Archive for the 'soup' Category
Sorry guys, it’s taken me awhile to get this soup up – I keep getting requests for it, and understandably – it’s one of my absolute favourites, one I should really have a stash of at all times. It’s the perfect midwinter soup – warm and sippable with protein and spice and beta carotene and all good things. (You may recognize the photo from a year-old issue of Parents Canada-taken out in Tofino! SIGH.) Print this recipe out RIGHT NOW and stick it on your fridge. Please.
In case you didn’t know – it seems a great many people are less familiar with dried lentils than I am – red lentils don’t need to be presoaked. Having been split in half, they can be tossed straight into the soup and cooked along with the vegetables. Take this soup with you to go in an insulated coffee mug to keep it warm.
Curried Sweet Potato, Carrot & Red Lentil Soup with Ginger
canola or olive oil, for cooking
1 medium onion, chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
1/2 cup dry red lentils
1 medium dark-fleshed sweet potato, peeled and cut into chunks
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 tsp. curry paste or powder, or to taste
4 cups (1 L) chicken or vegetable stock
salt, to taste
1/4-1/2 cup half & half, plain yogurt or heavy cream (optional)
In a medium pot, heat a drizzle of oil over medium-high heat and sauté the onion, garlic and ginger for 3-4 minutes, until soft. Add the lentils, sweet potato, carrots, curry paste and stock, along with a cup of water. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down, cover and simmer for half an hour, until the vegetables are very tender.
Season with salt, add the half & half (if you’re using it) and use a hand-held immersion blender to puree it right in the pot. Alternatively, transfer it in batches to a blender and puree until smooth or mash it roughly with a potato masher.
Serve hot. Leftovers can be stored in the fridge for up to a week, or cooled and frozen for up to 6 months. Serves 4.
Per serving: 241 calories, 4.4 g fat (1 g saturated fat, 2.2 g monounsaturated fat, 1.1 g polyunsaturated fat), 13.5 g protein, 37 g carbohydrates, 7 mg cholesterol, 5.4 g fiber
February 02 2011 | soup | 15 Comments »
Can’t sleep. Can’t breathe. The cherry NyQuil and OJ Shirley Temple I mixed up (the Sick Shirley) has not kicked in yet. And so I’m up poking around the internet, figuring out how to do fun stuff like this. I have a cold. A drippy-nosed cold, the kind where you can generally breathe fine through one nostril but not at all through the other, and it feels like your brain is swathed in cotton batting. And when you run all the way down to the basement to change the laundry and come back up again, you have to sit down for a rest. Fortunately I’ve been on a bit of a soup kick lately, so I had some at the ready.
LOOK AT THE COLOUR OF THIS SOUP! It’s not part of the effect – this is what it looks like – a mug of lipstick/fire engine/nail enamel red paint. In Vancouver last week, I was lucky enough to stay at the new Fairmont Pacific Rim, which again made me question my decision to marry for love, not money. Downstairs in the giovani café there was a beet and butternut squash soup on the menu that I didn’t get, but the power of suggestion is strong with me. I wish I would have seen if it was chunky (like borscht) or smooth (like squash soup). I decided, since I’m totally into sippable soups right now (like I used to be into Vans and Social Distortion), that I’d do a purée. I roasted the squash and beets first, and added a splash of orange juice because it was in the fridge. It puréed into a brilliant red, the orange squash offsetting the Barney purple shade of beet. Lovely. And far better the second day. Particularly with a dollop of sour cream on top, which you could, if you wanted to, draw a bamboo skewer through to make a heart.
Roasted Beet and Butternut Squash Soup
canola or olive oil, for cooking
1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and diced
2-3 beets, tops trimmed
1 large onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
1-2 cups orange juice
1 L chicken or vegetable stock
a big splash of half & half (optional)
sour cream, for serving (optional)
Preheat the oven to 450F. Spread the squash out on a rimmed baking sheet and drizzle with oil. Wrap the beets individually in foil. Place the sheet in the oven and the beets directly on the rack; roast for 30 minutes, or until the squash is soft and turning golden on the edges.
In a medium pot, heat a drizzle of oil over medium heat and saute the onion for a few minutes, until starting to soften. Add the garlic and roasted squash. When they’re cool enough to handle, peel and chop the beets; add to the pot along with the orange juice and stock and simmer for about half an hour.
