Posted by Blake Royer, April 17, 2008 at 4:15 PM
Considering the length of most recipes in Judy Roger's Zuni Cafe Cookbook, the eponymous cookbook of her San Francisco restaurant, finding a quick dinner recipe is something of a feat. Every page of her book is awash with meticulous detail about the cooking process, from advice about the shape of diced onion pieces to the flavor a fish stock ought to have when it's just finished (minutes too long on the stove and it can go muddy). Her roast chicken recipe, for example, runs four pages. Yet despite the laborious descriptions of technique (or perhaps because of it), everything I've made from that book has been outstanding: a monkfish stew, that roast chicken, and now, this soup. As she mentions in the recipe's introduction, it's a soup of delightful flavors and unexpected textures.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, April 16, 2008 at 1:45 PM
It's been only within the last year or so that I've acquired a taste for beets. I used to hate the earthy flavor and slightly gritty texture, which reminded me of eating dirt. But my girlfriend loves them, and after many dinners out with beet salads and beet dishes as an appetizer, I've come to savor them in all their variations. So when I found this straightforward Beet Soup with Feta, I knew I wanted to highlight it as one of the Cook the Book recipes this week. The book it's adapted from, The River Cottage Cookbook, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, gives instructions for serving it hot but also mentions that it's good chilled as well, especially if you grate some raw beet on top as a garnish.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 9, 2008 at 12:45 PM
Until last week I never met a mulligatawny soup I liked. It wasn’t that I hated the ones I was introduced to; it was more that they were watery, wan, and forgettable. Usually they were included as part of some deal at an Indian restaurant. I was torn between feeling sorry for mulligatawny, clinging to its place on the menu for people scared to order anything else, and vaguely disdaining it as an Anglo imposition on the Indian table.
Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe intrigued me, though, because it is made with meat and thickened with chickpea flour. Mulligatawny takes so many different forms that it seems almost silly to group all these soups under one name, but most of them do seem to be chicken based and have nothing to do with chickpea flour. I had to try this version, and I’m very glad I did.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 1, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I wasn’t sick, but I did have a lot of leftover chicken. For some unknown reason, I was struck by the need to make the most chickeny chicken soup possible. I had loads of onions and carrots and enough thick stock to make a real meal happen—but I was put off by the long process. The fiancée and I had some wedding plans to attend to and not much time to spend. A crazy chicken soup would have been too much so I downgraded my plans to this highly spiced soup I found on Epicurious.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 24, 2008 at 1:15 PM
Nigel Slater’s luxurious and deeply aromatic noodle dish has been on my poorly-maintained “to-make” list since Amazon delivered my copy of Appetite
four years ago. It was the title that won me over, I must admit, though the pictures are pretty convincing, too: fat shrimp, tangled noodles, a beautiful green purée. One thing and another (lack of Cuisinart, fear of fish sauce) interfered, and I didn’t get around to making it until last weekend. And then—it was too spicy for me to enjoy. I suffered through it with a glass of milk and hoped it would mellow overnight.
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Posted by Gina DePalma, March 18, 2008 at 8:30 AM
Eggs are essential ingredients in Italian Easter celebrations, playing a role that extends beyond the huge, elaborately decorated chocolate eggs that decorate every shop window in the weeks before the holiday.
Eggs were a symbol of new birth and renewal for many of the ancient civilizations predating the Christian era, when they were adopted as a representation of the resurrection of Christ. They evolved as part of the traditional Easter feast partly because they were one of the foods originally forbidden to have during Lent. These traditions are still intact today, ingrained in the mind, heart, and stomach; each region of Italy has its own special recipes for consuming eggs on Easter.
