Smoothie time?

I got a new blender for my wedding. It's a nice blender, actually. I was told I want/need a Vitamix. Although, it would be nice; I can't see why I'd pay for one when a friend offered me access to hers. I've tasted those milkshakes, and you better believe I'd be at the yard when she makes another.

Even so, I put some random things in the blender and here's what came out:

About a handful of spinach. Don't be picky with me now, guys.
A celery stalk
A carrot
As much ice as makes you happy
Some lemon juice (do you like lemons? Then use more. Don't like a lot of lemons? Then use less)
An orange
A banana
Enough mango nectar to getcha goin' to where you want to be

Granted, I just made a lot of smoothie. I'm considering adding toasted coconut leftover from when I garnished my lunch yesterday, but then I'd want to add nuts and chocolate and THEN just take a visit to Dairy Queen and..the cycle never ends. Besides, the noise of the blender made my cat go completely insane, and now I have a chair and a box of pens to clean up.
I love using mango nectar for smoothies because it's a bit thicker/more syrupy than orange juice. I get picked on because I don't really have an 'advanced palate' for textures, but there you have it. I don't want it to feel like water. If I want that, I'll drink water or coconut water. I actually have coconut water, and it'd likely be an interesting base to a smoothie. Must try that next time.

My end result filled the whole blender, so unless you want to give away about 5 glasses of the stuff, you might want to consider either storage options or cutting down the ingredients. I leave that to you, as this isn't my problem. :P

No dairy in this, no meat, no eggs, and not hard. Woo!

Mac'n'cheese

My friend Logan usually just comes over to play games on Sundays, as usual. However, I couldn't make up my mind tonight and I was running out of time. Usually, I have this planned out, but things have been insane lately as far as scheduling goes.
Safe to say, I asked another friend what I should do. He suggests mac'n'cheese. I tell everyone, and offer an opening for them to suggest things to go with it, and Logan jumps on the ability to make mac'n'cheese.

From what I saw, he did the following:


Add a cup and a half of condensed milk to an egg. Mix the heck out of this. Note: do this before making the roux.


Boil and cook your noodles of choice (enough to fill a large saucepan). Since this is mac'n'cheese, perhaps you shouldn't use spaghetti. This is up to you, dear cook. Eventually, when applicable, drain them and set them aside so the hot water doesn't make them mushy.


Make a butter-based roux from a stick of unsalted butter -- much like when I made the gumbo. You're basically lightly browning (see: malaise) a fat, such as different oils or butter. This is done on medium heat so things will melt correctly. Note: this isn't hard. Just doing boil it and you'll be fine.
While this is going, add about a half of a cup of milk (or was it a third? I doubt it'll change things much).
After this is mixed together, slowly add about a half of a pound of shredded cheese. We used a colby jack mix, but this is also up to you. It's your mac'n'cheese. If you like it sharp, then use sharp cheddar. If you like it light, use mozzarella or Swiss. If you like it smoky, use Gouda. This cheese should be added SLOWLY until it starts to thicken and become sticky, but not to the point where it readily hardens if cooled. The whole time you're doing this, stir with a whisk.

When the cheese sauce is melted, add a teaspoon or so of parsely, oregano and seasoned garlic salt -- or some salt and some more of that garlic you may have chopped for garlic bread, or minced garlic from a jar, or what have you. Just put garlic in it. Stir.

Put the noodles in a casserole pan. Put the two sauces in it, the white-egg sauce first. Lightly wiggle the pan so the white sauce spreads evenly, then follow by topping the noodles with the cheesy sauce.Top with more cheese to create a light cheesy-crust, or with cheese and bread crumbs if desired.
Top the pan with foil and cook at 350 for 12 minutes. Remove the foil and cook again for another twenty minutes or so, or until the cheese at the top is at the consistency you like.
Take out and serve.

