ZUCCHINI, ONION, and POTATO SOUP

I'm re-posting a post I wrote in 2010. I've had several people ask me for this recipe. AND I still make it every year with surplus zucchini and freeze a bunch. 

____________________________________

I made this soup last night, and many times over the years. It freezes well, and tastes so good, pulling it out for a quick winter meal. (Another good use of garden zucchini surplus.)

ZUCCHINI, ONION, POTATO SOUP

3/4 virgin olive oil (I don't measure, just let it form a good puddle in the pan)

3 onions, sliced

2 potatoes, diced

3 large zucchini, diced

1/4 cup tomato paste

juice of 4 lemons

2 bunches of cilantro (you don't really taste it, yet it adds SO much)

salt to taste

Saute onions for about 15 minutes over medium-low heat. Add potatoes (when organic, I wash and keep the skins on) and saute a bit more. Add zucchini and tomato paste. Barely cover with water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer on medium-low till everything is soft. Remove from heat and add cilantro and lemon juice. Puree in pan with an immersion blender, or in batches in blender. This is good hot or cold. I didn't think this would be so great without an added broth, but it doesn't need it! I like to serve it with some dollops of my homemade yogurt.

FRIED ZUCCHINI FLOWERS & FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

I'd mentioned earlier about wanting to fry up some zucchini flowers - the ones with the long stems are male flowers that will not produce 'fruit'. So I finally picked a few and tried them. I'd stored some extra egg mixed with milk in a little bowl in the fridge and a bowl of flour, corn meal and salt from trying fried green tomatoes, so used those same batter ingredients for the zucchini flowers. Just dip in the egg mixture (green tomatoes are 1/4" slices, and zucchini flowers kept whole), then dip in flour mixture and pan fry in a skillet with a bit of heated oil. Both were very good!

__________________________________

Hmmm ..... Reading my old post with the addition of the fried flowers and green tomatoes sounds so yummy!

I'm still frying the flowers, tho I have a different recipe than above, and serve with maple syrup. So good, I need to make sure I leave some male flowers for pollination or I don't get many zucchini. In fact, I planted more zucchini this year just to have more flowers! Does that sound crazy! All those jokes about zucchini's being given away . . .

Stocks/ Broths - Chicken, etc.

I posted recently about cooking a whole chicken in the slow cooker. So what am I doing now? Cooking up the chicken's bones in the slow cooker for a broth. EVERYTIME I cook meats with bones, I make broth - even if just a small bone - like we had grass-fed T-bone steaks last week and I further cooked up the fat and bones into a great broth (which I drank for 2 meals, mixing in some raw cream and one of my chicken's eggs; and too, a bit added to some cooking greens). Even bones from brined and cooked beer-can chickens on the grill (which I've posted about).

I thought I'd already have a post on making chicken broth. I kinda do in my White Chili Chicken soup post. So I thought I'd officially do a Chicken Broth post. I've been making this same recipe for over 30 years - whether in a pot on the stove or a slow cooker. I mostly do it in a slow cooker now, cuz I do it for at least 24 hours to extract as much calcium, gelatin, etc I can. Occasionally I'll keep cooking for several days, adding in water as I use some - like the above broth drink. People call this "perpetual broth".

Cooking chicken broth in my slow cooker - already cooked on low all night

Chicken Broth

De-bone the chicken, putting all the bones, sinew, cartilage, skin, fat (even chicken feet and heads too, if you have them) . . . in the pot.
Cover with water
1 onion, quartered (skin on is fine)
2 carrots, in 4ths
3 celery ribs with leaves
1 tsp pepper corns
3-4 whole cloves
1 1/2-3 tsp salt
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

Cooking broth in a pot

I don't typically put tomato pieces in chicken broth, but it wouldn't hurt - I do in beef broth. Any veggie scraps can make broth. I make fish stock too from good sourced fish.

When you're done with cooking your broth strain it. I don't de-fat it when it's organic or free-range meat. I want all the vitamins I can get, including vitamin D. I'll divide the broth in jars and freeze (initially don't tighten the lids and keep them upright, of coarse, till frozen. With tight lids, I've had too many jars crack - tightening the lids after frozen seems to prevent this, and too, they don't have to remain upright anymore).

I'm looking in Sally Fallon's new book The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care (I'm giving it to my daughter). She adds one bunch of parsley in the last 10 minutes of cooking - I'll have to start doing that too.

Adding stocks to anything is adding an Umami - improved savory flavor, besides the enhanced nutritive value.

Shared with: My Cultured Palate, Simple Lives Thursday

Cream of Roasted Mushroom Soup

Cream of Mushroom Soup, Salad, and Water Kefir Beverage

I got this fresh raw dairy cream and I started craving cream of mushroom soup. It is exceptional because of roasting the mushrooms and garlic cloves!

