Given how much I always thought I hated congee, I find it pretty shocking how much I now enjoy it. I haven't tried it in many restaurants because I'm still a little weirded out by ordering rice gruel with a potential surprise inside, but I love making it at home. We don't do it very often, but that's because I tend to forget all about it until hit with an intense congee craving. Usually that happens when it is cold out and I am feeling under the weather. I swear this stuff is almost better than chicken noodle soup.
This congee is in some ways not that different from the Rice Soup, Khmer Style we made a year ago (both use ground pork and Southeast Asian ingredients like fish sauce and lemongrass), except that this congee added tofu and was even more flavorful, which I expected given we used a homemade broth that was very flavorful in and of itself. I also liked the texture of this congee better because it wasn't quite as thick. You could totally play with this recipe to adjust the seasonings and ingredients if you felt like playing around in the kitchen (or if your kitchen is simply missing one or more ingredients). If you're not a fan of pork you could use ground chicken or turkey and if you wanted to be a little more Chinese (and less Southeast Asian) you could use ginger instead of lemongrass, peanuts instead of fried shallots and a combination of soy sauce and salt instead of fish sauce. You could also omit the Thai chili if you're not a fan of spicy food. Personally, I thought the dusting of Thai chili gave it the perfect kick, which was muted by the congee, but gave it a little extra zing.
Recipe after the jump!
Sometimes I pick out a recipe and I don't expect much from it. Take this recipe for instance. I thought it would be good, but mostly I wanted another easy vegetarian recipe and I got suckered in by the poached egg in the photo. I'm such a sucker for poached eggs. Runny egg yolk is my jam. And yes, I know I sort of mis-used that term. So I sent Alex the recipe and said "hey, we should make this sometime." And then we both proceeded to not do anything about it until New Years Eve rolled around and I wanted a simple dish to make for lunch that didn't require too many ingredients from the grocery. Luckily, we had everything we needed in the fridge. In the spirit of full disclosure, if we had been short on eggs I would have made a special trip to the grocery store just to get eggs. There was no way that I was going to make this soup without poached eggs. It was one of the "optional enhancements" listed in the original recipe but I think it is totally crucial. Even if I weren't obsessed with poached eggs I would think it was crucial for the recipe as a whole. Without the egg the soup lacks body and richness. As the egg yolk melts into the soup it makes the broth a little creamier. And while we're on the topic, I think the harissa is another necessary element. If you don't like heat, just add a little, but I think that without harissa you will be missing out. The same goes for the fresh herbs - the parsley and mint gave the soup some brightness and freshness. But if you absolutely had to pick one thing to leave out, I would leave out the herbs. Or the drizzle of evoo. You could leave that out too. But if you make the soup and add the egg and harissa you will be pleasantly surprised by just how tasty the soup is. Don't get scared when you taste the chickpeas by themselves prior to adding the garnishes. They taste a little bland, but the broth is delicious. And the soup as a whole with the addition of the garnishes is warm and comforting, not to mention really tasty.
Recipe after the jump!
For the past few years I have gone on a summertime gazpacho kick. What tends to happen is that Alex and I make at least 2 batches of gazpacho (some more traditional than others) over the course of the summer and I find it hard to resist gazpacho when it makes its way onto the menu at some of my favorite restaurants. This summer I have expanded into trying the various take-out gazpacho offerings from my favorite soup and lunch places. For the record, this summer I have been particularly into the Andalusian gazpacho from Zabar's (which I think is better than their traditional gazpacho). I'm not exactly sure why, but I have been
fixated on the idea of watermelon gazpacho since last summer. I can't
remember ever trying watermelon gazpacho but it sounded delicious,
refreshing and oh-so summery. I looked at a number of different watermelon gazpacho recipes and this recipe from CHOW seemed like a good starting point. I meant to play with it a little more, but we ended up making it almost exactly as written. I wish I had played with it a little more because there are a few changes I think I would have made. I would have cut down on the amount of garlic, used shallot instead of onion and maybe cut down on the amount of vinegar. Of course it's easy to say that I would have made those changes after the fact, because those are the same changes that I would make after having tasted the gazpacho. I found the gazpacho slightly harsh and acidic. I'm not really sure how to explain it, but it had a lingering aftertaste that I didn't find altogether too pleasant. When I first tasted the gazpacho it didn't immediately strike me as harsh or acidic, but the more I ate, the more those flavors seemed to intensify. We let our gazpacho hang out in the fridge overnight on the theory that the flavors could really meld that way and maybe that was the problem? Maybe this is the type of soup you need to eat right then and there because given too much time the flavors overdevelop? Who knows. Either way, this wasn't our most successful gazpacho ever. I am thinking that for our next gazpacho experiment we will make this Cucumber Gazpacho with Shrimp and Melon, which I considered (and discarded) for this batch because I decided I wanted a gazpacho that was more melon and less other stuff.
