Loaded Baked Potato Soup

When I was a teenager I spent a large portion of every weekend at the mall. Sadly, Robin Sparkles didn't visit the Crystal Mall in Waterford, Connecticut, so my mall visits didn't have a theme song.  However, the visits had a common theme and it was the food court. As a chubby adolescent, I loved the mall food court. My eatery of choice was one in which you could get a baked potato with all the toppings you could imagine. I have no idea if this establishment still exists in the Crystal Mall as I avoid the mall like the plague whenever I'm in Rhode Island, but here's my soup homage to the wonder that was the loaded baked potato store.

For my version of a loaded baked potato soup, you'll need: 1/8 pound pancetta, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 chipotle in adobo, 3 large baking potatoes, 1 small broccoli crown, a few tablespoons heavy cream, fresh chives, cheddar cheese and some salt and  water (which I forgot to include in the picture).

First, dice the pancetta into small bits and dump it into your soup pot. Turn the heat onto medium-high. If you have a fan or hood over your stove, turn that on too.  Cook the pancetta until the fat has rendered, at least 10 minutes, being sure to stir it frequently so it doesn't burn. 

Meanwhile, mince the garlic and chipotle in adobo.  Set them aside together.

Next, peel and dice the potatoes.

Depending on how quickly you work, by now the pancetta should be rendered. Add the garlic and chipotle to the pot, stirring frequently for about 2 minutes.

 

Next, add the potatoes and stir to mix. Now is a good time to add some salt as well. In a move uncharacteristic of my usual behavior, I added a lot of salt, like a tablespoon (go ahead and judge).

 

Then, add the water. I added about 5 cups.  Increase the heat to high to bring the soup to a boil.  Boil until the potatoes are cooked through.

 

Meanwhile, divide the broccoli crown into small florets and set aside.

Once the potatoes are cooked remove the pot from the heat and coarsely mash the soup with a potato masher. If you're looking for a smooth soup (which I was) also blend the soup with an immersion blender.  If the soup isn't as smooth as you'd like (which mine wasn't) also add some heavy cream or milk, and blend again until you're happy with it.

 

Return the pot to heat and  add the broccoli florets.  Cook for about 5 minutes until the broccoli are cooked.

 To serve, top with some fresh chives and shredded cheddar cheese. Enjoy!

Roasted Squash Chipotle Lentil Soup

The inspiration for this soup comes from one of the students at work who just happened to get engaged (I had to quell my excitement because said student doesn't know me that well and also doesn't know how much I love, love, love weddings and would very much like to plan his). On Friday, over lunch, him and I had a rousing conversation (well, to us) about just how easy it is to make stock and how gross it is to make stock from chicken feet. The people surrounding us at the table were not nearly as enthralled with our conversation. Possibly least enthralled was our vegetarian boss. Anyway, we got to talking more in depth about soup and he said something about throwing a chipotle pepper in regular old lentil soup and I thought that was brilliant.

Here goes a very spicy Roasted Squash Chipotle Lentil Soup. you'll need: 1 butternut squash, 1 yellow onion, 4 cloves of garlic, 3 parsnips, 2 chipotles in adobo, some hot smoked paprika, salt and pepper to taste, a cup or so of lentils, and a 1/4 cup of peppadews.  Where's the broth you may be wondering. I just used plain old water.

First, preheat the oven to 350. Second, make smarter decisions than I did.  In my defense, I was making this at 7:15 on a Sunday morning, because I was wide awake and instead of acting like a normal person and enjoying some coffee and a newspaper, I made soup (and a spinach lasagne). Yeah I'm nuts.  However, Brian woke up to the smell of roasting veggies, so that's pretty awesome. I guess there's a perk to having an insane wife.

Start with the onions, slicing them into rounds, and peel and coarsely chop the parsnips.  Arrange these on the bottom of your roasting dish, coat with a bit of olive oil and sprinkle with paprika, salt and pepper.  Next the butternut squash.  You really want to peel this before roasting it as it will make your life easier later (trust me, I failed to do this). Then halve the squash, remove the seeds, and place it on top of the onion, cut side up.  Lastly, peel the garlic, but leave the cloves whole. Place these in the round part of the squash. Coat the squash with a bit of olive oil and again sprinkle with paprika, salt and pepper.  Roast for about 50-60 minutes or until the squash is done.

While the veggies are roasting, mince the peppadews.  What's a peppadew? First and foremost, peppadews are delicious. They are delicious stuffed with goat cheese, and in hummus and just out of the jar. I ♥ them. I literally shrieked and did a little dance in Trader Joe's when I found them there. I have one jar in my fridge and another in the pantry right now, in case of peppadew emergency.  But I digress, peppadews are a sweet and spicy pickled peppers. They are also a topping in this soup. If you can't find them, you're really missing out. Go find them. Go harass your local grocer until they are stocked. You will not be sorry.

