Something like hopping on a plane and almost immediately succumbing to excruciating stomach cramps and then classic and miserable flu symptoms is about the least fun I can think of. This unfortunate fate happened to Mr Firewall, and I have been trying everything in my amateur first-aid repertoire to help him get well and make him comfortable.
One bit was my first attempt to make standard chicken soup. I am not sure how I got to this stage in my life without ever having made basic chicken soup – it just never seemed like a priority. Not to add that it’s not really my favorite soup, and I rarely have chicken on hand. I didn’t even have a whole chicken – only boneless chicken breast, which is far from ideal for this kind of thing. This time, though, it seemed that when Mr Firewall felt like eating again, chicken soup would be just the right thing.
How did I do it?
Quickly sear both sides of two large chicken breasts in about a tablespoon of olive oil in a large Dutch oven or large, heavy-bottomed pot. Remove chicken and set aside. Now you can either chop it into a few chunks to cook in the soup or cook thoroughly in another pot of boiling water to make it easy to shred.
I chopped up one red onion, one large shallot, one (cleaned) leek, two stalks of celery and two carrots and sauteed these in the pan in which I seared the chicken. Saute for about five minutes, stirring a couple of times during the process. At the very end, throw in about four thinly sliced cloves of garlic.
Add two cups of boiling water. In a separate glass, mix a half cup to one cup of boiling water with two chicken or vegetable bouillon cubes and about 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper – mix that into the sauteed veg mixture and let all simmer. Add the chicken now as well. Simmer for about 10 minutes. (If you are or have been cooking and shredding the chicken separately you can wait to add that until the last few minutes.)
After simmering, I threw the chicken in as well as about a quarter of a head of cabbage chopped into thin pieces as well as a handful of baby spinach, also roughly chopped. I also threw in two more cloves of thinly sliced garlic – and voilà – it turned out pretty well.
I have previously documented my obsession with making soup. It’s easy, delicious and makes me happy.
Tonight I threw half a head of cauliflower, cut into smaller florets, into a baking dish with some olive oil, ground cumin and cumin seeds, tossing the cauliflower in the pan to coat. I roasted it at 185C for about 20 minutes.
roasted cauliflower, ready for soup
Meanwhile I made broth in a pot on the stove – I sauteed one small onion in olive oil for about five minutes, threw in two chopped garlic cloves and added about three cups of vegetable stock.
When the cauliflower was sufficiently soft, I removed it from the oven and tossed it into the pot and let it simmer for about 20 minutes until the liquid reduced.
I blended the mixture in the pot using a handy dandy stick blender, returned the pot to the stove and added a bit of coconut milk (you could use yogurt or cream, if desired).
I garnished with a bit of olive oil and a healthy dose of black pepper, but I think some fried onion would be a nice touch.
Campbell’s had it right when they launched their direct, simple “Soup is good food” slogan. (Not to be confused with the Dead Kennedys’ “Soup is Good Food”.)
What they had wrong was that the stuff they sell in tins cannot really compare to real soup or real food. The gelatinous slugs and glugs of “cream of mushroom” just cannot be called soup or food. And most of the more, um, liquefied (?) soups are more like a salt lick in fluid form.
Everyone knows I love to bake – and I bake and bake to the point of exhaustion and then come up with creative solutions for transporting all those freshly baked morsels to my office.
Sometimes, though, I go through cooking phases. I read a lot of recipes and gather inspiration for making real food. Trouble is, during the week I do not have a kitchen. And cooking only for myself is a drag. I need food guinea pigs and lab rats. And much more time at home in my kitchen.
Today I am overdosing on reading the archives of the Smitten Kitchen blog – filled with magnificent recipes, stories and pictures. Of course, what kicked it off was the post yesterday about chicken phở (me being a soup-obsessed wolf eel) caused a great stir in my brain. It also made me scroll through loads and loads of the recipes, dreaming about trying some out, experimenting. But why would I make a beyond-tempting coconut tapioca pudding with mango just for me – if I could even find tapioca with ease?
Soup rarely has a recipe – I write it down sort of, if it works, and maybe try to replicate it again. My Thai red curry carrot soup was an experiment that continues to wow me but other experiments are not as successful.
What will this makeshift onion soup be like? When I made it, I didn’t know.
