Chicken Tortilla Soup

One of my most favorites and most often made dinners is Chicken Tortilla Soup.  I make this many ways depending on how much time I have and what ingredients I have on hand. Sometimes I add black beans or corn and omit the chicken.  Sometimes I roast the chicken or use leftover or put raw sliced chicken into rapidly, boiling stock to cook it in the soup.  Tonight I took the time to make a really flavorful stock and roast the chicken it their own seasonings.


Jenabeth's Chicken Tortilla Soup
Olive Oil
Chicken Breasts, on the bone with skin
Salt
Ancho Chili Pepper Powder
Cumin


Roast chicken ahead of time.  Drizzle olive oil over chicken breasts and then season with salt, ancho chili pepper and cumin. Use your hands to rub seasonings into chicken.  Cook chicken on sheet tray in a 375° over for 30 minutes.  Let chicken cool.  Remove skin & bones and shred chicken. Set chicken aside while preparing soup.

Olive Oil
Onion, chopped

Jalapeno Pepper, minced
1 clove of garlic, minced
Red Bell Pepper, chopped
Salt

2 T Cumin
1 T Ancho Chili Pepper Powder
2 t Mexican Oregano
4 T Tomato Paste
1/4 cup Silver Tequila
Chicken Stock

Couple tablespoons of honey

Make soup base.  In large dutch oven, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion, season, and cook until softened.  Add jalapeno and garlic and cook 2-3 minutes.  Add bell pepper and cook until starts to soften.  Add cumin, ancho chili pepper, oregano and tomato paste.  Cook for 1-2 minutes.  Add tequila and cook for a few minutes.  Add chicken stock and taste. Adjust seasonings if necessary.  If heat is too much add a few squeezes of honey.  Bring stock to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.  Add shredded chicken and cook for 10 more minutes. 

Serve the soup with your favorite toppings.  I top with crushed tortilla chips, slices of avocado, squeeze of fresh lime juice, sprinkle of diced red onion and lots of fresh cilantro!

CHICKEN & TORTILLA SOUP

Fresh Pumpkin

The week before last we got a small pumpkin from the CSA and it's been sitting on my counter as decoration. But I LOVE everything pumpkin - pumpkin bread, pumpkin beer, pumpkin pie, pumpkin coffee - so I really wanted to use the fresh pumpkin to bake something.  Making fresh pumpkin isn't that hard and is so worth the effort.

Baked Fresh Pumpkin
Preheat the oven to 350 Cut the pumpkin in half and clean out the seeds. Cover a sheet tray with tin foil. Place the sides cut side down on the sheet. Cook for around an hour or until the pumpkin is soft. Cool. Scoop the pumpkin from the ski and put into a food processor until the mixture is smooth.  Use just like canned fresh pumpkin in all your recipes.  It can be frozen and saved for up to 6 weeks to use later.

I used my first fresh pumpkin of the season to make a Pumpkin Bread Pudding.  Click here for the recipe I used.  I tried it with dried cranberries which I love but I did not like in this recipe. I made it a second time with pecans and it was so delicious. 

I'm going pumpkin picking this weekend and will be picking up several sugar pumpkins to make lots of fresh pumpkin.  My Mom is responsible for the pies at Thanksgiving so I'll give her the fresh pumpkin. But I suspect I'll be making another batch of bread pudding before the fall is over!

PUMPKIN BREAD PUDDING

Soups On! Big Time!!

Wow this blog things turned out to be harder than I expected - at least doing it with any consistency. It seems it's like most things in my life I either do it 150% or not at all - there isn't much middle ground in how I do things.  Today was the last CSA pick up of the season. I can't believe 20 weeks has gone by!  One of the things I love about this time of year is having a big pot of soup on the stove.  In the last few weeks I've made Linguica and Kale Soup two times.  It seems I like kale more than I realized which I guess one of the points joining a CSA - trying things I may not normally have tried.  Living close to New Bedford and Fall River there is a large Portuguese population and we can get great linguica and chorizio in our grocery stores.  I've been really enjoying this soup - you need to try it as it's a great one pot meal with lots of flavour and with beans & kale very good for you. 

Tonight in putting away the last CSA pick up my mind was already thinking of the many soups I could make in the coming week. Instead I decided to do a marathon cooking session and freeze some of the soups.  This will be great as the hectic holiday season approaches and I can have homemade soup for dinner on the nights I don't feel like cooking.  You can see the three soups I made below - Charred Eggplant & Tomato, Leek & Potato and Roasted Butternut Squash.  I did puree all the soups but I love serving them with a big piece of crusty bread. 

