Soup - - Page 6

by gansie

The Second Life of Corn Chowder

I don’t know why I had such a limited view of corn usage. Corn = grilled corn on the cob. That’s all. But then I let it pop and brown in hot oil and butter and threw it in with kale and roasted tomatoes for a salad.

I bought another four ears but did not have a plan of attack. And then I saw a corn chowder recipe over at Macheesmo. I never made corn chowder before, and I’m pretty sure I hadn’t followed a recipe all summer, so as the unofficial end of warmth approached last week, I fell in line and replicated a proper summer soup.

With the leftovers, however, I refused to simply reheat. Instead, I recreated a hotter, fattier soup and a slightly soggy frittata.

Corn Chowder Frittata

I think I botched this up, as I rushed to the broiler instead of letting the egg cook longer in the oven. I whipped one egg with hot sauce, salt and pepper. Then poured that over corn chowder leftovers, stirred it together and put the entire mixture into a pre-heated, buttered cast iron pan. Then I added sliced tomato to the top, with more salt and pepper and then slid it under the broiler. And waited and waited and waited. The mixture browned nicely on the top, but remained slightly soggy in the middle. I think cooking this in the oven for 15-20 minutes and then finishing in the oven, with a late addition of crumbled feta on top, would have worked better.

Uniformly Different, Uniformly Delicious

So JoeHoya totally stole my Part II thunder.

With my extreme abundance of tomatoes over the weekend, I made two go-to tomato recipes simultaneously: tomato sauce and gazpacho. Of course it was an obvious way to turn almost rotting tomatoes into something edible, as Joe Hoya pointed out.

And he’s right. Gazpacho is uniformly delicious but not uniformly similar in ingredients. In fact, tomatoes aren’t even a constant in some recipes.

As I rummaged through the tomatoes I noticed that a good half were yellow and the rest were a mix of red, purple, orange and green. I reserved the yellow for the gazpacho while I used the other colors for my maroon colored sauce.

Yellow Gazpacho

Roughly chop about 3 pounds of yellow tomatoes, non-rotting parts only. Immersion blend the following: yellow tomatoes, peeled, de-seeded and sliced cucumber, chopped Hungarian Stuffing Peppers (carries a bit of heat, way more flavorful than a green bell pepper and they are in light in color to match the yellow tomatoes), oil, white wine vinegar, salt and white pepper.

Cracked black pepper, to me, is one of the most attractive finishes to a dish. But for some reason I became really interested in preserving the pale yellow color of the cold soup. Cue the white pepper.

For color, however, I sliced in half sugar baby tomatoes. At least that is what I think that variety of tomato is called: they are slightly larger than sun golds, have a red exterior with white zig zag lines on the skin.

Also for some texture there are a few croutons, half floating on the surface. I simply cubed left over bread, tossed it with kosher salt, freshly cracked pepper and oil and placed it in a 350 oven for about 20 minutes.

by gansie

Should You Let Slimy Greens Slither Away

I wasn’t kidding when I said I was stalling on my way back to the kitchen. I’ve been home more than a week and have been in the kitchen maybe three times. I’m starting slowly.

I was away at Maids’ wedding the first weekend we were back and I refused to go real food shopping until I could make it to the farmers market on the next Saturday. I was freaking craving eggs, but I wanted to wait to buy them there. So I had to figure out how to create something to eat with almost nothing.

Gazpacho a la Leftovers

Luckily, my work catered (actually Couscous Cafe catered) a lunch meeting and there were leftovers. A co-worker let me steal a bag with a dressed-salad mix (romaine, feta, olives, carrot shreds, onion, tomato), another bag with a veggie salad (chunks of tomato, cucumbers, onion and parsley dressed in vinegar and oil) and another bag of pita triangles.

80 and I tore through part of the salad as a side for leftover pizza, but I just wasn’t sure how to make the rest into a meal the next day. Ah! I’ll buzz it!

Stalling On the Way to the Kitchen

In case you haven’t noticed, 80 and I took a two week vacation to Japan and Korea. In those glorious days of no work I didn’t cook a damn thing. In fact, it shocked me how much I didn’t miss the kitchen.

But now we’re back. I spend my days tapping on slate colored keys, knowing exactly what I’m doing and where I’ll be. I no longer need Lonely Planet guiding my days. Outlook dominates my hours once again.

Because I must get back into, well, being back, I bought something that would force me into the kitchen, but also force me to experiment with the flavors I found so delicious. I bought a big tub of miso paste. (Actually, it’s the only thing in my fridge at the moment.)

I’ve never played with miso paste before, but I have a feeling I’ll be able to find a billion uses for it. At this point, though, I’m very unclear on what those uses are.