Recipe after the jump!
It turns out that it's a good thing that I made those two homemade stocks while Alex was sick. Guess who caught the head cold now? I guess it was hubris to assume that I would be immune to Alex's most recent cold. In my defense, I only get sick about 50% of the time when Alex brings something home. It just happened that my body decided now seemed like a good time to catch a cold. When I have a cold the only thing I want is wonton noodle soup. It is my absolute favorite cold remedy. If I can't have wonton noodle soup (or I am too lazy to make the wontons) I will settle for a bowl of homemade Vietnamese chicken noodle soup. Since I didn't have any homemade wontons and we had just made homemade dumplings the day before, I decided to mix things up and make some sort of Chinese noodle soup. I didn't want to do a chicken noodle soup because we had just made matzo ball soup with chicken and we had homemade pork-chicken stock in the fridge, so I decided to go with a pork noodle soup. Once I settled on pork I knew that I would make homemade char siu and make a char siu noodle soup. For the char siu I used a combination of two char siu recipes that we have made in the past. I know that I said that I would never make char siu another way after I made Char Siu Take 2, but I didn't want an entire pork shoulder worth of char siu for my soup. I just wanted a few slices for each bowl. Plus, the grocery store nearest our apartment only had pork tenderloin. So I used the marinade from Char Siu Take 2 and the cooking instructions from Char Siu Pork (Chinese Roast Pork) which used pork tenderloin. I threw the marinade together and put it in the fridge, went to the gym, took the dog for a walk, etc. And later that night we made soup. Once you had all of the components prepared, it really didn't take that long to make your soup but preparing each component takes awhile - the broth takes about 3 hours, the char siu marinates for at least 2 hours (although you could easily do it overnight as we have done in the past) and then cooks for 30 minutes...
The thing I liked most about this meal was how homey it tasted. Variations on both of these dishes are available in restaurants, but everything tasted comforting and homemade. The flavors were there, the textures were there (particularly with the tofu with celery and peanuts), but it was all very simple and homey. The char siu wasn't the best that I have ever tasted (or made) and I wanted a little more depth of flavor and richness to the broth, but it just made me (and my head cold) happy. It reminded me of something my grandmother would have made for me. Granted, she probably would have picked up some char siu from the local Chinese grocery instead of making it at home, but the point still stands. It wasn't a perfect dish by any means, but it was very satisfying. And sometimes that is exactly what you want/need. It has been a long time since I have had any smoked tofu and I almost forgot how great it can be. I love the meaty, smokey flavor and the extra firm texture. It works really well with the crisp, grassy celery and the sweet and spicy sauce. I brought in the leftover smoked tofu for lunch this week and I thought it made for great leftovers.
Recipes after the jump!
This soup was... well we can call it a labor of love. You might have noticed a bit of a theme to our posts this weekend. Alex has been sick with a head cold and in a fit of wifely good intentions I bought a ton of ingredients (we're talking 3 lbs of pork neck bones, a whole chicken, 3 lbs of chicken parts, herbs, veggies, etc.) on Friday to make some homemade stocks and soups to help him feel better. I don't know about you, but I love soup when I don't feel well. I made an everyday Chinese chicken and pork stock on Friday (although we haven't quite figured out what kind of soup we are going to make with it yet) and I figured I would make some homemade chicken stock or chicken noodle soup too.
