A Month of Soups: Tomato-Basil

We have a lot of vegetarian friends who wanted soup recipes, and we like to eat meatless each week as well. Tomato-Basil soup fits the bill for both. When you make this soup, I want you to set aside 2 cups of it for a soup we’re making later. Since the recipe only serves 6-8, don’t invite too many people over.

This soup is chunky and heavy on herbs and spices, so get your taste-o-meter out. Add more if you want a stronger flavor. If you like cooking with fresh herbs rather than dried, remember that you use less of the dried because the flavor is more concentrated. Fresh does add a lovely greenness to the soup that dried just can’t match. Typically the ratio is 1-3.

Tomato-Basil Soup (6-8 servings)

30 Roma tomatoes (about 3½ #), halved

¼ c olive oil

3 T butter

1 ½ T flour

¼ c red wine

½ c water

1 T honey

3 cans diced tomatoes

6 cloves garlic, minced

½ c dried basil

¼ t red pepper flakes

4 t dried thyme

1 c vegetable broth

fresh basil for garnish

Coat tomatoes with oil and roast at 400° for ~45 minutes. While tomatoes roast, make a roux of the butter and flour in a Dutch oven. Cook about 3 minutes stirring constantly to cook the flour. Whisk in the red wine, water, and honey until smooth. Add canned tomatoes. Add garlic and herbs. Add roasted tomatoes and mash. Add vegetable broth.

Cook on low simmer for about 30 minutes. The soup will be thick. If you want it thinner, add more veggie broth.

I usually serve this soup with toasted (not grilled) cheese sandwiches and some grapes for contrast.

DH’S Rating: 3 Tongues Up. He is not wild about tomato soup of any kind. But he’s a sport for trying all these soups out, wouldn’t you say?

A Month of Soups: Mongolian Hot Pot

Wow! With today’s blog, seven soups down (literally--down the gullet) and only 22 to go! Almost done! One-quarter of the way through! (Well, it’s almost over in my mind, since I know where this is going and you do not!)

Today’s soup also takes planning ahead. So for dinner last night (instead of other leftover soups), we had Mongolian Hot Pot and there wasn’t even a girlfriend in sight. (See The Girlfriend Test blog entry-- http://bit.ly/A9ZJvg ). No, I did this dinner because I wanted to make Mongolian Hot Pot Soup today.

For the Mongolian Hot Pot dinner, I heat broth of some flavor with onions, carrots, and mushrooms and let it cool down. I strain out the veggies and it is ready to reheat again to boiling in a fondue pot set in the center of the dining table alongside plates of meats and veggies and a big bowl of brown rice. Save those veggies, though. They’ll go into your soup the next day.

The veggie plate has green onion stalks, whole mushrooms, bean sprouts, spinach leaves, and celery and carrot matchsticks. The meat/shrimp plate has about ½ pound of meat per person. I cut thin slices of chicken, pork, and steak. Add some raw shrimp. Put a loaf of bread out, and voilà, dinner is served.

Each person skewers what heesh would like to start with and lets the fork sit in the boiling broth until done to taste. Sometimes one loses one’s food and has to go fishing for it. And of course, your food comes in contact with others’ food, and might be considered, by the squeamish, to be contaminated.

Save the leftover broth, veggies, and meat, and you’re ready to make Mongolian Hot Pot Soup. You’ll have less than a quart of broth, but you can add more if you need to.

This soup is almost as easy as Garbage Soup (which is coming up later this month). The thing is, it is very forgiving and can be adjusted easily since you are not quite sure which ingredients you are going to have left or how much of them. So, chill. Go with the flow. Wind up your Taste-o-meter. It will be delish!

To the broth, add the leftover chicken, pork, steak, shrimp, celery sticks, carrot sticks, bean sprouts, onions, mushrooms, spinach, and any other ingredients you used for the Mongolian Hot Pot. Let it all sit for a while. I just put it all together in a pot at the end of the Mongolian Hot Pot dinner so it sits overnight. Then heat the soup gently until the meat is cooked.

Put ¼ cup of re-heated leftover rice in the bottom of a bowl. Pour the hot soup over it and enjoy!

DH’s rating: Four Tongues Up A light soup but it doesn’t feel like it. Still, you might be hungry again in an hour if you don’t serve it with some other stuff. We use bread and fruit.

Hermosillo Salsa.mov

A Month of Soups: MachacaTaco Soup

Welcome to the Southwest again. You won’t be surprised that lots of the soups and stews on this blog are inspired by where I live!

Today’s MachacaTaco Soup starts at least the day before. FIRST you have to make the machaca beef, a spicy, shredded beef that you’ll serve for dinner in tacos or tostadas.