Roasted portabellas and garlic with butter and lemon juice ready to blend with broth

Cream of Roasted Mushroom Soup

1# of mushrooms - I use portabellas
1-2 Tb fresh lemon juice
4 garlic cloves - I usually use more, like double!
3 Tb butter
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 1/2 C chicken broth
1/2 C heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. In a baking dish layer the sliced mushrooms (I usually cut their stem to a fresh layer and wipe tops across a damp dishcloth or paper towel). Add the lemon juice, garlic, butter and light seasoning. Bake for about an hour till juice is thick and dark. Blend with some chicken broth till smooth. Heat with the rest of the chicken broth and add the cream, cooking only 5 more minutes without boiling.

Simmering chicken broth

I had roasted some chicken breasts the day before so to debone the meat for a chicken salad. And then cooked up the chicken bones for broth. I always cover them with plenty of water and add celery, carrot, and onion chunks, then a few whole cloves, some peppercorns, a Tb of apple cider vinegar (for getting more nutrients like calcium from the bones) and some salt. Bring to a boil and cook simmering all day. Then strain the broth. I always have some handy in the fridge and freeze whatever's left.



Posted at: Monday Mania, Homestead Barn Hop, Simple Lives Thursday

BLT Soup

BLT Soup

BLT sandwiches have always been a favorite of mine since I was a kid. And oh do I look forward to them come summer with fresh grown tomatoes!!!!! Well, the other night I craved this soup, and I had some tomatoes needing to get cooked.

BLT SOUP

4 slices thick bacon, or maybe 6 if regular bacon

You can fry this till crisp and crumble it back into the soup. But I typically cut the bacon into my soup pot with 1 Tb butter and let it start cooking while I chop

1 onion, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped (my favorite is a poblano)

1 large stalk of celery, finely chopped

2 large cloves of garlic, minced

1-2 tomatoes, chopped (I used 3 smaller sized)

After the bacon was getting close to being cooked I'd start adding in the chopped ingredients one at a time. So I'd let the onion and pepper cook awhile with the bacon before adding the rest. Then add -

1 Qt chicken broth (mine is always homemade, as I'm always cooking up chicken and then the bones further). Simmer for about 10 minutes. With the bacon, I never add salt and pepper, but you do your own taste test.



Just before serving add some chopped romaine lettuce. You can add 1/2 C cream. I typically slice the lettuce (any kinds, including arugula, kale and spinach - whatever I've got handy) and put a helping in each soup bowl and pour the soup over, then serve with a dollop of homemade yogurt. That way, since we'll have it as a leftover, we'll add fresh lettuce the next time we eat it.



You could top it with some croutons.

Sauerkraut Stew

Sauerkraut, cauliflower, kale and kielbasa

Sauerkraut, potatoes, and kielbasa sausage has always been a family favorite food combination. Sometimes I'll saute up kielbasa cut in 1/2" slices to brown a bit and then add thin sliced onions and cabbage from our garden, kinda creating a fresh sauerkraut. This alone is great. I'll often add some chicken broth and thicken a bit. This is great over mashed potatoes. Sometimes instead of onions I'll use leeks - love leeks! Lately I'm adding kale and cauliflower. So that's what's pictured here.



Proportions?

1# sliced kielbasa, saute till golden.

Add:

1 thin sliced onion or chopped leak (make sure you cut the leek in half vertically and wash out all the dirt before chopping, and I like to use most of the green part too) - cook till they color.

Chopped kale, about 2 C - 4 large leaves (mine is frozen from last year's garden)

1/2 # cauliflower (mine is frozen from my garden)

Then add:

2 C sauerkraut, rinsed (I look for lowest sodium - usually fresh in refrigerator section)

2-4 C chicken broth, depending on how soupy you like it. I'll use the 4 cups broth if I add some potatoes.

Salt and pepper to taste - with the sauerkraut I never salt, unless adding potatoes needs extra flavoring.

We like to serve it with a dollop of homemade yogurt or sour cream.

White Chili Chicken Soup; Chicken Broth & Roasted Green Chilies

White Chili Soup with Avacado

This soup is an all-time favorite!

Chicken Broth

Since I'd made the grilled "Dancing" chickens a couple nights ago and planned on a chicken left over, we'd put all the bones in a large pot and covered them with water. I always add a quartered onion with 3-4 whole cloves stuck in each onion piece, I cut off the leaf tops of celery I always keep in the fridge along with one of the older stalks cut up,  I look for the oldest carrot or two in the same fridge bin and cut up, then toss in some pepper corns and a tsp of salt. Simmer for at least an hour, then strain ... putting all in the compost. This is the way I make chicken broth all the time and freeze what's leftover. I like to freeze in pint sizes and whenever a recipe has a cream of ... something soup can, I make a white sauce of a couple TB of olive oil and WWflour in a sauce pan and stir in the thawed chicken broth till thickened. Because these bones and deboned chicken meat had been smoke-grilled, the soup flavor is even better ... and the chicken meat makes the best sandwiches ever too!

