Cooking Challenge Week 32 (Late!) - Corn - Corn Chowder with Smoked Sausage and Pasta

Since I'm trying desperately to catch up to the current challenge, I'm going to keep this one short and sweet.  It's not the most attractive soup to try to photograph (pale yellow and fleshy pink?) but it's soooo tasty.

Let's get to that recipe, shall we?

Corn Chowder with Smoked Sausage and Pasta
(adapted from The Cook's Encyclopaedia of Soup)

• 1 small green bell pepper
• 1 pound potatoes, peeled and diced
• 2 cups canned or frozen corn kernels
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1/2 cup small pasta shapes (I used penne because I had it, but I'd recommend something smaller)
• 4 oz smoked sausage, sliced
• oil

Seed and finely dice the green pepper.  In a small bowl, cover with boiling water and leave to stand for 2 minutes.  Drain and rinse.

Put the potatoes in a saucepan with the corn, onion, celery, green pepper, and chicken stock.  Bring to a boil, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer 20 minutes or until all the vegetables are tender.

Add the milk, and season with salt and pepper.  Carefully puree half the soup in a blender and return to the pan, stirring to mix well with the remaining soup.  (Alternately, do what I did and use a hand blender to whiz the soup in the pan until it's partially pureed.  It's a lot safer, and it means fewer dishes to wash.)

Add the pasta and simmer for 10 minutes, until the pasta is al dente.  (Adjust this to the cook time of your specific pasta, if necessary.)

Meanwhile, heat a little oil in a small saucepan and fry the smoked sausage quickly until warmed through and lightly browned, 2-3 minutes.  Stir into the soup, and serve.

Cooking Challenge Week 15 - One Pot - Lentil Soup with Chicken and Potatoes

I love lentils.  Maybe they're an odd thing to love, but I have yet to meet a lentil soup I don't like, and I've been known to eat leftover tarka dal on wheat toast for breakfast!  This is one of my two favorite recipes (why, yes, I can have two because they're incredibly different!)  This one came from one of my first Indian cookbooks, and is definitely the more versatile of the two in terms of add-ins; the other relies on the standard mirepoix, plus rosemary and bacon.  I'll probably share that one at some point in the future...

Down to business.  The bare bones soup is delicious--I made it that way first, years ago.  The recipe lists two choices of optional additions, separate but equal: pre-cooked diced potato, or pre-cooked rice, obviously intended to help use up leftovers.  We like both, though I lean in slight favor of the potato.  Then I adapted the recipe to use either uncooked rice or potatoes by adding extra water and playing with the cook times--it is a soup, after all!  Then came experimenting with other vegetables.  Cauliflower is okay; parsnip is a definite no, its flavor ended up dominating the whole soup, which wasn't at all right.

This time, however, is the first time I tried adding chicken.  I had some leftover cooked chicken I'd intended to use for chicken salad, but it just didn't end up happening, so into the pot it goes!

Lentil Soup
(adapted from The Complete Book of Indian Cooking)

• 1 tbsp ghee (or butter)
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 fresh green chili, finely chopped (and deseeded if you don't like the heat)
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/3 cup split red lentils (masoor dal)
• 1 cup water
• salt, to taste
• 1 14-oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• lemon juice, to taste

Optional: 1/2 cup uncooked rice or 1 large russet potato, peeled and finely diced, plus 1 cup extra water ; 1 cup chopped cooked chicken

Heat the ghee in a large saucepan and fry the onion, garlic, chili, and turmeric over medium heat until the onion is translucent.   Add the lentils and water and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook until all the water is absorbed, about 15 minutes.  Mash the lentils lightly with the back of a wooden spoon.

Add the salt, tomatoes, and sugar and mix well.  For the bare bones soup, you're almost done; raise the heat to medium and cook the soup just long enough to soften the tomatoes, about 5 minutes.

If using rice or potatoes, add them now with the extra water, and cook until the rice is done or the potatoes are fork-tender, 15-20 minutes.  If using the chicken, add last and cook just long enough to heat through.

Finally, season the soup with lemon juice to taste.  How much you need will depend mostly on the acidity of the tomatoes and your personal preference.

Serve piping hot with any Indian flat bread to dip, or even just crusty French bread!

Cooking Challenge Week 8 - Slow Cooking - Chicken-Sausage Gumbo

In honor of Mardi Gras this week, I chose gumbo to go into my beloved crock pot.  I use it all the time, so the slow-cooking itself wasn't at all a challenge, just finding a new recipe to keep things interesting!

Hard to believe, I suppose, but for all the regional and ethnic food I've tried, I've never actually had gumbo.  Red beans and rice, sure, all the time, but never gumbo.  So while I knew my gumbo turned out tasty--which it certainly did--I had to rely on my husband to tell me if it tasted right.  His opinion?  A good base recipe, but not hot enough, and not spiced enough.  Next time, I'll try it with some creole seasoning, and more chili flakes!

