In honor of World Cup starting on June 11 in South Africa, Brian suggested making something South African (side note - all soups in the month of June may be inspired by the outcomes of important World Cup games). I did a little research since I had no earthly idea what kind of soups are common in South Africa and came up with several stew recipes (or bredie recipes) involving oxtail or mutton. Now, I regard myself as a semi-adventurous eater, but my typical American snobbish ways prevent me from having any desire to cook oxtail. If I have to go to some specialty, ethnic food market to get a meat ingredient, I believe that I do not know how to properly cook it and shouldn't even try. Am I missing out on something delicious? Probably, but I'm okay with that. After an hour or so of disheartening research resulting only in said bredie recipes, I remembered the wonderful curry dishes I ate while in Cape Town a few years ago. Surely there must be a South African curry out there. The wonders of the interwebs found me this delicious Cape Malay Curry.
For this gem you'll need: some meat, I went with beef, 1 large onion, 2 cloves of garlic, about an inch of fresh ginger root, 1 large or 2 medium eggplants, 1 green bell pepper, curry powder, turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, coriander, hot smoked paprika, bay leaves, beef broth, tomato paste, red wine vinegar, dried apricots, plain yogurt and apricot preserves. I know it looks and sounds like an awful lot of ingredients, but they are mostly spices, so don't worry.
First, chop the meat into stew sized chunks. I had this hunk of beef in my freezer and didn't feel like buying any more. It is pretty small, maybe only 3/4 of a pound. Feel free to add more if you like more meat. Also, lamb would probably be good here.
Next, mince two cloves of garlic, dice one large onion, and peel and mince about an inch of ginger root. These can all hang out in a bowl together. If you can't find fresh ginger, or think it's super annoying to have to peel it, ground ginger is okay, probably about 1/2 teaspoon.
Now, chop up the rest of the veggies. Cube the eggplant into one inch cubes, dice the bell pepper and set aside together. I used a ton of eggplant because I didn't have much meat and I really like eggplant. Feel free to use less eggplant if that's more to your taste.
Next, the spices. I normally don't measure spices, but I don't have a good appreciation of which spices and in which proportions make a tasty curry, so felt it was prudent to measure here. Into a small prep cup, measure one teaspoon each of curry powder, coriander, cloves, and turmeric, and 1 1/2 teaspoons each of cumin and hot smoked paprika, and 1/2 a teaspoon of cinnamon. Also add a pinch of salt and stir.
Now, for cooking. I used a cast iron dutch oven. Heating it over medium-high heat and adding some olive oil. Once the oil was hot, I added the spice mix and toasted the spices for about a minute.
Then I added the onions, garlic and ginger mix and 2 bay leaves, cooking for about 3 minutes.
Next I added the beef, browning on all sides.
Here's a fantastic picture of why the cast iron dutch oven is integral to this recipe. Things really like to stick to the bottom of these cooking vessels. These "things" are often delicious flavorful bits that must be scraped off the bottom of the dutch oven for your enjoyment. Once you get some liquid into this pot, it is super important to scrape the bottom to release the flavor.
Next, add the eggplant and peppers, stirring to mix.
Immediately add the broth. Be sure to scrape the bottom as well.
Next, add a small can of tomato paste, stirring to mix.
Then, add some delicious dried apricots.
Lastly, add a splash of red wine vinegar. Increase the heat to bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat and simmer for about an hour, stirring infrequently.
Once the curry is done, it will have a lovely, deep, reddish orange color. Immediately before serving, stir in a dollop of plain yogurtand apricot preserves.
This curry would be delicious with some rice. I didn't feel like making rice, so I opted for a stale piece of pita bread. The spice mix in the curry is truly tasty, so the curry is fine without added carbs as well. Enjoy and go Team USA!
