Making the new year happy

“This is the worst Christmas vacation ever!”  said Isaac on Friday evening before bed.  And he was right.  Starting Christmas day, somebody in the family was sick every day, and for a few days it was three out of the four children.  And when that happens nothing gets done.  The dishes don’t get washed, the floor doesn’t get mopped, the boxes don’t get recycled, and the blog doesn’t get updated.  But here, on the eve of their return to school, Daddy made up for all that by making a grand dessert.  

Karen started things off with the perfect dinner, as usual.  Then I got to make the dessert from a cookbook received as a present from my now-favorite sister in law.  It’s by George Duran, the “Ham on the Street” guy, and he calls it Chocolate Soup.  I can see already that I’ll get a lot of use out of this one.  When describing this dish George says “I love soup.  I love chocolate.”  And yeah, it was good.

But really, is it possible to mess up a recipe with this many ingredients?  

Probably, but this was good.  It wasn’t silky smooth or divine or anything, but it got rave reviews around the table.  It was like eating really good hot chocolate with a spoon from a bowl.  You know, like fancy people do.  So thanks to Aliyah, I promise we’ll make this the next time you visit.

My new favorite mushroom soup

I’m always up for trying new soup recipes.  I already had a recipe for cream of mushroom soup and I liked it, but I wanted to try a different one anyway.  Why, you may ask?  Because it calls for morels.

A while ago I purchased two packages of dried morels off the internet.  Each of these wonderful little 1 oz. packages is equivalent to 8 ounces of fresh mushrooms.  I had one left and I was itching to use it.  So when I saw a recipe calling for wild mushrooms like morels or porcini I knew I’d be in fungus heaven.  

The first step was to make a veloute.  I have no idea what that is, but I followed the recipe.  He said to puree the mushrooms raw and add them to the soup at the end, so that’s what I did.  I’m not sure why, though, because there was another whole step after the veloute was complete.  So if you’re not confused enough, here’s what I did:

Morel Soup

Ingredients:
1 medium onion, finely chopped
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter
3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Madeira
1 quart chicken broth
1 8 oz package white button mushrooms
1 8 oz package cremini mushrooms
1 cup heavy cream
salt
pepper

Cook the onion in butter in a soup pot over medium heat, stirring often to prevent browning.  When the onion turns translucent add the flour and stir over medium heat for 5 minutes more.

Add the Madeira and broth, whisk the soup to get rid of any lumps, and bring it to a simmer.  Simmer for 5 minutes.

Put the mushrooms in a blender and add 1 cup of hte hot soup base.  Blend the mushrooms on high speed.  Add liquid as necessary.  When this is done, add everything back into the soup and add the cream.

That’s the Veloute (I guess).  To finish the morel soup, place the dried morels in a bowl and add just enough Madeira (Yay!) to cover.  After about 20 minutes, remove the morels. Transfer the soaking liquid to a saucepan and simmer the morels in it for 5 minutes.  Carefully lift them out and into a bowl with a slotted spoon so that any sand stays in the pan.  Pour the liquid through a strainer lined with cheesecloth to remove any sand.  Place some morels into each of four serving bowls.  Pour the soaking liquid into the soup base to combine, and serve over the morels in the bowls.

I’m not sure if it was the Madeira or the morels (maybe both?), but this was one awesome soup.

Ben’s reach

Monday was Panera day since nobody wanted to cook. We brought home our wonderful goodness, and since it was kind of cool and rainy I got potato soup. Ben didn’t want to sit in his high chair so he was sitting on my lap as I ate. It was an interesting exchange. Ben was holding a spoon because he likes to hold things, and I was trying to see if he’d let me feed him. He was squirming and not cooperating. In all honesty these days he’s a little more adverse to oral stimulation. Ben’s getting in a few teeth and he’s been making such progress with physical development that I guess the oral motor skills took a back seat. And that’s my fault.

At one point during dinner Ben dropped the spoon he was holding. It fell to my right, so I leaned over to get it. As that happened I guess I leaned Ben forward just a bit, and he saw something else that he wanted to play with. The Styrofoam bowl that the soup was in. By the time I came back up with the spoon (total elapsed time: 0.7 seconds) the bowl was tipped all the way over, and the soup dripping off the table.

So Benjamin is coming up with some pretty creative ways to put an end to any physical / occupational therapy sessions Mom and Dad try on occasion. Luckily it was a thick soup, so it didn’t all land on Ben and my lap.

A good night for soup

Freezing cold temperatures, rainy weather. Good for two things. Staying in bed and eating soup. I made the soup and Karen made the sandwiches with some leftovers that she threw together after coming home from work.

I was shocked to look back and realize that I’ve never posted about my cream of broccoli soup. It’s such a staple at our house; we have it about once a month during the winter. I’m sure Karen’s getting sick of it these days, but the boys seem to enjoy it. I took the recipe from my favorite soup cookbook and made a few minor modifications.

