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soup week
It’s been soup week here In the Kitchen. Except for last night’s chicken tikka masala, we’ve had some kind of soup, stew, or chowder every night. The fact that winter has finally arrived here in Massachusetts and that Cook’s Country magazine had a bunch of reader-contributed chicken soup recipes in the latest issue made the menu choice easy.
On Monday, we had a Corn and Poblano Chowder that came in via a recipe exchange chain email we took part in. It wasn’t bad but it was lacking a little something, a little extra kick. I think this is one recipe where Melanie’s garlic aversion really became problematic. I’m going to experiment with it a little to figure out what to do to compensate.
The rest of the week’s soups came from the February/March 2007 issue of Cook’s Country.
On Tuesday, we tried New Orleans Chicken and Sausage Soup, substituting some chicken habanero sausage for the andouille called for in the recipe, which may have resulted in less flavor because of the loss of the pork fat. Don’t underestimate how much flavor pork fat can add to a dish, especially a Southern dish. At one point you add flour to make a roux and perhaps I did not let it brown enough because the resulting soup was more light-brown than the red-brown of the soup in the accompanying photo.
On Wednesday, we moved to the Far East for a Thai Chicken Soup. This was a very good soup, approximating the fresh light and herbaceous flavors and style of Thai soups. The directions were a little unclear or I was a little distracted because I couldn’t figure out how to prepare the chicken for the pot. I was supposed to poach the whole breasts in the liquid and then shred them after. Instead I sliced them into strips before adding them to the liquid. The resulting texture wasn’t great and I think shredded would have been better. And again, I think I could the missing garlic took its toll on the resulting flavor.
Finally, tonight we’re having Guinness Beef Stew cooked in the slow cooker (aka the Crockpot). I like using the slow cooker, not because it takes any less time, but that it shifts the preparation and cooking time to a different part of the day. Thus before dinner, there’s less preparation and at the end of dinner, there’s less cleanup because I did all that before. Unfortunately, it requires advanced planning including making sure all the ingredients are purchased by the day before. We sometimes have trouble with “advanced planning.“ An interesting aspect of this recipe is the addition of bittersweet chocolate to bump up the flavor profile of the Guinness. I just wish we had time to make some nice savory soda bread.
I have to say that I agree with Jerry Seinfeld that soup makes a great meal. I do love soup and winter is a great time for it.
COMMENTS
Yummy! But you should ask Melanie about how to make Guinness Beef Stew in a cast iron Dutch Oven over an open fire…....she probably won’t recommend it 
Not sure if you heard about that massive camping dinner failure with Meghan, but anytime cooking over an open fire, it’s probably a good idea to verify there’s still liquid in the pot. I burned everything into a blackened mass of organic charcoal not fit for human consumption as Melanie learned. The Dutch Oven is still recovering.
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