Tonight: Garlic bread

• There are two parts to this: make the bread, then slice the bread and add a topping.
• As found here:  Read more: http://www.food.com/recipe/bread-machine-garlic-bread-107933#ixzz1ktop2aHl
• To make:
• 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon powdered milk
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dried parsley
• 3 teaspoons minced garlic or 2 teaspoons garlic powder (I minced up about 5-10 cloves, so this is up to you about how much you want. If you love garlic like we do, then 3 ts is just not going to cut it.)
• 3 cups bread flour
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast (I put in a packet. My bread keeps falling and I keep changing things to see what its issue is)

A few good shakes of the following, each: dried oregano, basil, marjoram, and a small shake of lemon peel. 

Directions:

1. 1
   Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer.
2. 2
   Select Basic Bread cycle; press Start.

Or... Put in appropriate pans, knead away, let it sit and rise for about 45 minutes, then bake at 350 for about an hour and a half or until it's the crust you'd want. 




To top:


Chop up a junk load more garlic. Add more seasonings of choice, as well as olive oil. Eye this to your liking and be sure to remember it may cover a lot of slices. Add butter from the fridge and microwave until it melts. Add this to slices of your freshly baked bread and allow to broil in the oven for a few minutes, until it's as crispy as you like. Serve with your yummy meal.

Baked eggplant

I'm back! I took a trip up north, spent quite a bit of time cooking at my sister in law's (basic stuff like green bean casserole and sweet potato crunch. I didn't share the recipe because, well, it's.. one is super easy and pointless to post, and the other is a recipe in the family and I'm not sure how happy they'd be if it went public.)

Considering it's a new year, I refuse to cook things that you know will turn out tasting like dirt. There are just things I like and things I don't and there's not much one's going to do to it to change my mind. On that note, I don't want to eat a lot of fried foods, red meats or things heavy in fatty oils -- like Crisco, margerine; I'm avoiding vegetable oil due to some finds I've come across. Logically speaking I'd post a link to that, but I can't find it right now.
So I'm making a vegetarian meal that sounds like it should actually be tasty.


Serves 4.
Cook time: assumedly 25-30 minutes.

Ingredients

4 eggplants, cut in half (I'm using two, because the store had three)
1 tb coarse sea salt
4 cloves garlic, chopped
4 thinly sliced onions
1 cup olive oil
1 tb freshly chopped parsely (guess who's using dried..)
2 large firm ripe tomatoes, chopped

Short version: stab the eggplant, leave it sit for an hour, cook the rest, cook the eggplant, put everything together and bake it.

Long version:
Make several deep cuts in the tops of the eggplants. Place in a colander and sprinkle with salt. Let drain for an hour. (Note: if you're going to cook rice on the side, or anything where the juice would be possibly included in the food while you're preparing, this would be good to use. The food would absorb any lost nutrients due to draining. I've been calling it the collard-green theory, because southerners often dab up the juice with corn bread).

Preheat the oven to 350.

Saute the garlic and onions in 2 tb of oil in a large pan over medium heat until browned. Season with salt, if desired. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 15 minutes.

Heat the remaining oil in a large frying pan until very hot. Fry the eggplants until the flesh is softened, about 10-15 minutes. Note: you can do this on lower heat, which would avoid destroying the chemical compounds found in the oil and the fruit. This is one reason why frying is generally bad.

Place the eggplants in a baking dish and fill with the onion mixture. Bake until tender -- roughly a half hour.

Sprinkle with the parsley and serve hot.

Considering I have more onion and tomato than eggplant, and I'm not really keen on frying it, I'm probably going to drain the eggplant after cutting it into strips. I'll saute like it says, but instead of frying the eggplant, I'll likely bake it for 10-20 minutes (which I can do while sauteing the other stuff) and then put it all together. This saves me from washing an extra pan, using up a lot of olive oil, and destroying good nutrients from the extra cooking process. I can't see how it would taste much differently, and having extra tomatoes -- therefore extra juice -- I'm not too scared of it drying out on me.


I may add a few potatoes, since, for one, I have a lot of potatoes; for another, I have company coming over; and for a third, I have a love for potatoes. Woo!