Then I had an epiphany at spinning Saturday afternoon - we're in NYC, matzo ball soup is the only appropriate cold remedy. Of course that required another trip to the grocery store to buy matzo ball soup ingredients (like leeks and rendered chicken fat, although if I had really thought about it I would have realized that making homemade chicken stock provides you with more than enough chicken fat). Strangely enough, Zabars didn't have any rendered chicken fat. They had a zillion different kinds of rugelach, babka and other Jewish baked goods, as well as a selection of kosher meats, but no rendered chicken fat. So I went to Fairway and they came through with all of the matzo, matzo meal and rendered chicken fat I could ever need. But by the time I found a recipe, hit Zabars and Fairway and got home it was late afternoon. And when I looked at the recipe I realized that the stock needs to simmer for 3 hours, and then the matzo balls need to chill for 30 minutes and then simmer in the finished stock for 45 minutes... And when you considered how much prep work, etc. we had to do, that meant we wouldn't be eating dinner until 10 pm. Oops. So I started the broth on Saturday night and let it hang out overnight in the fridge and finished the soup on Sunday. Never having made matzo ball soup before I'm not sure if this was an entirely typical recipe (or if I picked a recipe that was inordinately and unnecessarily complicated for matzo ball soup) but I knew that the recipe sounded interesting. All of the matzo ball soups that I have tried have not included anything beyond the matzo balls themselves in a relatively mild chicken broth. But I liked the idea of including the poached chicken and herbs in the soup. And since I was the one picking the recipe I went with the chicken matzo ball soup. I briefly considered making this Leek and Ginger Matzo Balls in Lemongrass Consomme, but I decided that was taking things a little bit too far. Generally for my first attempt at a classic dish I want to stick at least a little closer to the traditional version.
More (including the recipe) after the jump!
It seems a little ridiculous that we are taking a break from our (Belated) Chinese New Year meals to make a Cambodian version of congee (a traditional Cantonese rice porridge), but Alex is sick and it's gross and snowy outside so I really wanted to make congee. After watching Chrissy Teigen make a Thai version of pork congee on Eric Ripert's YouTube series, On the Table, I wanted to make pork congee. And it just so happened that Hot Sour Salty Sweet had a recipe for a Cambodian congee with pork and a bunch of other deliciousness. So I decided that we could take today off from Chinese food and make some Khmer-style congee.
Congee is homey and comforting (and thus, good sick day food). And when you throw in all of the garnishes that are typical of Southeast Asian cuisine, it can be quite delicious (which appeals to everyone who isn't sick, namely myself, and some of those who are). Fish sauce, chilis, herbs, limes and fried shallots are a lot more fun than just scallions and sesame oil. I'm not knocking Cantonese congee in the slightest - I'm just saying that sometimes Southeast Asian congee recipes are a nice way to mix it up. While the congee was cooking I got a little worried that it wouldn't have enough liquid - that it would be wallpaper paste rather than porridge. And it definitely started to veer off in that direction. We ended up adding a little more liquid to loosen it all up a little, but I have adapted the recipe to include an extra 1-2 cups of water during the cooking process. Note that we used a ridiculously large Le Creuset to cook out congee (which allowed a lot of water to evaporate and necessitated 2 additional cups of liquid) and if we had used a smaller pan an additional 1 cup of water would probably have been sufficient. It was still a little more of a solid than a soup after the liquid cooked off, but that's ok. It was still warm, comforting and yummy. The congee itself had really nice flavor from the combination of dried shrimp and pork. I don't know that I necessarily like the flavor of pork congee better than chicken congee, but this dish made a really good case for pork. Beyond the flavor of the soup itself, I thought that the garnishes and everything else on top of the congee really made the dish. There is something to be said for being able to garnish a dish to suit your own tastes and preferences. We made the fish sauce pretty spicy and it was awesome spooned on top of the congee. But some people might not want quite that much spice. And then I went pretty heavy on the Thai basil, cilantro and fried shallots because I absolutely love all of those flavors. But again, some people might not. For the record, I'm not usually a big fan of bean sprouts (they just don't do it for me because I don't feel like they add anything) but I thought they were perfect here. They provided nice texture. And with congee, one of the things that I really want is texture. Obviously you want the congee to be flavorful, but a bowl of tasty porridge is still a little mushy and boring. You need something to give it a little bite. The bean sprouts, fried shallots and peanuts all added a necessary textural contrast (as well as more flavor) to the congee.
