Happy (after) Thanksgiving

It’s always a good time to give thanks.

I am so thankful for the love and laughter of family and friends. My daughter had me in tears during a recent family visit. She became upset as we left and told us, “I want to visit more family’s houses. I want to see more people we love who love us.” She just melts my heart.

If it hadn’t been for the painfully long car ride, and a potty-chair incident in the minivan, we might have been a little more gung-ho. But, instead we enjoyed the remainder of our trip and prayed that it wouldn’t take three hours to cross the city on the way home. (It worked, thank you traffic gods!) We learned that the effort it took to get there, and for our family to prepare our welcome was all worth it. Now, we just have to rest up a few months before any of us will even think about attempting it again. Then, kind of like pregnancy brain, you forget how hard the labor was, remember the end result is worth it, and do it all over again.

Thanks for a peaceful, wonderful, safe holiday!

Since we’re only a few short months from the welcome arrival of kid #2, my growing appetite also extends a thankful gurgle for the season’s delicious and indulgent foods. Here’s to a pie I didn’t try (yet), but it’s only because I just found this recipe – Toffee Topped Pumpkin Pie. Enjoy! http://www.goodbite.com/ultimate-thanksgiving/toffee-topped-pumpkin-pie

Success or Mess Soups – Grand Finale

Six Scratch Soups in Six Weeks? Yeah, that’s what I’m blogging about. Here’s what I learned.

Plans:

The plan was to cook one soup each weekend for six weeks. That way I had the opportunity to work in the kitchen while my husband occupied our active toddler.

Realities:

Things didn’t work out quite the way I planned. Weekends go by too fast, and time was even tighter since we had so much home construction and clean up the past couple months. Sometimes I had to dig deep to get the soup on the table.

Lessons:

Stick with the plan – make homemade soups that require time and focus when you actually have time. Say, some weekend you’re not struggling with plastic barriers between you and the stove, scrambling to paint, or moving your kitchen and dining room back into place.

Get help – whether you’ve got kids, pets or work, ask for help when you need it. Trust me, you’ll enjoy cooking more and burn a lot fewer meals (or shallots) this way.

Just go with it – sometimes you’re grand plans for a homemade Sunday supper just won’t fly. If it gets bad: take a deep breath, call for carryout and make your fabulous meal another night. You’d be surprised how many times you can pull off a scratch soup on a weeknight. There are plenty of quick-cook options to get you through and the bonus is you might find tearing and chopping a bunch of veggies at the end of a long workday truly cathartic.

Enjoy the video recap and whatever you cook tonight!

Success or Mess Soups – Italian Wedding Soup

It’s finally here – the end of the road for our Six Scratch Soups in Six Weeks experiment! And this was one of the best. I used a combination of ground chicken, chicken sausage and more to make the meatballs. Add in yummy veggies, the cutest little Dittalini tube pasta and top it with a sprinkle of shredded Parmesan, and you’ve got one delicious soup.

Tune in again soon when I post the final results of our Soup experiment!

The chicken idea comes from the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe seen here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/italian-wedding-soup-recipe/index.html
Here’s my take on this delicious soup.

Italian Wedding Soup

Ingredients

For the meatballs:

3/4 pound ground chicken

1/2 pound chicken sausage, casings removed

2/3 cup fresh white bread crumbs

2 teaspoons minced garlic (2 cloves)

3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves

1/4 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano

1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra for serving

3 tablespoons milk

1 extra-large egg, lightly beaten

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the soup:

2 tablespoons good olive oil

1 cup minced yellow onion

1 cup diced carrots (3 carrots), cut into 1/4 inch pieces

3/4 cup diced celery (2 stalks), cut into 1/4 inch pieces

10 cups homemade chicken stock

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 cup small pasta such as tubetini or stars

1/4 cup minced fresh dill

12 ounces baby spinach, washed and trimmed

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

For the meatballs, place the ground chicken, sausage, bread crumbs, garlic, parsley, Pecorino, Parmesan, milk, egg, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper in a bowl and combine gently with a fork. With a teaspoon, drop 1 to 1 1/4-inch meatballs onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. (You should have about 40 meatballs. They don't have to be perfectly round.) Bake for 30 minutes, until cooked through and lightly browned. Set aside.

