Leftover Soup for a snowy day

This is  a narrative of how this afternoon's soup came together... there are times when I'm a serious improvisational cook, (well, maybe serious isn't quite the word for it) and while it's not clear how the decisions are made, the results can be remarkably... not bad. In this case, it's a Cream of mushroom soup, with pan fried pieces of basil pesto chicken sausage.

We were supposed to get 8-12" of snow last and into this morning, so I'd penciled in today as a snow day, figuring I'd stay home from the shop, and get some writing done. Looking out the window, I think I woke up at 10 to blue skies, and looked out the window to find that we got some of that 8", and then the wind carried the rest away. I got the subtle feeling that I was starting the day as a slacker... this is not un-drivable weather. So, I started reveling in the slacker feeling, and hoping that this weekend's snowstorm won't keep me from being productive. Anyway, around lunchtime, I was looking at food blogs (what else) and got the urge to make soup... again.

"Baby, we HAVE soup... you made some the other night, remember? Not to mention all the other leftovers?"

Of course I remembered that we still had soup. But all I could think about was NEW soup. I'm not saying it's logical, but either way, smitten kitchen had a gorgeous picture up of a whole head of garlic that had been used to flavor a pot of soup, and I was damned if I was going to let Sunday night's leftover soup get in the way of trying this out. My impulse control around food when I'm spending the day at home isn't the best... but in this case, the impulse is healthier than normal. I'm cooking healthy soup, not binging on cheese and crackers and chocolate milk. What could be bad about that? I WANT GARLIC!!!


Did I mention that I'd been up for 2 and a half hours and was already on my third cup of coffee?


I started with chopped onions, celery, and scallions, and sent them off to cook in a puddle of olive oil, while I rummaged around for more ingredients. We had leftover mushrooms from making spaghetti sauce... that sounded good. And potatoes... potatoes are good. And garlic... oh, garlic.

I chopped the top off of a small head of garlic. I didn't quite slice off as much as I'd intended, so I had to slice again. I put the rest of the head to one side, and the tips and slices of garlic clove got minced up, thrown in with the sliced mushrooms, and that all went into the pot on top of the bed of onions and scallions and celery. I let it sit that way until I could smell the mushrooms cooking, and then stirred the mushrooms in. With the veggies cooked, it was time to add broth, and chopped up potatoes, 2 bay leaves, and the head of garlic, which had been washed and mostly de-skinned. And a tablespoon of whole-grain dijon mustard, because, well... why not?

In the meantime, I started poking around for more raw ingredients, I found a pair of basil pesto chicken sausages that, after 2 days, were already starting to get freezer burn. So I figured I'd add those in, but the question was when? At this point, everything jelled in my mind. I got the mental image of a nice cream of mushroom and potato soup, with sliced up pieces of pan fried sausage floating in it. That sounds good!

So, once the soup had simmered for 30 minutes, I fired up the skillet, added the slices of sausage, and started dumping the now-cooked soup into the blender. Once blended, I strained the result through the steam basket into the pot below, and added the sausage.

Yum.

Soup and Sandwiches for grown-ups

I love making soup. It's just so... easy. (Thanks to the availability of good pre-made broth at the store. I plan to tackle making broth sometime this year, but one thing at a time.)

The basics are simple. Cook the veggies, add the broth, and whatever grains. If you're going to use spices, put them in a tea ball so you can get keep them separate. This last one is pretty important, especially if you plan on storing the leftovers. Things like black pepper can continue to add flavor to the soup, and while it's not necessarily going to taste bad after stewing in the fridge for a day or two, it's not necessarily going to taste good, either, so being able to take the flavoring spices out as part of the process is key.

In this case, I thin sliced a few stalks of celery, sliced some leeks lengthwise and then chopped 1/4" pieces from there, and cut up an onion. Sizzle sizzle sizzle for about 8 minues on medium heat in some oil, and we're ready to go. I poured in a quart and a half of chicken broth, 1/2 cup of wild rice, 1/2 cup of a brown rice medley from Trader Joes, and 1/3 of a cup of barley. No salt, no seasoning, just the veggies, grains and broth. For the vegetarian crowd, you can use veggie broth instead... the rest of this improv dish is veggie friendly, and it's basic enough to be easy.