Once the veggies are done, puree them, however you'd like. I opted for the food processor as it is the most efficient. Here's also when I realized I should have peeled the squash first. Cutting hot squash from its skin was not fun. I also added about one cup of water to assist in the pureeing process.

Once the veggies look smooth and liquid, add the 2 chipotle peppers.  You may opt to add fewer peppers unless you like really hot soup. I think that eating excessively spicy food is a good way to ensure portion control, so I went a bit overboard with the spicy.

Next, transfer the squash puree to a stock pot.  Add about 5 cups of water and bring to a boil.

Once a decent boil erupts (gross, right?), add the lentils.  I fully intended to add more than a cup of lentils, but that was all I had in my pantry. It's taken me over a year, but I finally cooked an entire giant Your Dekalb Farmer's Market container of lentils. I think this is a victory.  Cook for about 20 minutes until the lentils are done.

Because I write this blog either 1) at the end working/dog walking/gym-ing/choreing on a weekday or 2) while drinking on a Sunday, I often do dumb things. Today's dumb thing was deleting the pretty picture of the finished soup. It was so cute, with a spoon full of minced peppadews topping it. Just picture it. It was cute. Most importantly, the soup was delicious. I hope you an enjoy, even without a final picture.

Quinoa Peanut Soup

Happy New Year!  Yes, I know it's January 10th, also known as Snowpocalypse in the great city of Atlanta thanks to 6 inches of snow coated with a tenth of an inch (and increasing) of ice.  Needless to say, I'm home, enjoying my first snow day in at least 7 years and futilely trying to convince Brian that sledding is lame and I will not do it. I'd much rather sit around and drink some salted caramel hot chocolate and share this delicious recipe for Quinoa Peanut Soup with all 10 of my readers. In full disclosure, I found this recipe on the delightful Fork, Fingers, Chopsticks and adapted it for my own taste.

For this tasty treat, you'll need: 3/4 cup quinoa, 2 stalks of celery, 1 medium onion, 2 sweet potatoes, 2 jalapeno peppers, 1 green bell pepper, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 zucchinis, 3 roasted red peppers, chili flake, oregano and cumin to taste, 4 cups of stock, 4 cups of water, and 1 cup of peanut butter.

 

First, rinse and drain the quinoa.  You may be wondering what in the hell quinoa is. Well, it's a tasty little grain-like seed with fantastic nutritional value. The one thing to remember when cooking with quinoa is that you must, must, must rinse and drain it prior to use to remove the seed's natural coating. I used a fine mesh sieve for this step and set the sieve aside to drain.  If you can't find or don't want to be bothered with quinoa, I suggest using barley, orzo or Israel cous cous instead.

Next, dice the celery, onion, green bell pepper, sweet potato and mince the jalapeno.  I peeled the potatoes as well, and diced everything up so that they were all roughly the same size.  Side note, I've taken to watching The Food Network's Worst Cook in America show because it's a little like watching a train wreck. Last night's lesson was all about mise en place and dicing vegetables in identically shaped pieces. Both techniques were like rocket science to the contestants on the show. I was dumbfounded.  

Now for the rest of the veggies, mince the garlic and dice the zucchini and roasted red peppers.  If you prefer fresh red peppers, feel free to leave the roasted ones out and add a fresh one. I tend to stay away from red peppers unless it's summer time since they're always like $4.99 a pound in non-Summer months and that's absurd.

After about 30 minutes of chopping, it's cook time. I elected to use my cast iron dutch oven for this baby.  I heated it over medium heat and added a bit of olive oil. Then went in the celery-onion-peppers-potatoes and about a teaspoon of red chili flake.  Cook for about 15 minutes until the potatoes are softened.  If you're using a cast iron cooking vessel, you'll want to stir this pretty frequently since things have a tendency to stick.

Next, goes in the garlic-zucchini-peppers.  Also, throw in about a teaspoon of dried oregano and tablespoon of cumin.  A bit of salt and pepper wouldn't hurt either.  Stir all this up and cook for another 2-4 minutes.

 

Now, the stock of your choosing.  First, add only about a cup and scrape the bottom of the pot with your spoon to release any tasty bits stuck to the bottom.  Then, dump in the remaining 3 cups.

Also, add an additional 3-4 cups of water.  Alternatively, you could only use water or only use stock. You do want your total liquid volume to be around 8 cups.

Finally, add the quinoa. Increase the heat to bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.  Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes until the quinoa is cooked.

