Posted by The Gurgling Cod, December 29, 2007 at 4:43 PM
The final Sunday Night Soup of the year features a visit by the Titans of Tennessee to the Colts of Indianapolis. As it happens, these are the Gurgling Cod’s two least favorite NFL franchises. The Titans deliberately injured Patriot safety Rodney Harrison in the regular season finale last year, making it possible for the Colts to be the last team to beat the Patriots. The Titans need a win to make the playoffs, while the Colts have clinched a playoff berth. A win does the Colts no good, so expect to see members of the Terre Haute Youth Choir and the Evansville Jaycees getting plenty of snaps. Soupwise, a bit of a poser – we have discussed the uncompelling foodways of Indiana before. Tennessee is known to have good things to eat, but most are in solid form, such as BBQ. An exception would be Jack Daniels, but if you want to make a whiskey-based soup (JD is not a Bourbon), you are on your own. So instead of local, we will think seasonal.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, December 22, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week's Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
The antepenultimate regular season Sunday Night Soup has SNS regulars the Redskins venturing to Minnesota to face the Vikings. The Vikings play indoors, which seems a shame, given the hardiness of their namesakes, and the franchise has languished since moving to a dome in the 1980s.
These teams have radically different foodsheds—the riches of the Chesapeake and the sweeping expanses of the northern reaches of America’s breadbasket. Flour comes from Minnesota, and crabs from Maryland, so breaded soft-shelled crabs would be an idea, but they are unwieldy in soup, and out of season, anyway. They will be teeing this one up not long before Santa kicks the tires and lights the fires, and that calls for something festive but not overwhelming. In other words, a perfect spot for Fergus Henderson’s leek, potato, and oyster soup.
This recipe is from his first book, published Stateside as The Whole Beast
. He has a newer book out as well, Beyond Nose to Tail, which is more attractively produced than the first but not as compelling to cook from. Despite what the newspapers tell you, there is nothing wrong with giving cookbooks not published within the last year, so if you have a cook on your list who likes to use everything but the squeak, start with the first one.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, December 15, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week's upcoming Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
This weekend, Sunday Night Soups returns to its NFC East comfort zone. The Redskins head north on 95 and take exit 16W to the Meadowlands, where they will find the Giants waiting for them.
You can get many different kinds of soup in both D.C. and New York, the nominal homes of these franchises, which are in fact located in Landover, Maryland, and East Rutherford, New Jersey, respectively. Neither Landover nor East Rutherford has its own signature soup, and we did the Maryland crab thing last week.
One thing that does distinguish this matchup is a heavy University of Miami flavor. Players on both sides will be wearing patches or decals in honor of former Miami Hurricane Sean Taylor, the Redskins safety who was murdered last month in his home. The Redskins feature the inimitable Clinton Portis, as well as Santana Moss, both coming straight outta Coral Gables.
For the boys in blue, Miami product Jeremy Shockey is a tight end-cum-nightlife impresario, not to mention punter Jeff Feagles. More important, it's that ever-growing period known as "the holidays," where work, friends, and family conspire to pump you full of food in a way that might make you wonder if they plan to make a terrine out of your liver. Thus something with more nutritional merit than those Scotch eggs you scarfed at the last holiday party (wait—that was me) and a Floribbean flavor seems in order. Thus, black bean soup.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, December 8, 2007 at 1:30 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week's Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
This Sunday evening sees the renewal of the Carbetbag bowl, as the Colts, former Charm City NFL franchisees, return home to face the Ravens, who stepped out on the long-suffering fans of Cleveland, where they were known as the Browns, but were required to leave their colors and nickname in Cleveland for the new Browns. Got that?
Brian Billick coaches the Ravens, and could be seen last week blowing kisses to Rodney Harrison after the Patriots safety snared an interception during the Patriots' Monday Night victory and drew the Ravens' coach's attention to the play he had just made. So some sort of lip-smackingly delicious soup seems warranted. Peyton Manning, of New Orleans, will also be participating in this contest and is likely to have an impact on the outcome.