Recipe after the jump!
I love soup. It makes me incredibly happy. I'm not sure what it is about soup that makes me so happy, but what isn't to love about a hot bowl of soup on a cold night? Soup is warm, comforting and delicious. And it is a wonderful way to try new flavors and new ingredients (or to see old ingredients in a new light). For instance, we eat a lot of chickpeas in our apartment but I have never tried a chickpea soup before. And I don't think I have ever added yogurt to soup before. But the chickpeas work really nicely to thicken the soup and give it a creamy texture. And the yogurt was the perfect finishing touch because it gave the soup a wonderfully tangy flavor and a smooth, creamy texture. If you ask me, the dollop of yogurt really made the soup. I was a little weirded out by adding apple juice to a soup, but if you really think about it, adding apple juice isn't all that different from adding diced up apple. So we went ahead and did it (or really I did it because the deal was that I would cook dinner if Alex got the ball rolling on our taxes - I like to file early). The best thing about this chickpea soup was that the ingredients were really easy to find ingredients (and there weren't all that many of them) and the soup came together really quickly. Once you threw everything into the blender and pureed it, it really took no time at all to bring to a simmer and serve. And even though the ingredients only simmered together briefly, the soup tasted like a composed dish that took much longer to make. I served the soup with salad and some whole wheat sourdough bread and it made a really tasty (which was the adjective that Alex kept using to describe the soup), easy and hearty winter meal.
Recipe after the jump!
When it's cold outside soup sounds like the best thing in the whole wide world. And I'm not usually a chili fan, but there is nothing more seasonally appropriate than a bowl of steaming hot (both in temperature and in spice level) chili when it is insanely cold out. This week was absolutely perfect for chili. Since I don't like pinto beans (or a ton of beans of any sort) in my chili I usually end up defaulting to a chicken or turkey chili with white beans, but I thought this green chili with pork recipe sounded like an interesting bean-free alternative when I stumbled across it sometime last winter. And it was interesting. I wish the flavor of the cilantro came through a little more clearly, but the chili had a nice spice level and the flavor overall was quite good provided that you like pork (it was quite porky). I loved the substitution of hominy for beans because in my humble opinion, hominy and corn are way better than beans. You might or might not agree with me there, but beans just don't do it for me. I think you could totally lighten this chili up by adding more vegetables - some zucchini would have worked nicely. Another bonus for me was that the chili didn't need to simmer for hours and hours to develop its flavors, although a little more simmering wouldn't have hurt. Overall it was a nice hearty winter dinner!
Recipe after the jump!
This soup doesn't look like much - in fact, it kind of looks like gruel (or something equally gross). But it was actually one of my favorite soups we have made all year. It had a ton of flavor and a wonderful rich texture. I'm not really sure how to describe the texture, except to describe it as slightly unctuous. I know that unctuous can be an unappealing adjective to describe food, but I can't think of a better way to describe the soup. And hot and sour soup is supposed to be a little unctuous. The cornstarch slurry did its job in thickening the soup a little, but I think a lot of the texture also had to do with the richness of the homemade broth we used from our Chicken Pho (Pho Ga). When we took the broth out of the fridge to use it, it already had some body to it. Actually, it almost appeared to be verging on gelatinous in its chilled form. It actually jiggled. And even once we heated the broth up, it retained a lot of that richness, as well as the complexity of flavor that I babbled on about in my post about the pho. And after we added in all of the additional ingredients, the soup was beautifully complex, yet balanced. The dried mushrooms added a touch of earthiness and umami, the vinegar added the sourness and bite that you want in a hot and sour soup, the white pepper added a hint of heat, the eggs added creamyness to the already rich broth and the scallions/cilantro on top added a little brightness. It was awesome. I heart this soup.
