Tag Archives: soup

Smoky, spicy red lentil soup (Always Hungry?)

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Lemony Red Lentil Soup with Cilantro

This is one of those “recipes” that really isn’t. Kitchen Express doesn’t give you a list of ingredients–it gives you a paragraph description of what to do–a happening. I don’t always have red lentils, so I’ve made this with De Puy lentils; it simply takes a little longer to cook. This is the “light, bright” lentil soup that I make in warm or hot weather.

The soup below started as the Red Lentil Soup (pages 283-284) in Always Hungry?  However, true to form for me, it evolved–still keeping the spirit of the meal plan. So here’s my version of a seemed to be rather a bland lentil soup when previewed on the page. It evolved on a dreary, rainy, chilly day in May that felt more like regression to March. It’s only mildly spicy and garlicky–you could increase the chipotle powder or add a dash of cayenne.

Serves 4 with big bowls, or 6 with small bowls. Add some meat (lamb would be good) and it’s a meal in a bowl.

Smoky, Spicy Red Lentil Soup

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil (for cooking)
  • Chopped onion–about 1 to 1-1/2 cups
  • 2 medium carrots, diced
  • 2 ribs celery, diced
  • one 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes [fire-roasted are really good in this.]
  • 32 ounces chicken stock
  • 1 cup red lentils
  • 2 or 3 large cloves of garlic minced or pressed (or more according to taste)
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons of herbs de Provence
  • 1 to 1-1/2 tablespoons of pimentón (smoked Spanish paprika)
  • 1 teaspoon chipotle chile powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (hot)
  • salt and black pepper to taste
  • one 8-ounce package of frozen chopped kale
  • extra virgin olive oil for drizzling as a tasty garnish

Preparation

  • Heat the cooking olive oil in a good-sized pan and sauté the onions until beginning to brown.
  • Add the carrots and celery and sauté until starting to brown.
  • Add the pimentón, chipotle chilli powder, red pepper flakes, and garlic; sauté until fragrant.
  • Add the chicken stock, tomatoes, and 2 cups water.
  • Add the herbes de Provence
  • Bring to a simmer and cook until the lentils are almost tender. [I moved it to the oven to finish cooking so I could work without worrying about checking it.]
  • Stir in the chopped kale and continue cooking until the lentils are tender.
  • Serve it up and drizzle with a bit of aromatic extra-virgin olive oil.

clear glass bowl with lentil soup

Roasted beet soup

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I really think that beets are right up there with cabbage as under-appreciated vegetables. I’ve another cold beet soup recipe some time ago, but I wanted to share this one with any beet lovers out there. Enjoy–either hot or cold.

Wendy's Place

Spring is here and I’ve got little baby beet seedlings in the greenhouse but I can’t wait 65 days for them to make beets.

Roasted beet soup-7So until then I’m getting organic beets at the store. They are a vegetable, in my opinion, that spans all seasons. We ate this roasted beet soup hot and cold and both were delicious. So if you’re still freezing your tush off- heat it up. If you are in CA and it’s gone straight from winter to summer- keep it cool.

PRINT RECIPE: {ROASTED BEET SOUP}

  • 1½ lbs roasted, trimmed beets (about 4-6 medium-lg beets)
  • 2 ½ qts chicken stock- or veggie if you prefer
  • 3 T olive oil
  • 5-6 cloves garlic
  • 1 T honey
  • 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp white pepper
  • 2-3 T sour cream or crème fraîche

It is super simple. The beets are roasted with skin on. I…

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Potato and cabbage soup

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I like soup for a meal–if it’s a good hearty soup with lots of veggies and maybe some meat in it. All it takes is cold weather and I’m especially interested in soup. Well, we’ve got the cold weather right now and it’s apparently going to last a while, too. I’ve a small “dinner” ham–I’ve sliced part of it to use for sandwiches, and cubed part–some will go in mac ‘n’ cheese (in the rice cooker), and it seemed that part of it would be good for soup–some to eat now and some to freeze for later meals.

Looking in the fridge, I discovered a head of cabbage and some red potatoes, and, of course, ham.

