Smoked turkey and green pea soup

If you are lucky enough to have a smoked turkey carcass lying around (or in our case friends who had one and didn't know what to do with it), you can make a terrific green pea soup with it. Just make sure that there is some meat on the carcass too.

Ingredients - Stock

1 smoked turkey carcass stripped of most of its meat

Enough water to submerge the carcass (at least 1 1/2 US Gallons) 

Ingredients - Soup

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

3 large yellow onions (not sweet, but more like Spanish or Bermuda onions), finely diced

1 whole celery head, stalks finely diced

1 lb carrots, finely diced

2 (or more to taste) hot chile peppers, finely chopped. I used 2 Thai chilies from the garden

2 lbs split green peas

3/4 US gallon smoked turkey stock. (Possibly more if the soup gets too thick)

1 1/2 lbs smoked turkey meat, taken from the carcass

3 Tbsp rice wine vinegar

salt/pepper to taste

Method - Stock

Place all of the carcass into a stockpot and cover with water. Simmer over low heat for at least 3 hours. Strain (I stored ours in a 1 gallon milk container). Note there are no other flavorings in the stock.

Method - Soup

Putt the oil into a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions celery, and carrots, and hot peppers. Cook gently for about 10 minutes until the onions are translucent.Take care not to brown the onions. While sweating the vegetables, you might want to add a little salt to draw out some of the moisture.

Rince and drain the split peas, checking to make sure that there are no rocks or other undesirable elements. Add the peas to the pot and then add 3/4 gallon of the stock. Bring to a simmer stirring often. Simmer for 20 - 30 minutes - until the peas have lost their raw texture, but still have a little bite.

While the peas are simmering, shred the turkey meat into small chunks - a bit larger than the carrots. They need to be able to fit onto the spoon. Set the turkey aside.

Whn you think the peas are cooked, taste for doneness and seasoning. This is when I dd the majority of the salt/pepper. Knowing that both the stock and the meat will be a bit salty.

Once the peas are at the texture you want them, use the stick blender to smooth out the soup. For a hearty soup, stop short of pureeing completely. For something more elegant, puree all the way and then pass through a strainer.

At this point add the turkey and the rice wine vinegar for balance. You may want to add a bit more liquid at this stage

Either heat the soup through and serve immediately or refrigerate and reheat just before serving. 

Avocado ginger coconut soup

 This is a recipe based on this month's Fine Cooking magazine. The result was very good, but I used too much lime juice, so it got the "We can serve this to people if you reduce the lime juice" accolade from Madame. The texture is very thick and creamy. It is best served cold - after being in the fridge overnight. 

We had it for dinner one evening, and then I had it for lunch the next day - where I tweaked it to tne down the lime juice. The tweaks will be in the description at the end, not in the main recipe

Ingredients

2 Cans full fat coconut milk (equivalent amount of home made - i.e. 3 1/2 cups #1)

1 stalk of lemon grass, roughly chopped

1 Makrut leaf (Thai Lime) roughly chopped

3" knob of ginger, washed and sliced very finely. No need to peel as it will be discarde

Handful of basil leaves

1 Thai hot pepper

Juice of 4 small limes

4 Avocados - dual use

1 Peach, diced

Salt to taste

Croutons or other crispy things to garnish

Method

Place the coconut milk, lemon grass, makrut leaf, and ginger into a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Simmer for a couple of minutes, and turn the heat off. Add the basil and allow the mixture to cool (ideally at least an hour).

Strain out all of the solids and discard them. Slice the hot pepper and add to the liquid. Peel and deseed the avocados. Mash 3 1/2 of the avocados and add to the coconut liquid, along with the lime juice. Blend until smooth. Add salt to taste at this stage. Chill the soup in the fridge for at least an hour, preferably 2 or ovrnight.

Serve the soup garnished with the remaining avocad, diced and the diced peach and coroutons.

The Promised Tweaks

If, as ours was, your soup is too acidic tasting (i.e. too much lime in our case), then that can be mitigated with some mirin and (surprisingly) balsamic vinegar. Even though balsamic vinegar does add some extra acidity, it also adds sufficient sweetness to counterbalance the lime. Weird, I know. 

Gazpacho

This is not your standard, boring blended salsa Gazpacho. It has stale bread. It has olive oil. It has a touch of sherry vinegar. Nothing is heated. The trick is to get as much flavor as possible out of raw vegetables, blending them, and then pushing the soup through a fine-meshed strainer.

The idea and techniques come from Serious Eats (where technique rules). However, when you get to the freezing step do make sure that you freeze the vegetables (especially the onion) in a freezer safe bag. Otherwise you end up with a very smelly freezer - the only thing to do then is to defrost and refreeze. Don't ask me how I know this!

Ingredients - these don't need to be terribly precise

2 or 3 slices of stale bread, sliced. We used a homemade sandwich loaf with 80% bread flour 20% whole wheat.