On an episode of Kitchen Nightmares Gordon Ramsay gives his recipe for a broccoli soup. It consists of broccoli, water, and salt. He pits it against someone else’s and asks a “random” taster “which one tastes more of broccoli?” His may taste more like broccoli than mine, but I’d rather eat mine any day of the week.

If you’re interested in reading my ceaseless ramblings about the making of this soup, feel free to click <more>. But I won’t force you to.

The Football Gods like soup

To the City of New York: This sentiment comes courtesy of the fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills, your own New York Jets, and most recently the Washington Redskins.

Thank you.

That being said, I did my part and I’m sure everyone will agree that the deciding factor in Super Bowl XLII was my Manhattan Clam Chowder. I hope to be hearing from team officials regarding compensation for my contribution to the outcome of the game. And if any other teams would like my assistance I’m willing to discuss terms.

The Chowder Bowl

I decided to make my Super Bowl pick this year based on soup. And since I’m really hoping the Giants win, I chose Manhattan Clam Chowder. My premise was that the Giants’ fate would be the same as my soup. If my chowder is awesome, the Giants win. I will be playing the role of star quarterback Eli Manning. But I’ve never even tasted Manhattan clam chowder, so you can see that the G-MEN were pretty big underdogs. Here’s how the game went:

WEEK OFF: Eli Manning doesn’t like the coaches’ game plan, so he changes it.

My soup cookbook (from the Culinary Institute of America) instructed me to shuck the clams from their shells, reserve the liquids, and cook the clams in the soup. That sounds really hard, so I decided to steam the clams first, keep the stock for the soup, and put the clams in at the very end. But first things first, I had to clean these things. A sandy soup means a happy Monday in Beantown. I saw on allrecipes.com to soak the clams in fresh water for 20 minutes or so and then scrub them down. Later I read somewhere else that you should change the water and repeat the soaking process twice, but it was too late by then. So I soaked them in a big bowl:

WEEK OFF: The Giants lose some star players to injury.

The book called for four dozen clams. That sounds like a lot of clams (just look at how big those clam shells are) so we decide to use two dozen instead. Yes I said “we.” I’d never make such an important decision by myself, would I? In fact I never considered using four dozen clams. After all, I’m a clam expert.

SUPER BOWL WEEK: The Giants go through a week of successful practices.

While the clams were breathing all the sand out of their systems I diced up some leeks, carrot, celery, and red bell pepper.

GAMETIME! FIRST QUARTER: The Giants’ smallest player scores early.

Two strips of bacon. One would think that such a small amount of volume, when compared to the amount of soup prepared, wouldn’t make much difference, but it would go on to serve the soup well. When the bacon was crisped I put in the diced veg and some kosher salt to sweat.

SECOND QUARTER: The Giants start to miss their injured star players. They thought they had enough men. The Giants’ offense stalls, and Eli’s confidence is shaken. The Patriots take the lead.

The clams took about 5 minutes to steam open (at least that’s how long I steamed them before opening the lid), and Karen helped me by taking the meat out of the shells. It turns out that the meat does not take up all the interior volume of the clam. I’ll remember that next time. See those beautifully opened clams up there? All those clams in the pot gave us this much meat:

THIRD QUARTER: The Giants’ defense keeps the game close.

I strained the liquid from steaming the clams through 3 layers of cheesecloth (to get rid of any remaining grit). I put it and three cups of clam juice, along with two canned plum tomatoes (seeded and chopped) into the soup pot with the veg. This is the part of soup making that I know how to do, so I started feeling good again.

FOURTH QUARTER: Eli remembers his running game. The Giants start to mount a comeback.

Round about this time Karen said “What about the potatoes?” I look at the recipe and, sure enough, I had forgotten about the potatoes, so I peel and dice up two russets and toss them in and leave it to simmer for about 20 minutes.

FINAL TWO MINUTES: The Giants’ star players return to the field for one final scoring drive.

The soup complete, I put the clams back in just before serving.

FINAL SCORE: A short-handed Giants team in over their heads scores the winning touchdown as time expires. The margin of victory is the score from the first quarter contributed by their smallest player.

When all was said and done, the soup was a success. It’s amazing, we really could taste that little bit of bacon in the soup when it was finished. Yes, it would have been nice to have more clams but it came out very nice. Karen made a nice salad and some of her home made Italian bread and that was dinner. Giants win, Eli Manning is the Souper Bowl MVP.

So there’s my pick, Giants over the Patriots. What about you? Who ya got?

Just like Trinidad, only freezing

This was our second annual “Trinidad Weekend.” The time in the dead of winter where we cook nothing but Trinidad food. The only thing is that it didn’t make it seem any warmer. I picked this weekend because it was so cold. But next year I think we’ll do it around Carnival.

