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!!