I am tempted to not even share this recipe. It came out so good that some iteration of it will likely compete in this Fall's Chomp and Stomp in Cabbagetown. However, I promised my sister that I would write a chili recipe in honor of her 30th birthday this month. Amy loves chili, though I'm not sure she'll love this chili. I think she once told me that I put corn in my chili just to spite her. Regardless, happy birthday Amy, here's some fired chili for you. Why is this chili fired, you may be wondering. Did it suck at its job? Keep reading and you'll find out. For those few readers out there who may actually try to recreate this, good luck. I was intentionally vague in describing the spices that went into this baby.
You'll need: about 4 poblano peppers, 2 green bell peppers, 2 ears of corn, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 large onion, 3 chipotle peppers in adobo, a pound or so of ground meat of your choosing, 2 cans of black beans, 2 cans of fire roasted diced tomatoes, 1 can of tomato sauce, 1 ale style beer and unnamed spices.
To start, pour yourself a beer. You're going to be cooking with it, might as well have one while you're at it. If you're lucky like me, you stole a glass with puppies on it from your favorite dive bar while you were out drinking to celebrate your birthday several months ago. If you're smart like me, you keep this glass in the freezer so its nice and cold for any tasty beers you decide to have. Puppies!
This inspiration for this fired chili was that I really wanted to fire roast something on my stove. Why have a continuous grate, 5-burner gas cook top of you're just going to cook everything in pots and pans? To get the peppers ready for fire roasting, I sliced all the bell and poblano peppers in half, removing seeds and stems. I also husked the corn.
I neatly arranged the peppers and corn on the cook top, being sure that all were skin side down. As you can tell from this picture I'm not very good with the camera but I assure you that the long, non-descript lightly colored things in the middle are truly ears of corn.
I lit the burners on high heat and carefully watched and smelled the veggies cook. Depending on how dry the veggies are, you'll hear plenty of popping noises as the water is cooked off. Be sure to rotate the corn and check the peppers often. I found the bell peppers cooked much more slowly than the poblanos, so you may have to move them around. You may find that they will smell a bit burned, but that's what we're going for. Turn on an above the stove fan if you have one or open a window if the burning smell gets to you.
Pull the peppers and corn off the heat once they are charred. I didn't completely blacken the peppers, but you could if you like. Set these aside to cool. If you don't have a gas stove, you can use a gas grill. If you don't have a gas grill, I believe you can use the broiler in your oven. Since I have both a gas stove and a gas grill, I just use those so I'm not certain about the broiler.
While the fired veggies are cooling, mince 2 cloves of garlicand dice one onion. Set these aside in a bowl.
Then, mince three chipotle peppers from a jar of chipotles in adobo. I broke out a trusty latex gloves to mince these since I didn't want an unfortunate hot pepper in the eye incident. Set this aside.
By now the fired veggies should be cooked. Cut the corn off the cob with a small sharp knife, or even a large dull one, the corn should come off pretty easily. I know there are special tools sold for removing corn from the cob, but they're pretty useless provided you own a knife.
Remove the char from about half the peppers by rinsing them under cold water. Dice up all the peppers and set aside with the corn.
Heat a large soup pot over medium heat and throw in a little extra virgin olive oil. When all is hot, throw in your ground meat, I used turkey, onions, garlic and half of the minced chipotle peppers. I also added other spices that shall remain nameless. Cook this until the meat is done, crumbling it along the way, about 10 minutes.
Next add the corn and pepper mix. Stirring to mix. Cook for about 5 minutes.
Rinse and drain the black beans and add those in too. Throw in the fire roasted diced tomatoes while you're at it.
Try not to drop some black bean rinse water on the floor while transferring them from the sink to the stove. But if you do, hopefully you're trusty puppy clean-up tool will be around to help clean the mess.
Now, pour in the beer. I went with a Kona Fire Rock Ale to keep with the fired theme. I also threw in the small can of tomato sauce because the chili looked like it needed more liquid.
Increase the heat to bring this to a boil, then reduce the heat to let it simmer for about 30 minutes. About 15 minutes into my simmering, Brian came home and I let him spice this up a bit more with spices that shall remain nameless. Enjoy this gem topped with some cheddar cheese if you'd like. It was mighty tasty.
