I've had a bad day chicken soup

The past 24 hours of my life have been particularly frustrating/maddening/annoying.  Whether this is because I perpetually allow the actions of persons who may or may not give two hoots about my well being upset me, or for some other reason, I really cannot tell.  I'll spare the details since I have no idea who actually reads this blog and just move onto the soup.  There are a few things in life that always make bad days better for me. In no particular order and not an exhaustive list: Brian (usually futilely) attempting to cheer me up, walking the puppy, cupcakes, lizards running on my back patio, and chicken soup. 

For this I've had a bad day chicken soup, you'll need: 2 carrots, 1 parsnip, 1/2 an onion, 3 stalks of celery, 1 turnip, 1 potato (mine is purple. PURPLE!), 3 cloves of garlic, 1 chicken breast, 1/4 cup pesto, 2 cups of spinach, 1/4 cup pastina pasta and chicken broth.

First, get the chicken breast in some water and boil it.  I only used one chicken breast since I didn't want to make more than a few servings of soup.

Next, work on the vegetables.  I peeled the carrots, parsnip and turnip. Then diced them and the onion, celery and potato.  As per usual, the garlic was minced. If your day has been bad enough to necessitate tears and you cry when chopping onions, this veggie prep time is an excellent time to get a good cry in as well.  If you ♥ the color purple as much as I do, you may find yourself cheered up by the potato. 

By the time you finish with the veggies, the chicken should be done. Remove it from the pot, but reserve the water.  Allow the chicken to cool then shred or chop into bite sized pieces. If you're pressed for time, or just like efficiency, shred the chicken while the veggies are cooking during the next step.

Now, for cooking.  Heat a bit of oil over medium heat in whatever pot you'd like.  Once it's hot, add all the veggies at once, cooking for about 8 minutes. Next, add the reserved chicken cooking water, more broth and the cooked chicken. I added about 2 cups of broth.

Stir in the pesto.  My pesto was homemade compliments of an unexpectedly large crop of basil.  Brian made it for last week's Sunday supper entree of pesto crusted pork loin, and (in usual Brian fashion) doctored it up with some gorganzola cheese.  If you don't live with a top notch chef and don't have a fridge full of inventive left-overs, store bought pesto is a-ok.  Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Lastly, add the spinach and pastina and cook for 5 minutes.  I really like pastina because it's little star pasta and reminds me that I'm a super star even when others try to convince me that I'm not.

To serve, you could top with a little cheese, since cheese makes everything better (provided you aren't lactose intolerant). I didn't add cheese since I had extra special cheesey pesto. Enjoy!

Ribollita

This lovely rustic Italian soup is inspired by two things: 1) mine and Brian's anniversary was on Sunday and I first had this soup while sitting in a cafe in Sienna, splitting a half litre of wine over lunch; and 2) Columbus Day was Monday.  Now, you can talk to me until you're blue in the face about what a terrible Italian Christopher Columbus was, about how he was kicked out of Italy and his travel to the New World was funded by Spanish, and how he wasn't the first European to set foot in the Americas, but I do not care. Where I come from Christoper Columbus is a hero. An Italian hero of whom all good Italians are very proud. As a good Italian, I took my honeymoon in Italy and just one year later am making this delicious soup to remember the fun of said honeymoon.

For this tasty treat, you'll need: about 2 ounces of pancetta, 2 garlic cloves, 2 carrots, 3 celery stalks, 1 onion, 3 medium potatoes, 2 large ripe tomatoes, a bunch of kale, 2 cans of Great Northern (or cannellini) beans, 6 cups of broth, 2 sprigs of rosemary, a parmesan rind and some hot dried peppers.

First, dice the pancetta.  I shopped at the el-cheapo Kroger for my ingredients, so I couldn't get the giant pancetta chunk straight from the deli that I like to purchase.  This thinly sliced, pre-packaged pancetta did okay.  Kindly notice the adorable little white prep cup. It's from the Le Creuset outlet (my new favorite store) and it's made of silicon so it' squishy. Awesome. 

Next, mince the garlic and dice the onion, celery and carrots.  I had to peel my carrots because I couldn't get them to look clean therefore I assumed they were dirty. Peeling, obviously not necessary, especially if you like the taste of dirt.

Then, dice the potatoes.  You could probably get away with using just 2 potatoes since these three turned into more than I bargained for. But I ♥ potatoes.

Now, seed and dice the tomatoes.  Please do not judge the fact that these tomatoes are far from ripe. They were all that was available. How quickly garden tomato season has gone away.

Finally, shred the kale into roughly one inch strips.  If you've never cooked kale, the important step is to get the thick rib out of each leaf. That piece is not tasty. As with nearly all greens, this looks like a giant pile of roughage, but it cooks down nicely.

