Soup

Since Stuart just hated on the 'shrooms, I feel obligated to post a contrary view. I love 'em. Not all of them of course, but they are highly fungi-ble (hah!) in cooking. I won't call myself a mushroom expert but I think they're a versatile ingredient.

Raw mushrooms seem fairly pointless most of the time. Maybe as a little sponginess in a salad with a hint of earthiness perhaps. A lot of the more flavorful mushrooms are simply too tough for easy chewing.

So basically you need to cook them, or pickle, marinate, etc.

Mushrooms may not be vegetables, but they make an admirable non-animal ingredient that substitutes for meat in many circumstances, which is why you see them on vegetarian menus, or as a way to boost the meatiness of meat dishes.

A couple of weeks ago, my brother came over and we cooked up a big meal for our parents. Among other things, we made chicken soup. When my mother saw how the soup was cooking, she exclaimed that it was genius.

Why?

I was using a pasta pot with a built in colander. The vegetables and chicken (bones and all) were in the removable colander. Take it out, and you have broth left in the pot. Chicken meat and vegetables that you might want to add back into the soup are now easy to separate.

I also use this method for other soups and stocks. Until my mother commented upon it, I assumed that this was commonly done in people's kitchens. Maybe it is, and my mother is simply out of touch. Maybe it isn't, and I was just making a weird assumption. It is hard to tell what goes on in other people's kitchens.

Nevertheless, the pasta pot is a great tool for soup-making. Smaller pasta pots are fine for just making pasta, but larger ones are better for making soup. If you're not picky, they can be picked up for about $25. For just a bit more, you can pick up a nice one that will last you a good long time.

So... how do I make chicken soup?

I start with chicken.

I rarely just toss a whole chicken in. You can do that, and it won't be bad, but I like a bit more substance to my soup. That means more bones and more connective tissues. I usually use a package of chicken backs. They have the added benefit of being really cheap. My brother uses chicken feet, a practice I endorse and may adopt. Either way, these are in addition to a whole chicken (brined or, at least, salted) or equivalent parts. Cutting through some of the longer bones (like drumsticks) with a pair of kitchen shears may help release more chicken-ness into your soup.

Then you add your vegetables. My must-haves include carrots, onions (yellow - including the onion skins will help your soup get that lovely yellow color that you want), celery, parsnips, and turnips. My other must-have is a chopped up apple or pear. It works. Leeks are nice, sometimes. If I'm feeling crazy, I might add some tomatoes, and if I want a very thick soup, I'll add a sweet potato.

For herbs, I generally go with parsley, sage, and dill. I go light on the dill. Sometimes I add a bit of thyme. Spices? Pepper is the obvious choice (more on that later this week), but we can play around with other spices like nutmeg, allspice, and mustard seed. Turmeric adds a nice richness in both taste and color. A wee bit of sichuan peppercorn can provide a great counterpoint to the other spices you use.

If I have some parmesan rind sitting around, that might get tossed in, too, to boost the umami flavor.

Add your salt. Don't be shy with it.

Now you have to add your liquid. Unless you want this to cook all day, don't just add water. I usually use vegetable stock from my freezer. I'll also, invariably, add some wine (and/or apple cider if I have it).

If I want my soup to be extra-thick, I may pull out some of the cooked vegetables and broth part way through, puree them in my blender, and then add them back into the pot.

Remember, though, that with all the extra stuff that you are putting in here it is possible to overpower the flavor of chicken. You don't want to do that. Always make sure your ratio of chicken to other things is high. Go ahead and use that strongly-flavored spice... just don't use too much of it... or add some extra chicken wings if you do.

These are my chicken soup secrets. Use them wisely.

Back when I was a kid (in the 1970s) my parents used to go gaga over asparagus. I didn't get it then. Many years later I learned. Now it's not hard to get out of season as an import but in my mind it's still a spring vegetable. Whenever it hits $1.99/lb (or so) I pick some up. It doesn't really need much help.

