Zucchini Zuppa

It's official, I'm in a cooking rut.  I attempted to blame this rut on many things, including but not limited to: I'm trying to buy locally grown produce which leaves me cooking exclusively with tomatoes, zucchini, okra, peaches and some snap beans every week, Brian and I have sports games at least three nights a week so we end up making one thing and either eating it leftover for several days or attempting to repurpose it over the course of the week, and I made two flop dishes last week and elected to eat them all week long instead of cutting my losses and moving on. The underlying reason I'm in this rut is that I'm cheap, or frugal if I'm being nice to myself. I just won't throw food away and I'll only buy things on sale, hence all my other excuses for this cooking rut. Big sigh. There's my confession for the week, if you can even call it a confession because everyone who knows me at all knows about my epic, sometimes debilitating, cheapness. Alas, I perserve. I hit up my local farmer's market in a baptist church parking lot where I suffer through tirades from one very nice farmer about the lack of pesticides creating 'God's blueberries' and picked up some zucchini for this tasty Zucchini Zuppa.

For this simple zuppa, you'll need: an entire head of garlic, two shallots, a few hot peppers of your liking, three medium zucchini, a mess of basil, a can of white beans, a bit of white wine and broth.

Start by roasting the head of garlic.  Preheat your oven to 400 or so. Then lop the top of the garlic head, coat in olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Put this in an oven safe dish and roast for about 40 minutes. My oven safe dish may look remarkably like the soup bowl I often use, and it is. But it's a magic soup bowl that can also go in the oven. I ♥ it. I made two heads of garlic because I wanted to eat some and planned on using the rest during the week, but you only need one head for this soup. In the pursuit of accountability, I stole this recipe/technique from CJ.

 

Meanwhile, chop up the rest of your veggies. I started by coarsely chopping the shallots and hot peppers. The hot peppers were more of an afterthought because they came out of my garden a few days ago and were starting to shrivel a bit and and I didn't want to waste them (epic cheapness). The bowl these are in looks huge, but trust me, it's just two shallots and two thin, short hot peppers.

Then, the zucchini.  I sliced two and a half zucchinis in thin pieces and used a super cool julienne tool to julienne the remaining half zucchini.  The julienned pieces are mostly for garnish so don't waste too much time julienning if you don't have a cool tool. Did you know the word julienne could be so many different parts of speach? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's all grammatically incorrect. 

Lastly, chiffonade the basil.  I'm also pretty sure chiffonade shouldn't be a verb and some French chef is going to show up at my door and beat me for using it in this manner. Oh well!

Still waiting on the garlic to finish roasting? Maybe put together this blueberry-peach cobbler found on Smitten Kitchen because you have friends coming over later and have it ready to go in the oven the second the garlic is done. Yes, that is what I did with my time.

By now, it's probably a thousand degrees in your kitchen because your epic cheapness thought turning the a/c up to 81 degrees during the day is a good idea since you usually aren't home during the day, and it smells like garlic. Lovely, lovely garlic. Pull that roasted goodness out of the oven and let it cool until you can touch it without burning your hands. Using a fork or just your fingers, get the garlic cloves out and set aside. Pop a few in your mouth as well.

Now, it's cooking time. Heat some olive oil over medium heat in your soup pot of choice. Once the oil is hot add the shallots and peppers. Cook these for about 3 minutes.

Next, add the zucchini and cook for about 5-8 minutes, stirring often.

Throw in a splash, about half a cup of dry white wine.  If it's a wine appropriate time of day, have some yourself too. I was making this at 11 AM which I do not deem a wine appropriate time so I just put the rest of the wine back in the fridge for later.

Next, toss in the garlic.  If you like garlic like I do, throw in the entire head of roasted garlic. If you aren't trying to ward of vampires and that much garlic makes you a little ill, just tone it down a bit.  While you're at it, throw in the basil too.

Finally, in go the rinsed and drained white beans.  I put beans in to add a bit of protein and make the soup a little heartier. If you want something really light, just leave them out, but this girl needs more calories in her soup than vegetables alone provide. Let all the veggies simmer in the wine for about 15 minutes.

Lastly, add 4 cups of broth, bring the soup to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Let this simmer for anywhere from 15-60 minutes. I was hustling around the house cleaning and doing other random chores, so I left mine on the stove for about 40 minutes. Give it a taste to see if it needs anything. I liberally salted and peppered my roasted garlic so the soup itself didn't need much. If you're happy with the taste, blend it up with your stick blender or other blending device.

