Recipe of the Day — ‘Southwest’ Chicken Soup

Many of my soup recipes are a lot like this one — I have ingredients on hand to make a soup, but the details of seasoning and specifics may be a spur of the moment thing, not scripted from a book or recipe and not necessarily reproducible.
********

Southwest Chicken Soup

3 chicken breast halves, diced

olive oil

onion, diced
green pepper, diced

garlic, chopped

32 oz box of organic chicken broth (No MSG)

15 oz can of black beans, drained
15 oz can of kidney beans, drained
15 oz can of corn, drained
15 oz can of diced tomato

a can or two of water

dash of salt

dried ancho chile (~2 tsp)

jerk seasoning (~2 Tbsp)

1 c. dry white rice, cooked in 2 c. water with a splash of olive oil

shredded cheese

I sauteed the chicken in a little oil to get it cooked more quickly b/c I had limited time, then added the onion and bell pepper and garlic and let it get tender. Then I stirred in the broth and beans and corn and let that boil. Next I added the tomato, salt, chile and jerk seasoning (the amounts are purely conjecture b/c I just shake the bottle over the top of the soup until is seems to look and smell good). Just before serving I dumped in the hot cooked rice and stirred it. Most of the family preferred to stir some shredded cheese into their own bowls. It would have been great to have cornbread with it, but I didn’t make any.

*******

During lunch, Thing 1 said, “Mom, this soup is so good you should plan to make it every Monday and Friday — if we had it too often, we might get sick of it.” I think it could have used a little more jerk seasoning (and Thing 1 asked if we had any Tabasco to add to it) but I was afraid of overwhelming the tastebuds of the littlest ones. As it is, it has a nice flavor, subtle enough to let you taste the individual parts w/o making the seasoning stand out too much.

Recipe of the Day — Soup

This will be the soup of the day here. I made up this soup a few years ago and then someone asked for a recipe and I stood there saying . . . a what? I don’t remember how I made it! So one day I tried recreating it and wrote down everything I did and this is the result. One thing that may strike you as odd, I refer to the garlic as ‘toes’ — there’s a story with that. In a New Orleans cookbook given to me by a prof I TA’d for years ago, the author referred to the individual pieces of garlic as toes and I have since seen that in several other recipes — I like it A head of garlic with toes. It is the only real seasoning I add to this soup (the sausage and chiles add the rest of the flavor) and it is a very mild soup. The kiddos love it — but they are sausage hounds too!

My neighbor planted garlic last year and shared a couple of heads with us and it was *so* much more flavorful than the stuff I find in the grocery — I’d like to add some to my flower garden. When it comes to gardening I tend to be a bit non-traditional — in front of my tulips and daffodils I have strawberries as a ground cover, by my front steps I have rhubarb for green leafy stuff (but it isn’t growing well there — I’m going to have to learn more about rhubarb needs and help it) and I have some asparagus growing in my flowerbed as well. I like mixing the lovely utilitarian with the strictly for-looks plants

******

Sausage Couscous Soup

1 (12) oz pkg sausage links (I like Johnsonville Maple Syrup), cut in 1/2″ lengths
1 medium onion, chopped
2-3 toes of garlic, minced
1 (4 oz.) can chopped green chiles
1-3 (15 oz) cans beans (northern, kidney or black beans or a mixture)
pinch of baking soda
2 (15 oz) cans diced tomatoes or 1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes
chicken bouillon and water or 1-2 (15 oz) cans chicken broth
couscous

Brown the sausage and drain. Add onion and garlic and saute until onion is tender. Add green chiles, beans and baking soda; cook on medium heat for 15-20 min. Add tomatoes and chicken broth and simmer until 10 minutes before serving, stirring occasionally. Add couscous until desired thickness is achieved (it will approximately double in volume after it is cooked in about 5 minutes). Especially good with biscuits.

Note:
This can also be made in a slow cooker. I usually brown and drain the sausage and then dump in everything but the couscous and let it cook all day. Add the couscous 10 minutes before serving. If you add the couscous earlier it may stick badly.