Bring to a simmer, and keep it there for 35-40 minutes.

I was using an oval roasting pot that my little sister bought me a few years ago, and one of the interesting things about the shape is that you can rotate the lid to vent off as little or as much of the steam as you want, unlike a regular circular pot. I don't think it's really a precise adjustment for maintaining a slow simmer, but it's nice to be able to vent just enough steam that the whole thing doesn't start boiling over.

Other trivia about this particular pot, Ariel loves teasing me about it. Why? Because it's Rachel Ray branded cookware. Why is that funny? Well... once upon a time, I'd put Rachel Ray on my list of 5. Ariel just couldn't wrap her mind around that one, and laughed at me about it for days. Shortly thereafter, I received this pot. So, to this day, it still puts a smirk on A's face.

Another benefit of making soup... there's time to stop, clean up a bit, and diminish the pile of after dinner dishes. (note the finished meal sitting on a CLEAN butcher block...) Once I was done with the cleaning, I still had time to get going on the sandwiches part. The general idea is an open-face grilled cheese... or maybe it's just over-grown crostini. Either way, it was mighty fine, and the salty savory crunchy cheese and toast thing went very well with the soup.

I grated some gouda and some other cheese, (gruyere is also wonderful for this) and packed it onto the top of some store-bought 'tuscan' bread. (Basically, fancy white bread with rubbery gluten and bog holes for the cheese to melt through.) I put that on the top rack in the oven with the broiler on high. You have to pay attention while the broiler is on, though. The first couple of minutes are pretty uneventful: the cheese starts to melt and bubble, and the grease puddles on top. Yum. The next minute or so the grease soaks into the bread, the bubbling picks up a bit. After that, things start to settle down, and it's important to grab the tray just after the cheese begins to brown. It's possible to actually watch the brown parts form and start to spread... and if you're not watching, it's possible to miss all of this completely, and end up with burned cheese on burned bread.

By the way, if you look closely at the picture, you can see that the back left corner of the cookie sheet is warping upwards, and the whole thing is starting to look like a pringle. It's not a trick of the light, that's actually what was happening. Don't be alarmed if this happens to you... there's something about being that close to the heating element that makes for some interesting thermal expansion issues. Once it cooled off it settles back down.

I still had time after this to clean up the stuff I used to make the grilled cheese before serving dinner. So all we had left to wash were two bowls, two plates, and the soup pot. Not too bad.

Date night! Soup in bread bowls, part 2

So, this was originally going to be cream of sweet potato and peanut soup, but we made a last-minute switch, and made cream of broccoli, instead.

We were also going to do date night on Saturday. We ended up doing it on Monday, instead.

So, part 2: Cream of broccoli soup, to go in the bread bowls!

The recipe is taken from a soup cookbook that I've had for a while.

-2 pounds (around  4-5 stalks) chopped broccoli. Separate the thick stems, peel them and chop them.
-1 medium onion, chopped.
-1 leek, sliced lengthwise and chopped
-2 celery stalks, chopped
-.25 Cup olive oil.
-1/4 Cup all-purpose flour
-1.5 Qt chicken broth
-.5 cup cream
-.5 tsp dill
-Lemon juice, salt, pepper, to taste

Chop up the vegetables. Don't be too fussy about it, they're all going to go into the blender later, and then get strained. For this reason, it's actually preferable to chop the celery as coarsely as possible... that way the fibers will be strained out more easily. Otherwise, they can get through the straining process, and end up in the final soup. I know, it's just celery. But fibers in a cream soup is really not a good texture. Good cream soup will coat the mouth, and be very comforting. A celery fiber in that context feels almost like a hair. 

Cook the vegetables in the olive oil on medium heat, stirring frequently until the onions start to become translucent. (~8 minutes) Then add the flour, and cook for another 4 minutes, still stirring frequently.