Linguica and Kale Soup
Olive Oil
1 lb linguica, cut into half circles
1 onion, chopped
Handful of baby carrots, cut into thirds
3 potatoes, diced
1 cup Pumpkin beer
1 can white beans, rinsed
Chicken Stock
1 lb kale, stems removed and cut into bite size pieces
3 sprigs of fresh thyme, tied in kitchen twine
Salt & Pepper
In a large dutch oven, cover bottom with olive oil over medium high heat.  Add linguica and cook for 3-5 minutes.  Add onion and cook until onions start to soften before adding carrots & potatoes.  Cook for 5-7 minutes until veggies start to cook.  Use beer to deglaze pan and cook for a few minutes. Add beans to pot and enough stock to cover all vegetables.  Drop in kale and thyme. Stir, season and bring to boil.  Cover, reduce heat to low and cook for 30 minutes. This is one of those great soups that is better the next day!.  Serve soup with a grating of Parmesan Cheese over top. 

Charred Eggplant and Tomato Soup
3 small eggplants, chopped
8 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 onion, chopped
Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Chicken Stock
Handful of basil leaves, rough chopped

Place eggplants, tomatoes and onion on large sheet tray in single layer.  Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt & pepper.  Toss vegetables to coat well.  Place in 425°oven and cook until vegetables start to brown around the edges (about 30 mins).  Pour about a cup of stock into blender then add vegetables & basil and blend well. Add more stock if necessary until desired consistency.   Put soup on pot and warm on stove top until heated through.  Serve immediately with homemade croutons.

Note: You can roast the eggplant and onion and add canned tomatoes after in the stock pot if you don't have fresh tomatoes on hand.

Potato Leek Soup
Olive Oil
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

4 leeks, sliced into half circles & cleaned
4 baby red potatoes, diced
2 Yukon gold potatoes, diced

3 sprigs of fresh thyme, tied in kitchen twine
Chicken Stock

Handful of fresh parsley, rough chopped
Salt & Pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large stock pot.  Add leeks, season, and cook until softened, add garlic and cook for 2 minutes.  Add potatoes, season, and cook for 5 minutes.  Add enough stock to cover potatoes and  add parsley & season.  Bring to boil, reduce heat to low and simmer covered for 30 minutes until potatoes are completely softened.  Pour entire mixture into a blender (removing thyme bundle first), by batches if necessary, and puree soup until smooth.  Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

Note: Be sure to check the seasoning all along in this soup. Potatoes soak up salt so you want to be sure there is good seasoning or the soup will be very bland.  I also do not peel the potatoes but be sure to use baby potatoes with softer peel so it purees well.

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup
1 large butternut squash, peeled & diced
Olive Oil

Salt & Pepper
1 Onion, diced

1 clove of garlic, minced
4 large carrots, peeled & diced

Chicken Stock
3 sprigs of fresh thyme, tied in kitchen twine
Bay leaf

Place butternut squash on sheet pan in single layer.  Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt & pepper.  Place in 425°oven and cook until squash is softened and starting to brown around the edges.  Just before squash is done heat dutch oven over medium high heat on stop top and drizzle olive oil in bottom.  Add onions, season and cook until softened. Add garlic and cook for 2 minutes being careful not to burn garlic.  Add carrots and cook for 5 minutes.  When squash is cooked add to pot, cover with chicken stock. Season stock with salt & pepper and add thyme & bay leaf.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer covered for 20 minutes for flavours to blend.  Remove bay leaf and thyme. Pour entire mixture into a blender, by batches if necessary, and puree soup until smooth.  Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.  Serve with a dollop of sour cream if desired. 
Note: You can certainly by pass roasting the squash and add it to the soup pot when you add the carrots.  You will need to simmer it for a bit longer though to ensure squash is completely softened. 

LINGUICA AND KALE SOUP

Ratatouille as Pasta Sauce . . Who Knew?

I head to Chicago tomorrow for 5 days so the cupboards are a little bare. After several hours of packing I needed something comforting - I hate packing!  Pasta is always easy to whip up with some canned tomatoes to make a quick sauce. When I was looking in the fridge for some veggies I saw the rest ratatouille I had turned into dip.  Heck that has lots of veggies in it and great flavour.  I cooked up some pasta - a new type for me - trottole by Archer Farms that I got at Target.  And heated the ratatouille in a saute pan.  When the pasta was done I added it to the sauce and used some of the pasta cooking water to loosen the sauce a bit. Sprinkle with Parmesan and a quick, delicious dinner!

Ratatouille!!!