Romans are likely to enjoy a light first course of Brodetto Pasquale at their Easter table, the local version of a soup that features eggs as well as lamb, another iconic Easter food.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 17, 2008 at 4:30 PM
The first of this week's recipes from Arthur Schwartz's Jewish Home Cooking is for Mushroom Barley Soup. I couldn't resist highlighting this one, because a good mushroom barley soup is one of my favorites. I've never made my own, prefering to get a decent one at a handful of delis here in New York, but Arthur Schwartz doesn't make this seem so difficult. The most time-consuming part might be making the chicken soup that serves as a base, but even that's not too crazy—and you can sub in four quarts vegetable broth for the chicken soup and water listed below.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 11, 2008 at 1:45 PM
My Last Supper takes the old "last bite on earth" game to the next level by asking that question of 50 of the world's best-known and most-loved chefs. Though beautifully photographed and almost more of a coffee-table book in size and format, there are some serious recipes in here to accompany the memorable visuals and fun interviews. As this week's featured Cook the Book entry, we'll be highlighting a recipe a day from it. Today's is from Mario Batali, who describes his last meal as a "seafood extravaganza" that would end with this dish, gamberoni all'acqua pazza, or "shrimp in crazy water."
As is always the case with our Cook the Books, we're giving away a number of them this week. Enter to win My Last Supper »
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, March 5, 2008 at 5:05 PM
I’ve had mixed results with blended soups lately. Sometimes it feels like I’m dealing with a wonderfully complex and succulent creation before it goes into the machine, and bland puréed slop afterwards. But I figured Martha Stewart could lead me in the right direction. She combats the blending problems I’ve had by amping up the spice and adding some much needed acidity.
The kick comes from a combination of grated ginger and curry powder, and some tart apples help keep it lively. This comes from The New Classics
, a massive volume with nearly half its paper weight coming from the dessert section. Of course, I gravitated towards the front and picked a soup that sounds rather similar to the curried butternut squash soup I made in the fall. But this is a far more balanced affair.
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Posted by Blake Royer, February 21, 2008 at 4:45 PM
After making Avgolemono a few weeks ago, I've been on the lookout for myriad ways that eggs and chicken stock can be combined to make soup. As sickness comes and goes and the cold of winter makes nothing more appealing than a bowl of chicken soup, new ideas are always welcome. In the case of Avgolemono, whipped eggs whites and lemon juice gave the soup an appealing lightness and acidity, while the result was still rich and chickeny. So when I was flipping through Mario Batali's Molto Italiano
, this recipe caught my eye for its similarity and simplicity.
It's also a little easier to pull off. Freshly grated nutmeg replaces the lemon juice and Parmesan cheese adds complexity and a round flavor. Chopped parsley goes in for freshness, and a little bit of semolina (pasta) flour to thicken. All you need to do is combine the ingredients with a bit of cold chicken stock, then whisk that into boiling hot stock over low heat. The egg breaks up into little "shreds" (stracciatelle), the Parmesan disappears into the broth, and the result is comfort food.
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Posted by Blake Royer, February 8, 2008 at 4:00 PM
Apparently, people are clamoring for Avgolemono, a lemony Greek chicken soup, judging from the 62 reviews for the Epicurious recipe available online, which has a respectable three-fork rating. Personally, I don't have memories of slurping this soup down in some Greek diner on my corner, but many do, especially in Chicago, and they all want a good recipe. The only problem is that actually reading these abundant reviews (a post on Too Many Chefs lead me there) reveals a shake-up: the Epicurious recipe is disparaged as inauthentic. Hardly anyone likes it. Instead, a mysterious cook known only as "Boston, MA" who left a comment in 2002, is repeatedly praised as the provider of an "OUTSTANDING," "SUPER" and "MUCH better" recipe than the original—and many people provide high ratings for her recipe instead. It's just a quick paragraph and comes from the author's experience watching her Yia Yia (grandmother) make it when she was a child. It involves 5 ingredients, including pepper.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, February 6, 2008 at 5:00 PM
"This is a ridiculously easy soup to make.” Well, okay then. Nothing like Anthony Bourdain telling you what to do. I was just innocently flipping through Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, grazing over his faithful French adaptations, when I came upon a recipe that sounded like the perfect Dinner Tonight recipe. How can you go wrong a recipe even he says is the easiest recipe in the whole book?
