Soup - - Page 10

by gansie

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

When I tried to slide my *Laughing Cow* usage under the radar, Yvo made sure to bring it the cheating (?) attention it deserved, especially after commenting on my coworker’s questionable usage of deli meat in a frittata

Wait, I’m sorry, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re actually turning your nose up at “deli meat” and eggs, but then you use Laughing Cow in your own version? Really? Come on, now.

And my co-worker, Yok, bravely defended her turkey decision

Being the above-referenced co-worker, I feel I must defend our topping choices. We had a variety: sun-dried tomatoes, havarti and monterey jack cheeses, sauteed onions and roasted turkey. The turkey was inspired by a 30-minute meal episode for a large frittata- not that that gives it a “pass”- I thought…interesting. It gave an awesome complexity of flavor so don’t knock it ’til you try it!

But nothing beats the wisdom of DAD GANSIE…

in Eggs 2 comments

by gansie

DAD GANSIE Tackles Recipe Writing

If you think BS and I give ~~poor~~ unspecific directions, um, check out this unedited email from ES friend, and my dad, DAD GANSIE:

From: DAD GANSIE
To: gansie
Subject: Homemade tomato vegetable soup

Cut up fallen tomatoes mostly ones that were not not ripe or partly used…added some evvo mushrooms red peppers kosher salt pepper had some roasted garlic yellow squash. Pretty tasty even Scott liked it a little to much pepper and garlic for her* i just cut them up and used a wooden spatula to stir them up no water should I save you some?

LD

*my mom

and one more thing…

in Recipe 3 comments

by gansie

Spice Master: Contestant #2

Editors Note: Yesterday you got to see how a pack of 12 spices inspired bobby to create an intricate lamb and couscous dish. Today, you’ll find out how JoeHoya reinterpreted those same Tunisian spices. And tomorrow – we’ll leave it up to ES readers to pick the Who Cooked It Better: Spice Master.

Spice Master Contender: JoeHoya

“It’s a walk-off.”

When the Who Cooked It Better gauntlet was thrown down, I couldn’t help but smile. As anyone who knows me can tell you, most of my kitchen improvisations involve cumin, paprika, chili powder, or a combination of the three. Working three of the spices from the Tunisian fun-pack wouldn’t be the problem – editing would. I needed to find a dish that highlighted the spices without going overboard.

And I wanted to do my best to incorporate that elusive Tunisian flare, so I did some reading and found out that Tunisian cuisine involves a fair amount of seafood (I also found a recipe for a pine nut pudding and a garlicky chickpea soup, but I figured both would be dismissed as obvious pandering to BS and Gansie).

In the end, I turned to John Ash’s “From the Earth to the Table,” a cookbook my wife and I picked up after we saw it in a winery in Temecula, California. We’ve found some real winners in this book before, and Elizabeth reminded me that one of them is a delicious tomato-curry soup served with riso (a rice-like pasta, similar to orzo only smaller and easier to overcook.)

Full disclosure – I’m not really a recipe person. I like to use them more as inspirations than blueprints, adding ingredients that make sense (or that I happen to have on hand.) In this case, however, I tried to stay relatively close to the original recipe and then supplement or replace with the Tunisian spices we had to work with.

Click through: full recipe, another pic, serving suggests

in Recipe 3 comments

by BS

Man Cannot Live on Pizza Alone

As mentioned earlier, it’s back-to-school day here at Endless Simmer (how’s the studying going, 80p?) I have sure come a long way since my college eating days (microwaved bacon…raw ramen noodles…congealed leftover pizza…shudder), and so I feel it is my duty to let the next generation of college students know that it doesn’t have to be that way. Especially for those of you in New York, there are plenty of ways to upgrade your college eating experience, without having to call mom and dad for a credit upgrade (I swear). Here’s the ES guide to Microwave-free College Eating in New York, replacing each college standard with a much less embarrassing option. Those of you elsewhere, feel free to chime in on what I missed in the outer boroughs, D.C., etc…

Dorm Fare: Easy Mac

Photo: Bucklava

You know you’re a college student if you’ve ever referred to the “fancy kind of mac-n-cheese” and meant the box of Kraft stuff that is cooked on the stovetop instead of in the microwave. Easy Mac is, well, unbelievably easy. Just add water to this little packet, microwave it for two minutes, and suddenly you’ve got gooey, cheese-y deliciousness. But the ingredient list in the “cheese sauce mix” is enough to make any sane person think twice: It’s made up entirely of hydrogenated this, modified that… trust me, none of these things is actually cheese.

Upgrade: S’MAC

Photo: S’MAC

Put down the packet and head to S’MAC, where you can get a huge cast iron skillet full of piping hot mac ‘n’ cheese, made with real certifiable cheese, and no powder. Starting at a meager $4.25, the offerings range from the kid-friendly classic (loaded with gobs of American and cheddar) to fancier versions for us “grown-up” folks, made with yummy stuff like Kalamata olives and goat cheese.
345 East 12th Street, 212.358.7912

More upgrade recs after the jump…

in Cheese / Desserts 7 comments

by gansie

Who Cooked It Better: Name That Gazpacho

With tomato season in full effect — well, except for DAD GANSIE’s garden because he doesn’t start his planting until very late witch means his yard yields vegetables until November — it means gazpacho time. And that run-on sentence was dedicated to DAD GANSIE.

