Roasted tomatoes

What to do with that avalanche of ripe backyard tomatoes?... Roast 'em! I slice mine in half and place them cut side up, on an oiled sheet of tin foil for was cleanup. Generously sprinkle with salt and pepper. Crank that oven up to 400º and let your tomatoes get good and charred. I sometimes even broil them for the last 5 minutes to get the them charred the way I like it. 

Now what you do with your tomatoes is entirely up to you. They are delicious just like this, as a side dish with eggs in the morning, or for lunch or dinner. I like to mix the roasted tomatoes with white cannelloni beans and basil to make a nice warm Italian salad. Freezing to make a marinara sauce is a good option, as is this wonderful smokey tomato soup. Lately I've been adding in some crumbled chicken sausages, also. Get roasting!

Frank + Marie's buffalo chicken soup

Here is a quick and tasty soup. Actually, it's a flavor explosion of a soup, with big, sassy flavors. It's spicy, creamy and delicious. Here is how you make it.

Ingredients
1 tsp. oil

2 tsp butter

1 package of Al Fresco brand buffalo chicken sausages (browned and sliced into rounds)

1 medium onion, large dice

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1/3 cup of Frank's Hot Sauce (it's gotta be Frank's brand)

1/4 blue cheese dressing (such as Marie's brand)

2 carrots, peeled and cut into thin rounds

1 stick of celery, cut into half moons

1 can of canellini beans (drained)

salt and pepper to taste

To top, when serving

1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese 

1/4 cup baby spinach leaves

Directions

In a saucepan, brown the sausages in a dash of the veg. oil and remove. Pull out the sausages and set aside. Add onions and garlic to the saucepan and simmer until clear. Pull out onion garlic mixture and set aside. Add the butter into the saucepan and melt, then add in 2 tsp flour. Stir for about a minute to cook the flour, then add in the the chicken stock. Bring to a low boil and whisk continuously for several minutes until the sauce is smooth and thickened a bit. Add in 1/4 cup of Franks's hot sauce and 1/4 of blue cheese dressing. Whisk again. Add the cooked onions, garlic, chopped carrots, celery, canellini beans and sliced sausages. Add salt and pepper to taste, and stir. Simmer for about ten minutes.

To serve

Ladle into bowls. Top with baby spinach and crumbled blue cheese.

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Roasted tomato soup

I roasted up the very last of the tomatoes from my garden to make a smoky and creamy soup. I'll freeze up most of it, because won't it be nice to sip on this soup on a cold, snowy wintry day to remind me of  summer days? Here is how to make this soup: 

Cut all tomatoes in half lengthwise (or quarter them, if they are super large), and place cut side up on a sheet pan lined with aluminum foil and drizzled with olive oil. Salt and pepper the tomatoes and add fresh thyme leaves if you have some. Place into a 375° oven and roast for about an hour. The end result will be intensely flavored tomatoes with a slight bit of char on them.

Then cut up and sauté a diced medium onion and 3 cloves of minced garlic in a tablespoon of butter. When onions are clear, add in the roasted tomatoes, 2 cups of homemade chicken stock (or small can of low sodium chicken stock), 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, a day of liquid smoke, and a half cup of fat free half and half. If you have smoked pimento, add a teaspoon for more smokey flavor. Salt and pepper to taste, and cook for about five minutes. Carefully use an immersion blender or pour soup into a blender to wiz the soup into a smooth consistency. If you prefer a chunkier soup texture reserve some tomatoes, roughly chop them and badd back into the soup after blending. Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with a dollop of crème fraîche (or Greek yogurt or even sour cream), a drizzle of olive oil and a spring of thyme. Of course, half of a buttery, gooey, grilled cheese sandwich would be marvelous with this soup!

You may also like: 

Smokey thyme roasted tomato soup with crispy cheddar frico

recipe post from a few years ago where I explained my philosophy 

about tomato soups. This post was published on Tastespotting. 