  • a medium yellow onion, chopped and lightly browned in a scant tablespoon of bacon fat (or oil).
  • Two good serving of ham, in 1/2-inch cubes, browned.
  • Garlic, about 6 good-size cloves, coarsely chopped, and cooked with the ham and onion until it starts to smell fragrant.
  • several healthy shakes of hot red pepper flakes added and “toasted” with the ham an onions.
  • about 1/2 teaspoon of kala jeera (black cumin) added to toast just a bit with the contents of the pan.
  • Two bay leaves added to the pan.
  • Three cups water to degaze the good brown fond from the bottom of the pan (add more later if needed when all the ingredients are in the pot). Bring to a simmer.
  • Three medium red potatoes cut into 1/2- to 3/4-inch cubes and added to the pot.
  • Cabbage, 1/2 small head cut into 3/4-inch pieces, or shredded if you prefer, added to the simmering pot. Add more water if needed to just barely cover.
  • Put the pot into a 250°F oven, and ignore for about 2 hours (I was working on an index and didn’t want to have to mind the pot on the stovetop).
cabbage, potato, and ham soup

meal in a bowl

Since cabbage keeps so well, I almost always have it in the crisper, and potatoes, too. I’ve done similar soups  (starting with the onions, potatoes, and cabbage–varying the seasoning, of course) with various sausages–kielbasa being a particular favorite. I’ve used leftover roast, steak, chicken, or chops in similar soups as well. If the meat is already cooked, I’ll use broth (vegetable, chicken, or beef) instead of water.

The kala jeera has a rather flowery flavor (and you want to use it in small amounts as it could be a bit overwhelming, but the hint of the floweriness was a nice contrast to the smokiness of the ham and the earthiness of the cabbage.

Beans & greens–soup!

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close-up of rapini or broccoli raab

rapini

This is one of my favorite recipes for the seasons when cool weather crops are easy to find.  It’s modified from “Marcella Cucina” (Bibliography)–it’s four servings as a main course, but it freezes well, and reheats well.  For best results, I recommend cooking your own dried beans, but canned will always work as well.  If you can’t find borlotti or cranberry beans, pinto beans would be a good substitute. If you can’t find the rapini (broccoli raab, or broccoletti) you can use broccoli–but the taste won’t be the same.  Rather than broccoli, I’d opt for other winter greens such as mustard greens or kale.

Cranberry Bean and Cime de Rapa Soup

Ingredients

  • 1-1/2 cups dried, soaked, cooked borlotti (cranberry) beans
  • 1-1/2 pounds greens, stemmed if large
  • 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
  • 1/4 pound pancetta, chopped fine (about 1 cup).

Preparation

Beans

  • Soak beans overnight in brine.
  • Drain and bring to a boil in a fresh change of water.
  • Reduce the heat and cook at a very low boil until for about 30 minutes
  • Add 1-1/2 teaspoons salt and continue to cook until tender.
  • Let them steep in the cooking liquid until ready to use.

Greens

  • Wash the greens in several changes of water and stem the leaves if they are large.
  • In a covered saucepan, with 2 cups water,  bring to a boil over high heat.
  • Add salt to taste and cook until tender.
  • Drain the greens.
  • When cool enough to handle, chop coarsely.

The soup

  • Put olive oil and pancetta (or bacon) in saucepan and cook, stirring frequently, until browned.
  • Add the garlic and sauté until the garlic just begins to color.
  • Add the chopped greens and cook for about 5 minutes, turning frequently to coat with oil and mix with the bacon.  Be sure to scrape the fond (all the good brown stuff) from the bottom of the pan.  If needed, add 1/4 cup water to help with this.
  • Drain the beans (do not discard the cooking liquid).
  • Purée half the beans and enough cooking liquid to make a medium dense consistency.
  • Add to the remaining beans and the greens and cook for about 10 to 15 minutes to blend flavors.
  • Taste and correct seasoning, and serve.

The original recipe suggests that this not be refrigerated since a night in the refrigerator will give the vegetable a “grassy, metallic” taste.  I don’t think that is an issue–you’ll only be able to tell if you try it yourself.  I would package some in zipper-lock freezer bags (single-serving amounts) and put it directly into the freezer.

