Stock (again): The Real Deal

The real deal for making stock from beef or veal is another story altogether than dealing with poultry. Since our refrigerator was filled with the gift of three large bags of veal bones, I could see how the next cold day was going to get a lot warmer inside with the roasting of some bones.

Preparing beef/veal bones for soup requires, first of all, a HOT oven and a couple of hours of roasting. If there is anything else you can think of to cook while you are at it, then the (household) energy expended can turn out to be more worthwhile, but it has to be something that needs to be cooked at 400 (or, to accommodate baking, 450 for part of the time and 350 for the rest).

Ingredients

8 pounds veal bones

3 carrots, scraped and chopped

3 yellow onions, peeled and chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

3 Tbsp tomato paste

2 cups dry white wine

2 plum tomatoes, chopped

2 cloves garlic

2 bay leaves

10 black peppercorns

3 sprigs parsley

4 quarts water

 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put bones in a roasting pan and roast for 1 hour.
2. Add carrots and onions and cook for another 40 minutes, or until well browned.
3. Remove bones and vegetables to a soup pot. Put the roasting pan across two burners, add tomato paste, and deglaze with the wine. Simmer until all particles are loose, then add to stock pot.
4. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer uncovered for at least two hours. Stock should be reduced by a third.
5. Strain stock and discard solids. The stock can be frozen in small containers to use for sauces or large containers as a soup base.

With the addition of further ingredients and more cooking, some of this stock can be converted into demi-glace, a richly condensed brown sauce that goes well on sliced steak or fillet mignon.

For us, the stock went into the making of a French onion soup, and the gravy for a sliced steak.

Portuguese Soup

In an attempt to make lamb stuffed cabbage for a pre-Thanksgiving gathering, we ended up with a kitchen full of cabbage. The impetus for this cooking was a gift of ground lamb from our son’s Longmeadow Farm sheep.

The problem was that the recipe for the Lamb Stuffed Cabbage didn’t explain in sufficient detail how to get the cabbage leaves to cooperate. The directions were to blanch the leaves and then run them under cold water. However, after cutting off the first two leaves for blanching, the rest ganged up on us and came off in pieces and hunks.

Fortunately, the market was still open and we had the resources of our computer. While my spouse went off to secure two more cabbages, I searched the internet and eventually turned up a useful bit of instruction: submerge an entire head in boiling water for 15 minutes, then douse with cold water. It worked. So we had two heads-worth of leaves… and a head in chunks.

The result was a pot full of stuffed cabbage… and a pot of Portuguese Soup, which requires a head of chopped up cabbage. This is one of our hearty winter traditions, so it was nice to have the soup for another Thanksgiving week meal while the family was here.

The recipe for Portuguese Soup was given to us by friends years ago on Cape Cod, an area with a large Portuguese population in previous eras.  It was summer when we visited the Cape, but we make the soup in the winter as a hot and hearty meal.

All the work is in the cutting up, because once that is done, everything goes in the pot at once and just cooks until the carrots and potatoes are done.

Ingredients

15 ounce can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

28 ounce can diced tomatoes

1 medium head white cabbage, sliced

2 green peppers, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

3 carrots, chopped

2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed

4 cups beef broth (we have also substituted our home made chicken stock)

1 bay leaf

¼ cup wine vinegar

2 pounds sliced linguica (we have had to improvise with other sausages or kielbasa when linguica wasn’t available)

Good shot of red pepper sauce

4 cups water

Directions

Put all ingredients in soup pot.

Cook for approximately 40 minutes or until all vegetables are done.

Talking Turkey.... Soup

For years the soup I regularly made from the turkey carcass was, to say the least, boring. That was before I discovered recipes that consider what the day after Thanksgiving would taste like if the Pilgrims were from France, China, or Italy.

Whether the soup is going to have a French influence, Chinese style, or Italian flavor, the first step is to make a stock from the bones. The longer this can cook, the better it will be; anything from two to four hours should do the job.

Basic turkey stock ingredients:

the carcass, broken up to fit into a soup pot, but getting rid of small, loose pieces of bone 

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

2 ribs of celery, coarsely chopped

2 carrot, scraped and coarsely chopped

The liquid added to cover the above ingredients depends somewhat on the direction the soup will take. Enough water to cover all of the above is one possibility.