So no, it still seemed cold this weekend but it went well. I made some doubles (more on that later), Karen made curry chicken, channa & potato with bus up shut roti on Saturday, bake and shark for lunch Sunday, and stew chicken with macaroni pie and pigeon peas for dinner Sunday. Good times. I finished the weekend off on Monday with a solo run on Mummy’s oxtail soup. Well, not completely solo, Karen made the dumplings.  I followed her recipe exactly, and noticed some things that I apparently forgot to write down. But I managed it all right and Karen said it rocked. And guess what secret ingredient I added:

Do you see it in there? Yes, I know it looks like witches’ brew, but pay attention. I added a habanero pepper in to the soup, just like everyone says you’re supposed to. It didn’t burst, and the soup wasn’t hot at all. And it looked a lot nicer in the bowls, too. Even Jonathan and Ben tried some and liked it. Ben likes all my soups. Good boy.

Tonight we dine in Hell

Bad movie tie-in, I know. But the smoke from this one was so caustic that maybe it’s not too far off.

I started with the typical inspiration: The Soup. I’m getting pretty cocky these days with soup, adding and replacing ingredients as I please. It hasn’t ended in disaster so far. This time I took the recipe in the book as just a general outline to follow since I obviously know more than those hacks at the Culinary Institute of America. Sorry, but when you hear the words potato and sour cream what do you think? Chives. It’s not rocket surgery.

So I had a good idea for the soup, but what about the sandwich? We’ve got chicken breast, but how many different kinds of chicken sandwiches can you come up with? Well, I had this recipe from Mario Batali’s cookbook for a whole roast chicken called The Devil’s Chicken (Pollo al Diavolvo). It involved rubbing the almost-cooked chicken down with a paste of dijon mustard and crushed black peppercorns. But the true beauty of this recipe was the “salad” side that he included. It used flat leaf parsley, halved cherry tomatoes, and red onions sliced thin. We’ve made this with lots of different dishes, and even used it in sandwiches before. Karen has added sliced baby cucumbers into the mix somewhere along the way as well. So I took this idea and turned that paste into a marinade for the chicken breast. Way cool, Mark’s the hero.

I’ve said it before. When I’m cooking meat on the stove top I use high heat. I don’t know why, so don’t ask. The end result tends to be smoke. The dinner isn’t always ruined, but sometimes the windows get opened in January. And it’s worse on the second floor. You see, we’ve got this set of stairs from the kitchen to the second floor so all the smoke goes straight up. Add a quarter cup of black pepper to the fog and you’ve got something that’s near impossible to breathe.

The chicken was scorched past recognition cooked perfectly, and the soup was also a hit. The compliments sounded something like this:

“Good *cough* dinner, hon. I really like *choke* the *cough* chicken. *hack* “

For the second time ever in her life in my cooking career, Karen didn’t need to add pepper sauce. A quarter cup of black pepper will do that. I, however, needed a half gallon of milk to make it through the meal. And some eye drops.

In praise of soup

This is what Pennsylvania looks like this week:

That’s Fahrenheit folks, not Celsius. So what’s the cure for all this cold and snow? A plane ticket to Trinidad? Probably, but soup is cheaper.

There is nothing on earth that warms you up like soup, so to all you prospective visitors from the Caribbean be warned. I’m a soup nut.

Luckily Karen had suggested Italian wedding soup this past weekend and we had all the ingredients on hand. That way I didn’t have to leave the house and go to the store. Lots of accidents out there. In the past we’ve built a Frankenstein soup using these two recipes:

Wedding soup from Food Network Kitchens
Wedding soup from Giada

This time I used Giada’s recipe straight up. Except for one thing. She said to grate the onion. Onions are wet and slippery and I like my fingers thank you. I diced it as small as my knife would make it. Wedding soup is pretty easy once the meatballs are made. I made them kind of big this time, it was tough to judge at the beginning how big they would turn out. And some of them fell apart in the soup. Who knows, maybe that’s supposed to happen. I’ll keep thinking that way.

Neither recipe called for acine de pepe, but we put some in anyway. We like it. Karen dumped in about a cup. And it turns out that a cup of acine de pepe is approximately 12 billion little pasta balls.

Soup was good and Karen was pleasantly surprised to see it already making when she came home.

Beans are neither musical nor fruit

It started out as a simple search for a can of chicken noodle soup. I opened up our pantry and started moving around cans of beans, tomatoes, and broth looking for this elixir of life for Jonathan, who isn’t feeling well. He’s been puking every night after dinner. It started this weekend, and oddly enough, I cooked all weekend. So I’m looking for chicken soup but we don’t have any. What we do have, however, is beans.

Black beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, baked beans, refried beans, black eyed peas, if you want beans we have beans. In all we had twenty-five cans of beans in our pantry and I thought to myself “Well, the boys can’t have soup tonight, but I can.” So I took two cans of black beans and made some black bean soup. My next problem came when I made the soup. Now I’ve made this soup before. You take two cans of black beans, a tomato, some cilantro, cumin, oregano, some hot peppers and some water, blend it all together and then heat it to a simmer.  Simple, and it always tastes great. But this time I had this really big deep green poblano pepper that I used, and holy cow if that soup didn’t look green when it was all said and done.

It didn’t come out in the picture, but trust me it was green.  With Karen’s help I tweaked it enough to save the flavor but the presentation would make Shrek proud. New rule: For the black bean soup use red peppers.

So the title is a little boring; Karen told me I couldn’t use the word “fart.”