Here’s what I did:
I sauteed about ten red onions in olive oil in a cast-iron skillet on medium heat. I left this to do its magic for about 30 or 40 minutes. Meanwhile I boiled about four cups of water with one cube of vegetable bouillon, one tablespoon of curry powder and some chopped garlic – I let that simmer until it reduced considerably. When the onions were ready, I dumped them in the broth pot, let it simmer another ten minutes and then blended with a stick blender. Afterwards I stirred in about half a cup of coconut milk – but you could use cream or milk or whatever you want.
Not bad, if you like onions. Actually it is not pretty but it tastes really fabulous – a hint of the caramelized flavor, only a hint of the curry (but it makes a difference) and coconut milk instead of milk or something else gives this a very slight sweetness that plays well off the onion and curry. I am happy with this even though I was scared. I will definitely do this again. Especially because I often have so few things in my house with which to cook – but I always have onions, always have coconut milk – and that is almost all you need for this!
Onions ready for caramelizing and becoming soup
Not pretty but quite yummy – onion curry coconut soup
In the overwhelming tidal wave of television chefs who show up everywhere, there are very few who interest me. I like to look back to the old days of TV cookery to the seemingly awkward Julia Child or the stark raving drunk Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr, filled the screen. Cooking on TV has always been a thing, often relegated to the domain of public television alongside quite tame “educational programming” (which was, fair enough, not always tame – most foreign films shown on American TV in the old days appeared on PBS – and those films are very rarely what anyone would call “tame”. After all, it was on PBS that I first saw the original version – not the inane Guy Ritchie/Madonnaremake – of Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away).
But things change, and everything is fair game as entertainment – even cooking. Enter the era of the celebrity chef, which arguably has made people a lot more interested in cooking stuff for themselves but has unfortunately launched some, let’s say, unqualified characters into stardom. Undeserved? Who knows? If someone wants to watch Rachael Ray, for example, who is a businessperson and entertainer – not a chef – and supremely annoying to boot – that’s up to them. These celebrity “food handlers” (since they are not chefs in many cases) entertain, bring in viewers and that’s the bottom line now that there are entire TV channels devoted to all manner of food, cooking, taking shortcuts in cooking and so on.
Most of these people – I can take them or leave them. Jamie Oliver is one that I could – or thought I could – easily leave. His accent alone bugs me (just for Esteban: “the shit just got reaw” – not even sure how to linguistically render in writing the dropped-off “L” at the end of words so characteristic of Oliver’s speaking), but then the messiness of his approach to food – always getting his hands deeply dug into all kinds of greasy, slimy foods – even to the point that he advocates wearing gloves to do it sometimes – makes me a bit queasy. I can’t pinpoint what exactly it is that annoys me. Even going to the grocery store and seeing his line of pastas and spices and whatnot – that is just too much. The overcommercialization does very little for me. Why would I buy a Jamie Oliver skillet when I can get a much cheaper and superior cast iron skillet and be happier with it? Personally when I buy kitchen goods, I don’t want any pseudo-celeb’s face on it. I will stick with the basics (even if there are times when tools that go beyond the basics and are extremely useful, even if singular in their use – like garlic presses or a “cupcake holer”. I am usually a firm believer in the “for every task, there is a proper tool” school of thought).
For those frequent cupcake-filling emergencies
But I will be damned if I don’t get pulled in every time I accidentally end up on a Jamie Oliver program on TV. I don’t even own a TV at home, so these accidents rarely occur. But because I spend most weekday evenings in hotels, I’ve got a wide range of channels – and twice in the last year, I’ve landed on Jamie Oliver shows and found myself glued to the TV. After he finished each recipe, I prompted myself, “Change the channel, damn you!”
But I was paralyzed. And why? Truth is – he was making stuff that sounded really amazing. Believe me, I don’t use the word “amazing” lightly because I believe it is one of the most overused and misused words in the English language. When someone tells me it would be “amazing” if I could make a tight deadline or deliver a box of cookies for their party, I think “amazing” is definitely overstating the case. But when you can create something that really wows the taste buds without overexerting yourself or spending all day doing it – that IS amazing. I am positively gobsmacked every time I can manage to cook actual food that really amazes someone.
