Nadine Soup

Nadine is Brian's sister and she's awesome. Unfortunately for all of us US-based people, she lives in Chile so I am only privy to her awesomeness a few times a year.  Fortunately for us Atlanta-based people, one of those few times was the past two weeks.  For those of you who don't know Nadine, here are a few quintessential facts:
1.  She's currently battling my sister for the funniest person I know.
2.  She has the curliest hair I have ever seen on a white girl.
3.  The jury is still out on who has the better bitch-face, me or her.
I could go on, but that would be a little boring and a numbered list cannot truly describe her awesomeness.  Instead, I tried to create a soup to embody said awesomeness.  I was working off a few things: her curly hair, the fact that she requested pizza for dinner when she go to the A, and her dislike of really spicy food. With a little help from Brian, I came up with this Nadine Soup or if you don't know Nadine, you could call this Pizza Soup.

For this soup you will need: a few cloves of garlic, an onion, sprig of rosemary, about 3 pounds of ripe, fresh tomatoes, about four cups of broth, three bell peppers, a whole mess of fresh basil, some curly pasta (mine is cavatappi), and the non-pictured crushed red pepper and shredded Parmesan cheese.

Start by mincing the garlic and rosemary and dicing the onion. I used some leftover roasted garlic from a dinner party we had on Friday night, but fresh is good too. If you're using fresh, you probably don't need more than 4 cloves not the 8 cloves I used.

Next, chop all the tomatoes. Mine were from a farmers market and were quite beaten up, but they were cheaper than the pretty ones (epic cheapness, there you are). I left the seeds in, but you could take them out if you have time you'd like to waste.

Now, it's cook time. Using your trusty soup pot, heat it over medium heat, throw in a bit of olive oil and let it get hot. Then, throw in the garlic, onions and rosemary.  Cook until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.

Next, add the tomatoes. Stirring to get everything all nicely mixed up. I wish I could have taken this picture in 3-D. Its like the tomatoes are just jumping off the screen.

Lastly, add the broth. Also, now is a good time to throw in any salt, pepper or crushed red pepper that you may like.  Take it a bit easy with the salt if you're planning on topping the soup with Parmesan cheese as it will bring some of its own saltiness to the pool. Let this simmer for about 20-30 minutes.  I didn't raise the heat because I hate it when tomato-based things boil on my stove top and make a ginormous mess, but if you like messes, feel free to bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer, as per usual soup instructions.

Meanwhile, fire roast the peppers. I halved mine, removed the seeds and roasted over my gas burners. But feel free to use a gas grill or broiler, and please try not to start a fire. My peppers were pretty small on account of the purple ones being from the farmers market and the green one coming from my garden, so they had a strong desire to fall through the burner grates and into the gas flames. I may have cursed at them a bit. When they're good and charred, put them in a plastic bag and seal it to help get the charred skins to fall off.

Next, chiffonade the basil.  As you can see, I used a ton of basil. My basil plant is out of control so I had a bunch lying around. Feel free to use less if you'd like, but I don't know why you'd do that as basil = delicious.

Hopefully by now the peppers are cool enough to touch. Remove the charred skins and dice them up.

Back to the soup pot, I wanted my soup blended like pizza sauce so I buzzed it with my stick blender.  Mashing the tomatoes with a potato masher would work nicely as well, if you prefer a chunkier soup. Then, I threw in the curly pasta (just like Na's hair!) and cooked for about 10 more minutes until the pasta was al dente.

To serve, top with some of the basil, roasted peppers and anything else you put on your pizza, which for me is always crushed red pepper and Parmesan. The topping idea was all Brian. I'm just not that clever.  You could even go crazy and have a whole buffet of pizza toppings for this soup. I could envision this being a fun, albeit somewhat messy, party idea. If you party with people who like tomato soup or who like Nadine.

Cuban Black Bean Soup

I took a lovely vacation to Cuba Miami Beach last week with some of the funniest girls I've ever met. It was hot as blazes for the entire four days we were there so I missed my opportunity to eat some tasty authentic Cuban black bean soup.  Never one to miss an opportunity, I thought it would be prudent for me to make said soup upon my return. Now, since I am not one bit Cuban, I modeled this after a tasty black bean soup served at a local Cuban lunch spot I visit when I get over myself and decide that ham + mustard + pickles = yummy, which is so odd to me because mustard and pickles on their own tend to not be yummy. Anywho, I digress, onto this Cuban Black Bean Soup.

