Soups and stews
Garlic and bread soup
That idea of garlic soup, a strong, aromatic, rejuvenating broth, really appeals to me. Here’s a recipe from my garden and homemade stock made from leftover roasted chicken, but it’s just as good with dried herbs and a nice quality supermarket stock. The garlic flavor mellows out with cooking, and it’s an easy recipe. You don’t have to worry about peeling and mincing the garlic very much. I cut and smashed a whole head of garlic, then strained it after simmering. Try it.
Curried celery root soup
Here’s a recipe for fabulous warming winter root vegetable soup recipe with celeriac and curry. It’s my delicious and divine interpretation of a soup we tried at Big Sur’s Nepenthe one night. Easily adaptable to a vegetarian diet and completely gluten-free. Enjoy!
Seasonal autumn carrot, fennel, and apple soup
Savory, slightly sweet, and uber-seasonal carrot, fennel, and apple soup does triple duty as an appetizer, entree soup, or as a lovely sauce for ravioli.
Artichoke soup recipes
I saw a short tweet just now about a creamy crock pot artichoke soup, and when I clicked through found this wonderful, short booklet put together by Ocean Mist Farms, a local grower. Click through for the link –>
Meatless Monday: Potato leek soup with a twist of fennel and artichoke
Fennel and artichoke hearts add an earthy twist to Julia Child's excellent potato leek soup - a quick entree I learned to make forever ago from her Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In addition to 2 large chopped leeks - the white part only - and 2 pounds peeled...
Leftover rotisserie chicken stock
Toss your leftover rotisserie chicken in a pot with a few vegetables, herbs if you desire, and some water. Simmer as long as you can stand it, and you’ll have a perfect, luscious, rich, nutrient-laden stock to use as a base for your soups and sauces.
Americana on the road: Andersen’s split pea soup
Here’s a classic road trip stop located in Santa Nella, California: Andersen’s Pea Soup Restaurant. If you’re headed to Yosemite or Tahoe, San Francisco or Santa Cruz, or anywhere else in Northern or Southern California and find yourself cruising along the state’s north-central bit of Interstate 5, it’s a great stop to pull over for clean bathrooms and a big bowl of that smooth, flavorful, green soup that tastes of home and will warm you air-conditioned hearts. Gift shop Mad Libs are optional on your way back out to the car.
Then when you feel like recreating the taste of vacation on a cool winter day, whip up a pot of your own. They discontinued selling this in cans several years ago, but they shared their recipe. Make a big batch of your own, enough to freeze the extra to pull out to reheat for a quick supper.
Corn and Poblano Chowder Recipe
"Rich, rich, rich, pale green with teeny tiny flecks of carrot and a perfect corn, cream, poblano balance" - that's what I jotted down about el Papagayo's crema de elote y poblano - cream of corn and poblano. Of all the wonderful food we ate in Loreto, this is the...
California cassoulet
The the very best of my recent experiments in leftover land turned out to be a stew LL dubbed California cassoulet. It lacks beans but really, I couldn't resist the alliteration. The process is fairly typical of the way I cook that basically guarantees I'll never be...
Tomato artichoke soup recipe
Somewhere along the line I picked up an excellent cookbook called Soups of Italy: Cooking over 130 Soups the Italian Way by Norma Wasserman-Miller. Her short history of Italian soup in the first chapter is really interesting; she writes that zuppa, the Italian word...
Plantains, provecho!
Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken’s smoothly sweet soup of plantains, parsnips, and leeks. Elton John is the reason I found the recipe. Every meal tells a story, and here is just one.