Archive for the 'soup' Category
But what I really love the sound of is Potage Parmentier. Growing up we called it vichyssoise, and it was well-known as my Dad’s favourite. He didn’t even have to specify vichyssoise on his birthday – we just knew to make it. Of course vichyssoise to anyone outside our household referred to chilled leek and potato soup, but we always served it hot. So really his favourite soup was Potage Parmentier.
I can’t recall if this made it into the movie or stayed in the book, but for some reason the name stuck. The humbleness of it, and the fact that a potato, some leeks and water can be transformed, in name at least, into something fussily French. Julia Child wasn’t just a master at French cooking, she was a pioneer woman when it came to product branding.
Earlier this year I unwittingly married P.P. with turnip soup simply by adding a turnip along with the potato. You could do this… or not.
Potage Parmentier
2 largish Yukon gold potatoes, quartered (I leave the skins on)
1 turnip, peeled and chopped (optional)
2 largish leeks, thinly sliced (white and pale green parts only)
1-2 L water or chicken or veg stock (Julia uses water, I generally use stock)
4-6 Tbsp. cream (heavy or half & half)
salt & pepper to taste
finely chopped parsley or chives
In a large pot, simmer the potatoes, turnip (if using), leeks and water or stock for about half an hour, until very soft. Puree in the pot with a hand held immersion blender, or roughly mash with a potato masher. Add the cream and season with salt and pepper and heat through. Serve immediately, sprinkled with herbs.
December 05 2009 | soup | 13 Comments »
It was a day for cheesy baked onion soup if ever there was one. I did take a stab at driving out to Red Deer this morning, the car loaded down with Boeuf Bourguignon, roasted tomato soup, chocolate-hazelnut-espresso shortbread and hot fudge sauce for 16, and managed to head out of town right when the storm hit. I did make it off the highway and turned around in Airdrie, although I pondered sitting in the Boston Pizza parking lot with a dozen or so other people sitting bewildered in their cars wondering what to do – instead I stuck it out and made it back, and in fact once back in the city pushed on to IKEA, since I was on the Deerfoot anyway and thinking no one in their right minds would attempt to go pick up a tree in all this. Apparently many other pre-weekend tree shoppers had the same idea. We now are the proud owners of a slightly malformed but delightful tree that will hopefully stay alive until Christmas. (Can’t complain, it was pretty much free.) If the needles start to prematurely start to fall off, we’ll spray it with green spray paint and call it fake.
The rest of the day was a marathon attempt at pulling the house back into some semblance of order, and looking back it’s a good thing we were shut in by the storm, because I have events tomorrow and brunch Sunday morning and then everyone arrives for our Julie & Julia party Sunday night. (We were hoping for advance copies of the movie to watch, but since they don’t ship out until Tuesday, Pierre has promised copies of Julia Child’s The French Chef on VHS.) So I’m proud to say that I’m lying on clean sheets right this very minute, and I cleaned off the top of the fridge (also known as our junk drawer) and even scrubbed the little space beside the oven where the cookie sheets go. As for the walls, we’re just going to have to paint them.
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December 04 2009 | soup | 84 Comments »
What a novelty! Tonight I think I’ll actually post what I had for dinner.
I couldn’t possibly relay the food that I’ve consumed over the past several days at the JPL-suffice to say it has been superb and in excess. Dinner tonight started with Sweet Potato Carrot Bisque, poured over crispy fried red onions (which were already in the soup bowls), then chicken stuffed with Fairwinds farm goat cheese and roasted fingerling potatoes, and white chocolate mousse with berry sauce for dessert. I figured the soup recipe was easy to share; plus it’s delicious. (I apologize for the nasty photo – it was dark, and the wine rendered me not as steady as I’d have liked.)
And also – I had gone to Shoana’s most excellent (say like in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure – am I dating myself?) mixology class in the afternoon, at which I tested no fewer than 7 cocktails – for research purposes, you understand. I think she may have convinced me to buy a martini shaker. Or dig out the one I bought at a garage sale a few years ago.
Yet another great thing about Christmas in November is that you get to take home a book full of recipes – everything you ate in the dining room, as well as all the recipes from the presenters.
Sweet Potato Carrot Bisque
This was served over crispy fried red onions which had already been placed in the soup bowls; to do this, thinly slice the onions and cook in oil until crispy.