To serve, throw in some of the julienned zucchini pieces. This would probably also be good with some raw julienned carrots for a color contrast. It makes an absolutely perfect lunch when paired with some tomato-mozzarella salad. The salad is doubly good because those are garden tomatoes and basil (the epic cheapness strikes again). Enjoy!

I'm trying something new with printable recipes, so here's the first go. I fully intend to write printable recipes for everything on here, but sounds like a winter project so hopefully all 10 of you who read this can wait.

Printable recipe

Yay for Spain Soup

The perfect storm of events brings you today's Yay For Spain Soup, aka, Paella Soup.  Firstly, Liz's bachelorette party was on Friday, we went out for yummy Spanish food (among other things) and split some paella. I,(stupidly) loaded up on the fantastic Spanish potatoes before the paella made it to the table and was too full to eat all the paella I wanted to eat. Secondly, Spain just won the World Cup (as in 10 minutes ago) and I thought a nice soup-homage to them was in order. Side note - I actually made this soup this morning, before the game was even played, because I was pretty sure Spain was going to win, and because some people have Sunday Fun Days in which they do fun things like drink sangria or get brunch, whereas my Sunday Fun Day involves four hours of cooking stuff or prepping stuff to be cooked for my week. Alas, this is why I am 'No Fun Erin'. Anywho, here's some Yay for Spain - Paella Soup.

For this adaptation of a classic Spanish dish, you'll need: saffron, some dry white wine, 2 red peppers, 1 large onion, 2 cloves of garlic, some rice, some hot smoked paprika, about a pound of chorizo, 4-6 cups of broth and peas. Notably missing from my ingredient list are the classic seafood items found in traditional paella.  I'm not a giant fan of most of the seafood that goes into paella and I hate, hate, hate, hate is when people heat up stinky food in the work microwave. Seafood is always stinky food when reheated so I leave it out. If you want to add it in, be my guest.

To start, grind up enough saffron threads to produce 1/4 teaspoon of crushed saffron.  A few words about saffron: Yes, it is expensive; Yes, you may have trouble finding it; No, you should not leave it out. I found this little package of 0.02 ounces of saffron (which was nicely wrapped in gold paper, how festive!) at Cost Plus World Market for $5. I probably could have hunted through my local international farmer's market to see if they had it cheaper, but the market near me stocks primarily Mexican and Asian foods and the people who work there don't speak much English. For the Atlanta peeps, of course Your Dekalb Farmers Market has saffron, but they hide it in the bakery and you have to ask for it (you all can thank CJ for that tip, I had no idea). I used this fancy mortar and pestle to grind mine, If you don't have one you can probably just use a spoon or something hard and flat. It ground up pretty easily.

Next, soak the saffron threads in 1/2 a cup of dry white wine.  Try your best to keep this liquid off of any light surfaces, unless of course you like to color things an orangey-yellow.

Now, get to chopping. I started with coarsely dicing the two red peppers and one onion. They can hang out in a bowl together.

Then, mince two cloves of garlic. I'm fairly certain that every single recipe on this blog contains this pictures. I may start leaving it out. Or using ridiculous bowls to store the garlic in. I must have something more exciting than this prep cup.

Next, I opted to cook my chorizo, with the intent of being able to slice it into nice even chorizo rounds so that I wouldn't have crumbled bits of chorizo chunks in my soup. As you'll see later, this didn't work out as planned.  Regardless, using the same pot you'll later use to make the soup, cook the chorizo. No need to add any oil to the pot, the chorizo will give up some fat as it cooks so it won't stick.  Mine took about 3 minutes on each side, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't cooked all the way through when I took it off the heat. A few words about this chorizo - it came from the international farmer's market and was prepared freshly there. It is spicy and delicious and quite fatty, but I'm okay with all of those things. If you can't find chorizo where you are, try some other spicy sausage. I would just stay away from the typical Italian sausages that you can find everywhere.

Once the chorizo is cooked, set it aside to cool. Add to the already hot pot the peppers and onion. Yes, this is another action shot. If you look closely in the pot you can see the some little red pools of fat in the bottom from the chorizo. That's good stuff, don't get rid of those fat pools. Cook for about 5-8 minutes

Next, add the garlic, saffron/wine mixture and 1 cup of rice.  I opted for a short grain brown rice today. If this were a true paella I probably would have used arborio because arborio is my favorite but I feared it would soak up too much broth. Cook until the wine is all soaked up.