4-5 lbs ripe tomatoes, cored, cut into chunks. We typically use seconds and cut off any ugly/squashed bits.

2 Cucumbers peeled, cored and sliced into chunks

2 Red bell peppers cored and seeded, sliced into chunks

1 Medium red onion, peeled and cut into chunks

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt 

4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

1/2 cup high quality extra virgin olive oil (first cold press, preferably Spanish)

8 tablespoons Sherry vinegar

Method

Tear the bread into chunks into a small bowl. place the chopped vegetables into a large bowl, sprinkling with the salt as you go. Leave the vegetables for 30 minutes to allow the juice to drain. Drain the juice over the bread to soften it. Set this aside, at room temperature, covered.

Gather the vegetables into 2 one gallon freezer bags. Lay the bags flat to even out the vegetables and press the air out. Freeze the vegetables until slightly mushy feeling. Not frozen solid, but not as firm as they were when they went in. If you let them go too long, that's fine - you will just need to let them thaw prior to the next step

Remove the vegetables from the freezer. Transfer liquid from the bottom of the bags over the bread.

Working in batches, place some of the vegetables, bread, olive oil and sherry vinegar into the blender. Blend on high power for at least 60 seconds. Transfer to a fine strainer and strain the pureed soup pushing it through with a metal spoon. There should be very little residue in the strainer, but what is left in the strainer will tend to clog it up. So you will want to clean the strainer between batches.

Chill until you are ready to serve.

Serving

When serving the soup, use chilled bowls, and some garnishes including chives, avocado, grated egg. We often freeze some of the gazpacho in ice cube trays (there go the freezer smells again). This helps keep the soup chilled, although the texture of the frozen pieces is a bit coarse. The ice crystals, are not ideal. Pour a little more olive oil and a few drops of Sherry vinegar onto the soup, and sprinkle some coarse crunch salt.

If you happen to have baguettes or other crusty bread handy, now would be a good time to serve them too. As you can imagine, we did and we did!

Cauliflower Soup

This soup is adapted from a recipe on Americas Test Kitchen. We made/served it for a major dinner party. This is a scaled back version, so the water may be slightly out of proportion. It can be adjusted at the end as necessary.
The beauty of this soup is that it has all the richness of a cream based soup - but with no cream. There is some butter in the recipe, but I suspect that it could be made vegan with the use of a neutral oil. I haven't tried that though.
You don't need to be very precise with the cutting, it all goes into the blender at the end, anyway.

Picture Courtesy of Jim Brewer

Ingredients

2T butter (substitute oil perhaps)

1 large leek, white and light green parts only. Sliced finely and thoroughly washed

1/2 yellow onion (NOT Vidalia or 1015) sliced thinly

1/2t kosher salt (there will be more salt later)

1 large head of cauliflower (divided use - 2/3 and 1/3)

4 cups water

Kosher salt to taste

Chipotle in adobo for garnish

Jalapeno corn bread/pepita croutons (or any other crunchy croutons)

Very coarse sea salt for crunch.

Finishing oil for drizzling

Method

Soften the leeks/onions in the butter/oil over medium low heat. Add the first salt as they begin to soften. Do not allow them to brown.

While the leeks and onions are softening, divide the cauliflower, making sure that there are no green leafy bits. Slice the stalks thinly and put them with the 2/3 side. 

When the leeks and onions have softened, add the 2/3 cauliflower and the water. Bring to a simmer and simmer for 15 minutes - until the cauliflower is cooked through.

Then add the remaining cauliflower to the pot and simmer for another 12 minutes (take the time from when the pot reaches simmering temp).

Transfer the contents of the pot to your blender and blend until very smooth. Note, of course that this is hot and will probably attempt to splash out of the blender, so make sure you have a towel around the blender and press the lid on tightly through the towel. If in doubt blend in batches for safety.

Strain the soup through a fine mesh strainer - to remove any lumps that the blender missed.

Adjust the texture using boiling water. Adjust the seasoning, remembering that you will be adding coarse salt later.

Serve in warmed bowls with croutons and chipotle. Add a little  swirl of olive oil and the crunchy, coarse salt.

Take a bow!

We served this with a nice Chardonnay from Nickel and Nickel.

Soba noodle soup

After the success of the cold soba noodle salad, madame thought it would be nice to have a soup with soba noodles in it. I figured that cooking the noodles in the soup would probably make it cloudy, so I did things separately. Using the technique that I learned from Chef McDang - make a flavorful broth quickly and then cook the chicken in it. Similar technique to this. But I didn't have any lemon grass or galangal on hand.
Madame gave this the "We can serve this to people" accolade.