Add the broth slowly, and add the dill. Bring to a simmer, and cook for 45 minutes.

The recipe says to strain the liquids. I'm not too fussy about this step. Scoop the vegetables into the blender, hold the lid down, and puree. I typically fill the blender cup half-way, because if the cup is too full, the stirring hot liquid heats up the remaining air, and the pressure pops the lid off a little bit. It's messy.

Puree the soup, and then strain into a new bowl or pot. Season to taste.
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And, the money shot: cream of broccoli served in the bread bowls:

The experience was similar to last time. The soup itself is great. So, we each had seconds. And then we started working on the bowls, and felt almost immediately full. My theory is that the dough for the bread bowls is so full of whole grain goodness (oat flour, oatmeal, and oat bran, in particular) that it all swells up almost immediately in the stomach. Neither of us could finish eating the bowls. So, if you're planning a nice dinner for two, my suggestion is to scoop out more of the bread bowls, and leave dinner as a single-serving kind of meal. Alternately, if you're feeding a crowd, use regular bowls for the soup, and serve the bread, cut up into pieces, or crumbled, to put into the soup. The dough will soak up the soup very well, and turn it into a stew-like texture that is very, very filling.

Date night! Soup in bread bowls, part 1

Once in a while, we like to have a quiet date night at home. It's a good excuse for me to pull out some more involved, or fancier recipes. This entry is the first of what will be an ongoing segment on date night meals.

I've been making cream of sweet potato and peanut soup for years. Last week I got ambitious, and decided to serve this soup in home-made bread bowls. It turned out very well, and I was very sorry that I hadn't documented any of it. So, I'm making it again. : )

Edit, 11/27/10: So, I was going to make cream of sweet potato. I'll make that another time. We ended up making cream of broccoli soup instead. 

It's important to remember that bread bowls must be made at least a day in advance. The reason for this is that you want the crust to dry out a little bit. Fresh out of the oven bread is still a little soft, and adding soup to a soft bread bowl is a recipe for disaster, as it will soak right through the outer layer of bread, and the bowl will fall apart.

The bread I used for the bowls was a loaded up variant of the basic honey-wheat bread I wrote about a few weeks ago. This is one of the great things about bread... it's really easy to successfully improvise. The nutmeg was an inspired touch, and it worked very well with the soup. That said, it did make for an odd-taste when used in sandwiches.

 Date night is tomorrow night, so I'm baking these today.

Nutmeg-Multigrain Bread Bowls:

This bread has the following ingredients:
-3 Cups all purpose flour
-2 Cups Whole Wheat flour
-2 Cups Oat Flour
-A handful of oat bran
-A handful of wheat bran
-A handful of quaker oatmeal
-Peel from one lemon, grated
-1 Tsp salt
-1 Tsp Nutmeg
-1/4 Cup or more of honey
-a little bit ( 1Tbsp? I didn't measure) of black strap molasses*
-3 Tbsp melted butter
-around 2.5 cups of warm water.



It's a nice, dense dough, full of all kinds of wholesome stuff. It's a little sticky at first, because there's a lot of water. Oat flour and oatmeal are known for being absorbent, so this does go away.

Follow normal bread-making recipe procedure. But instead of forming two big loaf, form the dough into 4 ball shapes. Then let them rise, and put them into the oven.

To be continued...

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*Black strap molasses is not to be confused with regular molasses. The first time I ever heard of black strap molasses, no kidding, was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. This pretty much guaranteed that I would end up seeking it out. I'm glad I did: Black Strap is really healthy. It's basically the by-product of making sugar, and it's loaded with nutrients and minerals. Only 2 tsp of Black strap provides 13.3% of the recommended daily dose of iron, 12% of calcium, 14% of copper, 18% of manganese, 9.7% of potassium, and 7.3% of magnesium. All of these things are important and good for you. If White sugar is pure calories that's been stripped of anything healthy, Black strap is the dumping ground for sugar's missing nutritional value. And it tastes great in morning coffee.