Post #102 ~ Quick and Savory Onion Soup

It all started with my mother putting some weekend leftovers in a bag for me to take with me this week.  As usual, she was finding lots of other things to squirrel away in my tote.  She's a good mama.  So I had only one reply in mind when she held up a handful of onions and said, "Want some of these?"

Sure!

Upon arriving back at my apartment, I noticed that I had about six baby heirloom tomatoes left in my crisper which were starting to look sad and wrinkly.  They were good for tossing or stewing, and I can't bear to toss food. In fact, I find it kind of a fun game to see what meals I can throw together using a few of these and a little of that - stuff that would be thrown out but could also come together to make a meal or two.

And so, the onion gift and sad little tomatoes were an inspiration for me to throw together a quick soup for lunch today (and a second bowl for later this week!).  So this could be a quick meal for two, or... two quick meals.  Or the title of a very strange children's book.

Here's what you'll need:

~ One cooking onion
~ Several sad little heirloom tomatoes
~ Two or three cloves garlic
~ Splash (or two) of whatever red wine you have lying around.  I'm fairly sure white would have worked fine, too.
~ Four beef bullion (more or less, according to your taste)
~ One bay leaf and random herbs on hand (I used dried oregano and basil)
~ Tsp sugar
~ Tbs or so EVOO
~ Coarse ground sea salt

I used a medium sauce pan, even though I'm fairly sure it's not normally conducive to soup.  I was only making a small batch, anyway, and I think the expanded surface area helped it to cook quickly.  I halved the baby heirlooms and diced up the onion, and tossed them into the pan with some EVOO and salt.  I let them sauté away before adding some sugar and letting them caramelize.  While they were cooking, I boiled two cups of water and poured it over the bullion and bay leaf in a separate cup.

I chopped up the garlic and added that to the onion and tomato.  By now, things were starting to smell super good.  I added the wine and then the broth.  I sprinkled some herbs over all and let the soup simmer away, stirring here and there, for about 15 minutes as I ran around tidying my apartment.  Then I spread some bread with some leftover hummus (about a tablespoon full that I had saved with the hopes of using it for something later!).  I popped the bread in the toaster oven as I turned off the heat on the soup.

When the toast was done, I ladled some soup into a bowl and enjoyed the meal that came from leftover ingredients!  And there's more for this week!

Yours in the love of good food and the "waste not, want not" mantra I grew up with,
AL


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The blogger is not an experienced chef. She takes no responsibility for the quality of the meals prepared while following her advice. Use your own judgment regarding cooking times and proper food handling.

Ninety-Ninth Post (One more!) ~ Cooking with Lentils

This past week, I was on a cruise with my family in the Caribbean to celebrate my grandmother's 80th birthday.  I've got to say, all the good food made me really miss blogging.

Don't get me wrong - I've been cooking and eating LOTS of good food over the last few months - I just haven't been blogging as much as I'd like.  Hopefully, that shall change.

Certainly the inspiration to reach 100 posts will help nudge me!

So, while we were on this cruise, I ordered a phenomenal pork roast dinner.  The pork was fork-tender.  The bread was crackle-perfect and the wine robust.  But what really stole the show for me (I'm sure to the chef's chagrin, should he have known) were the perfect little lentils spread under the roast.  I was immediately reminded of how much I love these little beans.  Perhaps it's because they're tied to a memory.

When I was a junior in college, I had a schedule during the winter months that allowed me to take a morning class and then drive back to my apartment for a breather before heading off to night classes.  I had, if I recall, about an hour and a half total for a break.  I'd throw my bags on the floor, take off my shoes, and prepare a hot lunch.  More often than not, it was a bowl of Campbell's soup (I wasn't such a cook back then).  One of my favorites was lentil soup.  I'd line up a re-run episode of Frasier on my DVR, sit with a heating pad on my back to relieve the chill and eat hot soup, relish in a good laugh, and, though I didn't know it at the time, build memories of my very first apartment and independent young adulthood, memories that will stay with me, steeped in nostalgia, forever.

So as I tasted the lentils, these memories came to me, and I told them to my family.  We talked about how food can be so closely tied to memories, and I resolved myself to return home and blog the very first meal I cooked.

Which happened to be lentil soup.

About which I knew absolutely nothing.

So I hit up AllRecipes, and came across this one.  I decided that my first foray into lentils would be well-instructed.  If this venture went well, I'd continue on unassisted.  One of my favorite aspects of soup is that it can be (and in my and my mother's opinions, SHOULD be) a laissez-faire kind of thing.  I decided to alter the ingredients a little to make it a bit more "throw-in-a-pot-and-walk-away."

Here's what you'll need (and as you can see, I followed the original recipe very closely but with a few substitutions in method - I'm not trying to pass this recipe off as my own!):

~ 1 (12 oz.) bag Wegmans pre-cut, pre-washed course mirepoix 
~ 1/4 cup EVOO
~ 2 cloves chopped garlic (although I think I'd press it next time)
~ 1 tsp each dried basil and oregano
~ 2 bay leaves
~ 1 (14.5 oz.) can tomatoes in whatever form you can find them in (I ultimately found "diced in juice")
~ 2 cups dried lentils
~ 8 cups water
~ good handful baby spinach, rinsed but not cut
~ splash red wine
~ fresh oregano
~ salt

I pre-measured everything before I even turned on the pot.  Doing so makes for faster dump-and-go soup-making.  While the original recipe calls for chopping onions, carrots and celery, I decided to cheat with the pre-made mirepoix.  I started the EVOO simmering and dumped in the whole bag.  I let it cook until the onions were nearly translucent, then added the garlic and the herbs (and wow, did THAT smell good!).  I added a good amount of salt at this point.  I let it cook the recommended 2 minutes, and added the tomatoes, lentils and water.  I walked away for an hour and change, coming back to stir it occasionally and take in the fantastic aromas.

