Taste the soup!

I love a last moment to shine. On this chilly, rainy Spring day I thought about split pea soup on the way to work. I don't like hot soup in the summer. I just can't do it. Maybe some tortellini with broth, but no chicken noodle, no kale cold remedy soup, no spicy Asian broth-y pho-like anything.

Forgive the horn tooting, but I am a master soup blender/puree-er. In a professional kitchen, when you are first relegated to the salad station, after you prep your station you get to do the tasks no one else will do. In some cases not even the illegal immigrant hires will do these tasks. Peel grapes. Surgically remove veins from raw foie gras, puree soup. Not "make" soup mind you - this is after another chef has crafted the soup it gets passed to you. First you puree the soup with a home-depot version of a hand blender, then into the almighty Vita Mix blender, strain through a chinois "chino fino" in kitchen Spanish, using a ladle to press the solids. Depending on the soup sometimes you'd have to repeat this ordeal. White gazpacho was the worst. Trying to get stale bread and almonds smooth was an uphill battle. If I never see another chestnut again I'll be OK. Later on in my past career I never worked the grill station that put out the soup so I never got to make soup and pass it to an alternate peon, but I relished being done with those tasks when I took on hot appetizers & risotto.

Translating this skill to my home cooking life, I especially love soup during a week when I'm trying to only spend $50 on groceries for 7 days, when it's cold, and when there is an odd leftover. I can build an amazingly fast soup with a rotisserie chicken, some boxed stock, carrots, spinach and pasta (a MacGuyver recipe!) but I adore pureed vegetable based soups. One I make repeatedly - sweet potato with caramelized onions. I roast sweet potatoes, slice and caramelize a load of onions, and combine them with some stock in the food processor. Swirl in some apple butter and it's an elegant first course. Simmering some vegetables with onions, maybe garlic, and stock and then pureeing is the method for any veggie soup. This works for cauliflower, mushrooms, peas, asparagus, parsnips, and carrots. For carrot soup I like to throw in a load of ginger and big scoop of peanut butter, and garnish with wasabi peanuts. Easy. Cheap. When I want a garnish for cauliflower soup I slice up some Aidell's chicken apple sausage. For tonight's split pea I made a quick ham stock with the Easter Ham bone, sauteed onions in olive oil, added the split peas, stock and herbs with a bay leaf wrapped around it and puttered around facebook while it simmered. Then I pureed it, put it back in the pot, and added some leftover ham and shredded carrots because peas and carrots are funny together.

Maybe this summer I'll work on some cucumber soups (garnish with curry-coconut sorbet??) but I am retiring the soup portion of my dijon colored Le Creuset 6 QT until the fall.

Negative x Negative = Positive

In a quick review of my latest posts, I've been cranky. Very cranky. It's reflective of my mood of late. In celebration of flowers blooming and dormant things making a return this month, I will bring some positivity to this blog.

Last week I made a super tasty pork rib roast. There were 5 ribs that I Frenched poorly as I haven't done it since culinary school. I seared it with some Penzey's tandoori spice, S&P and pan roasted it with onions and apple juice in the bottom of the pan. After roasting, I pureed the onions, juice and drippings with some applesauce and just a dash of BBQ sauce. It made one of the most interesting sauces I have ever had. The onions caramelized during roasting, the juice and apple sauce made for awesome texture and just the right level of apple flavor. It was grown up pork chops and apple sauce. I made cornbread cakes on the side, sauteing jalapenos and scallions, and dropping batter on top of them. In my head this sounded easier than making cornbread, but the procedure was make corn bread batter and fry it rather than let it bake all by itself. Maybe I was drawn to the fried aspect. I wasn't thrilled with the combo of corn product and apple sauce. Next time I'll try moderne latkes of sweet potato! If I had a BBQ joint, or a steak house, this would be on the menu. I guess this is as positive as I get. :)

Dinners No Longer in My Repertoire

It really is true, nothing tastes just like Mom made. In my case, I crave my Mom's meatballs and chicken parm. My husband noted that while mine don't taste like my Mom's, they are more culinarily correct and upscale. That's fine and dandy, but as the years of her passing saunter by, food is one of the ways I honor our time together. Because eating them is often a disappointment now, I am reluctant to make them.