Recipe of the Day — Soup, again

A couple of days ago I made a batch of soup from various leftovers and whatever was in the cabinet but found I was out of some of the things I had hoped to add. It turned out all right but it reminded me of a cooking tip/recipe from my Grandma Smith.

Grandma Smith was well known for having pies whenever a guest arrived . . . she would bake 10-12 pies at a time and freeze them and someone would visit and she would offer pie . . . would you like apple (2 crust or French crust?), peach, berry, or ‘punkin’? When my grandfather worked in a coal mine for a while, she used to make him a meat pie and a fruit pie and that was his lunch. She was not technically the best cook, but she made farm food and her pie (with the apples, berries, and pumpkin from her own orchard, farm and garden) tasted of love. She was full of practical knowledge — to make mashed potatoes without lumps, start with cold water and not hot. Here I share with you her ‘secret’ for good vegetable soup:

If you have 10 vegetables in your soup, it will *always* taste good.

That’s the whole recipe. Just pick 10 veggies, any veggies, and you have great soup. We always use a tomato base — any kind of tomato — juice, diced, pureed, crushed, stewed, then add 9 more (* indicate our favorites that we almost always added):

broccoli

cabbage

carrots*

cauliflower

celery*

corn*

green beans*

kidney beans or other bean

okra

onion*

peas*

potato*

spinach

zucchini or summer squash

Grandma used to just add salt and pepper for seasoning (her food was terribly bland) but I usually use garlic, bay leaf, sometimes basil and/or oregano,and sometimes parsley in addition to the S/P. You can add pasta — ABCs, egg noodles, springs, etc. You can add some beef or chicken, browning it in the pot before you add the veggies to add more flavor. Let it cook all day for the flavors to mix well and the smell to tantalize everyone’s taste. Mmm . . . then serve up big bowls of love, add crackers and fresh bread slathered with butter for the full effect.

Recipe of the Day — Soup

It’s beginning to turn cooler outside and soup is once more a somewhat acceptable meal in our house. Below is a recipe from a booklet called ‘Great Tasting Diabetic Recipes’. Oh, you already know what I’m going to say next don’t you? I modify it!

*******

Double Corn and Cheddar Chowder

1 Tbsp margarine

1 cup chopped onion

2 Tbsp flour

2 1/2 cup fat free reduced sodium chicken broth

1 can (16 oz) cream-style corn

1 cup frozen whole kernal corn

1/2 cup finely diced red bell pepper

1/2 tsp hot pepper sauce

3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

freshly ground black pepper

Melt margarine in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion; cook and stir 5 minutes. Sprinkle onion with flour; cook and stir 1 minute.

Add chicken broth; bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Add cream-style corn, corn kernals, bell papper and pepper sauce; bring to a simmer. Cover, simmer 15 minutes.

Remove from heat; gradually stir in cheese until melted. Ladle into soup bowls; sprinkle with black pepper.

Makes 6 servings.

Variations:

Add 1 cup cooked white or brown rice with corn.

Replace some of the chicken broth with light beer to produce a truly authentic Wisconsin specialty.

180 Calories per serving (28% from fat)

Dietary exchanges: 1 1/2 starch/bread; 1/2 lean meat, 1 fat

********

I don’t saute the onion and make a roux with the flour — I just pour chicken broth in a pan with chopped onions, garlic, usually a couple of diced chicken breasts or some shredded pre-cooked chicken and let it simmer until the chicken is cooked through. I add the corn (usually two cans of creamed and two cans of regular or a bag of frozen or a couple of cobs of fresh, cut off) and a few diced potatoes with some bell pepper (I often use green b/c it’s cheaper but red looks prettier) and some green chiles — canned or fresh roasted and chopped. I usually skip the pepper sauce b/c the twinkies have delicate tastebuds but it’s nice in the soup and even a little white pepper is nice. I add salt and pepper directly to the soup, not just at serving. I usually don’t stir the cheese into the soup b/c we have so many lactose intolerants here (I grate some and let people sprinkle in what they want) . . . but I do usually stir together a little Lactaid milk with flour (regular milk works the same here) and pour that into the soup when it’s about done to thicken it.

We had this for dinner tonight with some homemade biscuits and fruit salad. It’s one soup the kids actually like! I’ve never tried it with beer.