Recipe after the jump!
This chicken pho recipe has been a long time in coming. I think we made it 3 weeks ago, but I have been pretty swamped at work (and as you will notice below, the recipe is really long) so I haven't had time to post about it. But instead of attending a holiday party that we were invited to, I'm stuck at home this evening with a pretty awesome head cold, so I decided this was the perfect opportunity to post about the soup. First things first - this broth was amazing. It is totally worth the extra steps to char the onions and ginger, parboil the chicken parts, and strain it. It was delicious and very complex. It was also clear (hurray for parboiling) and rich. We used the leftover broth in two more soups later that week (and the following week), including a Shrimp, Pumpkin and Coconut Soup we have already posted about and a fantastic hot and sour soup that we haven't posted about yet, because you end up with a ridiculous amount of broth from this recipe. The recipe probably took 4 hours from start to finish, but I thought it was well worth it. The chicken breasts were succulent and had an almost silky texture. Andrea Nguyen says that you should start with a quality bird for this recipe and I totally agree. We used nice locally raised organic chicken and chicken parts that we picked up from Fairway. The soup might have been even better with some of the nice organic chickens from the farmers' market, but we used what we had.
We made another Vietnamese chicken soup called mien ga from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen cookbook some time ago. I think this pho ga blew the mien ga right out of the water. The broth was so nuanced and yet the dish had the freshness that the other soup was lacking. The fresh herbs had a lot to do with that freshness, but it was also the broth itself. I'm not sure how you make such a rich broth still taste light and fresh. It was just so bright and had so much flavor. I loved it. Clearly this isn't a soup that you could make every day (or even every month), but it is definitely going into my lazy Sunday rotation for the future. The broth alone is well worth many repeat visits.
Recipe after the jump!
We made chicken pho last weekend (which I will post about later this week - I promise) and we ended up with a ton of really good leftover Asian chicken stock. The only logical thing to do when you have 8 cups of leftover homemade chicken stock (and you already have some homemade chicken stock in the freezer) is to go on a soup-making extravaganza. And given the cool temperatures and rainy weather outside, soup was the ideal meal. Last night we made this shrimp, pumpkin and coconut soup. We had a cheese pumpkin and some Thai basil hanging around the apartment that I wanted to use so I started thinking pumpkin soup. And then I started thinking pumpkin and coconut soup because they work brilliantly together and are fairly common in some Asian cuisines. So I started paging through our Thai cookbook and stumbled pretty quickly on a recipe for a pumpkin coconut soup (which I have renamed Shrimp, Pumpkin and Coconut soup since it has shrimp in it too). We adapted it a bit to work with what we had in the apartment and then went for it.
I thought that the soup was a success in a lot of ways. It was tasty and fairly easy. And the flavors were pretty complex. I think some of the complexity was due to the homemade stock, but some of it was due to the spice paste and the other ingredients. The soup had a lot of intense flavors without tasting fishy - and given that it had dried shrimp, fish sauce and shrimp in it (and given the smells that filtered out into the hallway as the soup simmered) I was worried it would taste a little fishier. But the sweetness of the pumpkin, coconut milk and the coconut sugar and the heat of the jalapeno and the Thai chili really balanced it out. After tasting the soup we decided to add a little squeeze of lime juice at the end and the acid really brought it all together. Yum. Hurray for soup.
Recipe after the jump!
First things first - the hurricane hit and we are A-OK. I know that much of lower Manhattan (as well as various suburbs and boroughs of Manhattan) are underwater and without power, but we survived pretty much unscathed. While we were cooped up in the apartment we ended up cooking quite a bit, so this is going to be one large post containing a number of new recipes that we made over the past few days, in no particular order. We also made a bunch of recipes that we have made before (like these Buttermilk Biscuits with Green Onions, Black Pepper and Sea Salt) And due to the weather, we don't have pictures of all of the recipes, which is unfortunate, but what can you do?
