It's Hot Out - Let's Have Soup!

In between my freshman and sophomore years at college, one of my roommates invited some of us to go sailing in Casco Bay here in Maine.  Another roommate and I traveled up and we spent the next few days motoring around the bay in a sailboat under cloudy cold skies.  I should also say that both my roommate and I were intensely sea sick for that time as well.

Don’t get me wrong it was beautiful, but I was at that time unaccustomed to the fact that Maine can be 55° at midday during the summer.  It also was not very windy, which meant the “sailing” portion of our trip turned into using the diesel engine on the boat to slowly maneuver us around island (this engine was referred to as the ‘diesel donkey’).  Thus the seasickness I had was not of the “chumming for large sport fish” variety but a dull and constant nausea. 

Angry Lobster!

There were of course some wonderful experiences; stopping on an island and shell hunting, sleeping all together on the tiny galley table that pushed down to become a bed, and lastly stopping at a restaurant on the final day for some lobster bisque.  The lobster bisque was very tasty although I could only manage to swallow a few sips, again due to that lingering seasickness. 

Now, as I understand it lobster stew/bisque/chowder has basically 4 ingredients; broth, cream, butter, lobster.  And although this combination is very delicious, it is not the lightest meal to consume.  If the stew sits any longer than 30 seconds, the layer of butter separates to the top making a lovely orange shimmer along the surface of the bowl or pot. 

Since this summer has been decidedly un-Maine-like where it has actually been warm to hot even, the idea of consuming a large bowl of cream and butter didn’t sound that appetizing.  But, lobster prices are incredibly low right now, and Joe and I try to reserve tucking into whole steamed lobsters for when we have company, which lead me to thinking about lobster bisque.  So how should one go about making a lighter version of the traditional bisque? By adding vegetables of course! So the next time you feel like making soup during this incredibly hot summer, may I suggest a lovely Lobster Corn Chowder.

Lobster Corn Chowder
This recipe is really an amalgamation of recipes, but it is most closely related to the Williams Sonoma Lobster Corn Chowder

I had a bag of frozen lobster stock ready to go for this dish, but if you don’t I recommend using the one in the above recipe link.

2 1-1/4 pound lobsters
3 slices of bacon, diced
1 medium onion, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
1/4 c. white wine
4 cups lobster stock
1 lb. potatoes, diced (red skinned or fingerling)
3 ears fresh corn, shucked
2/3 c. heavy cream
3 scallions, sliced
10 cherry tomatoes, quartered (optional)
Fresh chives, chopped
Hot sauce, optional

In a large pot place 2 inches of water, heavily salted. Place the lobsters in, cover and steam for about 7 minutes, or until the lobsters are bright red.  Remove lobsters from pot and set aside to cool.

Next, cut the corn off of the cob, and reserve both the cobs and the kernels.

In a large stock pot over medium-high heat, sauté bacon to render the fat, add diced onion and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.  Add diced carrots and cook another 5 minutes.  Next add the white wine, and scrap off any brown bits on the bottom of the pan, simmer until the wine is mostly evaporated.  Add the lobster stock and corn cobs, bring to a boil.  Next add the potatoes, and the white part of the scallions, and cook for about 10 minutes.  Add the heavy cream, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Toss in corn kernels.  Continue cooking for another 10 minutes. 

Pull lobster meat from lobsters – knuckle and claw meat can be left intact, but chop tail meat into bite sized pieces.  Add lobster meat to the chowder.

Just before serving add in the remaining scallion greens.  Ladle into bowls and add chives and tomato quarters.  A dash or three of hot sauce in each bowl is a great addition right before eating – it will enhance the creaminess!

Stocking Up

Who said it could be September already? I mean seriously, I have not had enough time getting sun burnt or sweating at night or getting bitten by mosquitos. All of the things I normally gripe about have been very infrequent this summer, or at least it seems that way to me now.

I told Joe this morning that I was not ready for spiced apple desserts or soups or roasts or any other fall type food. I want my tomatoes and eggplants and green beans darnit! I’m holding on to summer recipes and summer foods for as long as I can. I’ll be out grilling in the first snowfall I imagine.

Normally, I kind of like the release of summer into early fall. You can smell it. Maybe that’s why, it’s been raining for the past few days and I haven’t smelled autumn yet. I keep asking myself (well my tummy really) ‘do we want apple cider? How does butternut squash sound to you?’ and in response I get nothing, no gurgle of appreciation or rumble of desire. Nothing. This means I will continue to disregard the calendar and outside temperatures and keep cooking summer favorites.