Once the bones are removed, and any meat taken off the bones, the stock can be used strained, or the vegetables can be pureed and added back into the stock. Any meat can be used in the soup, or can be used to make croquets.

French Version

12 cups liquid: a combination of chicken stock, white wine, crushed canned plum tomatoes, and water. Cook for two hours over medium heat. Remove bones but keep any meat that has fallen off the bone.

Add:

1 chopped fennel bulb

2 cleaned and chopped leeks

1 tsp chopped garlic

½ tsp thyme

Cook 15 minutes.

Add:

½ tsp cumin

1 Tbsp anise flavored liquor

Any leftover sweet potatoes cut up,  ‘et ‘bon appétit.’

Italian Version

2 cups chopped fennel

4 ounces sliced pancetta chopped

1 pound cherry tomatoes

1 15 ounce can canellini beans, rinsed

4 cups turkey strained stock from basic recipe above

1 cup leftover turkey, chopped

1 cup leftover turkey gravy or puree of the vegetables from the basic stock

¼ tsp dried crushed red pepper

½ cup chopped fresh basil, or I tablespoon dried.

Cook fennel and pancetta in a soup pot until pancetta starts to brown

Add tomatoes and cook briefly

Add all other ingredients and cook 15 minutes.

Chinese Version

For this soup, the stock is strained so it can be used without the vegetables.

For six servings, figure six cups of the strained stock and the following:

6 ounces uncooked Chinese noodles

1 Tbsp to toasted sesame oil

5 tsp grated fresh ginger

4 Tbsp oyster sauce

6 Tbsp chopped cilantro

3 cups diced cooked turkey

¾ cup thinly sliced scallions

Heat the strained stock.

Cook noodles according to directions, drain and toss with sesame oil, ginger, oyster sauce and cilantro.

Divide the noodle mixture among 6 bowls and top with turkey and scallions.

Pour broth over noodles.

Sweet Potato and Red Pepper Soup

1 jar roasted red peppers, drained, or two small red peppers roasted and peeled

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

½ tsp thyme

2 cups leftover mashed sweet potatoes

4 cups stock (from basic recipe). The pureed vegetables from the stock can also be used, but will moderate the color of the soup.

¼ cup orange juice

pepper and salt to taste

Heat olive oil in soup pot. Add onion, thyme, salt and pepper. Cook over low heat until onion is soft.

Add remaining ingredients and cook for 20 minutes.

Puree in blender.

Taking Stock

What do you do when you are given the gift of feet from fifty chickens? This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.  Instead, it is what happens around our house from time to time.

Our farmer son comes by every once in a while, after processing a batch of chickens, with bags of chicken feet for making stock. There used to be necks, too, but after a recent trip to France where he inspected numerous butcher shops and found meat sold ‘avec la tête’ (with the head), he compromised and left the necks on the chickens he sells.

Meanwhile, what happens to the feet of the fifty chickens? They get a bit of a spa treatment: they are submerged in a sink full of lukewarm water and undergo several rinsing. Any loose pieces of skin are removed and dark spots scrubbed. After three rinses the water is clear.

The next step is dividing the feet up between two large soup pots. Into each pot go three scraped carrots, three quartered onions, plus the leaves and upper third of a head of celery, divided between the pots. If I have any fresh herbs around, such as parsley, cilantro, tarragon or dill, those might go in, too. Lifting these pots is good for building upper body strength.

I add water until the feet and their accompaniment are well covered.  Once the mix is brought to a boil, I lower the temperature and cook the stock-to-be for two to three hours.

After the mix has cooked, I get rid of the feet as soon as it is possible to handle the contents. There is no point in putting the stock out to cool so that fat can be skimmed off because pasture raised chickens have no fat. They are athletes.

Then I remove the vegetables. I puree the vegetables in a blender with stock from one pot. This gives me two different kinds of stock: one is a thicker, opaque blend, and the other is a clearer, thinner liquid. These I freeze in gallon ziplock bags, 4 cups to a bag, labeled for future soup making.

