The Joy of Soup

Mary Beth's Veggie Lentil Soup

Mary Beth - maker of quilts, herder of cats, guardian of fruitcake, owner of the OXO peeler - writes about soup:

Dear Soup Lady, I've been enjoying some recipes from other websites, and thought I'd share the soup I made today. Use whatever sort of meat you'd like for the ham. Sure to be OK.

Hearty Veggie Lentil Soup

In a big soup pot, saute:
vegetable oil
two onions, diced
4-5 cloves garlic, mashed
1.5" thick slice of ham diced (I used turkey ham)

When onions start to turn golden, add:
2-3 quarts of water
1 one pound bag of lentils
5 carrots, diced (about 1/4"")
5 stalks celery (ditto)
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste
fines herbes
dried parsley

Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer until the lentils are cooked. Add:
one 28 oz can of pureed tomatoes
one small can ,b>beef stock, if desired
more water if needed
4-5 large leaves of kale, large stems removed. Stack the leaves and slice into 1/4" ribbons, simmer until the kale is cooked.

Leave uncovered to reduce stock slightly. Just before serving, add a good bit of grated fresh parmasean cheese to each bowl and ladle soup into the bowl.

I like that image: "... slice into 1/4" ribbons ..."

Steve's Portuguese Bean Soup

Inspired by the Congress Cooks! entry, Steve from Hawaii writes: face=georgia>Dear Soup Lady, I was surprised to find that none of the Hawaii Congresspeople mentioned this staple of Island parties in the Congress Cooks recipe listings, so I thought I'd submit it for your kitchen tests. Please note it contains cabbage. This one is pretty standard; as you might guess, there are
lots of variations. It's quite ono (good, in the local language).
Enjoy! Steve ( aka Linkmeister ) . There's a reason they call him The Linkmeister.

Portuguese Bean Soup

Ingredients:
2 cups (1 lb) red or pink beans
2 quarts boiling water
2 lb Portuguese sausage
1 onion, sliced
2 carrots, diced
3 potatoes, diced
1 small cabbage, chopped
1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
2 tablespoons salt
1 quart water

Procedure: Wash beans and put in a large saucepot. Cover with boiling water and let stand one hour. Cut sausage into 1/4-inch slice; add with onion to the undrained beans. Cook on low heat for 1 hour or until beans are tender. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer 1 1/2 more hours, adding more water if necessary. Makes 12 servings.

Source: http://www.hawaii.edu/recipes/pork/portbeansoup.html
Submitted by: Residential Services Division Organization: Hawaiian Electric Company

Charles' Spanish Stew

Charles from sixdifferentways writes about his Spanish Stew:

The Soup Lady said I could send a stew recipe and it would still count as soup. I lost the recipe for this stew long ago, but make it often enough that I basically have it memorized by now. I call it “Spanish stew.” I think the original recipe was in some magazine or something, as being typical of a dish made in Spain. The southern region near the French border. This was discovered in college. It’s the
best kind of meal: delicious, easy, one-dish, freezes well for those times when
you are short on time, and relatively cheap. Some of the ingredients are a bit
pricey, but you have to figure this recipe makes two dinners for two and a couple of lunches. I still bring leftovers of this for lunch. It is better than
anything you can buy out.

Spanish Stew - footnotes included*

1 – 1 ½ pounds of beef or lamb stew meat, cut into cubes [1]
¼ cup of flour
olive oil
1 – 1 ½ heads of garlic (not cloves and NOT chopped)
4-5 whole shallots (NOT chopped)
1 – ½ cups good dry red wine [2]
2-3 carrots, sliced
2-3 stalks of celery, sliced (I like including some of the leafy parts)
½ cup mushrooms, sliced (optional)
5 or 6 WHOLE new or small white or red potatoes
7 or 8 whole cloves
1-tablespoon oregano
2 tablespoons other dried herbs [3]
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper or a few dashes of hot sauce (optional, but I am from Texas)
½ cup fresh-grated Parmesan-Reggiano (pricey but so
worth it)
1/2 cup good quality fresh black olives (i.e., not in a jar or
tin)
(optional) 2 pinches of saffron
(optional) 1 baguette or other fresh bread – this is really part of the stew, a necessity and not “on the side”, even though it’s on the side.
Salt [4] and fresh-ground pepper.
a few tablespoons of European butter

To make this, you need a slow cooker, sometimes called a “crock pot.” (I suppose you could use a pan over low heat, but a crock-pot is one of the best inventions of the 20th Century. Everyone should own one. You can make stuff and forget about it. It won’t overcook. It won’t heat up the kitchen in the summer. It is idiot-proof.) You will also need a food processor of some sort or maybe a blender.