First up is this brussels sprouts recipe, which I saw on Serious Eats and got really excited about because it couldn't be easier. Once I started reading further I realized that it is a little finnicky and tedious in that you are supposed to make sure all brussels sprouts are first added to the pan cut-side down, and then "turn each sprout over carefully on its back" after the brussels sprouts have seared up nicely on the cut side. We cut corners a bit and weren't as precise in the cooking process as perhaps we could have been. Things I will use from this recipe - the cooking method. You get an unreal amount of caramelization on the brussels sprouts in a fairly short time period. I would probably try different vinegars and seasonings in the future, but it was a beautifully simple recipe. You got nice sweetness from the balsamic, balanced nicely against the nutty flavor of the caramelized brussels sprouts. It wasn't the most amazing recipe I have ever made, but it was a really nice, simple side.
Now for the Mexican chicken soup. This was something of a day long endeavor. I started prepping the stock while on a conference call at 11:00 am. The stock took about an hour to prepare, before we let the chicken cool in the stock for another few hours. Around 6:30-7 pm we got started on making the soup to serve to some of our neighbors. It smelled wonderful while it simmered away. By the time the soup was ready I was really hungry and excited to finally taste it. We don't often go to the trouble to make homemade stock and every time we do it really excites me because soup made with homemade stock is better than soup made with boxed stock by several orders of magnitude. And when you make homemade stock you can season and modify your stock so that the flavors best suit the soup you are preparing. This time I added various ingredients that are typical of chicken stock (onions, carrots, celery, thyme, garlic, bay leaves) and a few ingredients that I think of as being typically Mexican (chilis and cilantro). I think that the flavors of the soup were really interesting. I was a little worried about the texture of the blended hominy and chilis, but it ended up being nicely thick and hearty. The chilis gave the soup a nice slightly sweet, slightly spicy flavor. I will definitely be making the soup again because it's great cold weather fare and pretty simple.
Now for the Lettuce in Sesame Sauce. I'm not really sure what there is to say about this recipe - I have a feeling that the sesame sauce is not going to appeal to a lot of palates. I told Alex I thought the salad would go really nicely with a batch of Sichuan Dumplings in Chili Oil. The combination of the thick and nutty sesame sauce would be nicely offset by the sweetness and heat of the chili oil. We ate it with fried rice, which wasn't the most ideal pairing, but we had a limited selection of ingredients left by Tuesday afternoon...
Recipe after the jump!
Alex and I have a rather glorious All-Clad slow cooker in the closet that we almost never use. I am determined to change that this winter. I want to make at least one batch of slow cooker chili and at least one stew (or other braised dish). I guess this recipe would take care of the stew, but let's get a little crazy and make another stew because why not? But seriously, a slow cooker is brilliant for a lazy Sunday wintertime meal. You throw it together in the morning (or the afternoon) and wander off for a few hours. And later that evening you end up with something warm and hearty. Today we started putting dinner together around 3:30 pm. After we seared up the beef and threw it in the slow cooker, we took the dog for a long walk and hung out on the couch for awhile. And then around 7:30 pm dinner was ready! This recipe was fairly labor-intensive for a slow cooker recipe - there were several stages and several pots used, but it simmered away unattended for 3 plus hours, which was nice. The dish that finally emerged from the slow cooker was warm, rich and comforting - perfect for a slightly chilly lazy Sunday. It had a rich meaty flavor from the beef and the beef stock, plus a nice sweetness to the broth overlayed with the aroma of toasted sesame oil. With each bite you got shreds of sweet cabbage, hunks of tender beef, steamed rice, and the slight crunch of bean sprouts. My favorite element might have been the pickles. I really loved the how the pickles provided lovely little bursts of acidity and a little heat. And they held up a lot better once we added them in the slow cooker than I thought they would. I took a few bites and told Alex to break out the kimchi because I thought the kimchi would be a nice spicy side and would provide some complimentary (but absent) flavors and a nice textural contrast. When I asked Alex what he thought about the stew he said (and I quote) "I think it was very good - I think serving it with kimchi made it better."
Recipe after the jump!
