2.23.2011

soup v and vi: tomato, lentil


Well aren't yall in for a treat ... a two-fer. Yup having to resort to this because I have been lazy. Thus I may not remember these as well as a should (as an aside remember is one of my favorite words. It implies the action of re-membering, like putting back together the traitor that has been drawn and quartered. They do not quite turn out the same as the original. Neither do memories when retold.) Now with that thought in mind lets turn to the Tuscan Tomato soup.

To make this you need a bunch of tomatoes. The the fun part is seeding them.
The book recommended after skinning them to quarter them and dig the seeds out. I found it a lot easier, and messier, just to squeeze those puppies. In the end I had a pile of tomatoes to mix with some chicken broth and herbs. We were in business. We added a little corn starch to thicken it up, toasted bread and cheese. The soup was excellent. As a bonus it was nice and cold out, perfect tomato soup weather.

The next soup we made was lentil. But this wasn't just some run-of-the-mill lentil soup, because I can make good lentil soup.
Nope this was lentils and curry and lemon. Sacrebleu! What in the world are all these extra ingredients meant for? They are there to make some nasty, bitter, rancid mess. I ate about three spoonfuls, and it was a fight to get those last two into my mouth. I don't think Michelle survived that long. I blame it on a bad lemon, but after reading up online I may of overcooked the curry. But I really don't see how, as I followed all the directions. Needless to say, don't put lemon and curry in your lentils unless you know what you are doing.

2.09.2011

soup iv: new england clam chowder

Why do they call it new england clam chowder when my clams came from Cedar Key? Maybe I should just rename it.
This soup took longer than we expected because my potatoes wouldn't soften quick enough ('What's taters, precious, eh, what's taters?'). So there we sat with our steamed clams waiting, waiting and waiting. Actually it wasn't that bad compared to some of the others we have cooked; re: the caramelization of the onions and leeks for the French Onion Soup.

Other than that the recipe was pretty straight forward. Clam juice and milk make up the base and then add the goodies. I did modify the recipe of the book slightly. after thawing the chunk of salt pork that we had in our freezer, I noticed it had a strange green color to it. Not being Hogwallops, I decided that we should toss it. So we had NECC sans salt pork.

Regardless the chowder turned out delicious, and we got to eat a bunch of those tasty oyster crackers. We even broke out the china so that we could have a white bowl to photograph.