You may be wondering, what does she have for me today. The answer is nothing. I’m sorry. I’ve been so busy with guests and hurricanes and work that I have not got something to share with you. I have been cooking up a storm, but they have all been trusty favorites, or brand new recipes I don’t feel comfortable sharing just yet. Well, that’s not entirely true. I made some lobster stock that I plan on using this weekend. I’ll share that with you. Since this is basically how I make chicken stock, I know it well enough to share.

Remember how I told you last week that we tend to eat lobsters when we have guests? My parents came this past weekend, and to make eating lobsters not as terrifying to my mother, Joe and I dispatched and dismembered them prior to dinner. But I had lots of lobster shells available for making stock – which is perfect because I will need lobster stock for next week’s recipe. I don’t want to give it away, but I will give you the lobster stock. It was really very simple and smells wonderful while cooking.


Quick Lobster Stock
I did not add any salt to this as we cooked the lobsters in VERY salted water, but taste and adjust as needed.

4 empty lobster shells – meat removed (we saved all the little bits as well as the heads, this turned into quite a bit of shell)
1 medium onion, cut into a large dice
3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks
3 stalks celery, cut into large chunks
3 sprigs of thyme
3-4 large prigs of parsley (stem and leaves)
1 bay leaf
12 peppercorns
Water to cover

Combine lobster shells vegetables and spices in a large pot over medium heat. Begin cooking to soften the vegetables, then add water to just barely cover everything. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally.

Skim off any foam that accumulates on the surface and discard. Simmer for about one hour, until the stock is fragrant and yellowish/green in color.

Place cheese cloth into a colander and the colander into a large bowl (or other pot). Strain the stock through the cloth and colander. Discard the shells and veggies. Stir the strained stock to cool it quickly. Once it has stopped steaming, pour into re-sealable bags or plastic containers and freeze until ready to use. Make about 12 cups.

Onion Goggles

My grandmother used to wear “Onion Goggles.” This is not the same as beer goggles, although actual visibility may be just as impaired by either. No, Onion Goggles were the science lab type of eyewear protection my grandmother would wear while chopping onions. I only remember her wearing them sometimes and I can’t tell you what she was making while wearing them, but I am guessing anything with a lot of onions.

I used to love that she had onion goggles, and I would wonder why we did not have onion goggles at home for all of our onion chopping needs. During the holidays I could stand in the kitchen and watch her cook. She would pull out the onions, open her kitchen drawer, don the goggles and get to work. My eyes would always tear up, and she would tell me that I needed a pair of onion goggles. I’m not sure if I ever was given a pair, but hopefully there is a picture somewhere of my grandmother and me wearing our onion goggles standing at the kitchen counter.

I too have enlisted the help of eye protection occasionally when cutting onions. If the amount is small enough I will tough it out and have myself a good cry. But when I am cutting a lot of onions, I may bust out some old swim goggles and strap them to my head. I must say, that swim goggles are not the ideal goggles to use on dry land. My goggles constantly fog up, and make it extremely dangerous to continue chopping.

When we were living in California, I had offered to make the stuffing for a large family style Thanksgiving meal at the bakery I worked at. This meant stuffing for about 120 people. And if you remember how I have a problem gauging how much food to make – it will come as no surprise that I made waaaay too much stuffing. Plus, working at the bakery gave me access to all the different types of bread I could ever want in a stuffing. At any rate, I made about 40 pounds of stuffing. Which of course called for about 10 pounds of onions.

When chopping 10 pounds of onions you really do need eyewear protection. I tried everything else – freezing the onions, cutting them under water (which is a surefire way to cut yourself and make it look like a scene from Jaws in your kitchen sink), lighting a match and so on, but goggles are simply the best. And the reason I am mentioning this now, is not for a recipe on stuffing (although I may do that later) but for onion soup.

For a good onion soup, you really need to cut a lot of onions. I will give you a recipe that calls for a certain number of onions, but the goal here is to force other people out of the kitchen with the huge amounts of noxious onion gas you will be unleashing. Or better yet, if the people in another room of your house, have to leave or open a window – you know you have cut the appropriate amount for a good soup.

To me, French onion soup is a great, simple meal that is best on a cold and damp day. I have had onion soups from powdered mixes, cans, and restaurants. I have had soup with bread, no bread, gruyere cheese, swiss cheese and mozzarella cheese. And I like them all. The following recipe combines a couple of techniques which make it less labor intensive and creates a wonderful aroma that will push out the stinging bite of raw onions left hovering in your living room.