Meanwhile chop the cooked chorizo.  As previously alluded to, my best laid intention of slicing the chorizo into nice, even, pretty rounds was a failure. I ended up with some sliced pieces and some chunks. I'm okay with this. Clearly I can't cook sausage. Or I can't slice sausage.  This picture makes my cutting board look like a bloody mess, but trust me that's just chorizo spices and fat finding there way all over my kitchen.

By now, the wine should be all soaked up by the rice. Add 4-6 cups of broth and the chorizo to the soup pot. Stir it up, increase the heat to bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for at least 40 minutes or until the rice is cooked . After it has simmered for about 10 minutes give the broth a taste and add some salt, pepper or hot smoked paprika. 

Once you've simmered your soup for what will seem like a ridiculously long time and your entire house has a lovely aroma of chorizo permeating it, possibly to the point at which your husband asks you if you can make that smell into an air freshener (true story, and not the most ridiculous thing Brian said to me this weekend), add in the peas.  I used about a cup of frozen peas. Give the soup a good stir and cook for just another minute or so.

This soup tastes lovely with a little topping of basil chiffonade. It is also a little fatty. Mine probably turned out excessively fatty on account of getting chorizo from the farmers market and not some mass-produced product, but I'm okay with that. I'm going to use a food term I hate here, so please don't judge me on this: this soup has excellent mouth feel on account of the fat. Something about it is oddly comforting despite the fact that it's a quite spicy soup. Enjoy!

After eating this soup for a few days, I've learned a few things: 1) I should have removed the chorizo from the casing and cooked it as ground meat. I think that would have helped prevent little fatty bits of unedibleness from making their way into my soup; 2) People (Brian, CJ, Shmy) have all raved about this soup. Brian has called it the best soup I've ever made; 3) But I don't think I like it very much at all.  I just struggled to eat my one cup lunch serving. I think it's just too rich for this girl's blood. In an highly uncharacteristic move, I may not eat this soup every day for lunch this week because I honestly don't think I can stomach another serving. I may even (gasp!) have to go out for lunch instead.

Summer Squash Surprise!

Back to the hot soups.I'm also trying out something new with more exciting soup names! And more exclamation points! Like that episode of Seinfeld about exclamation points! Okay, enough of that, that would get annoying. In all seriousness, I'm working on more creative names. Soup is pretty boring, not as boring as toast, but not nearly as exciting as ice cream or tacos or cupcakes. Hence, this week's Summer Squash Surprise.  What's the surprise you may ask? Well there really isn't one, but that's as creative as I get after a work day of looking at data and solving "crises". This is actually adapted from a Cooking Light recipe from years ago.

For this masterpiece, you will need: a few cloves of garlic, an onion, fresh rosemary and oregano, some zucchini and summer squash, a splash of red wine, two cans of chick peas, two cans of diced tomatoes, some broth, tomato paste, crushed red pepper flakes and bay leaves.

First, go collect your fresh herbs from your garden. No garden? Well plant one. It's worth it. It will save you money. No yard? Grow your herbs in small pots in front of any window in your house/apartment/condo. Pesky cat that knocks everything over? Well I can't help you with that. My herb garden is outgrowing its undersized garden box. The oregano was the first one jumping out into the pine straw. Resourceful little herb that oregano is.

Now, back inside out of the oppressive heat. I started by mincing 4 cloves of garlic and dicing one large onion.

Then I minced, chopped, obliterated the rosemary and oregano until I could no longer really tell what they were.

Next, I diced one zucchini and 3 summer squash. How cute does summer squash look in a yellow bowl? It's like summer on my countertop. Also, rinse and drain both cans of chickpeas and one of the cans of diced tomatoes.

Now, for cooking. In your large soup pot, heat a bit of oil over medium heat then throw in the garlic, onions and chopped herbs.  Cook for about 5 minutes until the onions are translucent.

Next, throw in the squash and a splash of red wine.  Get a little bit worried when the wine turns everything in the pot pink, but then take a big swig of wine and forget about it. Let all this cook for about 10 minutes.

Now, in go the drained chick peas and tomatoes.  I'm trying something new with the camera these days. I call in 'food - in action!'. When I was in undergrad I was notorious for taking action shots of things that were actually standing still. I attribute this to the shoddy quality digital camera I was using, because, after all, it was 2001 and digital cameras were not what they are now. However, this food actually is in action, so all those people that made fun of me for action shots of things that weren't moving can go sit outside in the 100+ degree heat and think about what they've done. Regardless, this shot is pretty awesome.

Stir all this up and add the can of non-drained tomatoes.  Again, these are in ACTION! Though it sorta looks like the can is throwing up the tomatoes. Whatever. Clearly I need to perfect this skill.

