Saute for another 8-10 minutes stirring often. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. When you add the zucchini it may seem that you need a larger pot but the zucchini will cook down some so you're likely going to be fine with the pot you started with.

Add 1.5 cups of chopped sourdough bread. If you get a chance to leave a few slices of bread out all day to dry a bit that's great. If you are not able to do that then simply toast the slices lightly to get a dry texture to the bread. Along with the bread add 3 cups of chicken or vegetable broth (vegetable broth makes this soup completely vegetarian) and 1 cup of water. Bring the ingredients to a simmer, reduce heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Turn off the heat. Add 1/2 cup of loosely packed chopped mint leaves, 1/2 cup of cilantro loosely packed and chopped. Puree the mixture in a blender or food processor and return to the pot. But the best way to puree is with an immersion blender. If you don't have one and make soups on a regular basis then an immersion blender is a must. Bertie gave me one for my birthday last April and I love it. The one I have is powerful and has attachments like a little food processor, whisker and smoothie maker. It is made by Cuisinart here's a link to Amazon for my model http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-CSB-77-Blender-Chopper-Attachments/dp/B0006G3JRO/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen&qid=1282743363&sr=1-19.

After returning the soup to the pot add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, add salt and pepper to taste.

After finishing the soup last night I found it was missing something that I couldn't put my finger on. Usually when this occurs I add some lemon juice to give it a little tang but it already had plenty of lemon juice. I did add more salt but I have to be careful with salt because I love salt and can easily over salt for most people's tastes. Another couple of tastes and the soup still wasn't quite there. I added a couple of pinches of white pepper and that helped but still not quite there. Note: be very judicious with white pepper because a little goes a very long way. I was thinking about some fresh basil and/or some cream. I decided to sleep on it and after warming up the soup in the morning went with about 3/4 cup of cream. This addition got it closer but I'm still not fully satisfied but we'll wait to get my co-workers' opinions.

So, the fresh ingredients from Patterson Farms were the zucchini, mint and jalapeno. If I had used basil that would have come from our garden also. I'll include some pics of our garden boxes in a later posting. We had a great summer of vegetables this year. Tomatoes, tomatillos, chilis, eggplants, mint, thyme, basil and rosemary.

Off to work and Soup at Work Wednesday.

Thai Chicken & Pumpkin Soup

I got this week's recipe from a co-worker. It sounds interesting.

Chicken, onions, garlic, ginger, celery, carrots, mango nectar, lime juice, rice wine vinegar, cilantro, cream, canned pumpkin and cornstarch. I couldn't find two of the ingredients yesterday at my usual grocery store, Fry's. Mango nectar and the canned pumpkin. Lots of other nectars out there but not mango. The pumpkin was an unexpected hard-to-find. Nothing in the canned fruit aisle, canned vegetable aisle, baking aisle with other pie fillings. I even broke down and asked one of the customer service people as I made my way to the checkstand. This lady looked at me like I was wearing a Santa outfit in August. "Why we haven't had pumpkin filling since the day before Thanksgiving!". OK then.

So I'll be checking Sprouts, Sunflower and Safeway for those two items.

On an unrelated topic, my wife Bertie had arthroscopic knee surgery last Friday the 13th, her idea on the date. She had a torn meniscus repaired. She's doing real well and now walking without her crutches most of the time. She's pretty tough and very independent. It's nice to see her doing so well. She's my sweetheart.

Chorizo, Kale & Cranberry Bean

This week's Wednesday Soup slipped to Thursday. I spent Tuesday evening installing a new garbage disposal and didn't have time for soup making.

This week's soup is a Bobby Flay recipe. What caught my eye was the Cranberry Beans. I had never heard of Cranberry Beans before so a quick look on Google and found that they are also called borlotti or shell beans in New England. They have a nutty flavor. A cool answer reference I found is wisegeek.com. I had to call a couple of stores here in the Tucson area to find them but was successful at Sunflower Market.

It was very easy to make with simple ingredients. I used beef chorizo that was loose as opposed to being in a sausage tube. White and red onions, carrots and celery sauteed in a couple of tablespoons of the chorizo fat. The chorizo I bought didn't have enough fat so I added olive oil to the pot. The kale gets added to the sauteed veggies and cooked until wilted. Some white wine and chicken stock are added and then simmered. The beans and cooked chorizo are added and cooked until the beans and kale are soft.

We'll see what the crowd has to say tomorrow.