This instance occurs in my new family as well. My sister in law and I have been thoroughly instructed to master my Mother in law's coleslaw, Jewish apple cake, and mashed potatoes. Despite wonderful instruction on each of the recipes, we often fall short of transporting our husbands back to the dinner table of their childhood.

What familial food do you crave?

Morimoto I'm Not

I have been thinking about sushi all week. I had it 3 times last week. My new favorite store bought sushi is from Whole Foods. Their varieties made with brown rice are quite filling and there's never a question about freshness. Of all the things I have made, sushi isn't one of them. I consulted the honorable Mr. Bittman on the makings of sushi rice. What I produced wasn't bad, but was a bit overcooked. I poached shrimp in a quick dashi of ginger, scallions and soy. Lined here with spicy Sriracha mayo & cilantro. Note: this photo shows unrolled sushi with a bit too much rice.



A completed roll with some lettuce. I wasn't adventurous enough to make an inside out roll or a larger maki.











The table complete with pots of tea for everyone, and some chirashi sushi with shrimp and black sesame seeds in rice bowls. This meal really fed my soul.

Clams with Chorizo Almejas con Chorizo

Our wonderfully exciting Friday night meal.

Chicken under a brick. Pollo al mattone

Every passionate cook has a dish they've always wanted to make. Chicken under a brick is mine. Right now, I'm the closest I've ever come to making it. I have all the ingredients, even went to Home Depot to buy bricks. Each night, something comes up resulting in an alternate dinner. The, "It's too late, I need to make something fast." excuse yielded manicotti with leftover sauce. Last night's, "I had a few too many drinks to be handling bricks in my kitchen." resulted in calling out for a stuffed meat lovers pizza. All tasty - but not the intended meal.

I've seen this recipe in countless cookbooks which I consume like novels. It's been featured on all the cooking shows worth watching (not Giada and her cleavage). The recipe is memorized as if I prepared it in a professional kitchen nightly for years. But has yet to make an appearance at Chez Lisa, my home kitchen.

The recipe is more of a method as opposed to an ingredient list. Take 1 tasty fryer chicken. Remove the backbone and butterfly it. Remove keel bone connecting the breasts. Cut off the wing tips and the last joint of the legs so they don't burn. Marinate if desired. The dish is native to Tuscany so I will marinate in Chianti vinegar, some of my costly olive oil, lemon thyme and garlic. Maybe I will push some lemon zest under the skin to protect it from burning. Grey salt and pepper and into a heavy skillet it goes, skin side down. Before the skin sets in the pan, I will weight each half of chicken with 1 cement brick wrapped in foil. Saute on medium for about 20 minutes. Remove bricks, flip chicken and finish in a 400 degree oven another 20 minutes. Why bricks? At over 5 lbs. each, they will cause the skin to become duck crackling crispy. Because the meat is pressed, it will have a nice meaty texture and the flavor will spread throughout so the bird will taste like happy poultry as opposed to, well, chicken.

I had fun sharing the recipe with the Home Depot clerk. He inquired as to why I would purchase only 2 bricks. Often they are sold by the pallet. He never anticipated that they were for cooking. And at only $.41 each, they're the least expensive cooking equipment I own!

Googling 'chicken under a brick' yields many worthy results, including another great blog that inspired this one, Gastronomie. Her recipe states that it's time to turn the chicken, "when the smell from the kitchen causes your husband to start drooling." Indeed, husband drool is a side effect of tasty dinners. That is why our apartment is littered with coffee cans. People think we dip, but no, there's a husband in captivity here.

Tonight I will try hard not to let anything take me away from the intended meal. I'll serve it with a warm salad of haricot verts with the same Chianti vinegar, olive oil, Dijon mustard, cucumber and onion. Of course, I'll be back to share the triumphs.