Wish me luck!

Recipe: seafood sausage gumbo

Let me preface this by saying that Heather donated a chicken from Earth Fare she said she'd never eat. I can't see why, but that means she used it as a buy in for this soup.
This soup is not cheap. So don't be angsty about my charging a buy-in. I've been pretty lenient this semester.
So, I am boiling the bird. Why? Because it was frozen. But I'll use that stock in with the gumbo. I can't see how that'd hurt anything. I do intend to de bone the bird, and if you choose to do the same thing then kudos -- it's a better soup, I think, when you go through the process like this. I know I love my turkey stock and I still have some left in the freezer.


As one can see from the recipe, this one is going to take me a lot longer. The roux will be 20-40 minutes; the shrimp shells simmer for 20; part 7 is 20 minutes; 8 is about 40-45. I'm sure I can multi-task, but some of that is a consistent bout of attention (see: the roux, which I'm scared I'll end up burning but such is how things go sometimes). I can definitely see this taking two hours. On the upside, my house should be quite warm. I'm also doing peppermint-brownies since it's so close to Christmas (a week!!)   =)



It says it serves 10-12 - if you add a whole chicken this won't be the case anymore :P

3 lbs raw shrimp, in shell (yes, I'm boiling the shells with the water that the chicken's in right now.)
1.5 quarts water
4 onions, 2 quarters
4 bay leaves
3/4 cup veggie oil
1 cup all purpose flour
5 tb butter
2 green bell peppers
4 celery stalks
1.5 pounds polish or andouille sausage (we actually have some jimmy dean links that were on sale, so just about whatever sausage should work)
3 cups fresh okra (in my case, frozen, since it's December)
3 garlic cloves
1/2 ts thyme leaves
2 ts salt
Black pepper and white pepper
1 ts cayenne pepper
2 tb red pepper sauce
2 cups chopped plum tomatoes (or a sweet tomato of your choice)
1 pound fresh crab meat
boiled rice for serving

1: Peel and devein the shrimp. Keep the heads and shells. Cover and chill  the shrimp while you make the sauce.

2: Place the shrimp heads and shells in a saucepan with the water, quartered onion and one of the bay leaves and let it boil. Partly cover the top and let it simmer for 20 minutes. Strain and set it all aside.

3: To make a Cajun roux, heat the oil in a heavy bottomed skillet. When the oil is hot, add the flour, a little at a time, and blend into a smooth paste.

4: Cook over medium low heat, stirring constantly for 25-40 minutes until the roux reaches the color of peanut butter. Remove the pan from the heat and continue stirring until the roux stops cooking and cools down.

5: Melt the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Finely chop the remaining onions and add to the pan with the peppers and celery. Cook over medium-low heat for 6-8 minutes until the onions are soft, stirring occasionally.

6: Add the sausage, stir well, and cook for 5 minutes longer. Add the okra and garlic, stir, and cook until the okra stops producing white 'threads'.

7: Add the remaining bay leaves, thyme, salt, peppers, and make sure it's to taste. Stir well and then stir in 1.5 quarts of the shrimp stock and the plum tomatoes. Bring to a boil, partly cover the pan, lower the heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

8: Whisk in the Cajun roux. Raise the heat and bring it to a boil, whisking well. Lower the heat again and simmer, uncovered, for 40-45 minutes,

9: Stir in the shrimp and crab meat. Cook for at least 3-4 minutes or until the shrimp turn pink.

10: To serve, put a mound of hot, boiled rice in each serving bowl and ladle the gumbo over, making sure everyone gets a little of everything. =)

Won-ton Soup Recipe

It says this is usually served as a snack. Knowing how the crowd eats, though, we won't need much more than that anyway. I did dessert last week, so munchies are up to everyone else this time.


Says it serves 4.