The recipe I use for machaca beef is from friend and fellow author Annie Weissman. Check her out at www.annieweissman.com

Annie’s Slow Cooker Machaca Beef

2 ½-3# boneless chuck roast

2 T homemade taco seasoning (or one package of commercial taco seasoning)

2 c salsa (use the heat you like--I use mild because of the taco seasoning heat)

Trim off visible fat. Rub roast with taco seasoning on all sides. Put into slow cooker. Dump on salsa. Heat on high for 6-8 hours. Remove roast from cooker and shred it. Discard fat chunks. Return shredded beef to pot liquor. Stir around and let cook another half hour.

Remove contents of slow cooker to a sieve and squeeze the juices from the meat. A 3# roast makes ~4 cups of shredded meat. Reserve 1 cup of the beef and save for later. Use remaining meat for dinner. If any is left, add to the reserved meat.

Put pot liquor into refrigerator and skim off hardened fat before using in the soup.

You might be able to do this with chicken, I don’t know why not, but I’ve never tried it.

Unfortunately (she says, head hanging), I got distracted by the Internet schtick, and the pot of soup kinda burned. Yep. Black-bottom burned. Impossible-to-scrub-off burned. Sigh.

Now, as it turns out that gave the soup a smoky taste that, while not what I was going for, wasn’t awful. In fact, it added that outdoors, southwest vibe hard to get otherwise. Typically DH prefers soup that didn’t burn. However, read his rating below! I may be onto something!

Machaca Taco Soup (serves 8-10)

Reserved juices and meat from Slow Cooker Machaca Beef

(about 2 cups beef and 1 cup pot liquor)

2 cans diced tomatoes with seasonings

1 can Mexicorn

1 can black beans

1 can pinto beans

1 or 2 4-oz cans chilies (optional)

3 c thinly sliced lettuce

2 c fresh diced tomatoes

2 c shredded Mexican cheese

2 large avocado, diced

½ c sour cream

Tostado or taco shells, hard

Corn or wheat tortillas, soft

Mix machaca beef and juices in a pot over medium heat with diced canned tomatoes, corn, beans, and chilies (if adding). Stir. Add broth. Slow simmer for one hour.

Roughly break two taco or tostado shells into a bowl. Pour taco soup over shells. Add lettuce, fresh tomato, cheese, avocado, and dollop of sour cream on top. Serve with warm tortillas, corn or wheat or both! We have apple and orange slices as a side.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up! This soup is an unexpected combo of flavors and textures with all the taco makings on top of the soup. DH said, “It’s great, but isn’t this just chili?” Well, sorta.

A Month of Soups: Pork Posole

Here we are at Day 5 of a Month of Soups. Are you keeping up?

Alli and Gina in my culinary mystery series, “Dinner is Served”, love to make soups and stews. They are nourishing comfort food. Even though there are relatively few cold days in Arizona, still, we do get a touch chilly, so soups are great to eat.

Here’s one of their favorites with a nod to Southwest cuisine. Posole (pronounced POE-SOLE-AY) is a standard stew/soup. Serve with corn bread and hunks of sharp cheddar cheese and tart apple slices for a satisfying dinner.

As with all soups, posole is better the next day or at least several hours later. I always make my soup no later than the morning of the day I am serving it for dinner. Let the flavors and textures get to know one another.

Alli and Gina’s Pork Posole (serves 8)

1 T olive oil

1-1 ½# pork roast, cubed, fresh or leftover

2 c diced onions

4 cloves of garlic, sliced

4 c poultry stock or broth

1 cinnamon stick

¼ t ground cloves

½ t cumin

2 cans (15.5 oz) yellow hominy

2 cans (15.5 oz) white hominy

small can (4 oz) diced green chilies (adding other kinds of peppers can up the heat level)

If the pork is fresh, put in freezer for ½ hour to stiffen it up, then cut into cubes.

Brown the cubes in heated olive oil over medium heat. Remove.

Add onions to the pot and bring to translucence. Add garlic slices. Cook for two more minutes, stirring as you wait.

Add in pork and stir around to coat the meat.

Add broth, cinnamon stick, cloves, and cumin. Stir. Add in white and yellow hominy and chilies. Bring to a simmer. Cook for 45 minutes. Remove from heat and cool until ready to serve. Remove cinnamon stick and re-heat. Serve.

Sometimes I make this with chicken. Delish that way, too!

DH’s rating: 4 Tongues Up! This is filling and has a wonderful blend of flavors and textures.

A Month of Soups: Souper Bowl Beer Stew

Soups and stews. Related but different. It’s a matter of the proportion of solids to liquids. Today’s soup is more of a stew than a soup, but you can make it soupier with more beef broth.

Got some hungry folks showing up tomorrow for your Super Bowl Party? As an aside, and not to offend anyone, but DH calls it “The Super Bore”. But then, he’s a Cardinal’s fan, so what does he know about winning? But, back to you . . .