The kitchen toy tip this time is what I call a scooper but what is called in the "trade" a prep taxi. At least that's what Food Network's site calls them. I use it to scoop up diced veggies to put into pots or bowls. You can do in one scooop what might take two or three tries just using your hands. Here's a link to the Food Network site with the prep taxis http://www.foodnetworkstore.com/ProductList.aspx?Ntt=prep+taxi&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchall&Nty=1&N=0&Ntk=All

Chinese Dumpling

We decided on Chinese Dumpling soup for tomorrow's offering. By we I mean my friend Shannon and I. It was a simple soup to make but has the complex flavors of Chinese foods.

Since I went Asian it meant a stop at the Lee Lee Asian Market on the corner of Orange Grove and La Cholla. I have not been in too many international markets so I don't have much to compare but Lee Lee has unusual stuff compared to your standard American grocery stores. If you've ever been to Lee Lee and noticed an unusual odor to the place you are not alone. Anyway, I got some Chinese dumplings, dried oyster mushrooms, sesame oil, rice cooking wine and Asian chili sauce. The people working there are very helpful especially with ingredients that I'm not familiar with.

The other ingredients are chicken broth, fresh ginger, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, sugar, salt, carrots, scallions, baby spinach and cilantro.

If you've ever used sesame oil before you know that a little bit goes a very long way and the taste can be very overwhelming. I learned this the hard way a couple of years ago when I made some won tons. Too much sesame oil and the darn things were inedible, a large waste of time because won tons are pretty labor intensive.

I'll follow up tomorrow with the outcome of the Chinese Dumpling Soup and I'll expound a bit on knives and how I came to gain some experience with them.

Roasted Eggplant, Oregano, Basil & Tomato Soup

Last Wednesday's Soup came to be because we harvested a bunch of eggplants, tomatoes, and basil from our two 4'x8' garden boxes the previous weekend. The first thing I did was Google those ingredients and the word "Soup" to see what came up. Several candidates surfaced and I chose one from netcooks.com.

The one I chose was submitted to netcooks.com by Kevin Milstein from Australia. It was a little difficult to follow and lacked a few details but then I'm pretty detail oriented and like having everything spelled out even though I often stray far from a recipe's prescribed path. The title of my chosen recipe is "Roasted Eggplant, Oregano, and Tomato Soup" if you look for it on netcooks.com.

One thing about this recipe that had me a bit puzzled was whether to peel the eggplant or leave it unpeeled. My experience with eating eggplant was either in eggplant parmigiana or breaded and fried. I recall the peel being there but not consuming it. I checked a couple of other recipes calling for eggplant and peeling was called for so that's what I did. The recipe calls for:

Diced Eggplant
Fresh Oregano
Orzo
Onion
Garlic
Celery
Tomatoes
Fresh Basil
Vegetable Stock
Potato
Olive Oil

As I mentioned, from our garden I had enough eggplant, basil and tomatoes. In our pantry and fridge I had the olive oil, orzo, onion (I had a bunch of shallots left over from a previous misreading of recipe ingredients so I used them in addition to some red onion), garlic (I use the prepared minced garlic in a jar from Spice World you find in the produce section. This is a shortcut I'm willing to take because of the amount of garlic we use), celery and potato. I needed to buy the oregano (I've not had good luck growing oregano) and vegetable stock.

The potato acts as a thickening agent in addition to flavor. This precludes the need for butter or cream. I'm not against butter or cream in any way but this is a soup that doesn't need them.

Peel the eggplants and dice into 1/2 to 3/4 inch pieces. Salt them really well and set aside in a colander for 30 minutes.

The recipe calls for cooking the orzo early in the preparation. I found this to be a mistake because by the time I needed to add the orzo I ended up with a clump of pasta. So, wait until the soup is done and then cook the orzo, it doesn't take but a few minutes.

Spread the eggplant in a single layer on a large pizza pan or as many casserole dishes you need. Sprinkle with olive oil. Roast in the oven at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes and then sprinkle the chopped oregano over the eggplant and roast for an additional 10 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

Saute the onions, garlic and celery until onion is translucent, about 7 minutes. Add the diced tomatoes and stir to mix all the veggies thoroughly. Add the sliced basil leaves, stock, grated potato and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer 20-25 minutes.

This is where I screwed up so pay attention. I didn't read the recipe well enough or enough times so what I did was add the roasted eggplant/oregano into the pot after the simmering was done.