Many Onion Soup
I like using different types of onions in this. Traditional brown or yellow onions are a great base of flavor and can be supplemented with other kinds – red, cippolini, white, etc. You can use some sweet onions, but I do not recommend using a lot. Since the onions will be caramelized, the sweeter the onion to start the blander it will become once it is cooked.

3 pounds assorted cooking onions, cut in half and sliced
2 Tb. olive oil
3 Tb. Butter
1 tsp. dried thyme
½ c. sherry
2 c. Beef broth/stock
Salt and Pepper to taste (the salt really helps heighten the flavor here)

Sliced French Bread
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 ½ c. grated gruyere cheese

Preheat the oven to 425°. Place the olive oil into the bottom of a large heavy bottomed pot, and toss in onions. It will look like a lot of onions. Dot the onions with the butter, and bake uncovered for about 50 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Pull the pot out of the oven, and place over medium heat. Stir occasionally, scraping up any brown bits that may appear. This will speed up the caramelization process. Then add the thyme, a dash of salt and pepper and stir to combine.

Add the cooking sherry and boil rapidly to boil off the alcohol. Next, add the beef broth and bring to a simmer. If your soup is a little light in color, feel free to cheat and use some gravy master – it won’t change the flavor at all. Taste for seasonings.

Meanwhile, toast your slices of French bread in the oven. Once slightly browned, rub the garlic clove over the bread.

Ladle the onion soup into individual, oven proof bowels, and place a slice or two of the French bread on top. Cover the whole bowl with grated cheese. Repeat for the next bowls. Place the bowls on a baking sheet and place under the broiler until the cheese is melted and slightly brown, a few moments only.

Pull from the oven, and serve.

Makes 3-4 servings

Recovery Sunday Soup

This past weekend was filled with weddings, being as it was 10-10-10 and all. Although Joe and I did not go to a wedding on that auspicious day, we did attend a friends’ wedding that was lovely. Since Joe was in this wedding, we had some responsibilities and duties, for the groomsmen that of course included imbibing before the ceremony. And for me, it meant trying to keep my new heels on for most of the night.

One of the things I love about weddings (besides the glorious celebration of love of course) is the food. Cocktail hour is a big highlight for me, and if you remember my love of all things small – you know how crazed I may have gotten around tiny hamburgers and small bites of tuna tartar. Plus during cocktail hour you can get one or two martinis before receiving disapproving looks from bartenders, and having to switch to wine.

Without going into too much detail, there is a game that Joe’s friends play at weddings, that encourages a very good time by all. Basically you draw a name of a fellow wedding guest and if the person you drew, drinks too much and makes a fool of him/herself you win the prize. Granted no one wants to make a fool of them self, or at least only a select few will admit to wanting that outcome for themselves, but these things have a tendency to sneak up on you.

And if you are hoping that this story will lead to me regaling you with tale of public embarrassment by myself or Joe, sadly I will not deliver. What this story will lead to is the need to recover the day after a wedding. Typically Joe and I need to drive back to Maine the day after any celebration, which is one of the worst tasks known to man. Traffic on the Mass Pike does not mix well with a queasy stomach and a pounding headache –let me tell you.

But this time, we decided to spend an extra day visiting friends, who had also participated in a wedding the day before. A sorry sight we all were, eating takeout and watching football through half open eyes. We decided something good for us, nutritious and filling, comforting and cleansing was the way to recovery. A soup. Well, vegetables to be exact. After slowly destroying livers, it was necessary to balance out the equation with the restorative powers of vegetables.

Nothing says hearty, vegetable soup like a butternut squash soup. I like to make this fairly frequently during the winter, and it is very easy. It can be completely vegan and gluten free yet pleasing to even the most die-hard of carnivores. However, on this particular weekend, there were no Butternut squashes at the WholeFoods in Montclair. Which called for a plan B – anything But Butternut Soup.

Anything But Butternut Soup
You can make a “butternut-esque” style soup with any of your orange fleshed winter squashes. The most sweet and tender the squash when cooked, the better. We used a combination of Acorn, Delicata and Ambercup. I like the flavor best when you roast the squash first, then puree it -you keep all the best flavors of the squash intact.

3 c. cubed assorted yellow or orange fleshed winter squash
½ small onion, diced
1 Tb fresh thyme
Pinch of cayenne pepper
2 Tb olive oil, divided
12 oz. vegetable or chicken stock (one carton)
Salt and pepper to taste

Cut off the skin of the squash, scoop out the seeds and chop into 1”cubes. Toss with some salt, pepper and 1 Tb of olive oil, then spread onto a baking sheet and roast at 375° until tender – about 30-45 minutes.

