Cream of Tomato Soup — fast and easy!

Today is one of those transition-to-spring days.  Warm enough to tantalize you, but cold enough that you wouldn’t want to stay outside for long.  I thought it seemed like a soup-for-lunch day.  JR thought it seemed like a sandwich (with melted cheese) day.  What’s the perfect meet-in-the-middle lunch?  Tomato soup with grilled cheese, of course!

I did a quick search for recipes that I could make quickly and with ingredients I had on hand.  I settled on this recipe … some day I’d love to have my own standard, go-to, throw-it-together tomato soup recipe.  This was good but, to be honest, it wasn’t “it.”  Not sure what it was missing; maybe it would have been better if I’d followed the recipe, but I didn’t have celery seed or even any of the substitutes that I googled for celery seed.  I also used regular-acid tomatoes and substituted evaporated milk for the half-n-half and regular milk.

This was very tasty, though; I’ll definitely make it again and maybe try to follow the recipe. You can’t beat a very tasty soup made with common ingredients and thrown together in 10 minutes, regardless of the time of year.

Tomato Soup

1. 28 ounces, fluid San Marzano Crushed Tomatoes [I used regular canned, chopped tomatoes]

2. 1 cup Half-and-half [I substituted 1 12-oz can of evaporated milk for the half-and-half and the milk]

3. 1 cup Milk

4. 2 teaspoons Dried Basil

5. 1 teaspoon Dried Granulated Onion

6. ½ teaspoons Celery Seed

7. ½ teaspoons Kosher Salt

8. ½ teaspoons Finely Ground Black Pepper

9. Basil Oil, To Drizzle Over Soup [I omitted this, but you could definitely use it and make the meal quite a bit more fancy]

Combine all ingredients together in a medium saucepan and heat, stirring occasionally.  Puree with an immersion blender.  Drizzle with basil oil and serve.

#tomato #quickandeasy #creambased

Barefoot Contessa’s Chicken Pot Pie

I made this recipe a while ago, way back before we had Titus, which essentially makes it a lifetime ago.  But a fresh blast of cold weather and snow has got me thinking about comfort food.  Fortunately, I posted a link to the recipe on my Facebook and could go back, back, back, before all the one-month baby pics, before the Christmas family pics, before all the birthday wishes, before the congratulatory wishes … and there was this recipe.  I’ll be making it again for guests tomorrow night … not exactly fancy fare to feed guests, but delicious and hearty and, methinks, appropriate for a day when we’ll be digging out from a pile of snow and braving a high temperature of 10 degrees.

Here’s a link to the original recipe.   Since it was just me and JR, I halved the recipe and made it a bit more healthy.  It was still absolutely delicious and I look forward to eating it again tomorrow!

Ina Garten’s Chicken Pot Pie

1 Costco rotisserie chicken, meat picked off (you want 2-3 cups of meat; reserve the dark meat for soup or another use; I’ll use the white meat in the pot pie and use the carcass to make stock) 2 1/2 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade 1 chicken bouillon cube (I used 1 tsp “better than bouillon”) 2 tablespoons butter 1 cup yellow onions, chopped (1 med onion) 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1/4 cup heavy cream (or half and half) (this is the amount for a full recipe, but since I reduced the butter, I used the full amount of cream) 1 cup medium-diced carrots, blanched for 2 minutes 1 cup frozen peas 3/4 cup frozen small whole onions (I couldn’t find the frozen, so I bought a package of fresh pearl onions and blanched/peeled them)

1 teaspoon dried thyme (or to taste — it calls for parsley, but I don’t care for parsley and I love thyme, so I substituted)

Now, there’s a whole pastry recipe that’s full of butter, etc, but I opted for this whole wheat biscuits recipe. You could also use pre-made biscuit dough.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small saucepan, heat the chicken stock and dissolve the bouillon cubes in the stock. In a large pot or Dutch oven, melt the butter and saute the onions over medium-low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until translucent. Add the flour and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Add the hot chicken stock to the sauce. Simmer over low heat for 1 more minute, stirring, until thick. Add 2 teaspoons salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, and heavy cream. Add the cubed chicken, carrots, peas, onions and thyme. Mix well.

Put the filling in an oven-safe container of your choice (you could just leave it in the Dutch oven, or put it in a casserole dish, or use ovenproof individual bowls).  Place rolled-out biscuits on top and bake for an hour at 350, or until the top is golden brown and the filling is bubbling hot.

