Springtime Chicken Soup

Ah springtime! That wonderful season in which we're all rewarded for making it through the winter with wonderful things like asparagus and beers on a patio and daylight past 5 pm and pollen. Okay so pollen totally sucks, but most other aspects of spring are fantastic. I tried to harness some of my favorite springtime veggies into this fresh, springtime chicken soup. The artsy pictures are compliments of the Mister. He's really getting good with our new camera.

For this baby you'll need: a pound or so of chicken, a bunch of asparagus, a package of sliced mushrooms, two stalks of celery, two shallots, a few cloves of garlic, some frozen peas, some frozen lima beans, chicken broth and whatever seasoning you desire.

First, trim the fat off the chicken and liberally salt and pepper it.

Then, contemplate the best way to cook this chicken, ultimately deciding that your husband should grill it for you.

Have a good chuckle at the puppy hunting a burnt piece of asparagus that your husband threw off the grill from last week's grilled asparagus. The puppy later found this asparagus and did his best to eat it.

While the chicken grills, chop up the veggies. I started with the asparagus. First trimming the woody ends, then chopping into small pieces.

Then, the mushrooms. Even though they came pre-sliced, I chopped them a little smaller.

Next the celery. Just chop as per usual for soup.

Onto the garlic. I used three cloves and minced them.

Next, the shallots. I used two shallots and minced them as well.

Hopefully by now your chicken is done and looks something like this

Let it cool a bit and chop into chunks.

Now to cooking. Heat a bit of olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the shallots and garlic and cook until you start to smell the garlic.

Add the asparagus, mushroom and celery and a bit of salt.  Cook for about ten minutes until the mushrooms start to shrink a bit.

Add the broth and chopped chicken. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer.

Add the peas and lima beans.  I didn't put many into my soup because I grossly overestimated the amount of asparagus I was using. Yes, that is one of the Ed Hardy glasses from last week. They're still in my house.

The soup is edible once everything is heated through.  I let mine simmer for 30 minutes because I was busy getting ready to head to Park Tavern with my visiting parents and the puppy.  After the simmer, I tasted the soup and it needed something extra. I started with some dark soy sauce and added about 1/2 a cup.

The soy sauce wasn't enough, so I threw in some sriracha as well. Probably about a tablespoon.  For those of you who do not frequent ethnic establishments, sriracha is a delicious Thai hot sauce made from chili peppers, vinegar, salt, garlic and sugar. Its pretty hot so use it sparingly unless you like hot food.

I let this simmer a bit longer and portioned it into my lunch soup servings and a big bowl of non-lunch soup. I think this made something around 8 servings.

CJ asked me what kind of soup this was when I was heating it up at work today. I couldn't come up with anything better than springtime chicken soup. Seems like a sad name for something that is actually quite good.

Recipe for Easter Dinner

No part of this post relates to soup. I suppose one part could because I did give an entire ham hock to KMS to make spilt pea soup, but there are no soup recipes here today. Instead, I present several components of a successful Easter Dinner. 
Let's start with the ham(s). I (somewhat foolishly) decided to make two 10-pound spiral hams because I was expecting nearly 20 people. Plans fell through for about 8 of them, so 12 of us were left to eat the hams.  Harley started waiting for these people hours before they were expected to show up, not that he can tell time.

Back to the hams, needless to say, there were leftovers. I placed the hams, cut side down, in my roaster pan and covered them in foil. Shockingly, they fit in the oven with one rack removed.  I cooked these babies for 2 1/2 hours at 275 then started to freak out that they wouldn't be done on time, so cooked them for another hour at 325.

Meanwhile, I prepared a wet glaze for one of them with apple juice, bourbon, molasses, brown sugar and mustard.

Measure 1/2 a cup of apple juice

Add 1/4 cup of bourbon.

Put both liquids in a small sauce pan over medium-high heat and boil until reduced to about a 1/3 of a cup. Fight the urge to make yourself a drink or just have some if you'd like. I found that this foamed a lot while boiling so you don't want to stray too far from the stove or else you'll have a boil over mess.

Meanwhile, mix together 1 3/4 cups of packed brown sugar,

A quarter cup molasses,

and a squirt of mustard.

Mix all this together. It will look like sludge.

By now the apple juice-bourbon mix should be reduced. Add it to the brown sugar-molasses sludge and mix well. Set aside until the ham is done.

Meanwhile, work on the other components of this perfect Easter dinner. I'll go next to mac and cheese. This Easter dinner was also slated to be a great mac and cheese cook off competition, complete with a score sheet

and awesome prizes, le crueset for the winner and Ed Hardy glasses for the loser.

However, we only ended up with two entrants (mine and Brian's) because plans fell through for our other friends who were competing. I think I won the contest, but only because Brian actually wanted to use the Ed Hardy glasses (which made me seriously think about my decision to marry him).

Anyway, onto my mac and cheese. I use 2% milk, butter, flour, randomly shaped pasta, a sharp white cheddar and a spicy jack cheese, some adobo sauce from chipotles and in adobo and bread crumbs.

Slice up the cheese into chunks. The smaller they are, the easier they will melt. You could shred/grate the cheese if you like.

Get some water boiling in a big pot.

Now, work on your cheese sauce. This sauce is the secret to delicious mac and cheese. Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a medium sauce pot over medium heat.

Add 4 tablespoons of flour,

Whisk together to mix. Continue to stir until the flour is all cooked, about 5 minutes.

Add about 2 cups of milk, stir to mix, and heat for about 10 minutes.

Add the cheese and adobo sauce. Stir continuously to be sure the cheese melts, nothing sticks to the bottom and the milk doesn't boil over. The sauce will thicken as it cooks. If it seems too thin, just add more flour and stir well to incorporate.