Everyone serves wings and dips and blah blah blah. Why not make your party stand out from all the others? Make this stew today and re-heat it when everyone arrives. It is much better the second day! It will be a hearty and delicious accompaniment to the cold beer. Serve a loaf of beer bread with it, and, voila! Your reputation as SuperBowl SuperChef is solidified.

Here’s my favorite beer bread recipe: http://bit.ly/9cmtYR I use Guinness Stout in this as well.

Souper Bowl Beer Stew (serves 8-10)

2 T olive oil

salt and pepper

½ cup flour

2# round steak, trimmed of fat, cut into 2” cubes

1 c carrot coins

3 med potatoes, cut into 1” cubes

2 med onions, diced

3 cloves garlic, sliced

2 c beef broth, divided

2 c Guinness Stout (drink the rest as you mix up the ingredients)

1 T dried rosemary

1 T cinnamon

Heat oven to 300°. Heat the oil in a dutch oven over medium heat. Add salt and pepper to flour and mix well. Put in a paper or Ziploc bag and add meat cubes. Shake around to thoroughly coat the cube. Place cubes in hot oil and fry until all sides are brown. Remove meat from pan.

Add carrots, potatoes, and onions to the pan. Cook until onions are translucent. Add in garlic. Cook 2 minutes more. Remove veggies from pan.

Add ½ c broth to pan to deglaze it. Immediately add remaining broth and the Guinness Stout. Mix together. Add spices and mix well. Add meat and veggies back into the pan.

Cover the pan and place in oven for 2-3 hours, until veggies are . Remove and set aside to cool. The next day reheat on the stovetop and dish it up. Don’t expect many, if any, leftovers.

DH’s Rating: 4 Tongues Up. This is a tangy dish. One is not used to an underlying beer flavor, so the first bite catches you off guard. The beer bread enhances the stew’s flavor.

A Month of Soup: Lemongrass Chicken-the leftovers that keep on giving!

Okay, this one takes some prep as in at least a day before. One day I made slow cooker lemon grass chicken, and when the chicken was cooked, I removed it to shred it off the bones. Then, before returning the chicken to the slow cooker, I noticed how much broth there was, so I removed 1 quart of the broth and froze it along with 1 cup of shredded chicken. Then I proceeded to serve my lemon grass chicken as planned.

With the leftover lemongrass chicken and broth, I combined 2 ½ cups cooked rice, ½ package of frozen spinach (thawed and cooked), 1 cup mushrooms, and 1 cup of asiago cheese. I stirred it around a bit and baked it in a casserole dish. Voila! Another meal!

To make the soup, I thawed the broth and chicken and made the soup that follows. FIRST, though, here is my slow cooker Lemon Grass Chicken recipe (which will appear in Prime Rib and Punishment, Book 2 in my “Dinner is Served” culinary mystery series).

Gina’s Lemongrass Chicken (serves 6-8)

8 skinless chicken thighs *

1 T garam masala
2 oz fresh lemongrass, cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces OR 3 T lemongrass paste
1 T fresh ginger, roughly chopped
3 14.5 oz cans low-fat, low-sodium chicken broth
1 t fresh lime juice

1 T lime zest

2 cloves garlic, sliced

¼ - ½ t red pepper flakes (these are hot!)

2 T fish sauce

16-24 Butter crunch lettuce leaves

Pkg of glass noodles, cooked or shirataki noodles, warmed

*Alli rips off as much skin as she can; Gina trims all visible fat with a knife.

Rub garam masala into chicken thighs. Set aside.

Mix lemongrass, ginger, chicken broth, lime juice, lime zest, garlic, red pepper flakes, and fish sauce. Add to a slow cooker. Add chicken and stir around to coat with liquid. Cook on low for six to eight hours.

Remove chicken and shred. Return meat to slow cooker to keep warm in its juices until serving.

Serve on noodles with broth. Spoon into butter crunch lettuce leaves and top with Thai peanut sauce.

Lemongrass Chicken Soup (serves 6)

1 heaping cup cooked brown rice (or Royal rice for more color)

4 cups leftover lemongrass chicken broth, divided

1 cup carrot coins

2 cloves garlic, sliced

1 cup shredded lemongrass chicken

1 cup frozen peas

Cook rice and set aside. Add ½ cup lemongrass chicken broth to soup pot. Add carrot coins and garlic. Cook until carrots softened. Add remaining broth, lemongrass chicken, and rice. Stir. Bring to slow simmer. Remove from heat. Add frozen peas. Let sit 5 minutes. The barely-cooked peas add a nice fresh green taste. Serve.

DH’s rating: 3 Tongues Up The original recipe I made had 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes. TOOOO much. Even though the rice helped tame the pepper flakes a bit, it was still too hot for him as the heat overpowered the underlying flavors. Next time, I’ll use the adjusted recipe above. This is great served with challah!