Roasted Corn Chowder

One of my sassier friends commented last week that I should make a chowder because I'm from Rhode Island. I don't think he's the least bit familiar with the nastiness that is Rhode Island clam chowder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clam_chowder#Rhode_Island_clam_chowder) nor does he know that I'm not really a fan of traditional clam chowders. However, he threw down a challenge so I had to respond. Sudhir - I hope you're happy with this roasted corn chowder.

For this soup, you'll need: corn (I used 2 12-ounce bags of frozen corn), 5 Roma tomatoes, 4 stalks of celery, 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 5 small red potatoes, 2 chipotles in adobo sauce, 2 cups of milk, 4 cups of broth of your choosing (I used chicken), chili powder, cumin, salt, pepper, 1/4 cup of flour, butter and olive oil. (please ignore the destroyed wall, we're still waiting on our tin tiles for the kitchen)

First, if you're using frozen corn set it out to thaw for maybe 10-20 minutes. If you're using fresh corn, cook it and cut it off the cob.  Then chop the tomatoes, discarding seeds.  Since its January, I was not pleased with the ripeness of the tomatoes I had, but that didn't seem to matter in the end. Mix the corn, tomatoes, salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder and bit of olive oil together in a baking dish and roast in the oven at 400 degress for 20-25 minutes.

Meanwhile, mince the garlic and dice the celery, onion and potatoes.  You can also mince the chipotle but keep it separate from the other veggies.  Now, melt about a tablespoon of butter in your soup-making vessel of choice. I used an 8 quart cast-iron dutch oven (go ahead and giggle) today.  Once the butter is melted, get your garlic, onion and celery cooking.

Cook the veggies for about 2-5 minutes, then add the flour, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes to form a roux-like substance. You may need to add more butter if the flour seems to just be clinging for dear life to a veggie or your spoon.

Next, add 1 cup of milk and 3 cups of broth.

Right about now, hopefully your roasted corn and tomatoes are done. Remove about one cup of corn from the baking pan and transfer to a large bowl.  Add the remaining one cup each of milk and broth and the chipotles.  Get out your trusty stick blender (seriously, buy one right now if you don't have one yet) and blend until smooth.

Add the blended corn mixture to the soup pot and bring to a boil. If you're cooking in cast iron like I was, this will take a considerable amount of time. Unfortunately, you do want to be close by so you can watch the progress of the boil.  Since there's milk in the soup, the potential for a huge milk boil over exists and those are no fun to clean up.

Once its boiling, add the potatoes and cook for 7-10 minutes.  Check to be sure the potatoes are cooked and add the remaining roasted corn and tomatoes.  Turn down the heat and simmer until everything is heated through or until you're ready to eat.

My soup turned out really spicy on account of the chipotles. If you don't like spicy just leave them out, or use less of them. Since I left out the traditional chowder ingredient of seafood, I thought it was more than appropriate to garnish with some cheddar goldfish crackers. Enjoy!

I got about 6 servings out of this recipe. Estimated nutritional facts per serving: 320 calories, 6 grams of fat, 12 grams of cholesterol, 860 miligrams of sodium, and 60 grams of carbs.

Lentil Soup

I'm going to apologize in advance for this boring lentil soup. I had a particularily tiring week complete with crashing Brian's Volvo on Monday followed by a three day long exhausting work meeting and a super fun Saturday night in Greenville for a friend's birthday.  Come the end of the week, I had no energy left to make anything other than super easy, super boring lentil soup. This soup is so boring the adorable begging dog wasn't even interested, but in his defense, the landscapers were outside and he was busy protecting the house from their terrible leaf blowers.  Just because its boring doesn't mean its not delicious, because this soup is quite good and very hearty for a soup that lacks meat.

As said many times, this soup is easy-peasy. You'll need the following ingredients: a cup or so of chopped carrots; 4-5 celery stalks, diced; 3-4 garlic cloves, minced; 2 small red potatoes, diced; 1 can of diced tomatoes; 5 sprigs of fresh thyme; 1 to 1 1/2 cups lentils; 6-8 cups of broth; and 1/2 cup of pasta. 