I have been itching to make ratatouille for several weeks now ever since I got my first eggplant from the CSA.  Tonight was the night!  Ratatouille is a traditional, French Provencal stewed vegetable dish.  Julia Child's recipe called for individually saute the vegetables and then layering.  I have mixed the vegetables in an aluminum pouch and steamed them on the grill before for a quick ratatouille.  Tonight I took the more traditional approach and sauteed them in a huge pan with lots of olive oil.  I also used almost every fresh herb I still had in the garden but I did add a pinch of dried, herbes d'provence because quite a few recipes called for it and it includes fennel, lavender and savory. 

I served the ratatouille with a roasted, rosemary chicken and it was a delicious dinner!  I had a second serving of ratatouille.  I think I am going to take the leftover and pulse it in a food processor and serve it with some pita chips as a dip.  Or I may just eat it midnight .  it was that good!

RATATOUILLE
Olive Oil
1 large vidalia onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 yellow bell, diced
1 small green bell pepper, diced
1 yellow squash, diced
1 zucchini, diced
1 medium eggplant, diced
5 plum tomatoes, diced
Salt
Crushed Red Pepper
2 sprigs of rosemary, minced
3 sprigs thyme, minced
1 sprig green oregano. minced
Pinch dried herbes d'provence
10 mint leaves, minced
Handful parsley, minced
Handful of basil, minced

Pour enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a large pan.  Add the onions with a little salt and start sweating them for 3-5 mins over medium high heat.  Add garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes.  Then add all 3 peppers - I don't typically like green bell pepper but I got a small one my CSA this week so I used it here.  I also seasoned again with salt and added some crushed red pepper.  After letting the pepper cook down a little I added the squash & zucchini and cooked for 3 minutes or so.  Then added the eggplant and seasoned again with salt & crushed pepper. Add the tomatoes with the rosemary, thyme, oregano and herbes d'provence.  Reduce the heat to medium and simmer.  You also might have to add more olive oil as you add vegetables since they do tend to soak up the oil.  However long you cook it at this point is entirely up to you but I do add the rest of the fresh herbs at least a few minutes before you serve.  And of course taste and adjust salt & red pepper.  Enjoy!

We All Scream for Ice Cream!!!

Ok so this isn't really about vegetables . . although if I needed a technicality the lavender I used was from my garden.  In any event I just had to share.  I have been obsessed with trying Lavender Honey Ice Cream ever since I saw the movie It's Complicated.  It was a big reason I bought the ice cream maker in the first place.  But late the Friday night before Hurricane Irene was to hit was the first time I'd found the time to make it. I had bought organic cream and organic whole milk the week before and at the risk of it going bad if I lost power I wanted to use it up. Oh and the idea that I could control the quality of the ingredients was one of the many justifications I had for buying the machine.   Somehow if I use organic milk and cream isn't that better for you?? Anyway I used Martha Stewart's recipe - you can find it here. 

I'm not going to mince words . . it was terrible, it tasted like potpourri.  I barely ate one tiny serving of it and when the power went out I didn't care that it was going to melt in the freezer.  I might try to make it one more time because I'm wondering if perhaps mine had too much of the lavender.  I would cut back a little and I think I may have brought the milk to too much of a boil so it may have drawn out too much lavender essence.  I don't know and I won't be trying it anytime soon but I thought I'd share. Anyone ever had Honey Lavender Ice Cream and enjoy it??

The rest of my forays into making homemade ice cream have gone much better or not as dreadful.  Here is a quick run down:


Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream - this is another ice cream I've heard about but couldn't find around here so was eager to make myself.  I used a recipe similar to this one here but I added ancho chili powder in addition to the cayenne.  This was a terrific first homemade ice cream and I will be making it again. 

Coconut Sorbet - my mother was a big fan of this. I enjoyed it but I have to admit not as much as the coconut ice cream I made later (see below).  This was very refreshing and not real sweet.  But for some reason it seemed to coat my palate a little too much.  In small servings though, which I guess is how sorbet should be served, it is good. Here is the recipe I used.

Mango Frozen Yogurt - this was another not terribly successful attempt.  I'm pretty sure I know why though - the mangoes were not as ripe as they should have been and I didn't measure the lime juice so I think I used too much.  In the end it was too sour but I will certainly try again with really, ripe mangoes.  The recipe I used was yogurt, sugar, mangoes and lime juice.