Chicken sausage

Chicken Italian sausage

I’ve made this substituting sausage cut in pieces for the pancetta or bacon to make it a heartier soup.  Italian sausage (hot or mild according to taste) works well, but I’ve use other sausages from the store-made ones at Harris Teeter, such as lamb. There are a number of chicken sausages available if you’d like to avoid beef or pork.  Even without adding meat it’s still a hearty warming light supper.

A son goût!

Cold beet soup

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I’m back from the Durham Farmers’ Market–it was a great day, even though the market is not in full summer swing yet.  The Piedmont BioFarm’s booth, which was right next to mine, had absolutely gorgeous beets. Unfortunately, they  sold quickly so  I didn’t get any today, but I’m told that there will be more next week, so I’m planning to bring some home with me then.

beets with tops from Johnny's Select Seeds.The sunshine and warm weather made me think about beet soup.  This recipe was given to me years ago by a good friend, and it’s become one of my favorite summer things to have in the refrigerator for hot weather.  It’s cool and refreshing, yet very satisfying.

I first experienced this soup when Casey brought me some, just when it was most needed:  I was moving–in extremely hot, humid weather–from one apartment to another in the same building, so it was mostly carrying boxes and lugging furniture, all very hot sweaty work.  Air conditioning was out of the question with the constant coming and going, with the doors open.

Cooking was also out of the question–mostly for reasons of fatigue, sore muscles, disruption of the kitchen, and the heat, and maybe even a dollop of laziness thrown into the mix.   That soup was the most wonderful treat, particularly under those circumstances; I’ve made it many times since and it’s at least as good, if not even better, when had in much less dire straits.

It’s not a small recipe, but it holds very well in the refrigerator;  a “left-over” taste is not a problem–and I think that the flavors actually blend and grow with standing.  I suppose you could always halve the recipe, but it’s so good that I’ve never done that–I can easily enjoy  it several days in a row!

Šaltibaršciai (Casey’s Cold Beet Soup)

Ingredients

  • 1/2 medium-size onion, finely chopped (preferably Vidalia or Walla Walla sweet onions)
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 6-10 (depending on size) boiled, peeled, and grated beetroot
  • 2 cups water in which the beets were boiled.
  • Chopped stems and greens from the beets, steamed 3-5 minutes
  • 2 large cucumbers peeled, seeded, and chopped
  • 2 handfuls of fresh dill, finely chopped
  • 1 bunch of green onions, sliced thinly
  • 5-6 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
  • 1 cup of sour cream
  • 1/2 gallon buttermilk
  • 2 cups water from cooking the beets (cooled)
  • red wine vinegar (0 -4 tablespoons) to taste.

Assembly

  1. In a large bowl, place the 1/2 medium onion and about 1 salt. With the back of a wooden spoon, grind together the onion and the salt to draw out the onion juice. (You really need to do this “muddling” process–you don’t get the same “blend” of the onion flavor if you simply add minced onions.)
  2. Add the remainder of the ingredients to onion in the bowl and stir well.  Adjust the flavor balance with additional salt if needed, and a wine vinegar to taste.  Add more liquid if needed for the consistency you prefer.
  3. Chill thoroughly.  Serve with boiled or steamed potatoes, chilled.  (You want boiling potatoes, not baking potatoes for this; red or Yukon gold work well.)

Wine suggestions, courtesy of Casey, were as follows:

  • Sauvignon Blanc is excellent.  The soup needs a wine with more fruit and not too herbal or grassy.
  • A white Corbières was too herbal–it accentuated the dill in the soup until it was just overwhelming.

I did not try the Corbières; overwhelming dill did not strike my fancy and I trust this recommendation.  I can attest that Sauvignon Blanc is excellent with the soup.  I’ve probably eaten this for breakfast, lunch, and supper, with wine, and without.  It’s well worth the effort of making and it may well improve with standing a few days.

I have to confess that is a spate of utter laziness, I have replaced the potatoes with cubed extra-firm tofu with a very satisfying result.  I have always thought that it’s the eggs and the potatoes that make this such a satisfying, but cool, meal.  And, it a marvelous color, too–definitely shocking pink.  I’ve not tried it with the orange beets, but that might be interesting, too.

Think it looks like a lot? Well, invite a friend. Friends are usually glad to help in cases of an excess food crisis!

A son goût!

An awesome lentil soup!