Recently, the thicker mix became part of the base for a white bean soup and a curried cream of vegetable, while a bag of the clearer stock went into a mushroom velouté.

No antibiotics, no checking labels for salt content, these bags are like money in the bank.

"Orange" Soup

The title “Orange Soup” refers more to the color of this remarkable dish than to the contents, although orange as a flavor does enter into the mix. This is a soup that can only be made at the end of the summer when the special ingredients can be assembled. We have eaten it hot, but it could probably be eaten cold with a dollop of sour cream on top. Think of it as orange borscht.

From your local farm stand you need to collect yellow or orange tomatoes, striped or yellow beets, and red/orange peppers. With this assortment, and a few other ingredients, what results is a rich soup with a slightly offbeat flavor. Since the soup will be pureed, the ingredients can be chopped coarsely.

Hungarian style peppers are a recent discovery. I saw some beautiful small yellow/red/pale green peppers and asked if they were spicy. The farmer said, “Not really.” But apparently she was not that familiar with this species, because I chopped up a whole pepper and dumped it into our dinner one night, and it was too hot for us to eat. When I asked a Hungarian friend about the peppers, she said that a quarter of one would have been more than enough. But in a whole pot of soup, one small pepper is probably just about right.

Ingredients

6 medium to large yellow and/or orange tomatoes, chopped

2 medium onions, chopped

2 Tbsp butter or vegetable oil

4 medium striped or yellow beets

3 yellow/orange peppers, chopped

1 small yellow/red Hungarian style pepper

4-6 cups chicken or vegetable stock (depending on how much juice the tomatoes give off)

3/4 cup orange juice, or 2 tablespoons condensed frozen orange juice

Directions

1. Cook beets until just tender, then slip off outer skin and chop beets.

2. Saute onion in butter or vegetable oil until soft,

3. Add peppers and cook until soft.

4. Add tomatoes, beets, stock, and orange juice. Cook 30 minutes and puree.

French Onion Soup

Since this recipe calls for 3 pounds of onions, plus a little more at the end, I like to use the giant sweet onions that show up at farmer’s markets in the early Fall. About three of those big ones weigh in at three pounds.

Slicing all those onions can cause a lot of grief, but I have learned a trick that seems to help in avoiding tears. Someone once told me that if the cutting board is first wiped down with vinegar, all will be well. When I asked the person whom I thought gave me this tip, he looked blank, but it seems to help, so I continue to use a little white vinegar rubbed over the cutting surface before I launch into the onions.

It is a little harder to have homemade beef stock on hand than chicken stock. Any time a chicken has been cooked, the remains can be thrown in a pot with some vegetables to cook up broth, but steak and chop meat don’t give a cook anything to work with. The true French way is to roast bones and vegetables for hours, then deglaze, add further ingredients, and cook down. Another possibility is to put marrowbones in a soup pot, along with onion, carrots, celery, parsley, cook and skim.

The simplest way is to use a prepared stock. As always, this requires some careful reading of labels to check out salt and sugar content. A recent survey of a supermarket assortment showed that salt could range from 17 to 40 % of daily requirements.

Traditionally, French Onion Soup comes with toasted bread and shredded Gruyere cheese on top (which requires putting the already heated soup, with its decorations, under the broiler). But there are other possibilities. For instance, sautéing an onion lightly and adding that at the end, plus a little grated parmesan, will give the soup some extra body and flavor without having to worry about getting individual bowls of boiling soup in and out of the oven.

Ingredients

6 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

3 lbs. yellow onions, peeled and thinly sliced

1 tsp sugar

Salt (depending on broth)

1 Tbsp flour

8 cups beef stock

2 cups dry white wine

Pepper

Baguette

1lb. Gruyere, shredded

Directions

1. Melt 3 Tbsp butter over medium-low heat, add oil and onions and cook covered 30 minutes.
2. Increase heat to medium-high, add sugar and cook uncovered until golden brown.
3. Sprinkle flour, and cook for 3 minutes uncovered.
4. Add 2 cups of stock and stir to blend.
5. Add remaining stock and wine. Adjust salt and pepper and simmer 20 minutes.