Ingredients

4 oz Soba noodles cooked for 4 1/2 minutes, drained and rinsed

3 cups water

1/4 cup fish sauce

4 kaffir (Thai) lime leaves

1 serrano pepper cut into thin rings (more or less according to desired spiciness)

6 green onions (white and green parts used separately

1 1" piece piece of ginger chopped (no need to peel, it will be strained out)

1 medium carrot cut into 1/4" cubes

3" daikon root peeled and cut into 1" cubes

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast (yes this really was between the 2 of us) sliced into thin strips

Cilantro leaves to garnish

Method

Place the water, fish sauce, lime leaves, serrano rings, green part of the green onions,

and ginger into a medium saucepot. Bring to a simmer, and allow to simmer for about 5 minutes. Strain and retain the broth.

Bring the broth to a simmer again, and add the carrot and daikon. After 30 seconds, add the sliced chicken and continue to simmer for about 3 minutes (until the chicken is cooked through).

Place some noodles in the bottom of a warmed bowl, and ladle over the chicken, broth, carrots, daikon. Garnish with some cilantro leaves.

Mushroom soup

This month's issue of Fine Cooking had a terrific looking recipe for mushroom soup. However I didn't completely remember the ingredients when I went shopping. No matter, what came out was another "We can serve this to people" accolade from Madame.
What did I do wrong? I was convinced that the recipe said to use dashi - that stock used in Japanese cooking, made from kombu (kelp) and dried bonito flakes. After all, there would be lots of umami resulting from this. I thought it would be interesting to make my own dashi, so I followed Alton Brown's recipe for that.
The recipe actually called for chicken stock. Never mind! I also used more mushrooms than the recipe called for. I did follow the technique carefully - because it seemed unusual to me. I am glad that I did because the result was outstanding.

Ingredients

4t unsalted butter (divided use)

1T olive oil

1t whole cumin seeds

1/2 lb white mushrooms, coarsely chopped

1/2 lb cremini mushrooms, coarsely chopped

6oz oyster mushrooms, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup Negro Modelo beer (or other dark/brown beer)

3 large leeks, white and light green parts only, sliced into thin rounds

2 cloves garlic, minced. 

2 cups dashi + 2 cups water warmed to a low simmer

2 t habanero vodka or other hot sauce

1/4 cup heavy cream

salt/pepper to taste

Torn cilantro leaves as garnish

1/2 t sherry vinegar per serving

Method - and this is where Fine Cooking really shone

Melt 2 t of the butter + the oil in a 6qt pot on low/medium heat. I used the trusty Le Creuset for this and it worked well. When the butter is melted, add the cumin and cook until they brown a little. They should start to become fragrant and nutty. Take care not to burn the butter. 

Add all the mushrooms, turning the meat up to medium high. Cook the mushrooms until they become quite dry. The recipe said 8 - 10 minutes. Mine was more like 12 minutes.

Add the beer and continue to cook until dry.

Add the remaining butter and the leeks, cooking the leaks until soft. when the leeks are soft, add the garlic and cook a while longer - until the garlic is fragrant.

Turn the heat off and add the dashi and hot sauce. Stir and blend (taking care to put a kitchen towel over the blender goblet)  in batches until silky smooth and thick. Return the blended mixture to the original (but now cleaned) pot. Stir in the cream. Over low heat, bring the mixture up to a slow simmer. Adjust the seasoning.

Serve in warmed soup bowls with some drops of sherry vinegar and a few cilantro leaves on top.

Soup and Sandwich

This course was the "lunch" course of the Day in Dinner party. It was the soup course, but like everything at the party, it was to have a slight twist. The soup was a simple tomato/roasted red pepper soup. The twist was the sandwich. With the soup you don't have to be precise about the size of the vegetables - it is going to be blended and strained so it is completely smooth.
Ingredients  - Soup
2 red bell peppers, left whole
2T vegetable oil
2 oz butter
1 large onion (I used yellow) minced
1 shallot minced
3 cloves garlic smashed
3T all purpose flour
1 large and 1 small can of whole tomatoes
2 cups chicken stock
3 sprigs of thyme
salt/pepper to taste
A few drops of extra virgin olive oil for serving
Sea salt crystals
Method - Soup
Heat the oven to 450F and roast the peppers until the skin is well charred (about 45 minutes). Meanwhile heat the oil/butter gently until hot but not brown. Add the onion, shallot, garlic and sweat gently. Do not allow any color to form.
Place the tomatoes into the blender and pulse quickly to break up the larger pieces. It is better to this than to but crushed or sauce tomatoes. This way they are less metallic tasting. Also if you are lucky enough to have some home canned tomatoes (as we were), they will almost always be whole.
Once the onion, shallot and garlic have softened, add the flour to the pot and stir to coat, and make a light roux. Add the tomatoes, stock, thyme to the pot. Stir to incorporate. Peel and roughly chop the roasted peppers (having removed the seeds), add the peppers to the pot.
Bring up to a simmer - gently to avoid sticking. Simmer for about 35 - 40 minutes stirring occasionally.
Puree the soup in the blender in several batches. Do this while it is hot - make sure you place a kitchen towel over the blender while doing this. You do not want hot tomato soup flying around the kitchen!
Strain the soup using a fine strainer and discard anything that remains in the strainer.
Chill overnight to allow the flavors to develop. Reheat when ready.
Ingredients - Sandwiches
16 oz Parmesan cheese - grated finely. Use the highest quality you can
6 oz fresh goat cheese
A good handful of fresh basil leaves
2T milk (may not be needed if the goats cheese is soft and creamy)
1t sherry vinegar
1t extra virgin olive oil
Method - Sandwiches
Make Parmesan tuiles by spreading the Parmesan cheese on a baking sheet