A side note for my Atlanta peeps - I do fully intend to enter this in the amateur competition at Chomp and Stomp. To do so, there will be at least one more practice round to perfect the recipe, maybe more. If you're interested in taste testing, let me know as there shall be a Casa Blivmore chili party sometime in the coming months.
So jambalaya isn't technically a soup, but I'm headed to New Orleans this week, already made gumbo months ago, and had some okra that needed cooking. Okra, also not necessarily a jambalaya ingredient, but oh well! I went heavy on the vegetables in this recipe, because I like vegetables. As to be expected, I also omitted any seafood, despite the fact that my neighbors had a crazy crawfish boil the day before I made this and I could have easily stolen some crawfish from their mountain of creepy little leftovers.
For this not-soup you'll need: vegetables-at a minimum, onion, celery and pepper, if you're like me, also throw in some garlic, , zucchini, okra, carrots and tomatoes, chicken (or seafood like shrimp or crawfish if you like), some rice, some broth, fresh parsley and thyme, and hot seasonings of your choosing.
A short word about the spices, most jambalaya call for cayenne pepper. You can spice this up or spice it down anyway you choose. I started at my wall-o-spices for a while before deciding on cayenne pepper, ancho chili powder and the usual boring salt and pepper.
First, chop your veggies. Into one bowl goes two cloves of garlic, minced,
one medium yellow or white onion, diced,
Two stalks of celery, diced. Please ignore the sad, pale color of this celery. It had been in the fridge for a while but was still perfectly edible.
About a cup of baby carrots, sliced. Set this bowl aside.
Into a different, and probably larger bowl goes three plum tomatoes, chopped, seeds included,
One zucchini, cut in half then into rounds.
Be careful not to inadvertently drop some zucchini on the floor. If you do, just call over your trusty puppy vacuum to clean it up for you.
Back to veggies. Dice the peppers. I used one yellow and one red for some extra color. The choice of yellow bowl and yellow pepper was probably ill advised.
Lastly, the okra. Ignore the sticky goo and just slice into rounds, removing the stem and tail. Set this bowl aside.
Now the chicken. I used about 1 1/4 pounds. Dice it up into bite sized pieces and throw in a bowl.
Season with your favorite hot thing. I used some cayenne pepper, probably about a teaspoon.
Last prep step, the fresh herbs. I used about a half tablespoon of thyme and about as much parsley. I just ripped the little thyme leaves off their little thyme stem, no further cutting required.
For the parsley, I just shredded a bunch of leaves with my hands.
Now, get to cooking. I used my cast iron dutch oven (giggle, giggle). First heat a bit of oil of your choosing over medium-high heat and add the chicken.
Cook until the chicken is almost done, about 8 minutes and add the onion veggie bowl.
Cook until the onions start to get translucent, about 5-8 minutes and add the okra veggie bowl. Unless you have a ginormous cast iron dutch oven this addition is going to make the pot quite full. Do your best to stir it all up well.
Cook for at least 10 minutes, maybe closer to 15 depending on how long it takes you to stir everything up. Then, add about 2 cups of stock. Just dump it in willy-nilly. Your average stock container is 4 cups so I think its pretty easy to figure out when you've poured out two of them.
Then add 1 cup of rice. I used standard long grain white rice, but you could use brown or whatever you have in the pantry, except maybe arborio since we aren't making risotto here. I saw a recipe using farro and thought about using barley, but went with the white rice.
Give this a stir then dump in the fresh herbs
Cover and cook for about 30 minutes. Take the cover off and taste. Now is a good time to add any salt, pepper, or if you're like me some ancho chili powder and a bunch more cayenne. Also, if the rice isn't cooked and there isn't much broth left, dump in some more. Cover again, cook for another 15 minutes or so until the rice is cooked. Enjoy!
R