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French onion soup—ooey + gooey

Once a winter—always when there is snow on the ground and preferably when it's actually snowing—we like to make a lovely French Onion soup. To us, this is the epitome of slow food—nourishment that's complex, and the process of creating it is just as nurturing as the pleasure of eating it. Dan usually uses Thomas Keller's French Onion soup  recipe, but has also used Julia Child's French Onion soup recipe. This time—to try something completely new—he used the New York Times French Onion soup recipe which was very delicious with the addition of some ruby port. 

This is a messy soup—the messier the better. I always make sure some of the cheese (that's piled onto crisp croutons in the soup) overhangs naughtily over the edge of the bowl before broiling (oops, spilled some cheese, ha ha). The ooey-gooey cheese is great of course, but so are those crispy cheese bits that become welded onto the sides of the scorching hot bowls. Whatever recipe you decide to use, don't forget a green salad and a rich red wine to go with this.

I love when Dan makes this soup—it's an afternoon affair. First, he slices mass amounts of onions, and sautées them in butter for hours, eventually turning them into gorgeous, bronzed and sweet caramelized slivers of yum. He adds a sprigs of thyme, a splash of this and that, and other odds, and he finally adds the beef stock. Important note!… The backbone of this marvelous rustic soup is my homemade beef stock recipe. Do not even think about using canned beef stock for this onion soup recipe, your slowly caramelized onions deserve it.

Rich, homemade beef stock

When the weather gets cold—but before we turn on the heat—I like to heat the house a bit up by simmering stocks on the stove for those warming winter soups. In a pinch, you can get away with canned chicken stock, but canned beef stock is not even close to how delicious your homemade stock is. It takes several hours, but the stovetop does all the work for you!

Homemade beef stock

To make this super rich beef stock roast, simply toss a combo of veal shanks, short ribs, and oxtails along with carrots, onions and celery onto an oiled sheet pan into a 450°oven for a 45 minutes. Then place everything into a large stock pot, including all those brown bits. Cover with water and add (additional) carrots, celery, onion, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, several peppercorns and a head of garlic. Then just let the stock simmer away on a very low flame for at least 4 hours. Skim off fat and scum as it arises. Cool, add salt to taste, then strain twice through cheesecloth. You can use your stock right away or put in freezer for a snowy soup day for your beef bourguignon, beef stew, Vietnamese pho, or French onion soup. It's a labor of love, but you'll be astounded at how good your soups will taste with your own homemade beef stock!

The goods...

… and after 45 minutes in a 450 oven 

Wicked awesome clam chowdaah

PUBLISHED ON TASTESPOTTING!

What a fabulous stretch of weather we've had! Summer has just been eclipsed by autumn, so we still have sunny and warm days, but the mercury dips at night making it perfect weather for soups. Dan made a batch of his wicked awesome clam chowdaah last week. I still had some borage blossoms in the garden to garnish it with, along with some snips of chives and crushed pink peppercorns. He uses a great clam chowder recipe that we found in Saveur Magazine years ago. The crispy salt pork cracklins that we sprinkle on top really add nice flavor.

 


Clam chowder (from Saveur Magazine)

5 dozen littleneck clams or 4 1⁄2 dozen steamer clams
1⁄4 lb. salt pork, diced
3 medium yellow onions, peeled and diced
3 tbsp. flour
3 lbs. red potatoes, peeled and cut into 3⁄4" cubes
3 cups milk
3⁄4 cup heavy cream
3 tbsp. butter
Salt and freshly ground white pepper

Scrub clams under cold running water to remove grit and sand. Discard any that don't close when tapped. Place clams in a large pot with 3 cups cold water. Cover, bring to a boil over medium-high heat, and steam until shells open; check frequently and remove clams with tongs as they open, allowing up to 5 minutes for littlenecks and about 1 minute for steamers. Discard any that don't open. Pour cooking liquid through a fine sieve and set aside.

Cook salt pork in a large pot over medium-low heat until crisp, about 20 minutes. Remove meat, drain on paper towels, and set aside to use as garnish. Add onions to rendered fat and cook over low heat until translucent, about 20 minutes.