The recipe calls for pureeing the soup at this point. I was just about to bury my immersion blender in the soup pot and hit the button when something didn't feel right and I read the recipe one more time. What it calls for is to puree the cooked soup sans eggplant/oregano and then add the eggplant/oregano. So what I had to do was pick out as much of the eggplant as I could or had patience to do before pureeing. While I'm talking about pureeing let me recommend as strongly as possible that a gotta-have kitchen toy is an immersion blender, especially if you make soups. My wife, Bertie, gave me one for my last birthday and it is the best thing ever. No more making messes and losing precious spoonfuls of soup on the counter as you transfer from pot to blender.

After pureeing add the eggplant/oregano mixture and orzo. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

As I noted in a previous posting I often use fresh squeezed lemon juice to many recipes if the taste calls for a little tang or bite. That's what I did with this soup. I used the juice of one lemon. Another kitchen toy that is a must is a lemon juicer. I use the one that you place half a lemon in with the sliced end down and bring the anvil portion of the squeezer down and it basically turns the citrus inside out as it squeezes. They are pretty common in good stores and I just happened to pick mine up at Cost Plus World Market.

The folks at work liked the soup and several people commented that they were not big fans of eggplant as a rule but really like this soup.

I haven't looked at what soup is up for next week but will be looking this weekend.

Wednesday Soup At Work

So, how did Wednesday Soup At Work get started?

Over the holidays last year I read an article about finding new ways to find joy in going to work. In a roundabout way this got me to thinking about an article in Sunset magazine a couple of years ago about a woman in Berkeley that started a neighborhood soup night once a month. She hosted her neighbors with several pots of soup on the first Tuesday of every month. She gave her neighborhood an open invitation, no RSVP required. They could bring bread and beverages, she would provide the soup. It was very casual and a big success.

I tried this in my neighborhood and it failed miserably. So now back to the future, I thought about bringing soup to work on a regular basis. I love everything associated with cooking and I seem to gravitate toward soups. Looking for recipes, shopping, prepping, cooking, keeping the kitchen clean while I'm cooking, everything. So, Wednesday Soup At Work was born. Random choice was Wednesday. Hump day maybe.

The first week returning after the holiday break was the debut. I was subtle about the whole thing for the first couple of weeks. I set up the crock pot in a kitchen area with some bowls, spoons and a little sign describing the soup and its ingredients. The first week I intended to just have the soup warm up in the morning after my drive to work and open up the crock pot about 11:00 but people didn't wait and they just started serving themselves about 8:30. No one really noticed me placing the soup out the first two weeks. I watched people help themselves and listened to the comments which were all positive. It was kind of fun to listen to the inquiries about who brought the soup and why.

The third week I added my name to the sign along with a preview of the next week's soup. Build anticipation don't ya know! I was surprised by the positive reaction when folks knew it was me. I got emails, texts and visits from people I had never met before with compliments and questions about why and just to discuss cooking. It was great! I have to admit the ego boost was really nice! My wife, Bertie, mentioned that I have built an expectation for people and wondered what will happen when I stop bringing soup in.

I found out a few weeks later when I took a couple of days off with one of them being Wednesday. I had a few people mention that they were disappointed because they had come to count on Wednesday as Soup Day.

As the next few weeks went by I found myself avoiding using recipes I had brought before and searching for new and really different recipes. The internet is an amazing thing. Al Gore is a genius.

So that's how and why Wednesday Soup at Work started. I've been pretty consistent in meeting my weekly goal of soup every week. Here are some of the soups I've brought in so far in no particular order:

Chicken Tortilla a really colorful presentation with a tomato base, white hominy, yellow corn, black bean, shredded chicken and diced avocado garnish. I add a can of El Pato mexican sauce for some extra flavor.
BLT & P (Bacon, Leek, Tomato and Potato) the potatoes are thinly sliced which was a great way to use potatoes in this recipe. Of course bacon makes everything good. This is a Rachel Ray recipe, yummo.
Lemon Chicken with Spaghetti this was one of the first recipes I made that called for lemon juice. Now I frequently use some lemon juice in many recipes to add a bit of tang when it is called for. This one is from Giada De Laurentiis.
Roasted Chile Potato with Greens & Chorizo this recipe calls for hot Hungarian Wax chiles which are also called banana chiles. I always thought these large yellow chiles were the ones used for pepperocinis. Wrong. This was a really flavorful soup with the chorizo and chiles. The chard was also an unusual touch. I got this one from Rick Bayless
Black Bean salt pork and ham hocks make this soup. I make this one at home fairly often. I got this recipe from the LA Times food section. The Times has recurring feature that responds to readers' requests for recipes for popular dishes from So. Cal. restaurants. This is from Las Brisas in Laguna Beach.

I'll continue to post soups with my comments.

Later.