Chocolate Chip Ice Cream - This was pretty close to a home run!  My Mom grew up in Manchester, CT and until I was in high school we spent lots of holidays and weekends visiting.  One of the treats was chocolate chip ice cream at Shady Glenn.  In the last 15 years I have been known to bring a cooler with me if I was driving anywhere near Manchester to bring home a gallon. It's creamy lovely vanilla ice cream with shavings of chocolate in it - I've never had it like that anywhere else.  So with my ice cream maker in hand I thought let me see if I can get close . . and close I did!  Click here to see the recipe I used.  I used Hershey's Milk Chocolate and put the bar in the freezer overnight.  I then dropped it into a food processor just as the ice cream was thickening so I could get the grated chocolate into the mixture as cold as possible.  Even doing that my ice cream had a chocolate tint instead of the crisp white of Shady Glenn's but the taste was pretty damn close.  I will certainly be experimenting with this one in the future.  My mother gave this one rave reviews as well and rationed her share of it over many, many nights.

Coconut Ice Cream - This one was tied with the Mexican Chocolate as my most successful. The only issue was I didn't make enough.  It was creamy and tasted so much like coconut plus with the bits of coconut in it . .oh god so yummy!  Here is the recipe I used and will be using again very soon.

Oh Hurricane Irene!

Well just when I thought I was back to regularly posting Hurricane Irene blew into town which required two days of preparing, one of enduring (which wasn't that bad) and then 5 really, really long days of no power!!!  Since I work from home that meant no work, no play, no hot shower, no cooking - well I did use the gas grill one night.  Which meant that all last week was lots of making up for lost time.  So I will again post a list of what I've been up to . . and once again promise to get back to posting more regularly.  Oh wait I'm out of town all next week :)  But we already got the first of fall vegetables in last week's haul - delicata squash - and I LOVE fall and all those flavours so I'll be cooking up a storm.

Oh and one of these days I'll have to take some time and make batches of pesto.  My basil is still looking beautiful and I have a huge bush. I also have lots of parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme and Greek oregano.  Most should last into the fall but the basil needs to be used sooner rather than later. 

For lunch last week I had a slice of turkey and a slice of bread so I made a delicious open faced sandwich.  I used thick slices of green heirloom tomatoes, big leaves of basil, smooth slices of avocado and some slices of American cheese over everything.  Then put it under the broiler for a few minutes.  So yummy!!

OPEN FACED TURKEY SANDWICH

We have got kohlrabi the last two weeks so the other night I made a slaw using the kohlrabi, fennel and red carrots - it was super crunchy and fresh.  Check out the recipe at the bottom of the blog.

KOHLRABI & FENNEL SLAW

Last night we had some of the last sweet corn of the summer with ribs and the kohlrabi slaw. So tonight I wanted to use the rest of the corn to make a corn salad to accompany our skirt steak tacos.  I ended up surprising myself with the corn salad.  After I added the other vegetables and I included cucumber which wasn't in my original plans, I was about to add cilantro but decided against it.  Since I use cilantro so liberally in my tacos (in place of lettuce) I wanted the salad to have a a different flavour profile.  With the abundance of herbs I still I have I used a mixture of basil, mint and parsley.  Part of the vegetables I used was a jalapeno pepper.  The combination of the heat of the pepper with cooling cucumber and the sweet corn highlighted with the sweet mint and basil made for a great, complex mouthful.  And it was a great compliment to the skirt steak taco that I had marinated in lots of ancho chili powder.  I also used thick, peels of the red carrot for crunch along with creamy avocado and cilantro with a squeeze of lime to finish it off.  Yum, yum, yum!

SWEET CORN SALAD

KOHLRABI & FENNEL SLAW
1 kohlrabi, sliced into thin strips
1 fennel bulb, core removed & sliced into thin strips (reserving some of the frowns)
3 red carrots, peeled & grated into long strips
Olive oil
Tarragon Vinegar
1 T of Dijon Mustard
Salt & Pepper
Handful of fresh parsley, rough chopped
Fennel frowns, chopped

Combine kohlrabi, fennel and carrots and toss. Make a vinaigrette using dijon mustard, vinegar and olive oil and season with salt & pepper.  Toss the herbs into the salad mixture and add vinaigrette until coated.   Taste and season with salt & pepper.

SWEET CORN SALAD
4 ears of corn, cooked and the kernels cut off
1/4 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped
1/2 of red bell pepper, diced
Handful of grape cherry tomatoes, cut into quarters
1/4 English Cucumber, peeled and diced
Good handful of parsley, basil and mint; finely chopped
Olive Oil
1 lime, zested and juiced

Combine corn, both peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs.  I typically like things rustic and wouldn't ask you to chop grape tomatoes but in this case I wanted everything the same size as the corn kernels so I diced everything to just the same size.  Add zest and juice of lime and then olive oil to coat. Let salad sit a bit before serving so flavours can blend.