The game is in Baltimore, which is in Maryland. As Thomas Cecil pointed out back in 1630, in Maryland, "The Sea, the Bayes of Chesopeack, and Delaware, and generally all the Rivers, doe abound with Fish of severall sorts; for many of them we have no English names: There are Whales, Sturgeons very large and good, and in great aboundance; Grampuses, Porpuses, Mullets, Ttruts, Soules, Place, Mackerell, Perch, Crabs, Oysters, Cockles, and Mussles."
Billick. Manning. Cecil. The circumstances warrant a crab gumbo. Back in October, we saw a chicken-based no-okra gumbo for Saints-Seahawks. This time, consider a crab and okra gumbo, like this one, adapted from Gourmet.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, December 1, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week's Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
This week, the Patriots cede the Sunday Night spotlight to the 4-7 Bengals, who visit the Pittsburgh Steelers in a renewal of a hallowed Rust Belt rivaly. The AFC North is known for hard-nosed football, but Cincy and Pittsburgh have culinary traditions that do not translate easily into soups.
Under the circumstances, the best approach is to make a soup that keys on a single player, as with the pho bo for Cowboys–Bears back in September. A flamboyant Mexican soup honoring Chad "Ocho Cinco" Johnson would be one option, but we've done a posole recently, which unfortunately is where my even vaguely Mexican soup repertoire begins and ends.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, November 24, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week's Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
In case you missed them last week, the Patriots are back on Sunday night, hosting the Eagles at what promises to be a chilly Gillette Stadium. Befitting his North Atlantic origins, the Gurgling Cod has been a Patriots fan since he was a fingerling, but he understands that not everyone shares his joy at their success. In the wake of Spygate, the Pats' quest for a perfect season has taken on a somewhat grim and inexorable quality. It is professional football, and charges that the Pats have been running up the score only lead to tedious and predictable arguments, but Patriots head coach Bill Belichick does appear to be doing a season-long audition for the role of Ahab. Making matters, worse, a forecast gametime temperature of around 30°F means that Belichick will be accessorizing his trademark hoodie with the inexplicable cold weather headband. In tandem with the requisite coach headphone-microphone set, he looks like a soccer mom-cum-Panzer commander. Come to think of it, that's not a bad description of the SUV-driving Hingham hausfraus you might encounter on 128 on the way to the game, but I digress.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, November 17, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week's Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
This week, the New England Patriots pay a visit to Buffalo and their Bills. Northwest New York State will never be confused with Provence in terms of developing a compelling indigenous food tradition, excepting buffalo wings, which while delicious (and worth making at home, by the way) do not translate feasibly into soup. However, few match-ups offer a better opportunity to get into the right frame of mind. Bill Belichick, while something of a polarizing figure, is famous for his relentless preparation. A soup that requires the same of its maker will give you a sense of what it takes to be a champion. A soup does not have defensive tendencies you can track, or even opposing coaches that you can videotape surreptitiously, until your former assistant and protégé snitches you out, but it can have chestnuts. Chestnuts are delicious, but peeling them is tedious, and can fray the fingers a bit. They give this soup a wonderful velvety sweetness, and give you the opportunity to experience the 99% of genius that is hard work.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, November 10, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week's Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
This week’s Sunday night contest between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Diego Chargers may well be the single most bitter matchup in NFL history. It is not a bitter rivalry, just two teams with good reason to be bitter individually.
To review: The visiting Colts lost the most hyped game of the year when they were unable, despite the help of a home crowd and kindly officials, to stave off a late comeback that saw the Patriots emerge victorious. On the other side of the line, the Chargers lost to a middling Vikings team, despite scoring on the longest play in NFL history, largely because they surrendered a record- breaking number of rushing yards to a rookie, Adrian Peterson, who ran for roughly 1.3 furlongs through a cooperative Charger defense. So expect a gametime atmosphere not unlike the end of Stalingrad, with a possible cameo by death from The Seventh Seal.