When the 15 minute simmer time is up, give the broth a taste. Mine was nicely spicy on account of the two jalapenos. I was quite pleased since the soup had the potential to be bland as it was just vegetables.  However, it wasn't finished just yet.  Measure out a cup of peanut butter.  Then ladle out about a cup and half of the soup broth.  Using a whisk, fork, blender or whatever you'd like, mix the peanut butter and liquid until smooth, then add it back to the soup.  Stir to mix and cook for another 5-10 minutes.

 

This soup turned out a little thinner than the soups I usually make, but it was very, very tasty. Tasty enough that I'm pretty sure I'm going to make this for a soup swap a friend and I decided to hold later this month. Enjoy!

Angela Stew

Angela is one of my oldest friends from high school. By a unique turn of events, she'll be spending New Year's Eve in Atlanta this year and I decided to honor said occasion with soup, especially since I'm trying to get her to move here and I need to show her that Atlanta is awesome, and not as ghetto as she thought it was the first time she was here when I lived in the Projects.  Slightly complicating my cooking is the fact that Angie is a vegan. I couldn't be further from a vegan, after all, Brian and I have bacon fat in our fridge right now. However, vegan soups are super easy to make. Angie, I hope you like this, there will be some in my freezer for you once you get here.

For this Angela Stew (or mushroom-barley stew if you don't know Angela), you'll need: 3 cloves of garlic, 1 onion, 3 carrots, 4 stalks of celery, 2 parsnips, some veggie broth, a bit of white wine, random fresh herbs if you have them lying around, bay leaves, some spicy seasoning to taste, 2 leeks, cremini mushrooms, kale, barley and canned diced tomatoes.

The first few steps here are optional.  All three of my vegetarian friends always comment that store bought vegetable broth is gross. Since I pretty much only use meat-based broths (which I find tasty), I took their word for it and set out to jazz up the broth a bit. If you like the taste of vegetable broth or are using another broth you like, then skip all this. If not, mince or finely dice the garlic, onion, carrots, celery and parsnips.  I also peeled the parsnips and celery because I didn't want to scrub them.

Next, go foraging for herbs.  I found this frozen rosemary outside. I used a huge sprig since rosemary is hearty and I knew a little ice wasn't going to harm it.

Next, heat a bit of olive oil in a large stock pot over medium heat and throw all the veggies in.  Cook these for about 5 minutes.

Then, add the vegetable broth.  I only bought a 32 ounce container, and I knew I would need more broth that that, so I also added about 16 ounces of water.

Now add some white wine.  I really only added this because the bottle had been open in the fridge for a week while I was away on Blivmore Holiday Road Trip 2010 and I truly believe that wine goes bad in 3 days and this would be gross to drink. Gross to drink, but okay for soup, I guess.

Stir all that up and throw in some bay leaves, the rosemary sprig (or whatever else you found), and some salt and pepper.  I also threw in a bit of dried smoking hot peppers to add a little kick. Let this simmer for at least one hour, preferably 2 hours.  The longer it simmers, the better the broth will taste.  Alternatively, throw it all in a pressure cooker and cook for like 20 minutes.

What to do with the free time while this is simmering? Well, maybe you have Christmas presents to put away. Maybe one of those presents is a gel pro mat (aka, the best thing in my kitchen) and you're so excited that you'd rather stand on the mat than sit on the couch. Or maybe that's just me. Go relax, like a normal person.

While the broth is simmering away, prep the rest of the vegetables.  I started with the leeks, slicing them in half then in small pieces.

Next, the mushrooms. I chopped them up a bit even though they were already sliced. I didn't want giant mushroom chunks in my stew.

Lastly, the kale. Angela, like myself, is a wholesome Italian girl so I have no doubt she has a fondness for kale. After all, we all grew up with Italian wedding soup chock full of kale.  The secret to making kale edible is to remove the tough stem and shred the leaves.  Also, once you're done shredding, give this a good wash. Kale can be a bit dirty and dirt is gross to eat.

By now, your broth should be well simmered.  Pour it into a large bowl, remove the bay leaves and rosemary sprig, and blend with a stick blender.  Alternatively, you could just drain all the solids out. But I wanted to keep them for their yumminess and vitamins. Yes, your broth will be a tad bit orange. Get over it, orange is awesome.

Finally, it's stew time. In the same stock pot as before, heat a bit of olive oil over medium heat and add a cup of pearl barley. Toast the barley for about 2 minutes.

Next, add the leeks and cook for 5 minutes, until softened.
Then, add the mushrooms and cook for another 5 minutes, until they begin to shrink and brown.

Add the tomatoes with their juice.  Isn't this pretty? This stew could easily be turned into a barley risotto if you'd like.

Lastly, add the broth and kale.  Stir this up, throw in a pinch more of salt, and simmer for another 40-60 minutes until the kale is wilted and barley is cooked.