Toss the cubes of meat in the flour. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and brown the meat until slightly browned all over. Spoon all this into your crock-pot. Stick the whole cloves into the potatoes. Add all of the vegetables and herbs except the saffron, and wine to cover. Turn the crock-pot on for several hours (6 hours or less turn on “high”, 8-12 hours on “low.”)

After this time, you need to take a slotted spoon and carefully remove the potatoes, garlic cloves, and shallots. Remove the cloves from the potatoes best you can. Chop the potatoes a bit and add them back in. Here is the essential trick: This stew is not thickened by flour or anything like that. The mashed garlic and shallots thicken it. So take the whole garlic cloves and shallots, and add them to the food processor with a bit of the juice and the saffron. Process until you have a thick paste. Use a spatula and scoop every bit back into the pot. Continue to cook on “high” for another 2 hours or more. Taste for seasoning. You may want to add a tablespoon or so of extra virgin Olive oil to finish if you use no olives.

Serve in bowls with a sprinkling of the parmesan and the sliced bread. If you want to be really decadent, finish each bowl with about 1/2 a teaspoon of the butter, in the French manner. The butter is good on the bread, too - but the stew is rich enough you don't really need it if you want to cut back on the fat a bit.

I think that’s it. I may have forgotten something, I’m just writing off-the-cuff. However, it should be very good. It's stew, you can add other vegetables or seasonigs or whatever you like or have around. Play around. You’ll like it.

Note: This is really good if you keep it in the refrigerator overnight
after you cook it. It also freezes wonderfully. In fact, if you have a big enough crock-pot, make double the recipe and freeze some for a quick meal later.

* Footnotes:
[1] Being Spanish, you could probably also use some seafood instead – shrimp, crabs, etc. Just don’t add it until about the last 15 minutes of cooking – and maybe use white wine instead of red.
[2] You should always cook with wine that is, at least, drinkable. “Cooking wine” is an abomination and should be banned. This is cheap, leftover wine that is salted so much it can be sold as cooking wine and not a beverage. You see no cooking wine on grocery shelves in France. There is a reason for this. You don't have to use great wine for cooking, but it should be decent.
[3] I like to use a quality fines herbes or “Herbs from Provence” mix, from Morton and Bassett in San Francisco. They sell it at a lot of markets here or http://www.mortonbassett.com - which has chervil, rosemary, tarragon, lavender, marjoram, savory, tyme, and parsley. Use whatever you like, but some rosemary and tarragon in the mix are recommended.
[4] Like a lot of slow-cooked dishes, one trick is to season this throughout the cooking stages if possible. I like to add a bit of kosher salt in the beginning. After processing the garlic and shallots, I’ll add a pinch of pink Alaea Hawaiian sea salt, Tinged pinkish from contact with iron oxide inherent in that region’s waters, large crystals of this unique Hawaiian sea salt add complexity to the dish (it’s great on any grilled meat or vegetables, too.). Right before serving, a sprinkling of snow-white a French fleur de sel, in particular that gathered only in the Summer from the ile de Re. Yes, I have eight different salts in my cupboard and none is a cardboard cylinder of iodized stuff with the slogan “when it rains it pours.” Though that will work, too. I am just a saltophile.

Cheers, Charles!

Lee's Chicken (or Turkey) Soup

Lee of Simply Lee writes:

Dear Soup Lady, Recently while browsing through one of my favorite recipe books I ran across a little tidbit of soup history I thought you might find interesting. The following excerpt was taken from page 395 of the Betty Crocker New Picture Cook Book published in 1961:

" 'Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!' wrote Louis Carroll. In fact, 'la soupe' has been the name of the evening meal in parts of rural France for hundreds of years - and the name of our evening meal, supper, is derived from it. Even today these French folk are dipping their spoons into steaming bowls of 'pot au feu.' This soup, in which the French housewife uses meat bones, vegetable tag ends and herbs, is always cooking slowly at the back of the stove and flavors blend while the soup smiles and chuckles but never laughs in a full rollicking boil.

Another present-day word which is a part of the fascinating history of soup is 'restaurant.' A popular soup of the 16th century was called 'restaurant' because it was believed to have 'restorative' powers. A chef printed the name over his door to announce that he was serving it, and in time, restaurant came to mean a place where all foods are served.