For Serving with Gruyere

1. Put oven on broil (low)
2. Slice and butter bread
3. Toast in oven until just golden brown on both sides
4. Add toast and soup to (ovenproof) bowls
5. Spread shredded Gruyere on top
6. Put bowls on a baking sheet and broil until cheese bubbles and begins to brown.

Salmon Chowder

The big sweet onions that arrive in the fall have been appearing at the farmers’ markets, so I was tempted to write up French Onion Soup. Last year I didn’t stock up before the onions sold out. But as I associate French Onion soup with lunch on cool fall days, with Tarte Tatin for dessert, my suggestion is to stock up on the onions  -they keep well in a cool, dry place- and the recipe will follow anon.

This week’s recipe is for a fish chowder. It originated in Finland, which is easy to tell by the ingredients. Decades ago, when we first visited Norway, there were only local products available and fish and potatoes could appear at every meal.  This is an American adaptation, with such time saving products as bottled clam juice. The recipe calls for roasted salmon, but the difficulty these days of finding fish that is neither farm raised nor previously frozen means that other options might be called for.

One possibility is to use canned salmon. I have made the soup this way and it came out well. It was not quite the same in terms of consistency, but it was tasty and enjoyable. There are other fishes that look like salmon, such as steelhead trout, but I do not know if that would give the same result in terms of flavor.

This soup does not take very long to cook and does not get pureed, so it is a relatively short procedure. Because it calls for low fat milk and fish, it makes a substantial and healthy meal.

Ingredients

1 tsp butter

3 cups chopped onion

¼ cup flour

1 8 oz bottle clam juice

4 cups peeled and cubed potatoes

1 ½ cups thinly sliced carrots

3 ½ cups low fat milk

10 oz cooked (roasted) salmon

2 Tbsp chopped fresh or 2 tsp dried dill

¼ tsp Worcestershire sauce

Directions

1. Melt butter in soup pot. Add onions and cook 5 minutes
2. Stir in flour. Cook 1 minute
3. Gradually add clam juice and bring to a boil. Cook stirring until thick
4. Add potatoes and carrots, stir in milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes
5. Break salmon into chunks and add with dill and Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake with Bourbon Glaze

“What’s going on?” you are saying, “This is a soupsite and if I want cakes, I have other places to go.” 

You are right, but here is the problem. We may not live in the pot luck capital of the country, but there are at least half a dozen occasions a year when local organizations, town groups, friends, or holiday gatherings require that I supply what used to be called “a covered dish.” This was a quaint way of saying that each person is expected to supply a prepared dish to serve a group of people.

Soup just doesn’t work. First, it requires the host to supply a specialized set of tools: bowls and soupspoons. Second, it doesn’t fit into the three-part movement of a pot luck gathering: pre-meal snacks, main dishes, desserts.

So I have had to rely on a (seasonal) list of offerings, and this being the end of summer, here is one for the Labor Day Weekend. It is a cake made with one of those large zucchinis people are trying to unload from their late summer gardens.

It should be made a day ahead, not only for convenience, but because the Bourbon Glaze is actually like a marinade. It soaks into holes and is absorbed by the cake. The cake can be baked in several different kinds of pans, but first choice in terms of presentation would be a Bundt pan. One long loaf or two regular ones would also work, especially if you want to freeze one.

I had said that new recipes would appear on Sundays, but a family emergency having intervened last week, this is going up now.

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

2 cups sugar

¾ cups vegetable oil

1 cup plain yogurt

4 large eggs

2 cups shredded zucchini

1Tbsp grated orange zest

Glaze

½ cup orange juice

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup bourbon

Directions

1. preheat oven to 350
2. in a bowl, whisk together first five dry ingredients
3. With electric mixer, blend next four moist ingredients
4. Beat in eggs one at a time
5. Add dry ingredient mix and beat until combined
6. Stir in zucchini and zest and pour into greased pan
7. Bake 40-45 minutes or until tester comes out clean
8. Cool 5 minutes. Pierce cake and pour glaze over it. Chill overnight.

Summer Corn Chowder

Many corn soup recipes are chowders, and chowders generally include potatoes. Since potatoes and corn are more starch than I think is wanted in one recipe, I have collected some favorites that do not call for potatoes.