Now, for the beans. A truly good Italian would have used dry beans, let them soak overnight and followed all those steps for cooking dry beans. Or, if I were more like my Nonnie or my Auntie, I would have used the pressure cooker. I did neither of those things. I used canned beans like a true American.  Rinse and drain both cans of beans.  Using a food processor, pulse half of the beans into a paste. I seasoned the bean paste with some rosemary and salt and threw in a little bit of olive oil.  Reserve the other half of the beans.

Now, it's cook time. Heat a big stock pot over medium heat and throw in just a splash of olive oil.  Throw in the pancetta and cook until the fat has rendered and the pancetta pieces are a bit crispy, about 5-8 minutes.  Also, if you're adding any dried hot peppers, throw them in with the pancetta.

Next, add the carrots, celery, onion and garlic to the pot.  Cook these for 5 minutes or until the onions are translucent.

Throw in the potatoes and cook for another 5 minutes.

Then stir in  the tomatoes.

Now, add the beans.  First the bean paste (which looks terribly unappetizing) then the whole beans.

Dump in 6 cups of stock.  Yes, an entire 6 cups. This makes a lot of soup. Stir the whole thing up really well.

Okay, almost done with adding things. Drop in all the kale.  Stir the soup very well. You want to try to get the kale submerged in broth, but this is pretty impossible without adding more broth and making even more soup. Just do the best you can.

Lastly, toss in the rosemary sprigs and parmesan rind.  I left the rosemary whole since I knew it would fall apart during simmering. If you don't have any parmesan rind, don't worry, you just may need to season with more salt.

Increase the heat to bring the soup to a boil, then lower to a simmer.  Cover and simmer for 2 hours.  Yes, 2 hours. About an hour into simmering, give it a taste and throw in any seasoning it may need. I had to add a bit of salt, ground black pepper and red pepper flake.  This will smell delectable. Before serving, be sure to remove the rosemary sprigs. You can remove the parmesan rind, but I like to leave it in and have a parsmean surprise when eating the soup.

Serve with a hunk of hearty bread. If you want to go all out, rub the bread with a fresh clove of garlic and toast.  Feed this to your sister-in-law who just arrived from Chile via Charlotte and walked into your house asking if the soup was ready yet. Enjoy!

Pozole

Last Thursday was Mexican Independence Day. I know this because my boss is Mexican and usually brings in a treat to share on this special day. She did not do this last week. Instead, I took it upon myself to make a Mexican treat of my own in the form of this Pozole, and no, for you Atlanta peeps, I clearly do not mean the restaurant in the Highlands, though their food is quite tasty.

For this baby, you'll need: a few chicken breasts, some sort of spicy seasoning like ancho chili powder, 1 medium onion, a few cloves of garlic, 5 or so tomatillos, hot peppers of your choosing, 2 cans of hominy, 4 cups of broth, 5 radishes, 2 avocados, 2 limes and a whole mess of cilantro.

First, get the chicken breasts boiling in a medium sauce pot over medium-high heat. Two chicken breasts ought to do the trick. To spice things up a bit (literally) I also threw in about a tablespoon of ancho chili powder and a pinch of the Blivmore proprietary spice mix known only as 'use sparingly'.  'Use sparingly' is the dehydrated and powdered form of all the hot garden peppers we've been growing. Its name isn't just an idle warning. Let the chicken boil, uncovered for about 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, mince the garlic and hot peppers.  I intended to use one jalapeno, one very small and very curvy banana peppers, and a serrano. After tasting the chicken boil water and the heat that 'use sparingly' imparted onto it, all these peppers were not used (after all, I do like my taste buds and didn't want to kill them).  I also diced the onion and tomatillos. Yes, those green things are tomatillos and not granny smith apples.

Next, rinse and drain the hominy. A few thoughts on hominy. Being an Italian girl from Rhode Island, I had absolutely no idea what hominy was. I first heard of it in a Tori Amos song and, given the context, I had a suspicion that it was food.  Fast forward several years and some by-the-seat-of-my-pants education in Southern cooking and I've learned that it is indeed food, specifically a corn product with very little flavor of it's own, and an uncanny ability to look utterly unappetizing in photos.

By now the chicken should be cooked. Remove it from but do not discard the cooking water, and shred it any way you like. I spent a good three minutes deciding whether I detested shredding chicken with two forks more than I detested washing the food processor, finally settling on the two fork method (evidenced by the attack fork in the photo below). I left my chicken pieces quite large, mostly due to laziness and hatred of fork shredding.

Now it's cooking time. In your favorite large stock pot, heat a bit of olive oil over medium heat.  Then add the vegetables, cooking for about 3 minutes. 