Remove clams from shells. If using steamers, cut off and discard necks (the black part). Coarsely chop clams, cover, and set aside.

Add flour to onions, stir for 1 minute, then add potatoes, reserved clam cooking liquid, and enough water to cover. Increase heat to medium, cover, and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.

Add clams, milk, and cream to pot. Simmer (do not boil) until just heated through, about 5 minutes. (Clams will be rubbery if overcooked.) Stir in butter and season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls and top with reserved salt pork. (I also add chopped chives and crushed pink peppercorns.

Vitamin C boost: chunky gazpacho

Have you seen those Emergen-C type of drink mixes on the market? They boast that you can get 1000 mg of vitamin C with each serving. I'm all for boosting my immune system, especially in our New England winters, but have you read the ingredients? They include "fuctose, citric acid, natural orange flavors, malic acid, orange juice powder, tapioca maltodextrin, silica, beta carotene, glycine, asparatic acid, tartaric acid, and cysteine hydrochloride." Phew. That's a turnoff. Why not get a super C boost with, you know, real food?! A bowl of gazacho is just what the doc ordered! It can be made with bright and colorful veggies including red, orange and yellow bell peppers, which have way more vitamin C than an orange. Red peppers have three times as much! 

Most people probably think of gazpacho as a cold summer soup for a hot day, but I also like it in the dead of winter. All those happy veggies and tomatoes are not only chock full of nutrients, but they also help hydrate me and my dry winter skin. The authentic way to make a Spanish gazpacho is by blending it to a pulp, which to me is such a shame. I like keeping gazpacho ingredients super chunky and crunchy. Think of it as a salad with a lot of tomatoey dressing on it. Viva la vitamin C!!

Colorful confetti!

Here is a rough recipe: I never measure anything when I make gazpacho, but I do taste for balance as I go along.  First, chop a variety of veggies. I generally use the ones you see here, which include red, yellow, orange and green bell peppers, Persian cucumbers, celery, tomatoes (here I used red and small yellow ones),  minced garlic, red onion, and scallions. The perky sauce that these veggies all bath in is made with a spicy V8 juice, tomato juice, salt pepper, tobacco sauce for spiciness, sherry vinegar and olive oil. Don't underestimate the importance of those last two ingredients—the vinegar really brightens the flavors and the olive oil gives the gazpacho a sultry mouth feel. I add in chopped cilantro leaves when serving, and sometimes I'll add in a dash of smokey Spanish pimentón paprika too. This is a salad that you eat with a spoon!

Bowl of red

Cold temps call for a bowl of hot chili! In New Mexico you order your chili by the color, by asking for either 'a bowl of red' or 'a bowl of green.' The former is more spicy, and the latter is more mild, or at least less spicy. Shown above is the start of my turkey chili, and to confuse matters more, actually has both red and green chili peppers in it. And it has three dark ingredients—dark chocolate, dark kidney beans, and dark Mexican beer. My recipe also has a dash of cinnamon, which along with the chocolate and beer, helps to give it interesting and complex flavors. You don't actually think, "hmmm… this tastes chocolaty or cinnamony," but the flavors are there and tease your tastebuds a bit. For my full recipe, click here. Click here to read more about Hatch green chile peppers. See yesterday's post or click here for a tutorial on how to roast green chili peppers.

Spanish chorizo, bean + kale soup

This chicken chorizo, bean and kale soup is one of those quick soups I tend to make on the fly, with no written recipe to go by. I don't know about you all, but when I make soup I never use exact measurements anyway—the ingredients just don't need to be precise. One of the reasons that I started taking photos of foods I've cooked is to just to help me remember my crazy one-time creations like this soup! I used the ingredients below, plus a clove of garlic and some chicken broth. See loose recipe below photos. It's a really rich and hearty soup that's packed with so much good stuff it'll make you want to flamenco dance... Olé!