For some reason, most of these recipes are on the rich side, calling for cream or coconut milk, and cheese. One favorite is Indian and I usually make it in the winter with frozen corn.

Some vegetables, like asparagus, for instance, taste like two different foods from the canned to the fresh. But corn seems to be about the same whether it is home frozen at summer’s end, supermarket frozen, or even good quality canned. This means that though corn is associated with August, corn soups can be made year round.

This particular recipe seems summery because it is on the lighter side, and the yellow/red/green color combination looks refreshing. Cherry tomatoes cut in half can be used instead of the red pepper, but the pepper holds up better in later reheating.

 Instead of relying on potatoes to thicken the soup, the trick is to take half the soup and liquid, after the corn is cooked but before all the ingredients are added, and puree it. This gives the soup a solid consistency without using thickeners such as potatoes, cornstarch, or flour.

A recent houseguest brought us a chicken dinner with all the fixing for Friday night supper. After we had chicken and vegetables the first night, we made an Asian chicken salad the second night, and tacos the third night. Finally, all the collected bones were cooked up into a base for soup. That’s what went into the corn soup. However, when using homemade stock, it is necessary to adjust the seasoning for salt as even the best store-bought stock has a lot of salt.

Ingredients

1 Tbsp. vegetable oil

1 cup chopped onion

1 leek, cleaned and chopped

5 cups loosely packed corn

4 cups chicken broth

1 sweet red pepper, coarsely chopped

1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper, or to taste

1/8 tsp. ground black pepper

3 Tbsp. Chopped chives

Directions

1. Heat vegetable oil in soup pot
2. Add onion and leek and cook covered until soft
3. Add corn and cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally
4. Add 2 cups chicken broth. Bring to a boil, lower heat and cook covered for 20 minutes
5. Remove from heat. Cool partially and put half the mixture in a blender or food processor until smooth.
6. Return mixture to soup pot and add remaining ingredients

If you are very organized when serving meals, you can add the chopped chives to the actual serving bowls so they will be crisp and bright green. I find if I leave the garnishing of dishes to the last minute, it may not get done, so I add the chives to the pot.

Yellow Tomato Soup with Cilantro Relish

Yellow tomatoes used to be an exotic fringe item at the end of the summer, but with the focus on local organic farm products, by the end of July yellow tomatoes are right up there with the red ones. They show up about the same time and share the space on farm stand counters.

On the other hand, while it is possible to pick up baskets of red seconds for making sauce and soup, yellow rarely shows up that way, so making yellow tomato soup is still something special. Both the color and the flavor make this soup unusual.

Unlike last weeks no-cooking gazpacho, this soup starts out by getting its flavor from cooking the seasoning, and then adding the other ingredients. Once everything is cooked, the soup goes into the blender, and then to the refrigerator. The cilantro-red tomato relish can be made any time.

Ingredients

For the Soup

1 tsp coriander seeds

½ tsp cumin seeds

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 cup chopped onion

1 ½ tsp minced garlic

6 large yellow tomatoes cut into cubes

2 cups water

1 ½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

1 Tbsp lemon juice

For the Relish

1 medium red tomato, seeded and diced\

½ cup finely chopped red onion

¼ cup chopped cilantro

1 Tbsp lime juice

1 tsp minced jalapeno, or to taste

Soup Directions

1. Briefly toast the coriander and cumin seeds in the soup pot until they become fragrant and lightly brown. Be careful not to burn seeds.
2. Add olive oil and cook chopped onion and garlic until translucent. Do not brown; add a tablespoon of water if necessary.
3. Add tomatoes and cook five minutes.
4. Add remaining soup ingredients and cook 30 minutes.
5. Puree in blender or food processor.
6. Chill soup until serving.

Relish Directions

In a small bowl, combine all the relish ingredients. Adjust salt and pepper in soup and serve garnished with relish.

Everyday Gazpacho

Local tomatoes are making their appearance at the farmers’ markets. Ordinarily this would not be remarkable, but last year in the Northwest corner of Connecticut a blight wiped out the tomato crop and there was much fear that the culprit might lurk in the soil. But local farm stands are full of juicy red and yellow tomatoes, which means it is time for Gazpacho.