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Posted by Lucy Baker, January 26, 2008 at 4:00 PM
This past Sunday while my boyfriend drank beer and watched football, I sat next to him on the couch and drank wine and flipped through old issues of the New Yorker. All in all it was a lovely afternoon: the Patriots won (I'm from New England), and I read a wonderful short story, "Broccoli," by Lara Vapnyar. In my opinion, there's nothing better than when a writer blurs the line between fiction and food: "But, most of all, Nina loved broccoli. It smelled of young spring grass, and it looked like a tree, with its hard solid stem and its luxuriant crown of tight, grainy florets. Nina bought a bunch of broccoli every week, along with various other vegetables. She carried big brown bags to her car, firmly believing that this weekend she would find time to cook."
Inspired by Vapnyar's eloquent, evocative prose, I decided to make the Creamy Broccoli Soup with Cheddar Crisps from February's Food & Wine for this week's magazine recipe review.
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Posted by Blake Royer, January 15, 2008 at 4:00 PM
I've been meaning to pick up some celeriac for awhile now, just because it may be the ugliest vegetable in the grocery store. People are always passing it by, poor thing. On the outside it's a tangled mess of dirty, fuzzy roots and knobs, but once peeled it has the faint aroma of celery, a pale color, and a smooth texture. While I always thought it was simply the root of a celery plant it's actually a related, but separate, species. Above ground it grows a few stalks and leaves, but the majority of the growth happens underground in the root. When shopping look for smaller ones, which are tender and have more flavor.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, January 14, 2008 at 2:15 PM
I've been in the market for a good vegetable soup recipe, and this one looks like it fits the bill. It's got plenty of vegetables and even works in corn and potatoes, both of which I love in soups (though I don't recall the last time I've ever had them both in one soup bowl). And maybe the best part of this recipe is that it manages to work in chorizo while still maintaining its "healthy" label. Talk about healthy and delicious.
You could probably skip the chorizo, but if you're doing so to try to follow a vegetarian diet, there's no point—this recipe calls for chicken stock as a base.
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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 Nick Kindelsperger, December 21, 2007 at 4:00 PM
I finally got the courage to make this. Maybe it’s just the title, but it was never something salivated over. I just gave in because of Daisy Martinez, host and author of Daisy Cooks, loves it so. This soup was even in her top 10 hits stuck in the front. So finally, after I realized I didn’t have much else to eat but I always have garlic, I decided to try it.
Out of some very meager ingredients, comes a full and surprisingly luscious soup. I think it was the combination of the andouille and that egg. I was secretly very scared that I’d mess it up, but it turned perfectly. When you open it up, the yolk filters through the broth and thickens it up nicely. Of course, I didn’t realize until right about five minutes ago that I’ve had both onion and garlic soup this week. Good thing the fiance likes me. I wouldn’t suggest this with anyone you’re unsure of.
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Posted by Jenn Sit, December 20, 2007 at 1:30 PM
Whether you're bearing bitter cold times or basking in sunny California—nothing screams comfort food like tomato soup and grilled cheese. So if you're looking for Cozy In a Cup to take the bite off a long day (freezing or not), skip the canned condensed stuff, and check out the creamy tomato soup recipe from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics. It's a simple recipe that would go great with the macaroni and cheese recipe from earlier in the week or its irresistibly buttery, gooey best friend: grilled cheese. Lately, I've been experimenting with floating a slice of crusty bread covered in melted cheese atop the soup (making it French Onion Soup's crazy cousin) with slurptastic success.
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Posted by Blake Royer, December 18, 2007 at 4:00 PM
I didn’t know much about miso before I picked some up at the grocery store the other day. Since then I’ve learned that it is a Japanese fermented paste that contains grains or soybeans, sea salt, and a special mold called kōji-kin, and is aged anywhere from a few days to a few years. It's used to flavor sauces, as a marinade for meats, and as an integral part of soups. Miso is also praised for its health benefits, including loads of amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and digestive enzymes. The flavor is very subtle yet quietly rich, with a nice fermented tang.