Under the circumstances, soup seems almost irrelevant, as the training table for both squads likely features steaming bowls of bile. But who wants to eat that? Instead, something with a hint of sourness but with enough reassuring substance to remind you that life is worth living. Something restorative, yet comforting. In other words, Greek Egg and Lemon Soup.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, November 3, 2007 at 1:45 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week's Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
Suddenly, it's week eight and time for the Cowboys to visit the Eagles. Not all of the Sunday Night games by law involve at least two NFC East teams—it only seems that way. This is already Dallas’s third Sunday Night appearance, which is probably as much as America can handle of Tony Romo’s devastating sex appeal. Last week, we saw that there is not much soupifarous about Pittsburgh, and it appears to be a statewide problem. Soup…Philadelphia…cheesesteak…blender? And then sanity returns.
However, the Eagles do have a recent soup connection, thanks to those ubiquitous commercials where Donovan McNabb’s mom tries to force feed soup to her son and his teammates. Donovan McNabb seems like a cool guy—in interviews, he conveys the impression of someone who has ?uestlove’s number stored on his cell phone, so it’s hard to imagine how he consented to participating in this humiliating spectacle for so long. Failing that, even, how long would Brian Dawkins tolerate having someone’s moms hanging around the locker room? "Not long" is the correct answer to that question.
Under the circumstances, something chunky seems appropriate, but it turns out that a bowl of Chunky Sirloin Burger Soup (what is it with NFL QBs and hamburger soups?) will give you a solid 72 percent of your recommended daily sodium intake. In the realm of small-c chunky soups, a variation on the Kuner’s chicken posole is a favorite of mine. This is an easy recipe that has a few refinements you can add or not as time and inclination dictate.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, October 20, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week’s Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
This Sunday night, the Steelers venture into the mountains of Colorado to face the Denver Broncos. Soupwise, this match up is a bit of a poser. I can’t think of a particular food I associate with Pittsburgh the way, say, even Cincinnati has some sort of chili and spaghetti thing they do. And Denver’s culinary fame rests on an omelet popular with dyspeptic truckers. But once again, the NFL Family Cookbook rides to the rescue. This volume, from 1997, is a must have for any football fan who cooks — there is no other tome that gathers the secrets of Archie Manning’s shrimp appetizer, Hardy Nickerson’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, Dave Wannstedt’s beef flautas, and even Steve Largent’s Saturday morning waffles in one convenient place.
Granted, the folks the NFL would choose to coordinate a cookbook are more likely to be informed by the Taste of Home aesthetic than to smuggle Junior Seau and Morten Andersen off to Spain to apprentice with Ferran Adrià, but it is still remarkable how dated the recipes feel in a book that’s only ten years old.
Former Bronco luminary John Elway comes through with a soup every bit as colorful as the man himself. Despite his Bay Area collegiate roots, it’s interesting to see how even in 1995, Elway was unafraid to buck the fresh-and-local Panissians, and drop a soup recipe that will give your can opener a workout.*
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, October 13, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week’s Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
This Sunday night, the New Orleans Saints head to Seattle in search of their first win. Seattle is mainly known for rain, fish, and coffee, so let's hope the Saints remember to pack a few muffulettas from Central Grocery for the trip. (In all seriousness, attempt no departure from New Orleans without at least one of these in your carry-on. Twenty-four hours after your departure, when you are still stuck in Atlanta, begging the gate agent for a connecting flight to somewhere, anywhere, that does not reek of Cinnabon, you will be glad to have a half or a quarter of the miraculous sandwich that travels as well as the Harlem Globetrotters.)
You could, I suppose, hack a salmon into eighths, then braise it in a Tanzanian Peaberry, but why bother? To cheer on the Saints, you'll want a fortifying gumbo. This gumbo uses roux as its base, and if you have a TV in sight of your stove, making the roux will the perfect thing to keep your hands busy while you watch the more entertaining Patriots-Cowboys game on Sunday afternoon.