• About one cup, generous amount, of chopped pork
• 1/2 cup minced shelled shrimp
• 1 ts light brown sugar 
• 1 tb rice wine or sherry 
• 1 tb light soy sauce
• 1ts minced fresh ginger root
• 24 ready made won-ton wrappers
• about 3 cups of stock
• finely chopped scallions for garnish

1: In a bowl, thoroughly mix the pork and the shrimp with the sugar, rice win, soy sauce, scallions and ginger; set aside for about 30 minutes to blend the flavors.
2: Place about 1 ts of the pork mixture in the center of each won-ton wrapper.
3: Wet the edges of each filled won-ton wrapper with a little water and press them together with your fingers to seal. Fold each bundle over.
4: To cook, bring the stock to a heavy boil in a wok. Add the won-tons and boil for 4-5 minutes. Season with the soy sauce and add the scallions.
5: Transfer to bowls and serve hot.








As seen from Chinesefood.about.com, here's how one can make won-ton wrappers. It's not that hard, and I'll be making my own because I'm too lazy to go to Greenville to see if the Asian markets have any. It's just flour dough, guys, it's not that bad. =)





This recipe yields about 24 wonton wrappers.
Prep Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour
Ingredients:


1 egg
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 to 1/2 cup water, as needed
Extra flour as needed
Preparation:


Lightly beat the egg with the salt. Add 1/4 cup water.


Sift the flour into a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and add the egg and water mixture. Mix in with the flour. Add as much of the remaining water as necessary to form a dough. (Add more water than the recipe calls for if the dough is too dry).


Form the dough into a ball and knead for about 5 minutes, or until it forms a smooth, workable dough. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll out until very thin, and cut into 3 1/2-inch squares. Store in a plastic bag in the refrigerator or freezer until ready to use.

Recipe: Thai Chicken and Noodle

I loosely followed a recipe Kevin wanted -- he doesn't like coconut though, and to those that like coconut it's that which makes the soup.

My ingredients were as follows:

• 5 chicken thighs
• 4 garlic cloves (we love garlic)
• About a tablespoon and a half of cayenne powder
• About a tablespoon of powdered tumeric
• A couple/few chile-type peppers of choice (to keep up with your preference of heat; I used garden ones, myself)
• 8 cups of chicken broth (hot)
• About 3 cups of water
• Roughly 2 tablespoons olive oil
• A bunch of fresh cilantro
• A box of noodles (I used a whole box of spaghetti noodles)
• About a quarter cup, or more, of coconut 
• A cup of green onion or scallions
• A huge squirt of lemon juice, to taste (or lime if you want)
• Thyme leaves
• 4 big fork fulls of crunchy peanut butter (I'm NOT measuring peanut butter.. it's not worth it)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup of shredded carrot
• 1-1and1/4 cup cream coconut (I didn't have this available today.)

1. Heat half your oil in a frying pan, if you're like me and you have all your chicken frozen. Put the frying pan on medium or so, add the chicken and let it simmer with the lid. Chop things up in the process.
2. When the chicken is about cooked, add as much thyme as you'd like. I was liberal; I have a lot of thyme left over. Dump some salt and/or pepper onto it, keeping in mind that it's going to compete with about 10 cups of fluid as well as other things..
3. Heat the rest of the oil in your soup pan. Golden up the garlic. Then, add the chicken, with spices, and let it fry for a couple minutes.
4. Sprinkle the creamed coconut into the hot chicken stock and stir until it dissolves. Or, just add both in with the chicken, I doubt it matters and it saves a pan. Up to you. Add the lemon/lime juice, peanut butter and noodles (it says thread egg noodles. I obviously used spaghetti. PF Changs uses spaghetti type noodles, too, so don't judge me.)
5. Add the shredded carrot, and just about everything else other than scallions/green onion, and the cilantro. Cover the pan and simmer for 15 minutes.
6. In a dry pan, heat the shredded coconut and the cut up peppers until the coconut browns lightly. Make up some bowls, add this coconut mixture, and eat it -- immediately. It's FANTASTIC with the coconut!

Caribbean Vegetable Soup Recipe

Oh. My. Gosh.
Everyone loved this. I'm not even kidding. I'm having a hard time keeping my freezer-full-of-soups anywhere near capacity. My husband, especially, just finds himself wanting to eat it by the pound.