The best part is that you’re not even supposed to cook it much; all the hard work has been done for you in the fermenting, and excessive heat hinders its health benefits. So a miso soup can be as simple as bringing some water to boil, adding vegetables, cooking them until tender, and stirring in miso paste off the heat. With temperatures dropping, a rich, simple soup was just what I needed. I went to the website of South River Miso, who made my Three-Year Barley variety (it turns out they’ve been profiled in the New York Times and adhere to old traditions like blending up their mixtures by stomping on them with human feet), where they offered a recipe called Miso Soup 101.
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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 Nick Kindelsperger, December 7, 2007 at 4:30 PM
I don’t usually screw around with avocados. They don’t cook particularly well, smelling almost egg-like after a while. But I wanted to explore the world outside of guacamole for a change. A chilled avocado soup sounded perfect. No cooking at all, just some blending and chilling. I was going to be led by none other than James Beard (whose mug adorns those nifty book awards) and his James Beard's Theory & Practice of Good Cooking
. How could this fail?
Maybe I just didn’t know what I was getting myself into. All I could taste was the heavy cream, which wasn’t necessarily offensive, but obtrusive enough to cloud the fact that I was eating avocado. Besides their distinctive color, they seemed to simply disappear into the milk. After a few spoonfuls, I pushed my bowl to the side and sighed. Too bad. Anyone have a good avocado soup worth sharing?
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Posted by Robyn Lee, December 7, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Soup rarely appeals to me (too much liquid, not enough chewing), but when the weather is bitterly cold (like now), nothing fills up your inner crevices as well as a bowl of hot, chunky soup. Tom Colicchio's simple diced potato-leek soup combines diced potato, leek and bacon in chicken stock flavored with butter and chives. You've got your vegetable, starch and meat all in one spoonful. Although it make go without say (since Colicchio didn't mention it), make sure you wash your leeks thoroughly before using them—otherwise you may find yourself eating a potato-leek-bacon-dirt soup.
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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 Jenn Smith, November 13, 2007 at 4:20 PM
Ed introduced the concept of an assisted Thanksgiving with yesterday's confession of a semi-homemade holiday, and I say, why stop with the big classics of stuffing, sweet potatoes and pie? Nancy Silverton's A Twist of the Wrist collects ideas that rely on high-quality ingredients that come in "jars, cans, bags and boxes", resulting in tasty dishes in 30 minutes or fewer. Start your elaborate Thanksgiving dinner with a simple bowl of soup, made elegant and smoky with a garnish of bacon.
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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 Nick Kindelsperger, October 8, 2007 at 4:30 PM
I’m ready for hearty fall soups. But with Ohio temperatures in the high 80s the past week, much of that enthusiasm has been tempered by reality. It still feels like weather for lighter fare, even if my heart is craving something heavy. So even though I had a butternut squash searching for a real heavy base, I looked for a little lighter soup to showcase it, or at least not one loaded with cream.
I pulled this from Ellie Kreger, a fine lady most known for her healthy recipes. It sounds an awful lot like the potato and fennel concoction that had glorious potential but didn’t really gel, especially the blending trick at the end. But for some reason, this one did. The fiancée enjoyed hers so much she had it for breakfast the next day. That’s a sure sign of success if I ever knew one.
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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 Adam Kuban, October 5, 2007 at 1:15 PM
And so we've come to the end of the road with this week's installment of Cook the Book, the late James Beard's Beard on Food.
"Lentils," Beard wrote, "might have been devised for winter meals. They are a marvelously nutritious, satisfying, and economical food, and to me, their flavor is more interesting and distinctive than any of the beans, except perhaps the fava."
And while it's a probably a little early to start thinking about winter, I don't see why you couldn't make this soup on a chilly fall day.