One thing to note:  be careful with that roux!  I'm giving the recipe exactly as written, in terms of timing, but my roux browned much faster than anticipated--probably because I used a relatively thin-bottomed saucepan.  Trust your eyes and nose instead of the recipe; if it looks and smells done, it's done, even if it didn't need the full twenty minutes to cook.

Chicken-Sausage Gumbo
(from Better Homes and Gardens New Crockery Cooker Cookbook, 1987)

• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 4 cups water
• 12 oz. fully-cooked smoked sausage, halved lengthways and sliced
• 2 cups chopped, cooked chicken
• 1 10-oz. package frozen cut okra
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/4 tsp red chili flakes (more to taste, if desired)
• hot cooked rice, to serve

For the roux, stir together the flour and oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan until smooth.  Cook over medium-high heat for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.  Lower the heat to medium.  Cook and stir constantly another 15 minutes, until the roux is a dark copper-brown.  Set aside to cool while preparing the vegetables.

In a slow cooker (4 qt. or larger), combine the cooled roux and water.  Add the sausage, chicken, okra, onion, celery, green bell pepper, garlic, salt, pepper, and red chili flakes.  Cover and cook on low for 10 to 12 hours or high for 4 1/2 to 5 hours.  Makes 6 servings.

Cooking Challenge Week 3 - Soup - Chiang Mai Noodle Soup

Some people probably go through life without ever making soup from scratch.

I am not one of them.

There are nine different soups in my freezer right now.  Not just nine freezer bags of soup--nine types of soup, most with two bags' worth, a few with three.  Despite only having to feed myself and my husband, I never make a batch of soup smaller than four servings, usually six, sometimes even eight or ten.  I love soup.  And I love how well most of them freeze!

(For the curious:  top row, left to right - chicken noodle, Dublin coddle, turkey mulligatawny, potato, pork and sweet potato stew.  bottom row, left to right - spicy bean soup with carnitas, white turkey chili, ground beef chili, and borscht.)

So when I saw that this week's challenge was soup, I nearly threw my hands up in despair.  I make soup every week!  What on earth could I do to make it special?

Answer: Reread every recipe in my trusty The Cook's Encyclopedia of Soup, and find an overlooked recipe that was bound to set my taste buds on fire.

Literally.

And so I present Chiang Mai Noodle Soup.

 
Chiang Mai Noodle Soup
(adapted from The Cook's Encyclopedia of Soup; 4 servings)

• 1 15-oz can coconut milk
• 2 tbsp red curry paste
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 2 cups cooked chicken meat, cut into bite-size pieces
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• lime juice, to taste
• 2 to 3 oz. rice sticks (a.k.a. cellophane or glass noodles)

Garnish options:

• chopped scallions
• sliced fresh red chilis
• minced shallots
• pickled mustard leaves, chopped
• fried sliced garlic
• fresh cilantro leaves
• fried noodle nests

Pour about one-third of the coconut milk into a large saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring often.  Add the curry paste and turmeric, stir to mix together, and cook until fragrant.  Add the chicken meat and cook about two minutes, stirring well to ensure all the chunks are well-coated with the paste.  Add the remaining coconut milk, chicken stock, fish sauce, and soy sauce.  Season to taste with salt and pepper, and simmer 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the rice sticks in shallow heatproof dish and pour boiling water over to cover.  Leave to soak 10 minutes.

Next, prepare your chosen garnishes.  (I just went with scallions, not having thought to buy red chilis as well, and not having access most of the rest.)

Remove the soup from the heat and add the lime juice to taste.  Drain the rice sticks and divide between four bowls.  Ladle the soup over the noodles, add the garnishes, and eat!

Bring the little bit of coconut milk to a boil.

Dump in the turmeric and curry paste.  (It's obviously supposed to be Thai red curry paste for a Thai/Burmese dish, but I didn't have any--I used an Indian hot curry paste, it tasted fine.  Once you add the fish sauce, you can't mistake it for anything but southeast Asian!)

It smells pretty amazing at this point.

Toss in the chicken and let that cook for two minutes or so...

...then add the chicken stock, fish sauce, soy sauce, and the rest of the coconut milk.

These are the only non-pasta noodle my local grocery stocks, so that's what I used.  The recipe actually calls for one pound of fresh egg noodles, and the picture shows the kind of thick, round noodle I've seen in some Chinese dishes.  I like rice sticks, so I had no problem using them instead.  I used one of the three 'cakes' of noodles in the package, which seemed like plenty.

Pour boiling water over them.  This is another reason I love our electric kettle, it doesn't take up a burner!

Meanwhile, prep your garnishes.  I fancied up my scallions by chopping them at an angle--easy, but it looks pretty.

Like so.

Take the soup off the heat and add the lime juice.  Purists will insist on fresh-squeezed, but I prefer the value and convenience of bottled.  I honestly can't tell the difference!

 The rice sticks are ready to drain...

...and divide between the bowls.

Ladle on the soup...

..and throw on those garnishes!  Since I didn't chop up any fresh chilis, I added crushed red chili pepper as well, which is an easy way to customize the heat level.  Hot for me, extremely hot for my husband!