For this bowl of hearty goodness, you will need: one large onion, a few cloves of garlic, a spicy pepper of your choosing, one red bell pepper, one green bell pepper, two ripe roma tomatoes, some ham, three cans of black beans, a cup or so of yellow rice, bay leaves, hot smoked paprika and some broth.

First, start by finely chopping the veggies for the soup: three cloves of garlic, one banana pepper and the onion. Side note about the peppers, they're from my garden and I fully intended to use both of them. I also have learned (the hard way) that they keep getting hotter as summer goes on. I (stupidly) tasted some of the raw pepper and it was so hot I knew only one pepper was necessary. Only half of the diced onion will be going in the soup, so reserve the rest for the rice. If you're including ham, aren't lazy and didn't buy pre-diced ham, dice that up as well. I was lazy. In my defense I flew back from Miami at 6:30 AM so I have an excuse for my laziness.

Next, finely dice both bell peppers for the rice.  You could get away with leaving out the green bell pepper. I only used it because this one was rudely blown off the pepper plant it was happily growing upon and it needed to be cooked.

Lastly, seed and coarsely chop the tomatoes. 

Now, get to cooking the soup.  Start with heating a bit of olive oil in your favorite stock pot over medium heat.  Then, add the onion, garlic and banana peppers. Cook these for about 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, rinse and drain two cans of black beans.

Next, add the ham and cook for another 3 minutes.  The ham is obviously optional. This soup would be very easily made vegetarian. I just like ham, a lot (please click this link, you will not be disappointed, but you may find yourself wasting hours of time and giggling inappropriately in a place where you shouldn't be giggling and no, it doesn't have anything to do with ham).

Finally, add the star of the show, the black beans.  Both the two cans that were rinsed and drained and the one non-drained can and it's semi-weird black bean juice.

Top this all off with about 4-5 cups of broth and throw in two bay leaves and a whole bunch of hot smoked paprika.  Increase heat to bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer, for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, work on the rice. Could the rice just be cooked in the soup? Yeah probably, but I didn't want to do that. Said aforementioned Cuban lunch spot serves their yellow rice on the side of the soup and I (ingeniously) mix them together, so I was working off that model. A word about yellow rice - I bought this pre-packaged as yellow rice, but it's simply saffron that makes it yellow. If you happen to have both saffron and white rice lying around, just put the two together to get yellow rice. If not, the lovely people at the Mahatma rice company have already done this for you.

First, heat some olive oil in a high-sided skillet or medium sauce pan over medium heat. Then add the diced onion and bell peppers. Cook these for about 5 minutes until all begin to soften.

Then, add the rice. Cooking for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Add about 2 cups of broth (if you have some leftover) or just plain water if you don't.  Throw some salt in while you're at it and cover. Keep a close eye on the rice since you don't want to end up with a boiled over rice mess. Turn the heat down if an anxiety-inducing vigorous boil begins to form.  The rice should take about 20-25 minutes to cook.

Once the rice is cooked, turn off the heat and stir in the tomatoes. Resist the urge to eat the rice without the soup, because it's tasty and gorgeous.

By now, the soup should have developed a nice, rich flavor. I felt as though mine was more like beans in liquid than a true soup, so I broke out a potato masher and mashed the soup a bit. Not so much that it turned to mush, but enough that some of the beans softened and fell apart into the broth.

To serve, ladle some soup into a bowl and top with the delicious rice.  Enjoy!

Fresh Minestrone

This week I actually have two posts in one. Call it free soup, Call it a soup double dip.  Call it whatever you want.  Both recipes also directly relate to my epic cheapness and desire to cook with locally grown ingredients.

First up in our soup double header is chicken broth.  Brian and I got back from San Fran pretty late on Sunday night last week and had no time/energy to bother with thinking about dinner for the entire week. Enter a nice rotisserie chicken complements of my local Kroger and I had the beginnings of home made chicken broth.  For this you will need: one chicken carcass, one onion, three stalks of celery, two carrots, five cloves of garlic, a sprig of rosemary, salt and pepper to taste, water and a lot of free time.

First, coarsely chop the onion, carrots and celery, and peel the garlic cloves. Throw these the whole rosemary sprig and chicken pieces into a big soup pot. If you have one with a pasta strainer insert, it's a good idea to use it.

Add water to cover everything and put it over a medium-high heat.  Bring it to a boil then reduce heat to low to simmer.  Now's a good time to also throw in some salt and pepper.  Simmer for 2-4 hours. Yes, hours.