Before we left for vacation, 80’s mom sent me Japanese Food and Cooking by Emi Kazuko and Yasuko Fukuoka, to prepare me for the craziness ahead. I’ve spied a few recipes I’m excited to mess around with—Fried Aubergine with Miso Sauce, Pot-Cooked Udon in Miso Soup (with a broth-poached egg!), Broccoli (stem only) and Cucumber Pickled in Miso—but I also want to try a clean miso soup. If anyone knows where I can find: dried wakame, second dashi stock, shichimi togarashi or sansho – let me know!

And if you have other, less terrifying miso included recipes, comment here please.

in Food Travel 11 comments

by gansie

There Are Eyes in My Miso

There are fucking fish everywhere. At my last meal in Japan at the Narita airport I knew that I had to ask if the vegetable udon soup was vegetarian, because there’d be a good chance it wasn’t. It could easily contain slices of pork, but this soup instead was based in a fish stock. That just wouldn’t happen in the United States. A menu reads vegetable soup, it’s made with vegetable stock.

I still was shocked, however, to see these dark, circular eyes peering out from my miso soup. It’s not that I overlook miso in the US, I just don’t think much of it.

Broth is always rewarding, so warm and comforting. But when I’m on a sushi bender, I’m concentrating on the raw fish, not the accompaniment (although sometimes tempura battered vegetables steal some of my attention0n.) In Japan, though, broth is the first thought. So even while I’m letting tuna melt on my tongue, the salty liquid is on my mind. Not because I don’t want to choke on prawn’s head, but because of the dimensions of this not so simple side soup.

in Fish / Food Travel 4 comments

by BS

You Can Still Soup in Summer

Who says soup’s not for summers? Rachel from over at Good Bite brings us a one-pot recipe that’s prefect for drowning the heat in.

The best summers in Texas are those spent indoors. For three months the heat blazes and iced tea becomes a daily necessity, along with light delicious fare. With summer staples like sweet yellow corn and squash readily available, thoughts of barbeques, picnics and bowls of caldo brimming with vegetables fill my head. Infinitely adaptable, simple and sublime, caldo vegetal is a Mexican vegetable soup that begins with a basic stock and results in a trifecta of spicy, tangy, cheesy harmony.

A veritable laundry list of vegetables are first sautéed in a great big pot with plenty of onions and garlic. Gently rubbing the herbs between my hands, the heady aroma of Mexican oregano infuses the squash, carrots, jalapeños and green chilies with a warm, earthy essence. Chicken stock fills the pot, mingling with smoky ground cumin, coriander and fresh cilantro. Sneaking in for a taste, the slow burn of the spicy broth and chilies serves up just the right amount of heat to slurp and savor the rich complexity of flavors. As the caldo gently bubbles on the stovetop, big rounds of corn bathe in the simmering broth. In shallow bowls, yellow squash and zucchini peak out from under the golden liquid as sprigs of cilantro and fresh limes lay alongside crunchy tortilla chips and sweet corn. Difficult as it may be to disturb this beautiful arrangement, a generous sprinkling of cheese goes on top followed by a less than delicate stir until the caldo is delightfully messy looking. Simple, delicious and completely casual, caldo vegetal is light summer fare at its best and a soup worthy of cranking up the air conditioning.

Caldo Vegetal (Mexican Vegetable Soup)

in Veggie 0 comments

by gansie

The Louder the Better

“Put down your plate,” my Aunt Lorrie whispers through laughter. She had taken me—and me alone, not my brother and my sister—to IHOP. I forget why I was singled out, but I felt special.

This was during the early years of my decade-long pancake obsession (from about age 6-16) and after the last of the pancake was in me, I slanted the plate toward my face and started to lick the remaining syrup.

This was clearly not appropriate in a Southern Jersey restaurant. Okay, no jokes. In any US restaurant. We just don’t show that sort of oneness with our food.

It’s probably from our stuffy British ancestors. But in America we have certain stoic standards of eating. Plates and bowls are kept on the table. No noises should utter from our mouths, except maybe a soft mmmm.

Being a dramatic type, I will show my appreciation through an extended closing of the eyes so that I may tune out the rest of the table to fully concentrate on the bite within me. I may utter a slightly-louder-than-normal mmmm. But that’s all. That’s all we do to communicate deliciousness. Well, and tip. But that’s another story.

Meanwhile, in Japan they’ve realized eating is a full-body sport. Chopsticks become an extension of the hand in a way that sharp metal objects cannot. It is fully expected that when eating one will bring a bowl of rice or noodles up to her face. Shoveling in rice. Slurping up noodle soup.