and baking in a 475 degree oven until it is melted and bubbling. (3-4 minutes). Allow to cool a bit. While still flexible (they do become crunchy eventually), cut them out into the shapes you want. I used a 1" ring cutter. One guest remarked that they looked like Communion Wafers.

When ready to make the sandwiches, form the filling pr processing the cheese, basil, milk (if needed), vinegar, oil until a smooth green paste is formed. There is no need for salt because the tuiles have enough salt for the whole sandwich. To make the sandwiches spread a little filling on one tuile and top with another.
Serve alongside the soup.

Simple chicken soup

I have been feeling under the weather - with a cough/cold/sore throat. Unimaginably grumpy - poor Madame. So I thought maybe some chicken soup might help. As you can imagine preprepared chicken soup doesn't do it for a variety of reasons. So I needed to make some. This is an unbelievably simple way of doing it - and surprisingly good given the amount of effort involved. As Madame would say, "the taste to effort ratio makes this worth doing". Not quite as high praise as "we can serve this to people", but still worthwhile. The vegetables and chicken aren't browned, so there is no flavor from caramelization. It's just chicken/aromatics/stock/water. It looks like a lot of ingredients, but the prep time is very short. As you will see from the method you just bung them all in the pot.
Ingredients
1 whole roasting chicken (this one was about 5lbs)
2 medium onions sliced pole to pole
6 medium carrots cut into 1 inch pieces
6 stalks celery roughly chopped
2 Fennel bulbs washed and quartered
3 Kaffir (Thai) lime leaves
3 inches lemon grass cut on the bias into 1/2 inch pieces
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups (or so) water
1 Chipotle pepper
3" piece of fresh ginger peeled and roughly chopped
Salt/pepper to taste
Method
Clean out the cavity of the chicken and remove the silly pop up timer (if present). Place the whole chicken into a large dutch oven. Sprinkle the flavoring ingredients (except the salt) into the pot, add the liquids. Bring to a simmer over a medium flame and then simmer for at least 90 minutes with the lid on. The chicken will make its own broth while it cooks. If you cook it for longer than 90 minutes (and it does get better with time), then discard the vegetables 1/2 an hour before the end of cooking and put in fresh vegetables. The old vegetables have given everything up so you will need fresh to get them to taste of something.

Chicken, leek and potato soup

It was cold this evening in Dallas, so a warm soup seemed like a good idea. Also, I wanted it to fit into my tight schedule so it would be ready when Madame came home from school - famished as always. There were some nice looking leeks in the grocery store, so a chicken/leek/potato soup seemed like a good idea. It was! We ate it and Madame did her Oliver Twist impersonation, "More Please". so I guess it was a hit.

Ingredients
2T vegetable oil
6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
4 medium leeks
1/2 cup dry white wine
2lbs red (waxy) potatoes
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup half and half (light cream)
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Heat the oil in a large soup pan (or dutch oven) until smoking. Place the salted and peppered chicken thighs in the oil to brown. Turn the heat back to medium and allow to cook. Trim and clean the leeks, then chop them into 1/2 inch strips. When the chicken is browned on all sides, tmove from the pan. Add the leeks and stir them in the hot fat for about 5 minutes - until softened. Add the wine and cook until evaporated. Cut the potatoes into 1/2 inch pieces, lay them on top of the leeks, place the chicken and any drippings on top of the potatoes. Cover the potatoes and leeks with the stock, leave some of the chicken exposed. Putthe lid on the pot, bring the contents to a simmer, and then turn down the heat and simmer for about 25 minutes - or until the potatoes are cooked. Remove the chicken from the pan, and dice into bite sized pieces. With a stick blender (or a regular carafe style blender), puree the soup roughly. You want to leave some bits of potato and leek as texture. This is a rustic soup. Put everything back in the pan, bring to a boil and turn th heat off. Wait for the boiling to subside and add the cream. I tempered the cream by adding some hot liquid to the cream first rather than subjecting it to the total heat of the soup. Stir, adjust the seasoning, and serve in heated bowls.