Nations have become known for distinctive soups: Italy for Minestrone, Russia for Borsch, France for Onion Soup and Bouillabaisse, China for Bird's Nest Soup and the East Indies for Mulligatawny. Here in the United States regional soups are proudly acclaimed: chowders from the East, gumbos from the South, hearty vegetable soups from the Midwest and fish stews from the West coast. "

As one can easily tell from the above passages, soup has long played an important role during meal times across the world, and it may well be one of the most common traditions shared among nations. Another common tradition, at least in my neck of woods, is chicken soup. During the cold winter months there is nothing better or more "restorative" to be found on the table, and I thought it only fitting that I should include a recipe for this old favorite from the above mentioned book. Also please note that turkey can easily be substituted for the chicken and one might find it to be an appealing way to recycle those upcoming holiday leftovers. Hope you have an opportunity to enjoy it over the coming weeks!

Sincerely, Lee of SimplyLee

Chicken (or Turkey) Soup

2 cups cubed cooked turkey or chicken (1" cubes)
turkey or chicken carcass
1 cup chopped celery (several stalks)
1 carrot, sliced
1 onion, sliced
6 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
4 cloves
salt

Remove meat from carcass of turkey and set aside. Crack bones and place in kettle. Add skin, bouquet garni (peppercorns, bay leaf and cloves in cheesecloth bag) Cover with water. Simmer 2 hr. Cool slightly. Remove bones and bouquet garni by straining. Add meat and vegetables to stock. Chill. Skim off fat. Add salt to taste. Simmer until hot.

Dave's Sauerkraut Soup

The Soup lady often hears from people who like to share their soup experiences. Letters, recollections and ramblings about soup will be featured
here. The first Soup Guest is Dave Roberts, who shares his grandmother's recipe for Sauerkraut Soup.

Hi, Soup Lady! All recipes from Lee Park are By-Guess and By-Golly. When I tried making the comfort foods of my childhood, they came out surprisingly well just from memories of playing in the kitchen while Mom and Gramma cooked. (Pie dough or bread dough was my Play-doe.)
I didn't have the ingredients fresh out of the back yard garden or chicken yard,
but I was pleased with my results. Here is my best recollection.

Sauerkraut Soup:

Without benefit of getting Sauerkraut from the crock in the cellar where cabbage in brine and vinegar was being pressed and turned into Sauerkraut,
here goes...

2 jars of Klaussen Sauerkraut (is that a pound each?)
A package of Pork Spareribs (2-3 pounds?)
Medium to large onion
Some Allspice (10?)
Some Cloves (5?)
Bay Leave (1 or 2)
Caraway Seeds (at least a half tsp. to 1 tsp.)
Cracked Black pepper
Salt
Some new potatoes

Brown the spareribs in your stockpot in a bit of bacon grease that you save in a 3-lb. coffee can in the fridge. You can substitute oil, but why bother. Slice the onion into rings and the rings into halves. When the spareribs are halfway browned toss in the onions surprising them. Let them get opaque.Add about 8 cups of water, the allspice, cloves, bay leaves (be sure to break the bay leaves in half) and caraway seed. Bring to a boil then cover with a tilted lid to simmer for about 1 1/2 hours until the meat falls off the bones. (Skim away the froth if you like.

The alternative method is to transfer the soup to a different pot after it reduces and the froth is stuck to the side of this pot or just wipe away the stuck froth with a damp rag.) Remove the bones from your stockpot. You can also take the meat out at this point and slice it up to a manageable soup size. Toss the meat back in and add the sauerkraut including the sauerkraut juice**. Let it simmer another half hour.

Peel and quarter your new potatoes. Boil them, but not till they are too soft. Remember these will go into a soup that will be heated and re-heated. Drain the potatoes saving the water for your plants that love starchy water. Add the potatoes to the soup. Correct the seasoning at this point adding more water if desired. Let it stand while the potatoes absorb the sauerkraut flavor. Serve it with thick slices of Jewish Rye or Pumpernickel.

This is a great "second day soup". When you remove the pot-o-soup from the fridge on the second day, simply scrape the layer of coagulated grease from the top. Gramma used to love to spread this grease on a piece of warm rye bread. How she lived to 93 is a medical mystery.

If you really want to really do this right, make a stock using a ham bone and the herbs and spices listed above. Using this method, when you remove the soup from the fridge on the second day it will be totally congealed and look like Sauerkraut Jello. Actually a variation on that soup uses stewed tomatoes and smoked kielbasa, but I prefer that as a sandwich.

You can try this one too. Cut a ring of smoked keilbasa into hotdog sized pieces. Add a jar of Claussen sauerkraut drained. Season with caraway seeds. Dump in a jar of stewed tomatoes and heat thoroughly. Serve on your favorite hoagie bun. (Mom usually cut the kielbasa in half lengthwise for each sandwich.) When I was a kid, I called these "Yoagies" for YUM and HOAGIE.) Dave Roberts,
onewhoknows

**The Soup lady recommends rinsing the brine from the sauerkraut before it is added to the pot.