WHITE CHILI SOUP

3 16oz cans northern white beans

4 c cooked chicken

1 Tb olive oil

2 medium chopped onions

2 cloves minced garlic

2 4oz cans chopped green chilies

2 Tb ground cumin

6 c chicken broth

3 c  grated jack cheese

That's how my good friend Jeanie, who's moved away, gave it to me. Now I'll tell you what I do:

I usually use canned navy beans, but might at times cook the beans from scratch, which would probably be about 2 cups of dry beans. I prefer the smaller white beans. I usually cook up a whole chicken, both for the meat and the broth. Otherwise I use organic chicken broth. I usually have cooked chicken and turkey in the freezer from past meals, but in a bind, I've used canned chicken. I can't tell you the sizes, but I think I used three cans.

Roasted Green Chilies Frozen

Saute the chopped onion and garlic in the olive oil. I always add more garlic than recipes call for. Then add the chopped green chilies. We always have frozen roasted anaheim chilies in our freezer from the farmer's market. I get a bushel roasted and usually 3 chilies equals 4 ounces. I don't remove the blackened skin when freezing, but remove it when thawed and I'm readying to chop them (and don't like washing it off, as I think I'm washing away good flavor, but just run my fingers down the chili to remove the skin, stem end, and seeds, then I do have to wash my hands to remove it all from them!). And the cumin, I grind fresh. I rarely buy pre-ground spices, preferring their fresh ground flavor. My cute little wood mortar & pestle sits on my kitchen windowsill.

If I'm taking the soup somewhere, then I put the cheese in it too. At home, we grate cheese and put some in our soup bowls and ladle in the soup. From another chicken soup recipe, I fell in love with fresh avacado cut in chunks and added to the soup bowls. When we have guests (some guests having had it more than once - and they love it!) we typically set up meals buffet style on our island in the middle of the kitchen that the stove is a part of. So the soup pot stays on the stove and there'll be a wooden bowl with wooden tongs of grated cheese and a bowl of cut up avacados (with fresh squeezed lime juice to keep them from browning). Homemade bread and salad top off the meal.

Potato, Onion, Zucchini Soup & Zucchini Flowers & Fried Green Tomatoes

I made this soup last night, and many times over the years. It freezes well, and tastes so good, pulling it out for a quick winter meal. (Another good use of garden zucchini surplus.)



ZUCCHINI, ONION, POTATO SOUP

3/4 virgin olive oil (I don't measure, just let it form a good puddle in the pan)

3 onions, sliced

2 potatoes, diced

3 large zucchini, diced

1/4 cup tomato paste

juice of 4 lemons

2 bunches of cilantro (you don't really taste it, yet it adds SO much)

salt to taste



Saute onions for about 15 minutes over medium-low heat. Add potatoes (when organic, I wash and keep the skins on) and saute a bit more. Add zucchini and tomato paste. Barely cover with water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer on medium-low till everything is soft. Remove from heat and add cilantro and lemon juice. Puree in pan with an immersion blender, or in batches in blender. This is good hot or cold. I didn't think this would be so great without an added broth, but it doesn't need it! I like to serve it with some dollops of my homemade yogurt.

FRIED ZUCCHINI FLOWERS & FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

I'd mentioned earlier about wanting to fry up some zucchini flowers - the ones with the long stems are male flowers that will not produce 'fruit'. So I finally picked a few and tried them. I'd stored some extra egg mixed with milk in a little bowl in the fridge and a bowl of flour, corn meal and salt from trying fried green tomatoes, so used those same batter ingredients for the zucchini flowers. Just dip in the egg mixture (green tomatoes are 1/4" slices, and zucchini flowers kept whole), then dip in flour mixture and pan fry in a skillet with a bit of heated oil. Both were very good! but then almost anything battered and pan fried are good (believe me ... Dawson used to be a bug enthusiast and had me try battered fried Mormon Crickets! ... another story of "man eating bugs"! [that IS the name of a book]).

The bug man could tell me what this is ... 

I'm guessing it's a moth and not a butterfly, on a purple coneflower

Chili Con Carne

What did I cook on the cookstove Saturday when it slightly snowed but moreso heavily froze and frosted everything in a very picturesque way? Chili. I've got my 3x5 card sitting here with me. It has a paperclip on it, meaning I've accumulated several chili recipes. Paperclips in my recipe box are on Lasanga, and Tiramisu (not remembering what else). But Monte says this is the BEST Chili, so I need to make that note on the card (maybe throw away or put away the other cards).