Now the broth, also in ACTION! I'm giving some serious though to asking Pacific Natural Foods for some sort of endorsement. I am an excellent advertiser for thier product (MSG free and low sodium, super).

Lastly, throw in a palm full of crushed red pepper flakes, 2 bay leaves, as much salt and pepper as you desire and a bit of tomato paste.

Increase the heat, bring the soup to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes. Before serving remove the bay leaves. I had some yummy homemade garlic bread leftover from the carb-load pre-Peachtree 10k dinner Brian made the night before, and thought that was a nice addition to my soup lunch. Enjoy!

Roasted Pepper Soup

Here goes cold soup #3.  The farmer's market at work has some nice looking red bell peppers last week (though I didn't realize until I got home that they were from Mexico. Peppers aren't quite growing yet in Georgia so I guess this is to be expected). I thought'd I' try out a simple Roasted Red Pepper Soup.

For this baby, you'll need: 5 red bell peppers, 1 large onion, 2-3 cloves of garlic, 2 hot peppers of your choosing, 1 can of crushed tomatoes, 4 cups of broth of your choosing, 1 ear of corn, 1 bunch of scallions, goat cheese, and other spicy seasoning to taste.

To get started, halve the peppers, removing the seeds. Then char them any way you choose, either on your gas grill top, in a broiler, or on an actual gas grill. It was hot as blazes on my patio when I was making this and the Mexico-Argentina soccer game was on so I opted to char them inside on the cooktop.

Once their skins are delightful shade of burnt and anyone sitting in your house near the kitchen asks if you're burning something, take them off the heat and place in a bowl to cool. 

Meanwhile, prep your other veggies. You'll need to mince the garlic and the hot peppers, and dice the onion.

By now the peppers should be cooled. Remove the charred skin. I find rinsing the peppers under cold water makes this quite easy. I also think you can place them in a paper bag, close the bag and they'll more or less fall out of their charred skins. Once the char is off, coarsely chop the peppers into big chunks.

Now, get to cooking. In a large stock pot over medium-high heat, add a bit of olive oil. Once it's hot, add the garlic, onion and hot peppers and cook for 3-5 minutes until the onion is translucent.

Then add the red peppers again cooking for about 5 minutes. Now is also a good time to add a pinch of salt and a bit of ground black pepper.

Next, add the crushed tomatoes. Side note here - if I were to make this again, I would probably add fewer tomatoes. I wanted the soup to taste like peppers, but it tasted more like peppers and tomatoes and almost like a sauce I would put on pasta. I think fewer tomatoes and more peppers would solve this problem. Also, maybe if I wasn't ridiculously hungover when I made this soup (thank you USA losing to Ghana on the previous day and the hot-mess sleepover that ensued at my house that night) maybe I'd be making more tasty soups and this is just an example of a soup made worse by a hangover. On the plus side, this is a fantastic action shot picture of tomatoes falling into the soup pot. I guess I can still take semi-decent pictures, even when hungover.

Moving on, add the chicken broth or other broth of your choosing. I added 4 cups.

Increase the heat to bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, prep your garnishes. I used about 6 scallions, slicing about 2/3 of the scallion stalk (thanks Melissa for my scallion education! Girls who grew up in RI just don't know about these things like you Texans do). I cut the kernels off one ear of grilled corn leftover from said hot-mess sleepover. If you don't have any leftover corn, just grill it up when you're charring the peppers.

By now, your 15 minutes of simmer time should be up. Using your trusty stick blender or other blending device, blend the soup until smooth.  I gave it a taste and thought it need more kick so I also threw in a splash of cholula.

Let this simmer a bit longer, give it another taste and see if it needs anything. If you use the entire can of tomatoes, it's probably going to need some salt, so throw that in too.  Lastly, add the corn and scallions and cook for about 5 minutes.

Let the soup chill for a few hours or overnight, to serve, top with a little crumbled goat cheese and enjoy!

A few final thoughts on this soup - as soups involving hot peppers have a tendency to do, this one got hotter as the week went on. Which I thought was nice, but others may consider that a downfall. Also, I think I'm going to quit on the cold soups for a few weeks. I've confirmed that eating a lunch of a bowl of vegetable soup, an apple and piece of string cheese (my usual week day lunch) is not filling at all. I end up with a terrible case of the hungry-sleepies around 3:00, following by the hungry-grumpies around 4:30, which is no good for anyone. However, three people last week asked me if I lost weight, so I guess this cold soup diet is working. Regardless, this girl needs protein. Hot soups are back on order for at least the next few weeks until my garden makes enough cucumber so make a soup with them.