Chicken Refrigerator Soup

A refrigerator soup is one where you have a whole bunch of stuff lying round, and need to use it up - in a potentially unusual way. This one was no exception. Wee were leaving for the weekend and needed to make dinner the night before. How we had the ingredients is a bit of a mystery. What happened to them was awesome.
I had bought too many chicken thighs a few days before. The packaging had me with 2 bone in, skin on chicken thighs left over. Also there was 3/4 of a red onion. That meant to me "make stock". So into  the stockpot went thee thighs, onion and water. Simmer for an hour (so the meat was still viable and the stock was OK (weird color because of the red onion, but tasty. Shredded the chicken (removed the skin, of course) and we now had the basis of a soup.
We had an acorn squash lying around and some celery, carrots, yellow onions, and red potatoes on the day that soup making was required. So how hard could it be? The bonus surprise was that the acorn squash cooked right down and thickened the soup all by itself. So no need to puree anything.
Start to finish 35 minutes.

Ingredients

1T neutral oil

1 small red onion diced

4 small carrots cut into 3/4" lengths

3 ribs celery sliced into 3/4" lengths

3 cups chicken stock (defatted)

Hot sauce to taste (we used our home made habanero vodka - aka secret ingredient)

4 medium red potatoes - quarered

1 acorn squash peeled, seeded and diced

Shredded meat from 2 cooked chicken thighs

2T crunchy peanut butter (preferably unsweetened)

Salt/Pepper to taste

Method

Heat the oil in a saucepot or dutch oven until shimmering. Add the onions, carrots, celery, turn the heat down and sweat for about 5 minutes. Add the chicken stock and hot sauce, bring to a simmer and cook for 3-5 minutes. Add the potatoes and squash. Simmer the soup for 15 minutes - until the potatoes are just cooked. As you stir the soup here, the squash will disintegrate, thickening the soup.

Add the chicken and peanut butter, stirring thoroughly until the peanut butter is fully incorporated. 

Serve piping hot with crunchy salt.   

Asian Slaw

We were asked to bring a dish to a party last evening. We knew that there would be bbq at the party, so figured that some kind of a slaw would be a good dish to bring. Enter an Asian version inspired by my go to team at Serious Eats.

Note this takes well over an hour to make, but it is pretty low involvement

Ingredients - Dressing

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

2T Soy sauce

1t toasted sesame oil (or chili sesame oil if you have it. If so reduce the amount of the following)

Some form of hot sauce - preferably one without vinegar. we used "Srirarcha" and habanero vodka.

2 cloves garlic (squished into a paste with a little salt)

2T freshly grated ginger

3T smooth, plain peanut butter (unsweetened)

Method - Dressing

If you measure the oil first and then use the same measuring cup for the honey, the honey flows out more easily. 

Whisk the oil, honey, vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and spicy ingredients together. Stir in the garlic and ginger. Finally combine the peanut butter and stir/whisk until incorporated. Leave to stand for up to an hour to incorporate the flavors. Note that there is little salt in the dressing. The soy sauce provides some salt. The cabbage is salted in the next step. There is enough residual salt so it is not necessary to salt the dressing. The small amount of salt added to the garlic is to help with the making of the paste. So when you taste the dressing by itself,  it may seem under seasoned.

Ingredients - Slaw

1 head of green cabbage (about 2lbs) shredded

2T kosher salt

3 large, older carrots peeled and grated on the large holes of a box grater

3 scallions white and light green parts sliced on the bias

1 red pepper cut into small dice

2 or 3 hot chiles (we used cayenne peppers) chopped very finely) (if desired)

8 oz packet of edamame cooked and chilled

4 oz roasted salted peanuts chopped roughly

Method - Slaw

Lay the cabbage in a strainer or colander and sprinkle with the kosher salt. This will draw out some of the water and keep the cabbage crisp. Leave this for about an hour to drain. Roll the drained cabbage in a kitchen towel and squeeze the water out. This may end up with 1/2 to 1 cup of water.

Combine the slaw ingredients (except the peanuts) in a large bowl. Add the dressing in 3 additions, mixing the slaw after each addition. This ensures that the coating will be even - no pockets of undressed cabbage.

Add the peanuts and mix the slaw for the last time.

Chill and serve within a couple of hours after mixing.

Chicken Peanut Soup

Yeah, I know this sounds crazy, but it came out really nicely. Madame had been feeling under the weather a bit, so I wanted to make sure that she had something tasty, hearty and comforting for dinner when she came home yesterday - especially as I was out drinking good red wine and eating fantastic pizza!
I had recently watched an episode of "The Minimalist" - Mark Bittman's somewhat crazy cooking show. Crazy because it is about cooking more than it is about recipes. Also, I think he is certifiably mad (in a good way!). So as usual, I will tell you what I did. You can treat it as a recipe, but I suspect it is pretty forgiving. The only real thing to worry about is having it become too brothy. It wants to be the thickness of cream at the end. Luckily that thickness can be controlled by the amount of peanut butter added.

Ingredients

3T grapeseed oil
1 medium onion - finely diced
1" piece of ginger, grated
2 large garlic cloves, minced to a paste
4 chicken thighs - skinned, boned and cut into 3/4" chunks
1 cup roasted, salted peanuts roughly chopped
a pinch (or 2!) of cayenne pepper
2 cups chicken stock (home made preferably)
3 cups water
3 small sweet potatoes peeled and cut into 1/3" thick rounds
1 28 oz can plum tomatoes. Drained, tomatoes roughly chopped
1 bunch of curly kale - leaves only, stripped from the stalk. roughly chopped, large pieces.
salt/pepper to taste
1/2 cup chunky, unsweetened peanut butter (I used one of the "natural" varieties)

Method

Heat the oil in a large skillet or dutch oven until shimmering. Add the onions and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to prevent burning. Add the garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant. Add the chicken and continue to cook until the chicken is lightly colored on all sides. The chicken is NOT fully cooked at this stage. Add the peanuts and the cayenne and stir to combine. Add the stock/water combination and the sweet potatoe slices. Make sure the sweet potato slices are well distributed through the pot, and are immersed in liquid. Bring to a gentle boil, add the chopped tomatoes. Simmer for about 10 minutes. Add the kale and simmer until the sweet potatoes are just tender.
Stir in the peanut butter until the desired thickness is reached. Check the seasonings, adding salt/pepper, to taste.

It did get the "we can serve this to people" accolade, so it must have been good! Thanks to Mark Bittman and the New York Times for the inspiration