Gumbo is good for what ails you, but it is not a vaccine that must be made according to a set formula, so you could and should vary ingredients based on what is good where you are. Fish, shellfish, cured meats, sausage, other vegetables—the roux is really the foundation for what pleases you. I did this one on the first anniversary of Katrina, and folks seemed to enjoy it.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, October 6, 2007 at 11:00 AM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week’s Sunday Night Football game on NBC. We posted the Pork Stock recipe earlier in the week so you'd have time to make it. If you've already read that entry, you know what this soup's about, so just head straight to the recipe now.
This Sunday, the Chicago Bears travel to Wisconsin to face the Green Bay Packers. After dreary NFC East scrimmages and lopsided Belichickian beatdowns, this Norris Division contest is a welcome change. Soupwise, the matchup could hardly be more appealing—the Hog Butchers to the World travel to America's Dairyland. Thus, this tilt demands a soup featuring both pork and cheese. Such a soup exists: French onion soup.
"Where's the pork," you say, echoing the late Clara Peller. "French Onion Soup is made with beef broth."
Mostly, yes, but not in Montreal. At the legendary Au Pied du Cochon, Martin Picard soon realized that the braising liquid that ensued from churning out the eponymous dish could be the basis of a hearty soup. The collagen that comes from the cartilage in the trotter gives the broth a silky body and richness that is impossible to duplicate without trotters.
You may not have to cope with the results of braising hundreds of pigs' feet every week, but pork stock is still a dramatic upgrade over the typical French onion soup. Typical French onion soup is a bistro cliché that often devolves to something queso fundido floating on dishwater. Using a rich pork stock instead results in a soup actually worth eating. This soup is not demanding, but making the stock time-consuming, which is why we gave you the recipe for it earlier this week. If you followed it and are ready to continue with the French onion soup, here's the recipe.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, October 4, 2007 at 5:30 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week’s Sunday Night Football game on NBC. Think of this Pork Stock recipe as the pregame show—it takes a while, so we're posting it today. The recipe for the week's soup will come on Saturday.
This Sunday, the Chicago Bears travel to Wisconsin to face the Green Bay Packers. After dreary NFC East scrimmages and lopsided Belichickian beatdowns, this Norris Division contest is a welcome change. Soupwise, the matchup could hardly be more appealing—the Hog Butchers to the World travel to America's Dairyland. Thus, this tilt demands a soup featuring both pork and cheese. Such a soup exists: French onion soup.
"Where's the pork," you say, echoing the late Clara Peller. "French Onion Soup is made with beef broth."
Mostly, yes, but not in Montreal. At the legendary Au Pied du Cochon, Martin Picard soon realized that the braising liquid that ensued from churning out the eponymous dish could be the basis of a hearty soup. The collagen that comes from the cartilage in the trotter gives the broth a silky body and richness that is impossible to duplicate without trotters.
You may not have to cope with the results of braising hundreds of pigs' feet every week, but pork stock is still a dramatic upgrade over the typical French onion soup. Typical French onion soup is a bistro cliché that often devolves to something queso fundido floating on dishwater. Using a rich pork stock instead results in a soup actually worth eating. This soup is not demanding, but it is time-consuming, which is why we're posting the stock recipe well ahead of game day.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, September 29, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week’s Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
The Giants and the Eagles get together Sunday night, and one thing is sure. When the dust settles, one of these teams will reach the .500 mark. It seems as if NFC East teams play one another constantly, and this is already the second Sunday night appearance for the Giants.
Soupwise, it's not the most compelling matchup. A nod to New York, and a Manhattan clam chowder would be an option, but it would suffer in comparison to the real chowder of week two. Philadelphia is a historical city, and even has a little bit of soup history with Bookbinder's Restaurant and canned soups. But this is Serious Eats, so "open a can of soup and heat" won't really do.
I don't know if Alice Waters will be pulling for the Iggles or the G-Men as she watches this tilt, but I do know that she would want you to be eating seasonally and locally. Also, you will want some room in your arteries for next week's Bears-Packers contest, so something lighter this week seems appropriate.