Add the cream, puree the soup with a hand-held immersion blender and season with salt to taste. Serve warm with a dollop of sour cream. Serves 6.
One Year Ago: Poached Eggs Over Warm Lentil Salad with Bacon
January 19 2011 | freezable and soup | 11 Comments »
I’ve been shirking my dinner duties, I know. Sorry. Today I made baked bread soup. Mostly because it sounded so intriguing – don’t you think? You cook down a ton of veg – the usual onion-carrot-celery trio, plus garlic, thin-skinned potatoes, kale, savoy cabbage, tomatoes and smooth white kidney beans – it really is pure virtue in a pot, this. Then you tear up almost half a loaf of crusty bread and poke the pieces in, and refrigerate the lot overnight. I did the whole thing in an enamel-covered cast iron pot – it went from stovetop to fridge, then into the oven the next day. On day 1 it doesn’t seem like all that much, but overnight it morphs into something much better, and then when you bake it uncovered rather than reheat it on the stovetop, it gets all crusty around the edges, almost like a casserole. I thought it needed some freshly grated Parmesan on top – don’t you agree?
The original called for 1 lb of dried white kidney beans, which are soaked, simmered, and then partly pureed. You could do this, of course. But I don’t want to turn you off at the prospect of having to soak and cook your beans before even starting on your “soup”, which then must sit in wait for a night before you can bake it. You could of course start with dried beans if you like.
It’s like a big ol’ salad, condensed and warmed up for winter. If you’re the type to crumble crackers into your soup and won’t be too upset at not being able to actually slurp it, you’ll love it.
In other news, this site has expanded a little. Dinner with Julie is now a citizen of the Republic of Facebook. All the cool kids were doing it, and I succumbed to peer pressure. That’s right, I have another page to update. It will be like Dinner with Julie Lite®. I do like the idea of posting little snippets and links and photos here and there in between the bigger posts, which I’m hoping will go back to being more dinner-oriented. I have some ideas. Stay tuned.
Tuscan Baked Bread Soup
adapted from Saveur, Issue #46
canola or olive oil
2 onions, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and thickly sliced
2 celery ribs, thickly sliced
2 thin-skinned potatoes, chopped
1 large bunch swiss chard or kale, ribs removed and leaves torn or coarsely chopped
1/2 small savoy cabbage, cored and coarsely chopped
1 796 mL can whole plum tomatoes, undrained
1 L chicken or vegetable stock
3 thick slices day-old country-style crusty white bread
1 19 oz (540 mL) can white kidney or navy beans, drained
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat a good drizzle of oil over medium heat and saute the onions for about 10 minutes, until soft. Add carrots, celery, potatoes, chard and cabbage. Add tomatoes and stock, cover, and cook for about an hour, until everything is soft.
Tear the bread into chunks and add it to the pot, along with the beans. Cool completely and refrigerate.
The next day, preheat oven to 375º. Heat the leftover soup in the casserole in the oven, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until heated through, about 1 hour. For the last 30 minutes, do not stir; let soup brown lightly. If you like, top it with some Parmesan cheese. Drizzle with olive oil and serve.
January 18 2011 | one dish and soup and vegetarian | 12 Comments »
My sister is sick, so I made sippable soup. She likes the pureed orange gingery kind, made with sweet potatoes, carrots and red lentils. I’m trying to sip more of the stuff myself – partly because it’s like drinkable vitamins, and partly in an attempt to replace that afternoon coffee that I’ve always thought never affected me at night. But then I realized that perhaps other powers are at work when I jolt awake at 3am and lie there, trapped inside my brain, until just before the alarm goes off.
Although I’m inherently against the concept of New Year’s resolutions (in the sense that they’re easily broken, and thus dissolved), I nonetheless get reflective over the holidays and begin the year with boundless intentions to do more (and at the same time, less), be more (and again, less), experience more, read more, and eat better – mostly this comes about at this time of year because festivities grind to a halt, and I find myself needing to wean off of chocolate and sugar and bread and butter and cream. (Not entirely, but in lesser quantities.) I vow to have more dinner parties, eat more soup (translation: more vegetables in a format that necessitates slower eating), do more creative stuff (there is a bit of me that’s artsy and crafty, and I keep ignoring her), and get more sleep. Travel more, if I can manage it, and use up all that food in my pantry and freezer before buying more. I’ll start with more soup. It’s important to have achievable goals.