 My files include recipes for all kinds of special gazpachos: seafood, green, Mexican, or almost any other denomination. But my old standby is a recipe that always seems to please.  I call it “Everyday Gazpacho” because it does not require cooking, it uses ordinary seasonal ingredients, it takes only a few minutes to make, and it makes a quantity. Next time I will post a more exotic cooked tomato soup: Yellow Tomato Soup with Cilantro Relish.

Recently I tried a cold cucumber soup that seemed like a simple recipe: the few ingredients were combined in the blender, and then put through a strainer. The result was refreshing, but I would not recommend the recipe. Most recipes that ask you to put the results from your blender through a strainer have a problem. The strainer takes out so much pulp that the remaining liquid is just not worth the effort. We were left with two smallish cups of cold soup, which was just as well as it wasn’t a big hit with Mr. What’s For Lunch.

Gazpacho Ingredients

2 cups chopped tomatoes*

1 cup chopped red onion

1 cup chopped green pepper

1 cup chopped peeled and seeded cucumber

1 ½ tsp chopped garlic

1 ½ tsp kosher salt

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

1 Tbsp white wine vinegar

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

3 cups V-8 juice

Directions

1. Using a food processor, chop each of the first four ingredients separately by turning the machine on and off so that each one becomes small pieces but retains some consistency (this is a very brief process). Use a non-reactive bowl and add each vegetable as it is finished.
2. Add remaining 6 ingredients
3. Stir, cover, and refrigerate

*In an ideal kitchen, the tomatoes would be peeled. This can be done by cutting an X in the bottom of each tomato and submerging it in boiling water for 10 seconds to loosen skin. Chill under cold water and skin should come off. This is not an operation I generally do.

Szechwan Carrot Soup

Szechwan Carrot Soup

Everyone probably has a recipe for some kind of carrot soup. I have several, but this one has that subtle, mysteriously rich flavor that comes from the blending of several unexpected ingredients.

The recipe comes from friends of ours who renovated the family farmhouse and took the sunniest corner of the new kitchen, near the wood-burning stove, as an eating area. They like to invite guests for brunch or lunch in this sunny corner, rather than dinner in their dark, cool dining room. Their menus feature comfort food, like French toast marinated overnight or rich tasting soup.

Since they have lived in several different places, they have accumulated an eclectic store of recipes that they have shared with us. Their carrot soup has become one of our regulars, but it is not for anyone allergic to peanuts. On the other hand, it has plenty of nutritious ingredients.

In Search of Chicken Broth

So many recipes call for chicken broth that it is worthwhile exploring the options wherever you are. Since one of our sons became a farmer, we sometimes get large bags of chicken feet and necks. Cooking those up in a couple of big pots, along with tops from a bunch of celery, a couple of onions and carrots, produces a lot of broth. Since these parts come from pasture- raised chickens, there is no fat. Some of the broth I freeze in 4 cup containers, but I also puree the vegetables and keep a couple of containers of slightly thicker base.

When chicken parts are not on the horizon, I start reading the labels in the grocery story, or even a health food store. The labels are discouraging. Sugar and salt figure way too much in many brands, even ones that claim the high ground of being ‘gourmet,’ but at least a careful study can lead to the best of the bunch. If you find a brand that passes muster, stock up!

(Like all soups destined for the blender, there is no need to chop anything fine.)

INGREDIENTS:

1 Tbsp vegetable oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 celery rib, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 lb. carrots, cut up

¾ inch gingerroot, sliced

1/8 tsp. dried hot pepper flakes

3 cups chicken broth

1 ½ Tbsp soy sauce

1 ½ Tbsp creamy peanut butter

1 Tbsp sesame oil

1 cup milk, or more as needed

1. Cook onion, celery, garlic in oil until just soft
2. Add carrots, ginger, pepper, chicken broth and cook until carrots are tender.
3. Add soy, peanut butter, sesame oil, and milk.
4. Puree. If soup is too thick, add a little extra milk. When reheating, try not to boil.

This soup is hearty, even though it has no meat. With a salad or a cheese plate, it can make a fine lunch, of if you add both salad and cheese, with a good bread, you can have an easy dinner.