Embarrassingly, I’ve never thrown together this classic summertime soup. I grew to love it during my summer in Barcelona where the women in my dorm would throw together this cooling, super fresh dish every day. It was really the only thing that would make me leave the beach and head to afternoon class.

Now, I’m not exactly sure what makes something a gazpacho, but I can tell you, these bloggers are not following any rules I’ve ever seen on the subject.

Top Left: Golden Gazpacho [Vegan for the People]
We love our vegan friends, even though BS can never shut the fuck up about bacon. This recipe is actually not as revolutionary as some other vegan dishes that have been featured on ES (I’m looking at you Hezbollah Tofu) and I say that as a compliment. Everyone always thinks that when something is vegetarian or vegan, it’s going to be some bastard child of what it should be. Vegan for the People chooses a beautiful yellow tomato, topped with a cilantro garnish to create his spin on this light meal.

Top Right: Greek Gazpacho [Kalofagas]
This Greek version starts off normal: red tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, vegetable cocktail (cheating?) and then goes freaking berserk when it calls for the use of a shot glass. Now I was excited when I saw those iceberg size cubes of feta, but just try to guess what that greenish globe in the middle is. It’s frozen olive oil! An olive oil ice cube! OMG! Kalofagas suggests either using a shot glass (filled halfway) or an ice cube tray to create these solid masses of oil, which will keep your soup flavorful and cold.

Bottom Left: Gazpacho Salad [Smitten Kitchen]
Okay, I can’t even pretend that I’m sure this belongs in today’s edition of WCiB. But, hey, if Smitten is going to put “gazpacho” in the recipe name, then I think it’s fair game. The gazpacho salad is more or less made up of the same ingredients as regular gazpacho, but not blended. The addition of homemade croutons makes this akin to panzanella, but not quite drinkable.

Bottom Right: Avocado-Sesame Gazpacho with Cilantro and Sauteed Shrimp [Croque-Camille]
Avocado! Now, there are no tomatoes in this recipe whatsoever, so I’m uncertain how this Camille girl can get away with calling it a gazpacho. However, she seduced me with her use of avocado. With an immersion blender, Camille combines avocado, tahini and fish stock among other ingredients to lay a base for her sauteed shrimp. Sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds, this is surely a slap in the face to the flourishing tomato crop.

Who Cooked [Gazpacho] Better?

[poll id=”21″]

in Veggie 9 comments

by BS

Stalking Padma in the Kitchen: Soup Course

I actually made this soup in tandem with Padma Lakshmi’s first course: the mushroom and goat cheese flautas. But, as you’ll soon understand, this one took a lot more inventiveness. (Editor’s Note: This was all before we heard about Vi’s potato-and-cream fueled cucumber soup, which, for the record, makes Ms. Lakshmi’s recipe look like a little girl’s soup). So Padma’s soup is pretty simple: English cucumber, yogurt, mint and sea salt, all blended together and chilled. I’m not sure why I was so taken with it. I guess she just drew me in with lines like “It tastes of the cool, grassy notes of summer.” Who knew she was a poet too?

So I whipped this all up, chilled it a little bit, and…I mean, it was fine. It did kind of taste like the cool, grassy notes of summer, but it was also kind of bland and unexciting, like the second week of June, and you’re still in school. But of course I took some liberties and managed to spice it up a bit….

in Recipe / Veggie 2 comments

by Russell Warnick

SNDC: Veggie Shrimp Edition

My SNDC (Sunday Night Dinner Club) convened this past weekend at the home of our only member who owns a tool-kit, we’ve not been getting together as often as we usually do due to summer travels but this weekend was a must, our good friend T2 turned twenty-errr, anyway. T2 is one of those veggie types, and when we cook SNDC the veggie dishes are usually cooked by the birthday boy but as it was his birthday we couldn’t really ask him to cook, could we? I decided to theme the dinner on tomatoes, I wrote a few weeks back about the tomato scare that the country has been under so I thought I would laugh in the face of danger and host a tomato themed dinner, I had it planned for over a week and then on Friday the FDA cleared tomatoes of salmonella, damn you government types for thwarting my danger plan.

I have to admit something to you all, up until this past weekend I was a virgin… a Dupont Farmers Market virgin that is! I had never been before and wow, very impressed. So on Sunday morning with coffee in hand, I was your picture perfect foodie, buying organic carbon-footprint free produce and cheeses for my dinner.

After the jump, recipes and pictures of the four tomato base dishes (keep in mind these recipes are for 12 people).

in Cheese / Recipe / Veggie 10 comments