This would be me. I always wear my butterfly apron =)

Recipe:


2 tablespoons butter
1 chopped onion - to preference
1 crushed garlic clove
2 sliced carrots
1 1/2 quarts vegetable stock
2 bay leaves (see? Always with the bay leaves)
2 sprigs of fresh thyme (almost always goes with the bay leaves..)

This is usually what my counter looks like. It's my only one, and it's limited, but it works

1 minced celery stalk
1 1/4 cups peeled and cubed white yams (po-ta-toes!)
2 green bananas, peeled and cut into 4 chunks
2 tablespoons red lentils
1 chayote, peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons of optional macaroni (go whole wheat with it!)
salt and fresh black pepper
chopped scallions, to garnish

1: Melt the butter or margarine. Add the onion, garlic and carrots to fry for a few minutes. Stir occasionally until they begin to soften. Add the stock, bay leaves and thyme and let it boil.
2: Add everything else. Season it as you see fit and let it simmer for 25 minutes, or until things are at the cooked consistency you like. Serve with the garnish.

You could do that. Or you could lead my relatively hectic lifestyle and have no idea where to find chayote -- unless it's at a stupid Whole Foods store; they're stupid 'cause I don't feel like driving for 25 minutes to get to it.
Instead, you could call a fellow food science major and ask them what the heck chayote is. She, we'll call Magz the Scientist, will do what we do best: Google it. Upon doing this, we discover it's a gourd similar to other light-flavored gourds. Can't find one? It's somewhere between a cucumber squash (or something close to it; I keep wanting to say spaghetti squash but it's a lie) and, oh, honeydew melon. Sure. So we went with that.

I've mentioned the 8-people-feeding-frenzy we have weekly. It really is a bit insane. I cook. I yell at people who get in my kitchen. The longer the night goes on, the more I have to yell. The smell of nearly-done food seems to make them respond like shark do to bloody waters; eventually, every single one of them will just continually walk in circles through my kitchen, into the hall and back again.



This soup satiated the men-sharks.

These are man sharks. Don't be fooled by their present lack of movement; they eventually become troubled when hungered.
See the redheaded one? He's going to be the first to fall victim to his own stomach. I had to watch him carefully, to be sure I could complete my meal.

Thanks to Magz the Scientist, I ended up doing just what it says. Except I tripled everything. And I couldn't find green bananas, so instead I used plantains. Red lentils? What about a can of red kidney beans instead? Whole can. Why not? Chayote turned into 2 zucchini squashes and a whole honeydew melon. 2 carrots turned into half a bag of baby carrots I'd found on sale. 3 celery stalks, 4 red potatoes and a stray sweet potato later, and what was an attempt to fix a missing ingredient turned into Frankenstein-Caribbean Vegetable soup.

Frankenstein Soup

Contrast is off, but I wanted everyone to see how chunky it was =)

I also added some Caribbean spices I found at Bi-Lo some time back. Everything was put into chunks. I didn't garnish. You don't garnish DND nerds -- there's no point. It went over EXTREMELY well, and I must say it was probably the biggest hit of the semester. Is it anything like the original recipe? I'm disappointed in myself for straying, and it probably isn't like the original, but no one cares.

This is my best shot of it. The colors and everything are right; it was hard not just to eat it right then, too.

Berries

Poll: in my Indian Beef and Berry stew, it calls for beef with stock and onions; and, a choice of blackberries, blueberries or huckleberries. I'm not sure I can find the latter without unwanted effort.

So, blueberries or blackberries? Leave a comment below! :D

Spontaneous Soup

I know this might not be specific enough for some people, but I'm going to give this a shot anyway for those that can break away from the standard recipe chain.