As I've said before, I packed away most all my cookbooks (tho, as I posted a picture on my photoblog, Monte just made a shelf in the garage over the freezers that my books are now on and I'm utilizing them, having missed them!). A cookbook set I did leave out is all the Cooks Illustrated bound magazines. I never buy the magazines, waiting till the end of the year's bound edition, and have them all from their beginning. I consult them all the time. So this chili recipe is the best because of consulting them, yet not following their exact recipe. That's what I like about them - so much exploration and process of elimination with the whys, that I can choose my own way -

Chili con Carne
about 4# beef chuck roast, cut into 1" cubes (the last couple times I've used pork shoulder since it's what I had in the freezer. And the cubed meat is what's a key to the goodness of this recipe.)
7-8 slices bacon, cut into 1/4-1/2" pieces
Fry bacon and brown meat in batches (I used some wine after batches to remove browned bits stuck on pan's bottom - Monte thinks that's another key to the goodness - my addition to the recipe, having read many recipes that do that.)
Saute -
1 onion, chopped, 5-6 minutes, and add -
5 garlic cloves, minced &
3 anahiem chilies or 1 jalepeno, chopped
(I grilled these anahiems earlier, as we got them in our farm share. And they're a bit spicy hot. Once grilled, let cool- and then I plop them in the freezer in a ziplock bag with other chilies I've grilled. This would be another of my additions to the original recipe.)
2 tsp salt
3 Tb chili powder
(The recipe original messes with a variety of chilies, grinding and making a paste ... I skipped. I let the juices dry out, maybe not adding all the tomato in at once, so that the spices saute, toasting a bit too.)
2 TB cumin (whole, I didn't grind this time)
2 tsp oregano1 cup (or small can stewed) tomatoes, chopped
2 TB lime juice
Add back in the meat and bacon and 7 cups of water and let this simmer at least 2 hours.
At the end, Add -
5 TB Masa Harina, mixed with
2/3 cups water
and occasionally stir letting it heat and thicken some.
(The original recipe doesn't add beans, but I always add a can of either black beans or black soy beans.)

We love to eat this with added grated cheese and avacado chunks. I'll eat with tortilla chips, while my boys will crush the chips into the chili. Add a side salad and you've got a great meal. (I froze what was left of it last night for one more meal.)

Dawson and Splarah went skiing today for this year's first time. Wow, early October. There was a year that Travis made the goal of skiing every month of the year - not sure where he'd have done that in August. But one of our ski hills is open the earliest and latest of all others - it's A-Basin, most of it above timberline. We have the typical evergreen pines, conifers, spruce, and then above them there's the Bristle Cone Pines that are as old as Jesus! A-Basin's summit is above 13,000ft.

That's chili!!!!!!!

Fruit Soup

Like I said before, when I was dating Monte and he told me about fruit soup, I thought it sounded awful. But now it's my favorite Christmas food and I make a big pot so we have leftovers and plenty for serving at all sorts of get-togethers during the holidays. Here is my fruit soup recipe:

12 oz bag of pitted dried prunes, cut them up
1 1/2 c raisins
1 c cut up dried apricots
(about 2/3 cups each cut up dried apples and pears)
(I usually add cranberries too)
(Now I add dried bing cherries instead of adding 2 cans of sour cherries)
10 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
6 whole cloves (put in a little mesh basket or cheesecloth)
slices of lemon

Bring this to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add 6-7 Tbs tapioca to grape juice to soak a bit before adding to the soup. I eventually pour in a whole jug (32 oz) of unsweetened grape juice. This needs to simmer a bit more for the tapioca to cook and thicken.

It's good both warm and cold. I like it room temp. Monte loves to eat it with cream. It's great with ice cream. It's good with aebleskivers and pancakes and rice pudding ...

Onion, Potato and Zucchini Soup

I made this soup last night, and several times before, since I've had to use up zucchini! :) It really is very good, and I've froze it too. (Another good use of zucchini. You can only have so much frozen zucchini bread, which Heather plans to still do.)

3/4 virgin olive oil (should form a good puddle in the pan)
3 onions, sliced
2 potatoes, diced
3 large zucchini, diced
1/4 cup tomato paste
juice of 4 lemons
2 bunches of cilantro (you don't really taste it, yet it adds SO much)
salt to taste

Saute onions for about 15 minutes over medium-low heat. Add potatoes (when organic, I wash and keep the skins on) and saute a bit more. Add zucchini and tomato paste. Barely cover with water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer on medium-low till everything is soft. Remove from heat and add cilantro and lemon juice. Puree in pan with an immersion blender, or in batches in blender. This is good hot or cold. I didn't think this would be so great without an added broth, but it doesn't need it!

All I've been doing for awhile this afternoon is recipes!. My MOPS group is doing a cookbook for fund-raising, and of course I've added recipes. But I've been on the website proof-reading a lot of the recipes. It's been fun seeing the variety that's been submitted.