I ate my stew with a almost heart shaped grilled cheese sandwich, but I suck at making grilled cheese and only some of the cheese was melted. At least the soup was yummy! Enjoy!

Curry Chickpea Stew

Ah December. That magically month of the year when time seems to fly by much too quickly and despite our best laid plans, we all end up rushing around, buying lame gifts, and feeling so guilty and stressed out that the only way to feel better is to eat dozens of chocolate peanut butter balls. Or is that just me? Other people don't feel this way about December? Regardless, when life makes you too busy to even consider cooking, nevermind cooking something healthy, remember your slow cooker and use it and all its magically powers.  Yes, the slow cooker is a lifesaver for tough cuts of meat like brisket or pork shoulder, but it also does a great job on simpler things, like this Curry Chickpea Stew.  In full disclosure, I pulled this recipe off The Kitchn.

For this delight, you'll need: 1 medium onion, potatoes of your choosing, about 2 inches of fresh ginger root, hot peppers of your choosing, 4 cloves of garlic, curry powder, brown sugar, 1 head of cauliflower, 1 green pepper, 2 cans of chick peas, 1 big can of diced tomatoes, 4 cups of broth of your choosing, 1 can of coconut milk and some baby spinach.

Start by dicing the onion. I diced mine quite finely and it completely disintegrated in the stew. If you prefer to taste and see your onion, chop it a little less.

Next, peel and dice the potatoes.  I used three small red potatoes because I had them in the pantry, but should have bought a bigger potato.  Peeling little potatoes is more like a lesson in not peeling your finger tips. I failed.

Next, peel and grate the ginger.  The tiny little ginger nub in the picture is just the tip of the ginger iceberg. I ended up grating about 3 inches of ginger root which made about a tablespoon of grated ginger mush.  I really like ginger, so I wanted a good amount of it. If ginger isn't your thing, feel free to scale back. I do recommend using fresh ginger over powdered. The powdered stuff creeps me out a bit.

 

Into the same bowl as the ginger goes your diced hot peppers.  I picked up two sorry looking serrano peppers because the grocery store didn't have any jalapenos (said store also didn't have cauliflower and I had to go to the snooty store for it and was less than pleased).  I anticipated these serranos would be hot like fire like the ones Brian and I grew and I was sadly mistaken. If like spice, be sure you add more than I did, or are using fresher peppers.

 Also into the ginger-hot pepper bowl goes 4 minced garlic cloves.

Lastly, throw in about a tablespoon of curry powder and 2 teaspoons of brown sugar. I used light because it was all I had, dark would be fine too. Mix this all up with a fork.

Now for the evil snooty-store cauliflower, chop the entire head into florets. Try not to judge the cauliflower for coming from the rich kid grocery store, it's not the vegetable's fault that the people who shop at the discount store don't want to eat it so they don't stock it.

 Then dice the green pepper and add it to the bowl with the cauliflower.

Now for cooking. For starters, I'm going to apologize for these pictures. I couldn't get the camera to take a decent picture of the onions and potatoes and Brian wasn't home to fix it. Yes, I will admit it, our digital camera is smarter than I am and I do not know how to use it. This should come as no surprise to most people. Heat a large skillet over medium heat, add a bit of oil then add the onions, cooking for about 5 minutes until they're translucent.

Then add the potatoes, cooking for another 2 minutes or so.  Yay! Skillet full of tasteless white vegetables! Now's a good time to throw in a little bit of salt to give these guys a smidgen of flavor.

Next, add the ginger-hot pepper-curry powder mix and stir, stir, stir until the vegetables are coated and you start to smell the ginger and curry.

Pour in about 1/2 a cup of broth to deglaze the pan and ensure none of the flavor stays stuck in your skillet.  You may elect to do this in two steps, once with the veggies in the skillet and again after you transfer the veggies to the crock pot.

 Transfer the onion-potato mix to your slow cooker. Yum! Looks like Indian food mush!

Dump the cauliflower, green pepper, rinsed and drained chickpeas and diced tomatoes (with juice) into a 6 quart slow cooker. Pour in the rest of your broth.  I used 4 quarts of stock total, but if you want a thicker stew, use a bit less.  Set the cooker on high and let it go for 4 hours.

About 3 1/2 hours into the cook time, take the lid off and give the broth a taste. Mine was quite bland. I blame the dull serranos. I spiced mine up with a bit more curry powder and some garam masala. Put the lid back on and let it cook for another half hour. Once that time is up, add the spinach and can of coconut milk, stir this up, put the lid back on for a few minutes until the spinach is wilted.

I ate mine by itself, but it could easily be served over some cous cous. This recipe made about 10 servings as well, so you best be hungry or have some freezer space for the extras. Enjoy!