It does have one, ah, unusual side effect, though... #1 smells funny. But that's a small price to pay.

Use a vegetable peeler to peel off the tough skin on the bottom (or just snap the bottoms off) and clean to remove any bruised bits on the tips before you cook it. Tradition is to blanche it and then serve with Hollandaise sauce but I don't do Hollandaise sauce. I find sea salt (or a bit of tamari), black pepper and sesame oil works wonders. When I had access to a grill, I would put it on some foil and cook that way, finishing straight on the grill. Now I do it in the broiler the same basic way. (As AB will remind you, a broiler is just an upside down grill.)

Ever since moving to NY, I've discovered the joys of authentic mainland Chinese style food and one of my favorite dishes is prawns in chili garlic sauce with asparagus. (I buy this one, not make it, at the most excellent Szechuan Gourmet on 25 W 39th St., NYCNY.)

The most elaborate asparagus dish I make is a cream of asparagus soup. It's good stuff but takes a while and, well, let's just say it's pretty far from low-fat.

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Makes about ten one cup servings.

1 lb asparagus
1 large sweet onion
1 medium white potato, diced
2 tbsp butter (approximately)
1 pint sweet cream
1 tbsp herbes de Provence
2 bay leaves
4 cups chicken stock (low salt)
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp fresh ground black pepper (to taste)
1/2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg

Cut the tips off the asparagus and reserve. Trim the woody ends off and chop in to small (1/2") pieces. Dice the onion and potato. In a kettle on medium heat, salt the the asparagus pieces, onion and potato and sweat until tender in butter. In a separate skillet, lightly sautee the tips. Then combine the onion, potato and asparagus pieces with the chicken stock, half the black pepper, herbes de Provence, and bay leaves. Bring to a low boil for approximately 10 minutes, then turn off the heat and allow to stand until safe to blend. Remove the bay leaves. In a blender, food processor, or with a potato masher, carefully puree the onion, potato and asparagus mixture to the desired consistency. Return the puree to the pot and stir in the cream, the remaining black pepper, and add the tips back in. Dilute using hot water to the desired thickness. Dust nutmeg on the top of the bowl when serving.

I've been a bit obsessed with the idea of Spaghetti All’Ubriaco, or drunken spaghetti since I read about a couple of weeks ago over on Serious Eats.

What is drunken spaghetti?

Original image by Takanori IshikawaDrunken spaghetti is spaghetti cooked in red wine, absorbing the wine's flavor and color. I've added flavorings to pasta liquid to good effect before, and this seems like a logical extension.

My prime concern was just how much wine this would use. Even if the resultant pasta is amazing, would it be worth it? I'd want to use decent wine - infusing pasta with the flavor of a wine I wouldn't want to drink wouldn't make any sense at all.

Then I started to wonder whether I could get more use out of the wine? It would be boiled... reduced. More than that, though, it would be full of starch from the pasta cooking in it. In small amounts, it would probably be a great additive to many sauces and soups, providing both flavor and body. You can probably freeze it, too.

Over the weekend, I realized that my vegetable scrap box was getting full, so I made some stock.

I also noticed that I had some frozen chicken bones, so I tossed those in and ended up with chicken soup for dinner.

Usually, when I make stock or soup I stash leftovers in freezer safe containers. This time, I reserved some and froze it in an ice cube tray.

Image by tina vallèsThere's a certain simple beauty that can be attained by taking things that would otherwise be wasted and turning them into something delicious.

I have a middling-sized air-tight plastic container that I keep in the freezer. I toss scraps and ends of vegetables in it. When it starts to get full, I make vegetable stock.

Image by Jenny DowningLeftover wine? What's that?

Suppose, for a moment, that someone happened to have a bit of leftover wine in the bottom of a bottle that they were not prepared to drink immediately. It is certainly possible, at least in theory. If you were that person, what would you do?