In the meantime, for the soup, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat in a large heavy-bottomed soup pot. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and sauté until softened, 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the chicken stock and wine and bring to a boil. Add the pasta to the simmering broth and cook for 6 to 8 minutes, until the pasta is tender. Add the fresh dill and then the meatballs to the soup and simmer for 1 minute. Taste for salt and pepper. Stir in the fresh spinach and cook for 1 minute, until the spinach is just wilted. Ladle into soup bowls and sprinkle each serving with extra grated Parmesan.

Franken-soup (Leek and Asparagus Soup) Results

Well, I did have a big green mess in my kitchen, but it was mostly due to the fact that I do not own an immersion blender. One is not required for the soup, but after making it, I would recommend it. This soup is much better when it has a smoother texture. So, not only did I use a blender to mix the soup up in batches once (a second bowl, blending a couple cups at a time and back into the pan), I actually did it twice. After tasting it and feeling that it needed just a little more blending time to give it that silky taste and really hit the mark.

The soup had great flavor combination of asparagus, leeks and spinach to name a few ingredients. My family really loved the crunchy leek topping – think crispy onions, but not from a can. It lent a nice light crunch and a bit of an onion and salt taste that blended very well with the smooth veggie soup.

If you’re wondering, the soup color was a very light mint green, much like the unnatural color in the recipe photo I mentioned in a previous post.

This is a make again recipe. If you love asparagus soup or just want to try a great new soup this fall, give it a try. Let me know if you have the same mess I had, or if you might let me borrow your immersion blender next time. Enjoy!

Adapted from a Williams-Sonoma Leek and Asparagus Soup recipe

Ingredients:

2 tbsp unsalted butter

2 tbsp canola or vegetable oil

4 to 6 medium leeks, white and light green portions, cleaned, halved lengthwise and cut crosswise into slices1/4" thick (reserve 1 cup for fried leek garnish)

1/2  tsp dried thyme

6 cups chicken broth

1 medium russet potato, cleaned, peeled and cut into large diced chunks

1 1/2 to 2 lbs asparagus, tough ends trimmed, spears coarsely chopped

1 cup frozen spinach, thawed and drained

1 1/2 cups half and half

Kosher salt, 1/4 tsp, plus more to taste

Black pepper

Directions:

1.    In a big soup pot melt 1 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of oil over medium heat. Cook the reserved cup of leeks and 1/4 tsp salt and sauté until the leeks are crisp, about 8 minutes. (I walked away at 6 minutes and they still looked light green, returned around the 10 min. mark and some were going black, so watch these and take them off around 8 mins.) Transfer the fried leeks to a paper towel-lined plate.

2.    Use the same pot and melt 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp oil over medium heat and add the rest of the leeks and the thyme to the pot.

3.    Reduce heat to low, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the leeks are softened, about 10 mins.

4.    Add the broth and potato, increase heat to medium-high, cover and bring to a boil.

5.    Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until the potato is tender, about 12 mins.

6.    Add the asparagus, cover and cook until the asparagus is bright green and tender, about 6 mins.

7.    Stir in the spinach and cook until hot, about 4 mins.

8.    Using an immersion blender, or a very large stand blender, puree the soup until smooth.

9.    Add the half and half, season with salt and pepper and stir to combine.

10. Ladle the soup into bowls, garnish with the fried leeks (I kid you not, these really punch up the soup), and serve immediately.

Success or Mess: Next up…Franken-soup.

We had an eventful Halloween week, mostly due to all the housework we’re finishing. As we inch ever closer to the project finish line I’ve got more soup to make and this one should be fun.

Really, there are so many projects I’m not sure there is a finish line, but we’ll call time before Thanksgiving. There’s only so much we can take before we need a break. So, we have piles of laundry, dishes and more painting, but we’re working as fast as we can. Even with all this work, it’s nice to change gears and work on things like the Success or Mess series – I admit it does create more dishes, but it’s nice to create delicious meals and share them with others.

Tonight I will attempt a new recipe that my friend and I found through Williams-Sonoma. The fun of it is I have no immersion blender, and you need one, and the photo on the recipe card looks like unnaturally green – maybe I can convince my kid to try it if I tell her it’s some kind of goofy monster soup. I mean Halloween was just yesterday and she’s been talking about it most of today. We’ll see. Check back later to find out if the Franken-soup is a Success or if my kitchen turns into a green slimy mess.