I have a new farmers' market resolution. I want to pick up one new ingredient that we have never cooked with each week and figure out how to cook it. Last weekend my new ingredient was celery root. When I picked up the celery root I had grand ideas of soup or puree. I feel like celery root puree is everywhere in NYC restaurants. I didn't realize when I picked up the celery root just how much it would taste and smell like celery. For some reason I expected it to be sweeter and less celery-flavored. Had I known that celery root tasted like celery I probably would have picked up a different vegetable given that Alex isn't exactly a fan of celery. And after prepping this soup I am not sure that Alex will ever voluntarily cook with celery root again - it is kind of a beast to peel and chop up. Oops. This weekend I picked up sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes) so that will be our next experiment.
When everything was said and done, this was not our favorite soup ever. I... liked it. I thought that when you got a spoonful with the bacon it was pretty tasty. Bites without bacon were less so. Without the bacon I felt like the soup lacked depth of flavor. Alex was on the fence. Actually, saying that he was on the fence is sugar coating it a little. Without the bacon he thought the soup had the texture and flavor of baby food. Once I realized how much the celery root smelled like celery I knew I was fighting a losing battle. Expecting Alex to love a soup with celery root as the main component was a bit optimistic on my part. Oh well. Better luck next time.
Recipe after the jump!
I am clearly in a soup frame of mind. We had soup Monday night for dinner and I can't stop thinking about making more soup for dinner tonight. It's a soup obsession. I want soup, soup and more soup. And this weekend in Maine I am thinking about chowder. Or chowda. And lobster. I can't wait to eat some lobster. Maybe a nice lobster bisque is in order... Anyway, this cauliflower soup was a wonderful weeknight meal because it is easy to put together and doesn't require a lot of ingredients. The cheese made it rich without the need for heavy cream, although it does mask the flavor of the cauliflower itself a little. As a side note, I have a really hard time putting heavy cream in my soups at home. I don't mind ordering soups that I know are cream-based at restaurants, but somehow making them at home just seems wrong. The soup was warm and comforting, with a little kick from the cayenne sprinkled on top. And for the record, the reason our cayenne doesn't look like the ground cayenne you usually see at the grocery store is because it didn't come from a grocery store. This cayenne is from the batch of home grown and home dried chilis that John gave us in Cincinnati. It rocks. And I decided not to throw the croutons on top because I really wanted you to see the cayenne (and not just more beige), but you have to make them with this soup. They really add a nice crunch and a lovely garlicky/buttery flavor. Yum.
Recipe after the jump!
Alex and I are trying to get into the habit of doing Meatless Mondays in our apartment. I'm not going to avoid meat if we go out to dinner, but to the extent possible we try to cook and eat vegetarian on Monday nights. This Monday we wanted to use a bunch of produce from the fridge and the farmers' market so we whipped up a batch of gazpacho (which we started on Sunday so it could sit in the fridge overnight and then all we had to do was blend and serve on Monday) and Corn on the Cob with Lime Salt. The thing that most distinguished this gazpacho from others we have made in the past to me was the smooth and almost creamy texture. Roasting the tomatoes and bell peppers intensified their flavors, but mellowed the flavor of the garlic. The acidity of the tomatoes and the vinegar (as well as the fact that the soup is served chilled) makes the soup very light and refreshing. I didn't really taste the tarragon, but I thought the soup was pretty tasty so I would make it as written again. The only thing I might try is to crisp up some serrano ham and serve the soup with crumbled crispy serrano. Yum. But not on Meatless Monday of course.
Recipe after the jump!
I am embarassed to say that I have been sitting on this post for a couple of weeks - long enough for me to forget the finer points I might have made. Oops. But I wrote down a few notes right after we made the soup from Alex, who thought the soup was "pretty good," "wasn't that hard to make" and "had pretty good balance of flavors." So there you have it. I agree with Alex that the soup was "pretty good," although I thought the broth itself needed something to give it a little more depth of flavor. It tasted a little thin for me. I'm not sure that thin is the right word (although it does describe the consistency), but I just wanted the broth to be a little richer and more flavorful. The night we made this recipe I really wanted to make this Thai Shrimp and Coconut Soup with Lemongrass by Harold Dieterle, but it required yet another trip to the grocery store for lemongrass, tamarind concentrate (I think I threw the rest of ours out) and Thai chilis. And I just got too lazy, so we used Thai curry paste and some dried lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves to spice up the broth. It did give it some heat and flavor, but I just wanted it to be bigger/better. Next time, I will plan more in advance and go buy the fresh lemongrass, etc. and make the Harold Dieterle soup because it really does sound fantastic.