First, get all your veggies chopped up

Then, get your lentils ready. Rocks and other forms of debris have an uncanny ability to sneak their way into bags of lentils, so you want to sift through your lentils to be sure all grossness is removed. I didn't find any grossness in the cup I used for this soup, but I've definitely not sifted through lentils before and cooked some rocks into my soup.

Now you're ready to get everything cooking. I used my trusty 8 quart stock pot. First adding the veggies with a little bit of olive oil and cooking over medium heat, until they were just tender, about 8 minutes.

Next, I added the tomatoes. I used a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes because I think they have a nice flavor.  Cook the tomatoes for about 10 minutes, stirring every once in a while and breaking the tomatoes pieces up if they seem too big.

Now, add your lentils and thyme. Throw in the entire thyme sprigs, the leaves will fall off as the soup cooks and you will remove the stems before serving.  Stir everything up so that its well mixed.

Add your broth. I used 6 cups of organic chicken broth but if you wanted to make this strictly vegetarian a nice vegetable broth would work well too. Beef broth may even taste nice, but I've never made the soup that way. Increase the heat to high to bring the soup to a boil. Then reduce the heat to low to simmer for about 30 minutes or until the lentils are cooked. Now is also a good time to add any salt, pepper or other seasoning you'd like, I threw in a little crushed red pepper.

Lastly, add your pasta. I used Barilla picollini, the cute little wagon wheel pasta because I like cute things, but you can use anything you like or have around. Or omit the pasta if you want and just add more lentils. Cook for another 6-8 minutes or until the pasta is done, remove the thyme sprigs and enjoy! To serve, you can top with some parmesan cheese, but I think the soup tastes lovely without any added cheese.

This recipe made 6 servings, all about 1 cup each.  Estimated nutrition facts per serving: 210 calories, 1 gram of fat, a whopping 1400 grams of sodium, 42 grams of carbs, 7 grams of dietary fiber, and 10 grams of protein.

Crock Pot Beef Barley Soup

I adore beef barley soup. My love affair with it started in high school when a friend made it for a biology class dinner party project. I love it so much that I purposely make way too much of it and have to eat it for lunch and dinner for an entire week. Which is something Brian tends not to enjoy as much as I do, but he's traveling for work all next week, making it the perfect time for a week's worth of beef barley.

First, you need some beef. I usually buy the 'stew beef' for this recipe, but there was none at my local Publix (I blame the "Great Atlanta Blizzard of 2010" since we got 1/2 inch of snow, everyone freaked out and bought all the food from the grocery store). I bought this hunk of beef roast meat instead, cut it into three big portions, used one for the soup and threw the rest in the freezer for another day. It probably ended up being 3/4 of a pound of beef. Kindly notice the adorable cow on the cutting board, in case you didn't fully realize that the piece of meat is beef.

Chop the beef up into bite sized pieces small enough to fit on your soup spoon.

I like to marinate my beef overnight in about 1/3 of a bottle of red wine. I started doing this mostly because I had some leftover wine that was no longer good for drinking and because I like the idea of wine in food. This step is totally optional, I have no idea if it adds to the flavor.

Get started chopping your vegetables on the morning of the day you're making the soup. This baby takes 6-8 hours in the crock pot so you do need to plan ahead.  In no particular order, you'll need: 3 to 4 cloves of garlic, minced.

1 to 1/2 cups of carrots, sliced or diced.  I used baby cut carrots and slice them into thin strips.

You will need to ignore the adorable, begging puppy. He just cannot stay out of the kitchen. He never even eats vegetables when I give them to him so I'm not sure why he's so interested in the floor.

1 to 1/2 cups diced celery. I used about 5 celery stalks.

Some potatoes, diced. I used about 6 petite red creamer potatoes.

1 to 2 small white onions, diced.

Now, the piece de resistance, the mushrooms. I find most people either love or hate mushrooms. Brian hates them, I enjoy them very much in certain applications. They are supurb in this soup. I used one 8 ounce package of pre-sliced cremini mushrooms. Since the slices were huge, I also diced them up.  I'm usually not a big fan of buying pre-cut vegetables unless they're on sale since they're so much cheaper whole. But I find that mushrooms are a huge hassle to clean and the sliced ones cost the same as the whole ones, so it makes sense to buy them sliced. Work smarter, not harder.