Next add the broth, both the leftover water from boiling the chicken and 4 cups of other broth. Finally, add the hominy, chicken and a pinch of salt. Increase the heat to bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer. Let this simmer for at least 30 if not 60 minutes.

While the soup is doing its thing, prepare all the soup toppings.  I spent a good portion of my Saturday researching what actually goes onto a bowl of pozole. I settled with sliced radishes, diced avocado, fresh lime juice and a bunch of cilantro.  I found many other recipes that added lettuce or cabbage to the bowl of pozole but I didn't much like that idea. Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Deliciousness

Summer is generally accepted as a season in which people eat less and are more active and therefore shed a few pounds. However, for girls in Atlanta who go to too many tailgates, drink too many beers and wear too many belly hiding sundress, Summer turns into the season of minor weight gain.  Said weight goes largely unnoticed until the first days of Fall roll around and the dreaded task of buttoning pants rears its ugly head, culminating in a major meltdown with me throwing every pair of pants out of my closet in frustration. I'm trying to prevent that meltdown by making some veggie based soups (and re-acquainting myself with the gym). Not to say that this Sweet Potato Deliciousness is without any unhealthy component, but the star of the show is the potato with the unhealthy bits just making a cameo. 

For this little bowl of heaven, you'll need: 4 sweet potatoes, a few cloves of garlic (by some upsetting turn of events, I had no fresh garlic in my house, so please excuse the pre-minced garlic in the picture), 1/2 a cup of barley, 2 dried bay leaves, 2 fresh sage leaves, some broth of your choosing, about a cup of milk and a 4 ounce package of gorganzola cheese.

Since the ingredient list on this one is pretty short, I also thought it would be cute to highlight some of my kitchen gadgets as well. If you have them, this soup is a good place to use: a mandoline slicer, food mill and stick blender.  If you don't have them, the only gadget you'll really need to make this is some device capable of blending a soup, be it a food processor or traditional blender.

To start, peel the potatoes or get your husband to peel them for you because he's bored. That's right, he was so bored that he wanted to peel potatoes. Brian and I lead an exciting life.

Then, get your husband to use the mandoline slicer to put the potatoes into thin rounds.  No mandoline slicer? Just dice the potatoes up into evenly sized chunks or thinly slice them. Remember that the smaller the pieces are, the faster they'll cook.

While Brian was doing all my prep work, I was trying to get the adorable puppy to play with me. He wasn't interested, so I threw his toys at him instead (which is the act of choice in the Blivmore house for when Harls refuses to play with us).  Yes, his toys have faces. Yes, they are also Clemson colors, but that was by accident (I think).

Back to soup. I heated some olive oil in a large stock pot over medium heat then threw in the garlic and cooked for 3 minutes. Then I added the barley and cooked for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly.  The barley is completely optional. I added it so that the soup would have a bit more body and to impart a nutty flavor, but it could easily be left out.

Next, add all the potatoes to the pot and give it a good stir.

Then, add the broth. You want the potatoes to be almost completely submerged in liquid.  I had to add an additional cup of water to cover my potatoes.

Lastly, throw in the bay and sage leaves and a bit of salt and pepper. Cover and increase the heat to get the liquid boiling.  Cook this for at least 30 minutes or until the potatoes are completely cooked and a bit mushy.

Meanwhile, make the gorgonzola cream sauce.  In pursuit of making this soup at least mostly healthy, I used 1% milk instead of real cream. My sauce turned out a bit thin, but I'm okay with that. Using a stick blender or other blending device, blend the entire containter of gorgonzola cheese with about 1/2 a cup of milk.  Set this aside for later.

By now, the potatoes and sage have caused your entire house to smell like Thanksgiving dinner, which is your first indication that the potatoes are done. I mashed the potatoes a bit before attempting to stick blend them because I know that my stick blender is incapable of handling big chunks, and then roughly blended the soup to the consistency of baby food.  Then I ran the entire soup through my brand new food mill in efforts to make it smoother, which mostly failed because the soup needed more liquid. 
I returned the soup to the stock pot, turned the heat back on to medium, and added 1/2 a cup of milk and about a cup of water. This simmered for another 10 minutes. I buzzed it one last time with the stick blender and it turned out to be the perfect consistency (for me at least).


To serve, top with a bit of the gorgonzola cream sauce and stir to get a pretty swirl design in your soup.  Also, consider serving with the wonderful wrap sandwich that I made consisting of: hummus, smoked provolone cheese, homemade pickled hot peppers, onions and carrots (also known as hickles), and turkey. Would I order this in a restaurant? Why yes, I think I would. Enjoy!

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.