As we near the end of the growing season in the Northeast, a gazpacho is a good bet. If you don't have any sherry vinegar on hand, this is a good reason to get some. Enjoy this soup with the best tomatoes you can find where you are before we descend into the long dark hydroponic night of the soul.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, September 22, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week The Gurgling Cod shows up to offer a soup appropriate to the week’s Sunday Night Football game on NBC.
This week, the Cowboys visit the Bears for Sunday night Ditkaesque action. We saw the Cowboys in Week 1, where they got their chili, and we will see the Bears again soon enough when they play the Packers on October 7. We have a special porky-cheesy treat in store for when the Hog Butchers of the World invade America’s Dairyland, but for now, something a little bit lighter, but still beefy.
Mike Ditka, who played for the Cowboys, and coached the Bears to their lone Super Bowl title more than 20 years ago, owns steakhouses, which would suggest a steak soup. Before you reach for your blender and contemplate a sirloin smoothie, recall that the Cowboys were the team that drafted the NFL’s Vietnamese Jackie Robinson, Dat Nguyen. Among their many other virtues, Vietnamese cooks have figured out a way to include steak in a soup, without resorting to the meatshake. The recipe follows below.
You will need to make your own stock, because commercial beef stock is nasty, and you want to have the characteristic spices in contact with the broth for as long as possible. This version is adapted from the version that appeared in Gourmet in 1995. Note that while the prep is pretty simple, you will need to allow time for simmering and cooling.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, September 14, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Sunday Night Soups, where each week Serious Eats offers a soup appropriate to the week’s Sunday Night Football game on NBC. This week's recipe appears a little early, to give you time to round up a fresh, whole fish.
This Sunday night’s Chargers-Patriots tilt is naturally soupier than many of this season’s matchups. (Stay tuned for horsemeat soups when the Colts appear.) San Diego and New England are both regions with strong culinary traditions, though San Diego’s may have more to do with its proximity to the ocean and to Mexico than with the natural culinary genius of its residents.
Given the Charger lightning bolt helmet logo, and New England’s strong chowder tradition, a chowder of electric eels would seem to be the call here. Alternatively, considering the bad blood between these teams, a soup of live fighting fish in a room-temperature court-bouillon would be another appropriate choice. However, here at Serious Eats, we’re all about local and sustainable, so consider a chowder of your local catch instead. For inspiration, we’ll reach back to the championship year of 1918, and the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, available free on the web.
Do note that this recipe calls for whole fish, so get your knives sharp, and call your fishmonger ahead of time. If you are apprehensive about how to handle a whole fish, this video, illicitly obtained by the New England Patriots, may help.
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Posted by The Gurgling Cod, September 8, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Editor's note: This entry marks the first in a series called Sunday Night Soups. Our friend The Gurgling Cod will be concocting them and posting them. And, yeah, it's Saturday as we post this, but that's so you have some time to shop for and cook this recipe. Enjoy! —Adam
Welcome to Sunday Night Soups, where each week Serious Eats will offer a soup appropriate to the week’s Sunday Night Football game on NBC. This week’s game sees Eli, the other Manning, and his New York Giants travel to Dallas to take on the Cowboys. The Texas venue basically demands beef, and a lot of beef, and New York has at least two Koreatowns, and that’s enough of an excuse to make this Korean-spiced chili.
The origin of this chili was Craig Claiborne’s recipe in the New New York Times Cookbook, but necessity dictated a few audibles the first time I made it (Korean red pepper powder for chili powder, and Quaker oats for flour), and they worked out well enough that I’ve been making it like this ever since.
This is more of a stew than a soup, but it is as close as you can get to steak you can eat with a spoon. Starting with cubed—rather than ground—beef produces a texture that is much more interesting than most chilis. You can adjust the heat up or down, depending on your taste, but if the heat seems too much as you cook, add two or three tablespoons of honey.
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