Pull your marianted beef out of the fridge and dump it along with the vegetables, a few dried bay leaves, some fresh cracked black pepper, and 6-8 cups of beef stock into a crock pot. A word of caution about crock pots, in order for them to work efficiently you need to fill it at least half full with delicious goodies.  I put this soup into my 6 quart crock pot and it fit beautifully. If yours is a different size, you may need to modify the recipe.  I also have this super cool crock pot (thanks MD!) that has 2 and 4 quart bowls that work with one base, so I can choose to make less soup, though I would never do that.

Set the heat to low and let it cook for 6 hours. Its in your best interest to leave your house for a few hours during this time and come home when the soup is almost done. You'll be greated with a lovely beef barley aroma that will make you want to eat the soup right then, but you really should wait for the barley. After 6 or so hours, add 1 cup of pearled barley  and cook for another hour or so until the barley is done.

After an hour, give the soup a taste to make sure the barley is cooked and everything is delicious. I had to add a pinch of salt to mine since I used low sodium broth.  Remove the bay leaves and enjoy!

This recipe made 10 1-cup servings. Estimated calories are 225 with 2 grams of fat, 20 miligrams of cholesterol, 180 milligrams of sodium. 35 grams of total carbs, 5.6 grams of dietary fiber and 15 grams of protein.

Nonnie's Italian Wedding Soup

This soup reminds me of my childhood. My Nonnie used to make it in the pressure cooker, the whistling of which used to terrify me as a child. I also used to fight her over eating the kale and had a habit of eating everything but those leafy greens out of my soup bowl. My Nonnie passed away about ten years ago, but this soup lives on in both my mom's kitchen and now my own.  This soup lends itself very well to pressure cooking because the kale takes considerable time to cook. My pressure cooker is only 6 quarts so its not big enough so I just used a stock pot. If you're pressure cooking, just throw everything in together and cook for about 20-30 minutes, if you're sans-pressure cooker, this baby will take a few hours, but its worth it.

Start with the kale, remove the leafy greens from the rigid stalks and shred. I used 1 1/2 bunches because I now love dark leafy greens and tend to go heavy with the kale. (Kindly notice the shiny new granite counter tops in the background)

Get the kale cooking in a stock pot with 4 cups of stock, bring the stock and kale to a boil and cook for at least 30 minutes. This is not going to smell good, greens never smell good when they're cooking, but they taste much better than they smell.

Meanwhile, get your other veggies together. You'll need to mince 4 cloves of garlic, dice 2 medium white onions, chop 1 bunch of big or 1/2 bag of baby carrots, and chop 6 stalks of celery. Set these aside.

Next, make your meatballs. I used homemade pork sausage for mine, probably about 3/4 of a pound. Remove the sausage from its casing and add about 1/2 a cup breadcrumbs.

Mix these together with your hands and form into small balls.
Ignore adorable begging dog.
Sear the meatballs over medium heat. This helps them to stay together in the soup and cooks out a bit of the fat. Set these aside.
Check on you kale, it should be a little darker in color and flimsy.

Add the veggies, sausage balls and at least 4 to 6 more cups of stock. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer this for 45-60 minutes to be sure all the veggies and meatballs are cooked through.

Give the soup a taste to be sure the broth is yummy and everything is cooked, add any salt, pepper or other seasoning it may need. Lastly, add you pasta. I usually use orzo but didn't have any in my pantry, so I used 1/3 of a cup pastina. The pasta is going to absorb lots of stock, so be sure you have plenty to spare in your soup. Cook the pasta for about 5 minutes as you'll want it al dente. Don't be surprised if the pasta seems to disappear in the soup, its probably just hiding at the bottom of the pot.

I made 10 servings out of this recipe, so I hope you like it if you make it. Top with some Parmesan cheese and enjoy!
My good friend Liz enlightened me about this wonderful website www.sparkrecipes.com where you can input recipes and it will calculate nutritional information for you. For this recipe, per 1 and 1/2 cup serving, there are 150 calories and 6 grams of fat.