Cioppino, Quick and Easy

For some reason, in addition to cold soups, summer makes me think of fish soups. I don’t know if this is because fish soups are often lighter than meat soups, or because I have spent so much time in New England that I think of summer and the coast as related, and the coast as offering all kinds of ocean-based meals.

Once, I can remember staying at a place in Maine where we managed to have lobster as part of every meal: breakfast was lobster omelets, lunch lobster salad, and dinner baked lobster.

There are numerous recipes for fish soups that start with cooking up heads and tails and shells. This can result in the same kind of rich broth that chicken feet and necks produce for meat-based stock. But during hot summer days, there are some shortcuts that result in a very tasty version of this classic Italian soup.

The recipe calls for a firm white fish, plus shrimp, and scallops. The proportions can be varied, but since shrimp get rubbery when cooked too much, it is best to have a variety of seafood. If the soup is made ahead, and there is enough other fish to give the soup flavor, the shrimp can be added just before serving.

Ingredients

3 Tblsp olive oil

2 cups finely chopped onion

2 large garlic cloves, minced

2 tsp chopped rosemary

¼ tsp dried crushed red pepper

28 oz. can crushed tomatoes in puree

2 8oz. bottles clam juice

¾ cup dry white wine

12 oz. firm white fish, cut into 1 inch pieces

½ lb. uncooked peeled shrimp

½ lb. bay scallops

1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley for serving

Directions

1. Heat oil in soup pot over medium heat.
2. Add onion, garlic, rosemary, and pepper. Cook 5 minutes.
3. Add tomatoes, clam juice, wine and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 20 minutes.
5. Add seafood and 2 Tblsp parsley.
6. Cook until fish is opaque, about 3 minutes.
7. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Garlic toast to float on the top is a nice addition at serving time, with the remaining parsley sprinkled on top.

Lemon-Artichoke Soup: Hot or Cold?

This week was supposed to be Szechuan Carrot Soup, but when the weather settled down in the nineties, it felt like something lighter was called for, so the Carrot Soup will appear a little later.

In the freezer I found a container of Lemon-Artichoke soup. It has a refreshing tang from the addition of the lemon, it is relatively easy to make in terms of having few ingredients, and is a little unusual in flavor, all recommendations for a recipe. The result was intended to be eaten hot, but I decided to try it out cold for our guests.

Much of our idea of cold soup comes from such French dishes as Vichysoise and Jellied Madrilene. Yet I have spent two sabbaticals in France, plus numerous other visits, and have never been served cold soup. It is as though the French think cold soup is a grievous culinary error, while we may think it is the height of sophistication. Perhaps the same could be said for Gazpacho, another fine cold soup that comes from another country where I have never been served cold soup. Once native tomatoes ripen, there will be a simple recipe for that, too.

The Lemon-Artichoke soup was a big hit cold, so here is the recipe, and you can enjoy it either way: hot or cold. This is one of those soups that gets pureed, so you don’t need to chop ingredients too fine. When soups are served cold, they sometimes need additional thinning so you avoid the consistency of oatmeal. Just cleaning out the container with a little extra milk may achieve the right consistency.

2 Tblsp butter

1 medium onion, chopped

2 stalks celery, including leaves, chopped

1 large carrot, chopped

pinch of thyme

½ tsp basil

salt and pepper to taste

2 cups canned artichoke hearts, drained

4 cups chicken stock or broth

juice from ½ lemon plus skin (not grated)

½ cup cream*

1. Melt butter in soup pot. Add onion, celery, and carrot. Cover and cook until soft.

2. Add thyme, basil, salt, pepper, artichokes and stock. Bring to a low boil.

3. Stir in lemon juice and add skin. Simmer over low heat for 30 minutes.

4. Remove and discard lemon rind. Puree mixture in blender or food processor, adding ‘cream.’

5. If soup is to be served hot, do not boil.

* Unless there is leftover ½ and ½ from our daughter’s tea, or heavy cream leftover from a whipped cream dessert, when recipes call for cream, I use Fat Free Evaporated Milk. If we happen to have leftover real cream in any form, that usually calls for making a soup like Clam Chowder or Potato Leek. 