I had an urge to cook soup. The last one, due to my urge to use up my hot peppers, turned out to be hot enough that I didn't want to use it for school left overs. I typically take a frozen serving, for lunch, and eat it between labs, but there's no way in Earth I'd be eating that before statistics legwork.
So, I didn't make soup yesterday because I couldn't find time, but that left me with the soup-making bug. Between that and the fact I'm attending a study session Sunday night, I wanted to do this. I also wanted to do another, but I got carried away, so I think I'm set for soup for a while. I'm running out of freezer-ready containers...

I went to the store. I know, I know, that's what happens when one makes soup. Bear with me. My original thought? Get a medium butternut squash, maybe a couple of sweet potatoes, an onion, some celery, some cream, and head out. What actually happened was similar: celery, an onion, some squash and potatoes. Except it turned out to be four large potatoes, one very large butternut squash (maybe 8 cups worth? 6?) along with another small-medium-ish squash (3 cups? 4?) And half-and-half, which I didn't even end up using, but I'll find a use for it regardless.

The process for making soups couldn't ever really be much easier, and I find that a recipe is just a good guideline to give you an idea for how long things should be cooking. Squashes and potatoes take a little longer than, say, celery and onions to be considered 'cooked'. Carrots fall a little closer to potatoes due to their size, but, again, it depends on how you cut them.

I have a pot that fits perhaps a gallon, maybe a few cups more. I filled it with squash, to give you an idea of how much I had bought. And then I had more, and filled it almost 3/4's with potatoes. All of that, plus an onion, about 4 celery stalks and a red bell pepper (snatched it on the way out), filled my large pot. I'd say I got about 40-50 ladel-fulls; I can say that because I ladled them all out into the Gladware containers. It came out to about 17-20 servings, depending on how one would define a serving.

Now, this was tasty. Tasty. How did I do it? I cut up everything into cubes, and added everything but the pepper, onion and celery. I put in about 75 ounces of stock (cooked some chicken in the process for a later meal), and about a stick of butter. Why butter? It goes with squash. And, someone had left it out. I didn't want it to go rancid, but I don't think it was worth putting back into my fridge.

I didn't add any cream mostly because I didn't have any space. After I let it cook on medium-high for an hour (needed to be that due to the amount of things cooking; otherwise it never came close to simmering), I added the onion, celery and pepper for about 10-15 minutes. Then, I went back to my trusty stick-blender and annihilated the heck out of everything. It was a lot, so it still had a few chunks, but I like it that way. Has the occasional bout of color and texture that a soft soup doesn't usually present.

This whole thing cost me maybe 25 bucks. Could have been cheaper if I decided to find things on sale; this was pretty spontaneous, considering my lack of planning. I was also really hungry, so there went my financial worries for a minute or two. But, if you consider I have at least 15 servings out of all of it, that's about $1.67 a thing -- and I filled them up to be enough to fill the average stomach, or at least be quite satiable. So, I don't think I did too shabbily.

Why am I posting such a post? I mean, it's not nearly as well thought out, prepared or otherwise clearly written as the others. Well, for starters, I was hungry. For another, and more to the point, I think people are losing their cooking touch. I mean, this isn't that hard, and people seem to be horribly afraid of trying stuff like this out. Potatoes and squash go together in soups; tons and tons of soups have onions, pepper and some salt; most of the vegetable based ones have celery. It takes about 30-45 minutes to really soften cubed potatoes and squash; if you cook it more, then, well, it's even easier to soften with a stick blender.

My point here, people, is to go out and make some soup. You like apples? Make the one I posted about a couple-few weeks ago. Tomatoes? Go for it. Mushrooms? Probably cooks like tomatoes, except you replace tomatoes with 'shrooms. And a lot of those have cream. Gosh, so far, everything is better with cream (in most opinions I've heard so far) and you can't usually go wrong with adding it. You can add noodles, corn, broccoli, spinach, you name it. Bacon. Peas and bacon go great, and people love bacon. Heck, I've been asked to do some crazy concoctions, and I think to myself every time: why don't you try it? Why does it have to be me?