This also works well as a “make-ahead” recipe.  You just need to be around to pop it in the oven to bake for an hour or so, but it can sit in the fridge even with the biscuit dough on top for a couple of hours.

#potpie #chicken

Chicken Pho (Vietnamese Noodle Soup)

I’m tempted to make a “good pho’ what ails you” joke … and I just did.

Pho is Vietnamese noodle soup (it should have a little squiggly line over the “o,” and it’s pronounced “fuh”).  I was introduced to it while living in Philly and once when I was sick, a friend brought me a big bowl of pho, telling me, “It’s like Asian chicken noodle soup, comfort food when we’re sick.”  Since then, I’ve craved pho when I was sick.  It has all the comfort of traditional chicken noodle soup (though I think pho is generally beef), but it’s lighter and fresher.

Yesterday, I was sick with a cold, as was JR, Titus also has a cold, and my mom was in bed with the flu all day.  Sounds like a pho day to me.

Did you know that there’s supposed to be something in chicken soup that helps clear mucous out of your system? And don’t forget how ridiculously good for you homemade chicken stock is anyway.  Add in some other things that are good pho’ what ails ya as well as the delicious flavor combination, and this is a great soup in sickness and in health.

Here’s the recipe upon which I based my soup.  I didn’t intend to deviate from the recipe much, but circumstances required some changes.  First, I didn’t have time for the crockpot method (had something to do with being sick), so I started with a pot full of water and added all the broth ingredients.  I bought a whole chicken and after cutting off most of the breast meat I decided I didn’t have the patience to remove more meat when I really needed to get the stock cooking.  So I cut off all the skin and dropped the whole chicken in; about an hour later, I pulled off most of the (now-cooked) meat and dropped the carcass back into the stock.  In an ideal world, I would have let this cook longer to get more goodness out of the bones.

Other changes:

1. I added a dash of apple cider vinegar because I’d read that helps with leeching minerals out of bones in stock making.  It didn’t change the flavor.

2. I couldn’t find star anise, so I used 2 tsp of anise seed.

3. I simmered this on low for just over 3 hours.

4. I used green onions as a garnish (instead of red onions), because I think they’re delicious.

One last comment, this is a perfect soup for the gluten-intolerant among us!  You might check to make sure your fish sauce and hoisin are gluten-free; mine were both labeled as such right on the jar.

Chicken Pho adapted from Jaden Hair/Bon Appetit

INGREDIENTS

1 whole chicken, breasts and other meaty parts cut off (you don’t have to use all of the meat; I reserved some of the cooked chicken for another meal) 1/2 onion 3-inch chunk of ginger, sliced 2 tablespoons whole coriander seeds 4 whole cloves 2 tsp anise seeds 2 tablespoons sugar (I used muscovado/unrefined sugar ) 2 tablespoons fish sauce small bunch of cilantro stems, tied in bunch with twine

1 pound dried rice noodles (about 1/4″ wide) 1/2 pound chicken meat (breast or thigh), thinly sliced 2 cups bean sprouts, washed handful of cilantro leaves 1 sliced green onion per bowl 1/2 lime, cut into 4 wedges Sriracha hot sauce (optional) Hoisin sauce (optional)

PREPARATION

1. Combine in a pot the chicken carcass, onion, ginger, coriander seeds, cloves, anise, sugar and fish sauce. Fill with water to near the top of the pot/slow cooker. Turn slow cooker to high for 4-6 hours or low for 8-10 hours, or simmer on stovetop over low heat for 3-4 hours. Remove all chicken, strain broth through cheesecloth. Taste and adjust with additional fish sauce and sugar if needed.

2. Soak rice noodles in cool water for 5 minutes. Drain. In the meantime, bring a big pot of water to a boil and then turn to low. Add the chicken slices and let cook for 1-3 minutes or until cooked through–timing depends on how thin slices are. Remove the chicken slices. Next, add the rice noodles to the water and cook for 1 minute. Remove noodles and divide amongst 4 serving bowls.

3. Fill each bowl with chicken slices, noodles, broth and a sliced green onion.  Let guests garnish with bean sprouts, cilantro leaves, lime, Sriracha and hoisin.

#brothbased #chicken #asian #pho