After a few hours your house will officially smell like Lipton Landing and I can't guarantee that you won't also smell like soup.  Give the broth a taste. It should be pretty bland, and that's just fine.  Remove the strainer insert with its fully water logged veggies and chicken bones from the stock pot. Let the broth cool for about 45 minutes and throw everything else away.

I got about 18 cups of broth out of this. I know that my soups usually take 6 cups of broth, so I ladled 6 cups each into three gallon freezer bags, gently placed two in the freezer for later and kept one out for the next match-up in our double header, some fresh minestrone.

Minestrone is not my best soup. I often make it because it's easy and a good pantry/veggie drawer cleaner, but I must miss something when making it.  It's usually a winter soup for me, so I thought I'd give it a try with some fresh from the farm veggies and see if that was the missing link in making the soup delicious.  Brian and I also finally had time to check out the Sandy Springs Farmer's Market where I found all the tomatoes, beans and potatoes that I used in this soup.  All are organic and were purchased from a very nice young man who likes to give people deals on their purchases. Everything I bought should have been about $18 and he gave it to me for $12 (the epic cheapness was so happy).  I'll likely juxtapose this receipe with a frozen or canned minestrone sometime in winter for a little battle of the minestrones if you will. Until then, here's some Fresh Minestrone.

For this gem you'll need: 1 onion, 2 carrots, 2 stalks of celery, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 sprig of rosemary, 2 serrano peppers (if you're into spicy), 3-4 small potatoes, 8-10 medium tomatoes, 1 zucchini, a bunch of beans (I went with these delightful purple ones), 1 can of kidney beans, 6 cups of broth, and 1 cup of small pasta. You'll also need some not pictured items to taste, additionally I threw in: one sprig of fresh oregano, 2 dried bay leaves, some dried oregano, salt, pepper and crushed red pepper flakes.  Yes, there are many ingredients. Yes, you will be spending some serious time chopping them up.  Lucky for you, it's probaby over 90 degrees outside and it's not like you were going to go outside and do something so just hunker down in the kitchen with your favorite knife and get going.

Start by mincing the garlic, serrano peppers and rosemary.  These serrano peppers came from a very fertile plant in my garden so I felt the need to use them to keep with the farm/garden fresh aspect of this soup. Feel free to leave them out.  Also, dice the onion, celery and carrot.

Next, dice the potatoes.

Then, coarsely chop the tomatoes, keeping the seeds.  I had a few pretty heirloom tomatoes to work with so seeds weren't really a problem.  Please don't judge my horrible knife skills. It's a wonder I have finger tips.

Now, the beans. I got very excited when I saw these beans, mostly because I ♥ purple things and had never seen purple beans before (so I grew up sheltered, my Grandpee had a huge garden in RI, but the only beans it in were green). These beans were a little tough and a little bitter, but they are oh so pretty.  Trim the ends of the beans and cut into 1/4 inch or so lengths.

Lastly, the zucchini. Simple dice this baby up like the rest of the diced veggies.

Now that you've devoted probably at least 30 minutes of your day to chopping veggies, get to cooking. Heat a large pot over medium heat and add some olive oil or other fat. Once it's hot, throw in the garlic, serrano peppers, onions, celery, carrots and rosemary. Cook for about 5 minutes.

Then, add the potatoes. Cooking for another 3 minutes.

Next in is the zucchini.  Cook for another 3 minutes.

Now add the tomatoes. Also throw in the chicken broth and kidney beans. Stir it all up, bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer. Let it simmer for about 10 minutes and give it a taste.  That's when I added some fresh oregano, dried oregno, dried bay leaves, salt (lots of it because the homemade broth hardly had any salt in it), pepper and crushed red pepper.

I let my soup simmer for an unnecessarily long amount of time (over an hour) because I went to the gym and wanted to eat it for lunch upon returning. I do not suggest leaving a hot pot of soup on your stove while going to the gym, unless you have someone at home to watch the soup just in case (which I did).  Regardless of my ridiculous simmer time, the soup should simmer for at least 30 minutes.  Again, give it a taste to see if it needs anything. If all systems are a go, throw in the beans.

Next, toss in the pasta. I used cute little shells. Give the whole thing a stir, increase the heat a bit and cook for about 10 minutes or until the pasta are done. Before serving, be sure to fish out the oregano sprig and bay leaves.

This is super tasty topped with a bit of shredded parmesan cheese, which is exactly how I choose to enjoy mine.