Next heat 1 Tb olive oil in a sauté pan, add onions, thyme, and cayenne pepper cook until onions are soft and translucent, about 7- 10 minutes. One the squash is cooked, add half to the sauté pan with the onions, stirring to coat. Puree this mixture in a blender or food processor until smooth, then pour into a soup pot. Puree the other half of the squash, adding some stock as necessary if the squash is dry. Add this to the soup pot, and stir to combine.

At this point you will have a thick puree. Add vegetable or chicken stock while stirring until you reach a consistency you prefer. Heat over medium high heat until simmering and allow to simmer for about 7 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately. (I like to swirl in a little heavy cream or sour cream to add some richness, but this is optional).

1700's Soup

It is finally time for some soup. Of course when I made this soup, I managed to heat up the house enough that it was almost too warm to have soup. But nevertheless, we pushed on and ate it. This soup deserved to be eaten, and I’m glad Joe and I did. This soup is one of the first things I ever learned how to cook on my own. I make it at least once a year and always for a family gathering of some sort. I am not usually a huge fan of soups. But this soup, this soup is fantastic. I’m not just saying it to encourage you to keep reading (well, maybe I am a little.)

This mystical soup I am alluding to is Potato Leek Soup. Depending on where in the country you live, leeks can be hard to come by. But here in the northeast, leeks are a staple of cool weather cooking. And from my previous post about leeks, I think you know how I feel about them.

When I was 12 my family took a vacation down to Colonial Williamsburg. After reading all of the American Girl series up to that point, I was so excited to go there it almost hurt. And being there did not disappoint. To this day I love living history. I even applied to the College of William and Mary just so I could get a costume and work in Williamsburg. Every time I coerce, or trick Joe into visiting some place with living history my look would be best described as ‘deer-in-headlights with goofy grin’ as I wander around thinking about tackling people for their bonnets. Ok, now that I have hopefully not scared you away with my freakish love of all things living history – back to the soup.

My family had lunch at the taverns and inns around Williamsburg, but this soup came from the cafeteria in the visitor’s center. It was amazing. I loved it so much in fact, that we bought a Williamsburg cookbook just for that recipe. The way I remember it tasting was not how the recipe described it, so we did some tweaking. I have made this recipe so many times, that when I pull out the original recipe it is caked with potato starch and splattered broth, so that it is barely legible.

My only unsuccessful attempts at this recipe were one time when I was 13, and I think that was because I was 13, and everything is pretty unsuccessful then. And the other was when I tried to make it at the bar I worked for in college, and let me be clear – pancake mix is not an acceptable stand in for thickening agents. Although if pancake soup is something you might like, don’t let me dissuade you.

This soup can be light and refined or thick and hearty. I prefer somewhere in the middle. Please use amounts of vegetables to your discretion, adding or subtracting the amount you prefer. You can also freeze this soup very well, which is helpful as I cannot make less than one metric ton of soup at a time.

Potato Leek Soup
As adapted from Favorite Meals from Williamsburg – A Menu Cookbook ©1993
The key to thickening this soup is to add mashed potatoes at the very end – here is where you can make the soup as thick as you like. In the recipe below I ask you to make mashed potatoes from scratch, but this recipe works equally well with instant mashed potatoes (and I won’t tell or judge, if you use them) – just be careful – instant mashed potatoes take about a minute to come to their full thickening power.

4 c. chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you are going vegetarian)
1 ½ c. potatoes ( ½ c for the mashed potatoes should be peeled and diced, but the ones for the soup can just be diced)
2 medium leeks, white and light green parts only, chopped
1 medium onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced (optional)
¼ c. butter
3 Tbs. flour
2 c. milk, at room temperature (use whatever you have on hand, the creamier the milk = the creamier your soup)
Salt and Pepper

Start boiling your potatoes for mashed potatoes. After about 10 minutes, start checking for doneness. Once they are soft, mash with a splash of milk, salt and pepper and set aside.

While your potatoes are boiling, place in a large pot the chicken stock, onions, potatoes and leeks. Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft. Then reduce heat to low until the roux is ready to add.

To make the roux, melt butter in a sauce pan and then stir in flour. Cook until the mixture begins to thicken, stirring constantly about 3 minutes. Then slowly pour in the milk, stirring to combine the roux. Bring to a simmer, stirring regularly until the mixture starts to thicken.

Add milk and roux mixture in with the stock and vegetables. Bring to a simmer and then begin to add the mashed potatoes, stirring so that now clumps form. Continue to simmer for another few minutes until the mashed potatoes are completely incorporated, or you reach your desired thickness.

Keep soup warm on low heat until ready to serve.