I might compile some stranger ideas and give them a shot next year. But, for now (and hopefully for a while, if not ever) just make some soup. Have something you like. It doesn't need a guideline, really. And if it stinks, well, so what? Don't do that one again. Try something else. I threw things together I was craving, and, may I say, it turned out amazingly.

Roasted Red Pepper

Sometimes, my recipe book (The Soup Bible, by Debra Mayhew) has its own description of the soup just above the ingredients. I don't usually include it, because I am here to say what I want to say, not what the editor threw in. In this case, however, it's probably much more accurately written than I can pull off:
Broiling intensifies the flavor of sweet red and yellow bell peppers and helps preserve the stunning color of this delicious soup.

I'm all about colors in foods. For instance, given the chance, people will largely turn down blue foods. Why? Because there's only something like 2-4 naturally occurring blue fruits and things in the world ( see this for some psychology on food colors ). I'm not cooking a blue soup right now, but I'm willing to in the future. I'd love to see how much of it the guys will actually eat.

Anyway, on to the soup!!

It says it serves 4. I'm going to post my alterations to it after I alter it, specifically because that wouldn't nearly be enough to feed 8 people. I mean, unless it's like the Apple Soup and completely lies to me.

Ingredients
3 red bell peppers
1 yellow bell pepper
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
3 cups vegetable stock
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
Salt and pepper
Diced red and yellow peppers for garnish

1: Heat the broiler. Cut the peppers in half and remove the stems, cores, pith and seeds. Line a broiler pan with the peppers, skin side up, on a single layer on the foil. Broil until the skins are black and blistered.
2: Transfer the peppers to a plastic bag and leave until cool. Peel off the skins (I'm not) and discard. Roughly chop what remains.
3: Put the onion, garlic, and 2/3 cup of the stock in a large saucepan. Boil for about five minutes until the stock reduces in volume. Lower the heat and stir until the onion and garlic are soft and just beginning to color.
4: Sprinkle the flour over the onion. Gradually stir in the remaining stock. Add the chopped roast peppers and bring to a boil. Cover the saucepan and simmer for five more minutes.
5: Leave the soup to cool slightly, then puree in a food processor (stick blender) until smooth. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Return it to the pan (makes the stick blender look a lot more convenient, doesn't it?) and reheat until piping hot.
6: Ladle into four soup bowls and garnish each with a sprinkling of diced peppers.*

*If you prefer, garnish the soup with a swirl of plain yogurt instead of diced peppers.

Summer Tomato Soup: Recipe

I wanted to make something that, A: matched the season a bit and B: could go with the temperature. I get a lot of comments about making soup over the summer. 'But, Mel, it's hot out. It's not soup season yet!' Why not? Because soup is supposed to be hot, heavy, full of things like beans and beef and potatoes?

Any how, here's the recipe. Enjoy!

It says it serves 4. I'm assuming it does.
1 Tablespoon Olive oil
1 large onion, chopped.
1 carrot, chopped.
2 1/4 pounds ripe, quartered tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, chopped.
3 sprigs of fresh thyme, or 1/4 teaspoon dried
4-5 sprigs fresh marjoram, or 1/4 teaspoon dried (I might use a combination of dill and savory, because I ran out of marjoram and don't feel like buying more right this second.)
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons of creme fraiche, or sour cream, or plain yogurt, plus a little more for garnish
Salt and ground pepper

1: Heat the olive oil in a large, preferably stainless steam saucepan or flameproof casserole. Add the onion and carrot and cook over medium heat, or until just soft, stirring occasionally.
2: Add the quartered tomatoes, chopped garlic and herbs. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.
3: Discard the bay leaf. Strain the soup, stir in the cream/yogurt and season. Leave to cool, then chill it in the fridge.
Note: it says here that you can use oregano instead of marjoram, and parsley instead of thyme.

Considering we're supposed to eat this in about seven hours, I think I'll get to it now to give it time to cool off. I hope it's good enough for dinner; it's supposed to be hot and stormy this afternoon, so I can't see why this wouldn't be a good idea. I think I may even do grilled cheese. =)