Meanwhile, your water should be boiling by now, so add the pasta and cook until al dente. I used a whole box of rotelle.

Once the pasta is done, drain it and transfer to whatever casserole dish you want to bake the mac and cheese in. I chose a cast iron dutch oven because I wanted mine to stay warm. Anything 2 quarts or bigger should hold this mac and cheese. Add the cheese sauce and stir a little bit to be sure all the pasta is covered. This will look soupy and that's okay. It will bake up just fine. Top with bread crumbs to make a crunchy top. Bake for 45 minutes at 350.

The final product will look bubbly and delicious.

Meanwhile, Brian was busy frying up some of his mac and cheese, since he's of the opinion that frying things always makes them better. They were pretty good, but the non-fried version of his was better (you can sort of see his dish in the background of the picture above).

So what next? I think 13 bottles of wine makes for a nice Easter. Though I do believe we only drank 4 of them and there were no 'water into wine' jokes.

A vegetable would also be nice. Nothing says 'Spring is here' like asparagus! CDC sponsors Farmer's Markets in all of its campuses weekly and I bought all the asparagus at the market at my campus on Friday. Yes, that's 7 buddles of asparagus.

Since the oven was busy with hams and mac and cheeses, the asparagus went on the grill. Seasoned simply with salt, pepper and garlic powder.  This platter is huge, though I know it doesn't show that way in this picture. This was more asparagus than I've ever seen in one place at one time. Thankfully, I ♥ asparagus so leftovers will not go to waste.

Now, back to the hams. They finally cooked and cooled. I poured the wet glaze over one and baked for another 20 minutes at 425 until the glaze was nice and bubbly.

Brian meanwhile coated the other ham in brown sugar and made a brown sugar-butter glaze. He poured it over the ham and it solidified into delicious ham candy.

Then I put out plates, flatware and drinks and waited for our friends to arrive.

Friends came, complete with some tomato pie, cheesy grits, more beer and many lovely desserts, all of which I neglected to take pictures of (because I'm really self-centered). We had a great time, with everyone who wanted leftovers taking some home. Then baseball came on and I nearly vomited at Beckett's awful first outing. Boston won in the end, but I do not like to see the ace have 5 earned runs against him. Oh well, at least Easter dinner was great!

Butternut Squash & Lentil Soup

Thursday was my birthday. Thursday was also yet another cold, rainy, dreary day in Atlanta, which was perfect for soup lunch. One of my favorite soup places in Atlanta is the lovely Souper Jenny on East Andrews Drive. I think it may be the only good reason to ever be on East Andrews Drive because everything else over there is a waste of time.  Anyway, my delicious birthday lunch selection was some pumpkin & butternut squash soup and a lentil salad. Sadly, it was so wonderful that I ate it too quickly and couldn't enjoy the two hour long lunch I had planned. Happily, it inspired this week's butternut squash and lentil soup.

First of, I recognize that most people will find this recipe nauseating. I'm okay with that, because it was not my best. If you decide to embrace this soup and give it a try, you'll need: one butternut squash, a few cloves of garlic, two shallots, some ginger, lentils, broth of your choosing, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, ground nutmeg, cumin, coriander and cinnamon.

Start with chopping your veggies, mince 2-3 cloves of garlic,

and two shallots. Set these aside in a small bowl together.

Then, peel and mince about 1 inch of fresh ginger. You can use about 2 teaspoons of ground ginger instead if you can't find fresh, but fresh is better. Set this aside in a bowl by itself.

Now, peel the butternut squash.  The squash peel is really quite thick. I had to go over the squash three times with my peeler to get down to the squash itself.

Next, dice the squash into medium-sized cubes. I cut mine into rounds and cut out the seeds once I got to them. Put all the squash in a large bowl and set aside.

Then I mixed my spices together. I normally don't do this, instead just adding them directly to the soup. But since I put so many spices in this one, I thought this was a good idea. Into a cute little stainless prep cup, 2 teaspoons of ground cumin, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander, and a little bit of freshly ground nutmeg.  Feel free to play with this spice mix. I bet this would be good with more cinnamon or maybe even pumpkin pie spice.

For the last of the prep steps, sift through a cup of lentils, making sure that you remove any rocks or other non-food pieces.

Now, get everything cooking. Into an enameled cast iron dutch oven over medium heat, throw in a bit of olive oil and the garlic and shallots.  Cook for 3-5 minutes until you start to smell the garlic.

Then add the ginger and cook for 2-4 minutes until you smell the ginger.

Add the spices and stir to mix.

Add the squash and lentils, stir to mix and cook for about 5 minutes.

Add about 6 cups of broth and bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer.  Cook this for about 50 minutes, stirring occaisionally.

Meanwhile in my kitchen, Harley-face woke up from his much needed nap after a weekend boarded at day care, to the lovely smell of Brian dicing up some beef for dinner. That puppy is so nosy and stands so well on his back paws!

After an hour or so, the squash and lentils will be cooked and the soup should look something like this

I added some fresh lemon juice then mashed the soup with my potato masher. In retrospect, I should have stopped after mashing, you'll see why in a second.

Since I don't know when to quit, I blended this soup with my stick blender. Which resulted in a soup that looked an awful lot like baby food or possibly baby poo depending on your perspective.

Regardless of this soup's semi-unappetizing appearance, it does taste good and it looks lovely in the fantastic soup and sandwich plates (thanks Amy!).

This soup was not my best. I will admit that. If I were to make it again I wouldn't blend it. I would also use less cumin because cumin smells a bit like dirty feet (which makes people look at me really strangely when I heat this up at work). However, this is a nice hearty soup. I was feeling quite sick at work today, complete with what I thought was a fever and was very lightheaded, but after my lunch serving of this soup, I felt like a million bucks. Pretty food, it is not. Comfort food, it may be.