Finally, I turned off the heat and let it sit for about an hour until I was ready to eat.  I turned it back on and added the final ingredients.  The original recipe calls for vinegar.  In my opinion, wine just makes me happier than vinegar.  Unless we're pouring it over curly-cue french fries.  So I added a splash of the Carmenere I got for this meal.  The recipe also calls for sliced spinach, but I opted to go for baby leaves so I wouldn't have to do anything to them.

I let the soup bubble for a few minutes while I changed into my PJs and poured the wine (mine is a comfortable household).  I ladled the soup into my bowl and topped it with a bit of fresh oregano.  Then, I grabbed my soup, grabbed a crusty rosemary roll from Wegman's bakery to go with it and grabbed my glass of Carmenere and sat down to enjoy.

This Chilean wine, by Arboleda, was on sale at the wine shop right around the corner from my old apartment (see?  I told you I was feeling nostalgic!).  It's full, ripe, rustic, and steeped in berry flavor.  It made a fine companion to this meal.

The soup also did not disappoint.  The lentils were tender and flavorful, the vegetables were perfectly cooked, and the fresh oregano gave a punch of bright flavor to the stewed ingredients.  I feel as though I may have found a new favorite bean!  Versatile enough to be a side or a main course (as well as being healthy AND inexpensive), this is not the last you shall read of lentils from THIS accidental chef!

Yours in the love of good food, wine, and nostalgia,
AL


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The blogger is not an experienced chef. She takes no responsibility for the quality of the meals prepared while following her advice. Use your own judgment regarding cooking times and proper food handling.

Ninety-Seventh Post ~ Hearty Tomato Vegetable Soup

Today's high was 63 degrees, and I was in heaven in my jeans and hoodie.  I'm what you might call an "Autumn-Winter" person, and today's weather made me feel the change of the seasons and rejoice with it.

And what better way to rejoice than through cooking?

I decided to make a pot of vegetable soup to enjoy throughout the week.  With that decision in mind, I went a little nuts in Wegman's produce department.  Here's what I got, but you can choose any veggies you wish!

~ Carrots, onion and celery (for the classic mirepoix base that my family seems to gravitate toward for all things soup)
~ Acorn squash (if Autumn were a veggie, this would be it)
~ Portobello mushroom (for the sheer sake that I've never cooked with one before)
~ Largish tomato
~ Zucchini (locally grown, of course)
~ Handful leftover fingerling potatoes
~ Fresh herbs (rosemary, sage and oregano - As Wegmans didn't stock any, I found myself giggling over the pun-ready thought, "Why, I won't have any THYME this week!")
~ Four beef bullion
~ Dash white wine
~ Sprinkling of white pepper
~ One clove garlic, coarsely chopped
~ ...And one mystery ingredient which shall be exposed later

So I went home and set to merrily chopping my veggies.  I had about a half-pot full of water (my traditional dutch oven in which I make all my soup) boiling at this time, and into the pot went the coarsely chopped celery, onion and carrots, soon to be joined by the dash white wine and herbs.  Next went some fingerlings.

I pierced the squash and microwaved it for one minute to make slicing it easier.  Then I cut it in half, scooped out the seeds, and cubed it and tossed it in the pot, skin and all.

Next went the portobello, the zucchini and the tomato, skin on as well.  After that went the garlic and the pepper.  By now, things were starting to smell real good.  The problem was that it was tasting a bit bland.  I added some beef bullion and a bit more salt, but to no avail.  Just at that moment, my mama called.

: : PAUSE : :

Somewhere in our ancient history as humans, mothers leaned with their daughters over the crude vessels they had fashioned to hold the night's stewed offerings, whispering to them that if they just added a pinch more of that, or a dash more of this, it just might be a bit more like they remembered it from their childhoods.

Truly, life has changed little since then.  I cheerfully announced that I was making a stab at vegetable soup for the first time, and my mother suggested...

Spaghetti sauce.

Seriously.  I was a little befuddled too.  "Or," she said, "I would add V8 juice to our vegetable soup.  That's what gave it that kick you liked."

So THAT'S why the V8 juice would show up in our cart when I would join my mother for trips to the store.  God knows I'd never DRINK the stuff...

: : UNPAUSE : :

So since I didn't have any V8 juice around, I thawed out a frozen third of a jar of Wegman's spaghetti sauce from the freezer and dumped it in.  The soup slowly took on a more minestrone appearance and smell and - yep - it started to smell more familiar.

(I peeked at the ingredients, and aside from the olive oil, all of the ingredients in the spaghetti sauce were ones I had added already - onion, tomato, salt, spices, garlic... but perhaps in more concentrated form).

I slowed it down to a simmer, tasting here and there.  I'm new at vegetable soup, and after turning off the heat and letting it sit for a while, I was surprised to find that the rind of the squash stayed in tact with a bit of flesh left, but the pulpier parts of it seemed to naturally incorporate into the broth, giving it a wonderfully sweet taste and rich texture.

I enjoyed a bowl of it for dinner along with a few slices of a multigrain baguette and a glass of Tall Poppy Shiraz.  All in all, a satisfying meal that I'll enjoy throughout the week!

Yours in the love of good food and wine (and a few words from the wise),
AL

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The blogger is not an experienced chef. She takes no responsibility for the quality of the meals prepared while following her advice. Use your own judgment regarding cooking times and proper food handling.