The first Jamie Oliver program I saw (Jamie’s Great Britain, which was a fascinating look at food in Great Britain, in case anyone imagined that food there completely sucks!) featured roasted chicken and potatoes – I have now made both several times to great success, albeit with my own little alterations.
Yesterday, I turned on the telly and it was a program (Jamie at Home) dedicated to pumpkin and squash – be still my heart. He really highlighted the versatility of these kinds of vegetables – making an absolutely fantastic butternut squash soup, a duck and pumpkin salad and some butternut squash spice walnut cupcakes. Naturally I am going to try this stuff out next time I have a guest to feed. I don’t get around to cooking for myself but for others, I will go all out.
Considered, reconsidered – the important thing here is maybe that I can find Jamie Oliver annoying until the end of time, but what he does turns on my culinary curiosities and experimental bent – so he is definitely doing something right. The fact that the recipes are easy to follow and he makes them look easy if you follow a few steps does not hurt – and the results have always exceeded expectations.
Normally I make pumpkin curry soup, which is a serious fork in the road from the traditional Thanksgiving dinner road driven by my predecessors. We never had soup in my family, and if we did, it sure as hell would not have been pumpkin. My mom, the primary Thanksgiving cook, hates pumpkin, and I do not recall that my grandmother had any particular affinity for it either. When I decided to start a new tradition of making soup, I wanted something that incorporated pumpkin (one of the most important Thanksgiving ingredients in my opinion) but that was not dull or plain (as so many pumpkin soups can be). I used curry to give it its kick. Generally when I make this soup, I use coconut milk (making the soup vegan), but at Thanksgiving usually dose the soup with a generous few gulps of cream.
Pumpkin curry soup (You can use pureed butternut squash in place of pumpkin here if pumpkin is hard to find… might even be better that way. I did this year just for a change)
3 tablespoons butter or oil
1 cup finely chopped onion
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon curry
¼ teaspoon ground coriander
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
3 cups water
3 bouillon cubes (I use vegetable)
15 ounce can pumpkin (or the “meat” of a baked butternut squash)
1 cup half-and-half or cream (can replace with coconut milk if you want a non-dairy option)
Sour cream garnish
Melt butter in large saucepan over medium high. Add onion and garlic. Cook 3 to 5 minutes til tender. Stir in curry powder, coriander, cayenne. Cook 1 minute. Add water and bouillon. Bring to boil. Reduce to low, cook, stirring constantly for 15 to 20 minutes to develop flavors. Stir in pumpkin. Blend until smooth. At this point, you could cover and refrigerate the soup for a day. This develops the flavors further and of course means you can plan ahead.
When ready to finish and serve, place soup on stovetop and mix in cream (or coconut milk or half and half). Cook 5 minutes or til heated through. Garnish with sour cream if desired.
I am not a big fan of carrots. The idea of carrot soup does not appeal to me that much, but I am in this soup-making-frenzy phase and had a massive amount of carrots in my fridge. I have made some sort of soup almost every single day, and oddly had never made a concoction of carrot. So….. I guessed at this recipe (unlike baking, you can just throw in ingredients, taste, hope for the best). And I do not have the pickiest or most discerning taste. I will eat this soup even if I do not happen to like it very much. (I can report, though, that the soup is absolutely amazing. I am beyond surprised.)
Thai-spice roasted-carrot soup
2 cups (or more if desired/needed) vegetable stock
10 (or so) medium-sized carrots, scrubbed (or peeled if desired)
1 medium onion
Olive oil
Salt
1 large clove of garlic
Grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons Thai red curry paste
Coconut milk (to preferred taste and consistency)
Put the carrots and chopped onion into a roasting pan with a generous amount of olive oil and salt. I roasted mine for about an hour, checking on them every 15 minutes and stirring them around. I did this at 200C but you could go lower if needed/desired.
While this is in the oven prepare the garlic, ginger and broth in a large saucepan or soup pan. When the carrots and onions are ready, remove from oven and mix them into the saucepan of broth. Bring this mixture to a boil, then cover it and heat on a low temperature, letting it simmer for about 20 minutes. Stir in the curry paste and simmer for another minute or so, until the curry is perceptibly fragrant.
Remove the soup from heat, cool slightly. When somewhat cooled, add some coconut milk and blend until smooth/desired consistency). Add more coconut milk if desired. Garnish with cilantro or mint leaves.