Recipe after the jump!
Sopa de ajo
(aka garlic soup) sounds a little weird right? I thought so. I know
it's a totally traditional Spanish dish, but I have never been inspired
to try it or make it at home. But we had some stale bread in the
apartment and Alex wanted to use it, so I found this Mario Batali recipe
online at Serious Eats for sopa de ajo
with poached eggs. I have to admit, the poached eggs were what really
sold me on this recipe. Well, that and the fact that we had everything
we needed in the apartment (which is a huge plus on a rainy weeknight).
This soup is simple and very satisfying, with a pleasing richness from
the poached egg. It's the perfect type of soup to eat when you are
feeling a little under the weather or when the weather outside just
isn't so great. One note - depending on the type of bread you use you
might have to play with the ratio of broth to bread a little - ours got
really thick, almost oatmeal-like, because we used a fairly hearty bread
(and probably because Alex used more than 1/4 pound on accident). As far as meals go, it was comforting and tasty. We served it with a nice salad, and it was a perfect meal for a rainy Tuesday night.
Recipe after the jump!
Ummmmmm.... What to say about this soup? It was neither my favorite, not my least favorite soup that we have ever made. I would say that it falls somewhere in the middle. It was good, but not great (or at least not as great as I had hoped it might be). The turkey meatballs smelled amazing while they were browning in the pan, but finishing them in the simmering broth seemed to remove a lot of their flavor rather than adding flavor. And the broth didn't seem to absorb much flavor from the meatballs either. The broth did pick up a little flavor from the escarole, but not much else. I must admit that the soup really improved once you dipped some bread into it. Then it was pretty tasty. But all things considered, I wish that we had just made Stracciatella instead - a lot less messy and labor intensive, but just as tasty.
Recipe after the jump!
Somehow Monday has become the night of white soup. Last week we made congee and this week, cauliflower soup. I'm not sure where I got the bee in my bonnet, but I have been wanting to make cauliflower soup for some time now. I think my obsession with cauliflower soup stemmed from a shot glass full of truffle-scented cauliflower soup that we were served as an amuse bouche at Eighty-One almost two years ago. It was such a lovely mouthful of soup that I have been thinking about it ever since. I have had cauliflower soup served as an amuse at other restaurants as well (it seems to be a rather common amuse bouche here in NYC), but none were quite as good as that first one. Speaking of Eighty-One, I'm still pretty depressed that it closed. Moving on. I have been on the lookout for a recipe that looked easy, but flavorful. I have to say that the truffle oil is what did it for me here. I love the combination of truffle oil and cauliflower. And I love bacon with cauliflower. So it sounded like the best combination of recipes/flavors ever! But I'm not sure that bacon, cauliflower and truffle oil were the most successful combination in this soup. The entire soup was imbued with this subtle bacon-y flavor (which I usually love), but thought that it was too much like every other soup we make with bacon in it. It didn't stand out and didn't work as well with the truffle oil. It also overpowered the subtle flavor of the cauliflower. The entire pot of soup just tasted like any really rich, creamy, slightly bacon-y soup. It could almost have been loaded baked potato soup (or whatever that soup is called), except for the occasional whiff of the truffle oil. I think if I were to make the soup again I would leave the bacon out entirely and try to coax out more flavor from the cheese and truffle oil. I would also roast the cauliflower, rather than simmering it in the stock, to intensify the flavor of the cauliflower itself. I also think that the soup would be improved (both aesthetically and flavor-wise) by the addition of some fresh chives sprinkled on top.
Sadly, this soup didn't make much of a lasting impression, but it did teach me some valuable lessons about cauliflower soup. I guess I will have to keep looking for the perfect cauliflower soup recipe - one that can live up to the memory of that cauliflower soup at Eighty-One.
Recipe after the jump!