Here's how to make it: In a soup pot, add a splash of olive oil and brown the Alfreso brand Chorizo chicken sausages (all natural and no chemicals!). Remove and set aside to cool. In the same pot sauté diced tomatoes until they break down and begin to fall apart. Add in diced onions and sauté until clear, then add in minced garlic and cook for a minute more. Toss in a teaspoon or two of pimentón (a Spanish smoked paprika), the beans (canned is fine if you rinse them well, or if you've thought ahead to soak your beans overnight, even better), sausages (slice them first), and add enough chicken broth so it just barely covers it all and looks, well, soupy! Cook for 15 minutes or so. Just before serving add in some chopped kale leaves, which will wilt with the heat of the soup. How fast was that?

Avgolemono soup

I make Greek avgolemono soup in the spring around the time of Greek Orthodox Easter, which this year just happens to be tomorrow. Growing up our Greek neighbor used to call us on Greek Easter morning and exclaim, Christos Anesti—Christ is risen! Making this lemony soup always reminds me of her. It's a simple soup, made with eggs, chicken broth, and lots of lemon. I like my avgolemono with rice and mini turkey meatballs, which I always have a stash of in the freezer. Some folks swap out orzo pasta for the rice, and skip the meatballs. I also add in some fresh sprigs of dill. Opa!

Animal crackers in my soup

These cheese animal crackers were perfect

 with a bowl of chicken and rice soup.

Fifteen bean soup

Ever see those bags of fifteen bean soups at the market? All those bright and colorful beans were hard to resist, so I gave them a try. Here's the mix; lima beans, pink pinto beans, navy, beans, cannelini beans, black beans, cranberry beans, kidney beans, garbanzo beans, great northern beans, white beans, pink beans, lentils, split yellow and green peas, and black-eyd peas... Phew! It comes with a smokey ham flavor packet, but toss that and make your own stock with a ham hock or ham bone instead. Be warned that once you cook all those colorful beans they turn a monochromatic shade of belch. I mean it was really visually unappealing. I brightened the soup up with carrots, a half a butternut squash, and parsley. Kale would have been be a nice addition too.

Pea soup shooters

Minty pea soup shooters with salty, crunchy prosciutto crisps.

1 cup peas— fresh or frozen
1 can chicken broth (scant 2 cups)
1 scallion, roughly chopped, white and green parts
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons creme fraiche
big handful of fresh mint
dash of freshly cracked pepper
dash of salt if needed

This is a 10 minute soup! Bring chicken broth to a boil in saucepan, then add peas, scallions and butter, and cook for 3 minutes. Pour into a blender, add the mint, creme fraiche, and pepper, then cover and process until pureed. Taste and add salt if needed. Pour into little shot glasses. Garnish with prosciutto crisp, which you make by laying each strip on baking on a sheet pan, then baking in a 350° oven for 10 minutes.

A bit o' the old Blarney

Aren't we all just a little bit Irish on St. Patrick's day? Dan, who really is mostly Irish, is making his annual batch of Irish Stew the Bailey—a hearty "blonde" lamb stew made with hunks of veggies. I also made a small batch of colcannon, which is a warm Irish cabbage and potato dish—essentially an Irish verson of what Brit's call bubble & squeak. Tradition calls for the colcannon to be served with a little well of butter in the center, so why would I mess with tradition?

(Click here to see what I did with the leftovers!)

Dan's lamb stew, the colcannon, and a slab of Blarney Castle cheese will be a nice bit o' the Blarney for our St. Patrick's day dinner. We've also got a few pints of Bottingtons ale in the ice box. We started the day with some ultra smokey Irish back bacon, hash browns, sauté of mushrooms (very British isles), and in a wildly decadent move, put some Bailey's Irish cream in our coffees! I mean, why wouldn't we have Irish cream in our coffee on St. Patrick's day?! I don't even drink coffee, but made an exception today. In our defense, it was late morning. After a day of rich foods and a serious nod to the humble spud, it'll be good to get back to greens, beans and berries tomorrow.

Irish Stew the Bailey

prepping for the colcannon

Roasted + toasted

This Thai red lentil curry soup was made with roasted carrots, sautéed onions, and garnished with cilantro and toasted coconut. Love it when the carrots get all crispy and sweet and start to blacken a bit. Somehow it reminds me of a charred marshmallow. Having said that, the soup seemed a little on the sweet side, so I cut it with a judicious squeeze of lime. 