You can find roast bison in the Co-op deli – no sodium, no msg, no preservatives. Leaner than beef. Lots of protein and iron.
Roasted Ginger-Orange Carrot Soup
2 lbs. carrots, peeled (or scrubbed) and cut into 1” chunks
canola oil, for cooking
1 Tbsp. butter
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
1 tsp. curry powder or paste
3-4 cups low-sodium chicken stock
1 cup orange juice
salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 cup half & half or heavy cream (optional)
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Spread the carrots out in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet and drizzle with oil; toss to coat well and roast for 20 minutes, until soft and starting to turn golden on the edges.
In a medium pot, heat a drizzle of oil with the butter over medium heat. When the foam subsides, add the onion and ginger and cook for 5 minutes, until the onions are soft. Add the curry powder, roasted carrots (scraping any flavourful browned bits from the pan), stock and orange juice and bring to a simmer. Cook for 15-20 minutes, until the vegetables are soft. Season with salt and pepper.
Remove from the heat and using a hand-held immersion blender, puree the soup right in the pot. (Alternatively, process it in a blender in batches until smooth.) Stir in the cream, if you’re using it, and serve hot. Serves 6.
January 05 2011 | soup | 17 Comments »
This cold has wrestled me to the ground and is sitting on my face. You’re likely as sick of it (pun intended) as I am, but it (my cold) has everything to do with the recipe du jour – it inspired me to make soup.
The most appealing foods have been hot and sippable, and the thought of something smooth and full of spices, vitamin C, garlic and ginger was irresistible. I saw it on Dan’s blog and loved the idea of using a tandoori spice blend in soup, much like I (habitually) use curry paste or powder. And I just so happened to have a bottle on the back of my shelf. How could a cold possibly survive a hot blast of tandoori spices, garlic, ginger and enough carrots to choke Bugs Bunny?
Because I was not feeling up to snuff, I didn’t pay full attention to the original recipe and wound up more or less doing my own thing – onions, celery, carrots, a handful of red lentils for good measure – I didn’t have the zucchini Dan called for, and meant to try the apple cider vinegar but forgot. I’m not a fan of fennel so intentionally forgot that.
And do you see that ravishingly golden chunk of dough sitting precariously on the edge of my mug? It’s one of Aviv‘s biscuits, which I bought at Friday night’s Hillhurst-Sunnyside Christmas Market (along with a few eggnog-poppyseed) and which i thought were plain old (as if) cheese, but when I broke my (freshly warmed) scone open, I found, as if opening a present, it was full of chunks of bacon. Bless you, Aviv. By the way, he’s one of the bakeries that will be joining me downtown in the lobby of the Suncor building between 12-1 on Tuesday for our third annual Upscale Bake Sale as part of the CBC Suncor Food Bank Drive. Other participants include Urban Baker, Brûlée Patisserie and Buttercream Bakeshoppe. Can’t wait. Scones, bread, cupcakes and cookies (and more!) for a great cause.
Tandoori Carrot, Lentil & Apple Soup
inspired by Dan’s Good Side
canola or olive oil, for cooking
1 large onion
2-3 celery stalks (with leaves)
4-5 garlic cloves
2 Tbsp. tandoori powder
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
4-6 large carrots, peeled and chopped
small handful dry red lentils (optional)
1 apple, chopped
1 L chicken or veg stock
splash of half & half (optional)
sour cream or plain yogurt, for serving (optional)
In a largish pot, heat a drizzle of oil over medium-high heat and saute the onion, celery and garlic for a few minutes, until soft. Add the tandoori powder and ginger and cook for another minute, then add the carrots, lentils, apple and stock. Bring to a simmer, reduce the heat and cook for about 30 minutes, until everything is nice and soft.
Using a hand-held immersion blender, puree the soup right in the pot, adding a splash of cream, if you like. Season with salt and pepper if it needs it, and serve hot, with a dollop of sour cream on top to cool the spice, if you like. Serves 6.
December 05 2010 | soup | 11 Comments »
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