Mexican Fried Noodle Soup

Mexican Fried Noodle Soup

When our daughter was born, we had two sons, age 10 and 8, a cat, and a dog. We lived in the suburbs and I worked near home as a college teacher and administrator while my husband went off every day to practice law in the big city.

We were lucky to find a woman from Mexico to help take care of the baby. It turned out that though she had given birth to many children, she had also been a cook in a restaurant. She could concoct a dinner for 10 from one chicken, but everyone sat around the house crying from the spiciness.

She made her tortillas by hand using Masa Harina she brought from the city. In those days, ingredients like taco shells, black beans, and cilantro were exotic items in the suburbs.

She spoke no English and wasn’t quite literate in Spanish either, so we communicated in kitchen Spanish… everything in the present imperative.

Some of the special dishes she made we have never found again in any cookbook or restaurant. Mexican Fried Noodle Soup is one of those. But there are plenty of recipes for tortilla soup and I have always wondered if she made do with noodles because she didn’t have tortillas on hand, yet the result tastes different from tortilla soup. 


This is the recipe I often make when the children gather as it reminds them of so many things about their childhood at home.

(The asterisks at the end are suggestions for simplifying kitchen life.)

INGREDIENTS

2/3 16 oz. box of medium wide noodles

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 large onion, chopped

2 Poblano chiles, chopped*

2 cloves garlic, chopped **

Canned tomatoes, 28 oz.

4 cups chicken broth

3 cups water

12 oz. fresh spinach, rinsed and torn up

1 tsp. salt, pepper to taste

2 Tbsp chopped cilantro***

½ lime

1. Warm oil in large frying pan. Cook noodles, stirring frequently until they turn a light tan. Drain on paper towel.
2. Add onions, garlic, and chilies to oil. Cook just to soften onion.
3. In a soup pot, combine onion mixture with tomatoes, chicken broth, water, spinach, and salt. Cook for 20 minutes.
4. Add noodles, cilantro, and juice from lime. Cook 20 minutes more.

* I am nervous about making food too spicy so I tend to use Italian peppers and then add a small amount of jalapeno from a jar I keep on hand.

** Our CIA (Culinary Institute of America) trained nephew advises keeping a large jar of chopped garlic in the refrigerator.

***We keep a container of cilantro pesto in the refrigerator as the fresh kind is hard to find in our long Northeast United States winters.

"For Better, For Worse, But Not For Lunch"

For better or for worse, but not for lunch… that’s the old saying about marriage and retirement.

But what if a couple both work at home, is the saying true for them, too? You bet!

Soup saved our marriage (along with a few other things, like the microwave).

That is because a souplover is someone who doesn’t just like to eat soup, but someone who loves others enough to make soup for them… all the time.

Here’s the backstory. When I taught college courses online, I was able to work from home. But then one day, after a few years of this, my husband looked around and decided he too would like the comfort and convenience of working at home. No more commuting to an office for him.

Fortunately, we had a space we could clear out for him in another room from where I worked. He set up desk, computer, and reference books and got down to work: separate but equal, or so it seemed…until lunch.

When lunchtime came, he stood up, surveyed his new domain, wandered over to my desk and asked, “What’s for lunch?”

I’d heard “What’s for dinner?” maybe even, on a Sunday, “What’s for breakfast?” but “What’s for lunch?” on an ordinary weekday was another matter.

And so began my routine of making a pot of soup a couple of times a week. Two containers for the refrigerator, two for the freezer, so there is always an assortment of soup to choose from whenever someone asks, “What’s for lunch?”

“SOUP!” And anyone can heat up a container of soup.

Making soup a couple of times a week, I collected recipes for every season, every kind of ingredient: heavy winter meat soups, thick purees, light summer soups; hot and cold, spicy or comforting. I adapted recipes from cookbooks, magazines, and friends… always trying to simplify them.

Every soup has its own story, starting with a soup I learned about forty years ago. We call it Mexican Fried Noodle Soup. It is the soup I make when the family gathers because it brings back the house in which they grew up. Next week's installment of Souploversblog is the story of Mexican Fried Noodle Soup, along with recipe and instructions.