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Being both a cookbook/food addict and a Kindle addict, it’s probably no big surprise that I’d have to have a cookbook on my Kindle.  My first one was the Cook’s Illustrated, special Kindle edition (only for Kindle, I believe) which is a great book to have available.  But you can’t expect a cookbook addict to stop at one can you?  Certainly not!

The second one that I downloaded was Kitchen Express. Having the instant gratification of looking, trying a sample, and viola, there it is,  just naturally leads to an I-must-cook-something-out-of-it-now frenzy in the kitchen.  Now I have to say that I love the way that book is organized (aside from the thrill of being able to search using the Kindle).

The weather probably contributed to my choice of a first recipe to try–rainy, but certainly not cold–but the kind of weather to make you want something like comfort food.  I’ve always liked lentils–the cook quickly, freeze well, and all sorts of things.  Given the rain, I searched for lentils and found a recipe for which I had all the ingredients except one: a lemon!  I looked at the description of the recipe, and decided that I had to have a lemon.  Not wanting to go to the grocery store in the rain, I called my closest neighbor to see if she had a lemon I could borrow.  Luck was with me–she had several.

Now having all the ingredients, I made lentil soup (and returned the lemon in a large bowl of soup). Both of us have subsequently done a lot of improvisation around this basic recipe, so I’d like to share it with you, and hope it will inspire you to do some variations.  Here is the recipe reproduced from Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express. *

Lemony Red Lentil Soup with Cilantro

Red lentils cook very quickly, but allow more time if you substitute and other type.

“Cook a copped onion in olive oil in a saucepan until soft; add one cup of red lentils and four cups of chicken broth and bring to a boil; continue simmering until the lentils are soft.  Puree a handful of cilantro with a few tablespoons of olive oil and a pinch of salt; set aside. If you like, puree half the lentils until almost smooth; return them to the pan. Add about two tablespoons of lemon juice or more to taste.  Stir in the cilantro puree, adjust the seasonings, and serve with crusty bread or a mound of rice in the center.”

I’ve done lots of variations on this one: used lime instead of lemon, added some rice, pureed it or not; there are so many ways to improvise with a recipe like this.  I’ve had the same basic soup with garbonzo beans.  There’s something about the combination of the citrus and the cilantro that just makes this kind of sparkle.  I like to add a bit of the citrus zest to brighten this even more that just the juice.  The pureed cilantro keeps very well in the fridge if the surface is covered with oil (and it’s a great addition to chili con carne to add some fresh contrast).

Well, it’s a few months later, and now we have cold weather, real serious soup weather!  I just finished making another half recipe of this with the chicken broth from cooking some chicken thighs.  Now that it’s colder I wanted to “hearty” the soup up a bit, so I used some French (green) DePuy lentils (which I prefer to red, even though they take a bit longer to cook) and added the chicken meat from one of the thighs that I cooked in the microwave to get both meat and broth.

The only complication that I’ve found with this recipe for one is that bunches of cilantro from the grocery store are huge.  As much as I like cilantro I can never use it all.  In the summer I plant successive pots of cilantro so that there is always some to pick.  In the winter, it’s a different story: want to make this but don’t have cilantro.  I’ve found a great stand-in for the fresh cilantro in the frozen foods department at the grocery store: Dorot Chopped Cilantro (www.dorotfoods.com).  It’s frozen, fresh cilantro in cubes equivalent to 1 teaspoon each.  Nothing is quite like the fresh, but I’ve been rather pleased with this as a stand-in, so it has become a freezer staple for my kitchen.

I’ve just finished a supper of a first course of steam-sautéed vegetables–a medley of carrots, broccoli, and red bell pepper, followed by a hearty bowl of the lentil soup with the chicken meat added.   Since I made a half recipe, I’ll have enough for another bowl in a day or two.  I’ll add another splash of lemon and a bit of cilantro to perk it up, and perhaps have it with (as the recipe suggested) a mound of rice–another satisfying, healthy, and easy meal.

This recipe lends itself so easily to improvisation.  Try it–you’ll find something to please your palate.

A son goût!

* I’ve been searching on how to cite a Kindle reference properly since I don’t have the hard copy.  According to Amazon discussions, the font size does NOT affect the location: so here that is: 1187-98.  Since I’ve given you the exact recipe title, I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty locating it in the book.