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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 Adam Kuban, September 26, 2007 at 3:15 PM
This week's Cook the Book entry, How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons, is all about where the foods in the produce aisle come from, when they're at their best, and how to pick a prime example of whatever it is you're in the market for. Today's recipe gives you something to look forward to, since its starring ingredients are the hardy cooking greens of winter—mustard, kale, collard, beet, turnip, and chard. Southern Comfort Soup, makes good use of them, so be sure to bookmark it for the day these greens really come into season. The recipe follows after the jump, but first a couple of tips on greens from Parsons.
- How to choose: Greens should be rigid and firm, not wilting. Avoid greens with black spots on the leaves, which are a sign of breakdown.
- How to store: Greens should be refrigerated immediately in a humid environment, such as the crisper drawer. Keep them in plastic bags, but if you're going to store them for very long, slip in a paper towel to absorb any condensation.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, September 21, 2007 at 4:00 PM
I picked this one from 1,000 Vegetarian Recipes—a book that I never thought I'd flip through—because I came home with a hole gob of apples from the farmers' market. Sure the pepper, potato, and fennel get much of the credit in the title, but let us not forget the tart apple that provides the nice kick to this quick fall soup. It feels well suited for the colder weather rolling in.
I’d probably skip the last step. After 25 minutes of slow-simmering, the apple, fennel, and leeks combine beautifully but still hold their own when spooned apart. Once blended with the potatoes, some of the flavor gets muted. I guess it matters if you like your soups smooth or chunky. That’s kind of a personal question. Either way, the whole process gets wrapped up in 30 minutes.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, September 14, 2007 at 4:20 PM
I was thumbing through Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat, when I came across a sentence that immediately caught my eye. As soon as I got to the soup section, before any actual recipes were listed, she details how the make the “the quickest and best soup you can make.” It has five ingredients. It takes all of about four minutes to complete.
I was so caught up in the convenience that I didn’t really notice she was talking about pea soup. It’s not something I’m usually clamoring for, but it was unbelievably easy and surprisingly tasty. I’d definitely make this again, though I’d probably fiddle with some additions. I added a little shot of balsamic vinegar for some sweetness to make it even more delectable.
Of course, this is nothing compared to Batali’s latest post. Did you all read that? That’s dinner tomorrow night.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, September 14, 2007 at 2:45 PM
The last of the week's Cook the Book recipes is for Peanut Soup. It's a soup that John T. Edge reminds us in Southern Belly, was "au courant in the mid-1970s, when a farmer from Plains, Georgia, took the oath of office." It's also a soup that has fallen out of favor, with a few holdouts still serving it, such as the Hotel Roanoke, in Roanoke, Virginia, from which this recipe is adapted.
If you'd like to read more about other Southern delights, grab a copy of Southern Belly for yourself.
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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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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 22, 2007 at 8:30 PM
Speaking of corn, today's Cook the Book recipe makes good use of the vegetable—along with two of the season's other usual suspects, tomatoes and cucumbers. The contrast of colors is as pleasing to the eye as it is to the palate.
The recipe, of course, is from Patricia Wells's Vegetable Harvest.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, July 27, 2007 at 4:00 PM
There are simple soups, and then there is this guy. I pulled this one from the Silver Palate Cookbook, an old '80s standby. It's a solid collection, and one that I've flipped through often. But I was struck when I came across this little ditty, a soup that looked much too simple to possibly be any good. I decided to put it to the test.
The most difficult part of the recipe is tempering the egg so it doesn't curdle. Otherwise, it's not much different from boiling rice and tossing in some lemon. But somehow, this soup tastes much more luscious and creamy than it has any right to be. They say it tastes good both hot and cold, but I'll vote strongly for the former.
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Posted by Ed Levine, April 30, 2007 at 6:00 PM
And here's the first recipe of the week from The Silver Palate Cookbook 25th Anniversary Edition.
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