Here's how to make it. Relax, it's a soup, and you really don't need to measure anything. Trust your intuition! Roast a few carrots, dice when cool, and set aside. Sauté a diced onion, then add Thai red curry paste, coconut milk, chicken broth, and salt and pepper to your taste. Stir the pot, then add lentils and cook until it all comes to a boil, then simmer for only 5-10 more minutes. The lentils will keep cooking after you turn off the heat, and you don't want mushy lentils, now do you? Stir in the diced carrots, and voilà!... or however you say voilà in Thailand. Garnish with cilantro leaves and the aforementioned toasted coconut... Lime is optional. For a similar lentil soup groove, check out the Indian curry lentil soup I  made last year.

Bouquet garni

There's nothing like a snowy winter day to make a chicken stock! Here is a nice bouquet garni—a mélange of fresh herbs—that's all ready to tie up and drop into the pot. Click here to see my chicken stock recipe.

Chicken massaman curry

My food pantry is never without a can of Thai massaman curry paste. From that little can, I can bring the flavors of Thailand to my kitchen in a snap. Muslim in origin, this curry is sweet and only mildly spicy. All recipes vary of course, but massaman curries generally contain tons of spices, including cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, palm sugar, fish sauce, chili, tamarind, turmeric, cumin, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, kaffir lime leaves, coconut milk, peanuts.

To make the base sauce, I combine a can of massaman curry and a can of coconut milk in a stew pot.  To that I add diced, cooked sweet potatoes, diced carrots, sautéed onions, browned chicken (1 inch pieces) and a kaffir lime leaf or two (which I keep frozen). After the stew has simmered for 5-10 minutes, I place in bowls over a bed of jasmine rice, then top with roasted peanuts, cilantro, and green onions. Prepare your taste buds for an explosion of flavors.

Fifteen MORE minutes!

Campbell's Soup is offering Andy Warhol another 15 minutes of fame! In homage to the the 50th anniversary of the artist's 1962 signature work "32 Campbell's Soup Cans," the soup manufacturer is launching colorful, limited edition soups designed in Warhol's pop-art style. The cans will be available for ¢.75  in Target stores starting on Sunday (September 2). Mmmm, Mmmm clever!

Watercress & cucumber soup

This watercress and cucumber soup is one of those no cook soups—great for a hot summer day. I used mint instead of dill, and added in some parsley as well, then garnished with Greek yogurt, olive oil and a purple pansy.

Tom Kha Gai

This is the classic Thai chicken coconut soup called Tom Kha Gai. It's quick, easy and packed with intense quintessential Thai flavors, which it gets from coconut milk, lemongrass, fresh ginger, lime juice, chile paste, Thai fish sauce, cilantro, and kaffir lime leaves and other goodies. Amazing complex Thai flavors.

2 cups thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms
1 large can unsweetened coconut milk (I use the light version)
2 cups canned chicken broth
2 tablespoons finely chopped lemongrass
1tbsp Thai fish sauce (nam pla)

2 keffir lime leaves**

1 tbsp palm sugar**
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1/3 of a red serrano chili, sliced into rounds*
1 teaspoon chili-garlic sauce* (or srirachi and minced garlic)

+ + +

2 skinless chicken breasts, thinly sliced
pre-soaked rice noodles
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 tablespoons fresh lime juice
cilantro leaves

grated unsweetened coconut

*adjust chili ingredients to your heat tolerance

*find palm sugar and keffir lime leaves on Amazon.

In a saucepan, sauté mushrooms until very lightly browned, then combine all ingredients in pan except for the last 6. Bring to boil, reduce heat, and cover and simmer 10 minutes to let the flavors blend. Then add chicken and rice noodles, and simmer for 5 more minutes until cooked through. Mix in green onions and lime juice. After ladling soup into bowl, top with cilantro leaves and grated coconut, and prepare your taste buds for a treat!