2 cups chopped carrots
1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped
1 L (32 oz.) chicken broth
1 Tbsp. butter
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. curry powder
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 cup plain yogurt
In a large pot simmer the carrots and sweet potato in the stock for 20 minutes, or until tender, adding more water if you need to to keep the vegetables covered. Meanwhile, saute the onion in the butter until translucent. Add them to the pot of veggies. Add the sugar, curry, nutmeg and salt and puree with a hand-held immersion blender (or transfer to a regular blender in batches) until smooth. Add the lemon juice and yogurt and heat through. If you like, serve over crispy fried onions. Serves 4.
Chocolate Martini
2 oz. vodka
1 oz. crème de cacao
2 oz. milk (optional)
ice
chocolate shavings or finely crushed candy canes (optional)
Rim your martini glass by running a wedge of lime around the rim and dipping it into a shallow bowl of chocolate shavings or crushed candy canes. Shake everything else up (lots of ice) in a martini shaker and strain into the glass. Drink.
November 11 2009 | beverages and soup | 7 Comments »
The phone rang at 8 this morning. I had been up for awhile, and was helping W make oatmeal. (To sum: no no no I can do it myself I CAN DO IT MYSELF! Insert dramatic throwing of self on the floor when I absentmindedly added the raisins. WHAT WAS I THINKING? It’s a good thing there was still flax seed that needed to be added is all I can say.)
Want to know who it was? It was Michael Smith. I can’t really tell you this story without name dropping, so there you go. It was Michael, losing his mind a little bit upon discovering his identity had been stolen on Twitter. Turns out some guy (or girl, as the case may be) has been posing as Michael, twittering about his family and even offering up the chance to meet him and come on set, since May. It only became obvious when the fake began bashing the Montréal food scene last night – so not cool – and so not Michael.
(To clarify: it’s not like I’m Michael’s wingman, the problem solver he calls when he needs things fixed. It’s just that I twittered him -aka the impostor- last night and he -the impostor- answered, and so I came up on the radar. Also, he doesn’t call every morning so that we can coordinate our outfits or to see what I’m having for breakfast.)
So it was damage control in PEI today, and I myself peppered my followers with alerts to Unfollow! RT! Fake! The good news is the real, actual Michael has been thrust into twitterland by all of this, and you can now follow him at @chefMICHAELsmth. (Yes, that’s him. NOT the other one.)
So Michael has been on my mind today. He really is a fantastic guy, just as he is on TV (not everyone is exactly like their on-air persona, I’m sad to say). I get to see him a few times a year, usually, and every November when we get together at the Jasper Park Lodge to eat and drink for a week. (You should come!) So I was perusing his website, looking for info on his (beautiful!) new book but distracted by recipes, and stumbled upon one for cauliflower soup.
Which made me pause only because I have a pot of cauliflower soup in my fridge, destined for dinner tonight. I made it yesterday to bring to my parents’ house, where my aunt and uncle are staying and where we all converged for dinner. It was good, but plain, like vichyssoise – I planned to stir some Boursin cheese into it, but then had none. Instead we crumbled blue cheese into the bottoms of the bowls before ladling the hot soup over.
I was wondering if it might benefit from some curry paste to liven it up tonight when I came upon Michael’s, which is curried, and made with orange juice. Mine was made with apples. I hastily threw the cauliflower directly into the pot; he roasted it first. (The only problem with this scenario: I’d eat so much of it straight from the pan that there wouldn’t be enough left for the soup.) So tonight, when I reheated the soup I stirred in a small glob of curry paste, and I simmered a withering red pepper with a splash of V-8 and took his advice to puree it (a hand-held blender worked fine – it was chunky, but delicious) and spoon it overtop. It was sweet and made a nice foil against the spicier soup. Halfway through my bowl I went back to the stove and dumped the rest of it overtop and swirled it in, the way I used to swirl chocolate sauce into ice cream.
Curried Cauliflower Soup with Apples & Red Pepper Purée
I should really have called this Cauliflower Soup Three Ways – you could do it without the curry and swirl in some Boursin cheese, or with crumbled blue, or leave the curry and add the red pepper purée, or come up with your own version. It’s just soup.
olive or canola oil, for cooking
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 tsp. – 1 Tbsp. curry paste (optional)
1 large cauliflower, roughly chopped or separated into florets
1 apple, peeled and chopped (or try a pear)
1 L chicken or vegetable stock (or half stock, half orange juice)
1/4-1/2 cup half & half
salt & pepper
Red Pepper Puree (optional):
1-2 red bell peppers, seeded and chopped
1/4 cup tomato juice or V-8
Heat a drizzle of oil in a largish pot and sauté the onion until soft; add the garlic and curry paste and cook for another minute or two. Add the cauliflower, apple and chicken stock, plus a little water if it needs it to barely cover the cauliflower, and bring to a simmer.
Reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the cauliflower is very tender. Remove from heat and purée with a hand-held immersion blender, right in the pot (or do it in batches in the blender); add the cream and season with salt and pepper to taste.
And after, rifling through the fridge I found a forgotten slice of cheesecake – one Cheryl gave me from her BT appearance yesterday morning. It’s from a Honey Pear Cheesecake – made with puréed and chopped pears – and it’s wonderful. She has the recipe posted on her blog, so you’ll have to go get it. It would make a great Thanksgiving dessert I think, made with a gingersnap crust. (See Cheryl, I plated it? And garnished it with a flourish of honey, just like you said? Sorry I didn’t have the gumption to slice a pear fan – I just wanted to eat.)
And by the way, I apologize for the encroaching left sidebar – I had to widen it just for a week, as tomorrow we launch an online charity event sponsored by Quaker that runs until October 8th. And, well, you’ll just have to check in and see tomorrow!
One Year Ago: Chicken Fajitas
September 24 2009 | freezable and soup | 15 Comments »
Romance is so not dead. I was just rooting around for chocolate (a habit I inherited from my Dad, who used to do this after dinner any night that there wasn’t a little dessert to be had – now he keeps the makers of Lindt 70% cocoa chocolate busy) and mentioned how much I would love to have a Drumstick right now (the ice cream kind), and Mike walked to the corner store and just handed me one. I think he may be hoping for some kind of payback later.
It was some sorta crazy weekend. Friday night ended at 1am and Saturday morning began at 6:30 with W flicking/Lou licking me in the head. It was Gallery Calorie day, which was wildly successful and (almost) went off without a hitch, but had me out the door before 9 and home at close to midnight again. Sarah came and met me, and took a photo of our stunning pasta and bruschetta we ate on the patio at Il Giardino with her iPhone, but the computer keeps telling me it’s broken and won’t let me open it. So that, technically, was dinner, along with a few raspberry martinis (not a good idea in close vicinity to a silent auction), beef and beer pies, cupcakes, and bacon-wrapped scallops. (Dinner was grazed upon between 2 and 7 pm.)
This afternoon we spent at a barbecue and got home at dinnertime, all disoriented after having just eaten burgers and hot dogs a couple hours earlier. Why is there no afternoon equivalent to brunch that marries lunch and dinner?
But H had walked across the street this morning with a little basket of freshly picked spinach leaves – straight from her garden – and I was not about to leave them to languish in the fridge or for W to use as confetti in the living room. I haven’t even managed to plant my spinach yet, let alone harvest it.
(I don’t hate her because she’s beautiful, I hate her because she can plant stuff and not kill it. Which come to think of it is a handy sort of neighbour to have.) So I quickly sautéed the lot in a slick of olive oil and dab of butter, with a smashed clove of garlic, and as soon as it wilted tipped an egg into the hot pan. There is no better quick meal with a good slab of buttered toast.
I also reheated some asparagus-cauliflower vichyssoise for each of us to sip as we went about doing what needed doing. I didn’t make it to Edgar Farms’ Asparagus Festival a couple weekends ago on account of W’s fever; luckily I managed to stock up on plenty of the stuff, some of which I made into a large pot of soup. Vichyssoise is the hoity-toity name for far more humble sounding leek and potato soup, when it is puréed and served chilled. Very Garden Party. It was always my Dad’s favourite soup – he’d request it on birthdays and other occasions during which his input was requested. I hadn’t made it for ages but thought asparagus might make a nice addition, and then as I was making it discovered half a head of cauliflower that needed using, and both worked swimmingly.
This soup, by the way, is just as good served hot as cold or anywhere in between. And although I am not much of a garnisher, I dabbed a bit of jarred pesto on top for the photo because the pale green puree just wasn’t cutting it. It’s optional, but delicious.
Asparagus Vichyssoise
1 Tbsp. each butter and canola or olive oil
3 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
2 leeks, chopped (white and pale green part only) and then washed in a bowl of cool water
1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1″ pieces
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
salt and pepper
1/2 half & half or cream
In a large saucepan, heat the oil and butter over medium heat. Add all the vegetables and cook for a few minutes, until they start to soften. Add the stock and cook for 20 minutes, until everything is very tender. Season with salt and pepper and stir in the cream.
Purée the soup in the pot using a hand-held immersion blender, or do it in batches in the blender or food processor until very smooth. Serve warm, or chill and serve cold. Serves 6.
One Year Ago: Puffed Apple Pancake
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June 14 2009 | freezable and soup and vegetarian | 17 Comments »
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