Pork and apples might’ve been my first foray into the world of food pairings. I’m not sure what prompted me to ladle apple sauce over my leathery pork chop that day in my college cafeteria. But I thought I was a genius. It wasn’t till later that I realized pork and apples is a tried and true culinary couplet.

In the kitchen, however, I am much more adept at improvising. I love the magic of off-the-cuff meals– when disparate ingredients come together into a delicious punchline of a dinner.

That’s what happened this past lunchtime. I gathered together what sounded good: lettuce with the crispness of fall morning air, golden raisins the color of its afternoon light, and toasted almonds smelling of its evening fire. Toothsome pears and leftover pear brandy cream sauce completed the cast.

]]> http://collectedquotidian.com/2011/10/06/an-impromptu-autumn-salad/feed/ 0 http://collectedquotidian.com/2011/01/11/a-snow-day-and-pesto-chicken-and-rice-soup/ http://collectedquotidian.com/2011/01/11/a-snow-day-and-pesto-chicken-and-rice-soup/#comments Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:06:21 +0000 Jana@ Collected Quotidian http://collectedquotidian.com/?p=1263

The weather here has shown an uncharacteristic propensity for white this winter. While she often indulges in her love for the sparkly white of frosts, she usually only dons the honest-to-God white stuff every four or five years. This season, which isn’t over yet, she has waltzed out in the swirly white dress no less than twice.

While I fully intended to make the trek to the farm, it seems that pregnant scooter-riding farmers get a snow day. With the unexpected day off, my thoughts turned to good snow day activities.  I was having trouble staying warm… it seems Hemingway is taking all my body heat too. So, instead of going all the way outside, we did our snow activities from the window. While Mr. Quotidian held the window open, I leaned out and made our snow avatars. A tall snowman in Mr. Quotidian’s likeness was easy enough, but I had trouble with the pregnant snowife. So, as a compromise, I fashioned a little Hemingway snowman separately.

Nothing could be more of a soup day than a snow day, so I turned my attention towards dinner. For me, soup must include two things if it’s to be classified as a snow day soup. It must be based on real broth that has been simmering all day, and it must not require any ingredients other than what’s already in my fridge, freezer, or pantry. (Extra points for being able to use leftovers.) The requirements, though they might seem random, actually have some reason behind them. The on-hand ingredients stipulation is for the obvious reason that on a snow day you either can’t or don’t want to make the journey to the grocery store. The broth specification has to do with the anticipation factor. Snow days typically involve long stints under blankets  punctuated by brief stints of outdoor frivolity. When I’m home all day, there’s something about slowly becoming aware of the aroma of stock simmering on the stove, attending it throughout the day, and then enjoying the rewards at the end of the day. That pleasure is compounded when my hands are cold from snow and they slowly thaw as I stir the stock, leaning next to a warm stove. Obviously these aren’t real conditions and don’t absolutely have to be followed to have a successful soup. For me, they are just what distinguishes a Snow Day Soup from any other run of the mill soup.

I just happened to have a leftover whole chicken and some rice from last week that was practically begging to be made into soup. In the morning, I picked all the meat from the bones and set the stock to simmer. Later that evening, I sauteed some onions and garlic and stole a few ladle-fuls of the stock, leaving the rest to simmer overnight. I also added a bit of leftover whey to up the protein content (pregnant you know). Because I had time to spare, I added what I consider one of the secret weapons of a good soup: a Parmesan rind. These take awhile to melt in, but can’t be outdone in the savoriness  and body they add to soup. When the rind was melted, I added the cooked rice and shredded chicken. Then, at the last minute to preserve its color, I added a couple spoonfuls of homemade pesto. Perfect. Even though I hadn’t been out playing in the snow all day, this soup bore the same sense of comfort and well-being that a hot meal did after my childhood snow days. With this soup, the weather can wear white all she likes.

Not many of us have the luxury of using our overgrown squash to save our families. However, every summer, the frugal among us struggle to use up these garden mistakes. When my freezer is stocked full of grated zucchini, destined to become wintertime zucchini bread, I turn to this recipe to use my . . . uhhhh . . .  corpulent squash. This is a basic recipe that has many variations. It is well suited to using leftovers or other excess garden produce. Tailor it to fit what you have on hand.

While simply reheating that leftover enchilada or half serving of peas is certainly an option, I prefer to disguise my leftovers as soup. Depending on your perspective, this is either a creative and frugal way to reuse ingredients or a shady practice that comes dangerously close to being dishonest. I am loyal to the first camp, but must admit that some of my leftover soups have made me feel mildly criminal, as they tasted like I just dumped all my disparate leftovers into a pot of broth and called it soup.

To avoid such a dinner, I have been collecting tips, tricks, hints, clues, pointers and words to the wise concerning making leftovers into a successful soup. Some of them I have learned the hard way while others I was lucky enough to learn from someone else’s mistakes.

1. Choose a theme for your soup. No, not Batman or a masquerade ball. A food related theme. Choosing a theme gives you a foundation to build on. It adds cohesiveness to your soup, even if the specific ingredients don’t really match. There are many options for food themes, from historical periods to foreign holiday foods. However, I find geographical regions to be most helpful. Choose a region of the world and create your soup using spices and flavors connected with that region. For example, make a Southwestern style soup using cayenne pepper, cumin, and coriander. Or make an Asian soup using soy sauce, five spice powder, and cilantro. Or an Italian soup with basil, olive oil, and oregano. This step might take some research, but to me that’s part of the fun. Once you’ve covered the basics (like Asian and Italian) you could move on to specific countries. Like, what makes Argentine food different from Colombian food?  This is a great excuse to check out ethnic cookbooks from the library.
2. Always start with a fresh base. In all my leftover soups, I try to have some kind of fresh mirepoix (pronounced “mirror-pwa”), the traditional trinity of carrots, celery, and onions. Sometimes this means just a palmful of chopped onions sautéed in butter. Maybe a little garlic. But always start with something fresh. You’d be surprised at how that freshness gets breathed into the rest of the soup.
3. Be mindful of how long different ingredients need to cook. Overcooking and undercooking are both enemies of the successful leftover soup. There is nothing worse than greens that have been cooked so long they’ve turned bitter, unless of course it’s biting into a chunk of potato that’s still cold in the middle. This seems like a basic law of cooking, but one that I often forget when using leftovers. Add the things that need to cook longer first, like potatoes. Add the things that cook quickly near the end, like spinach.
4. Vary the texture of your soups. While brothy soups with bits of vegetable and meat floating around are good, they can get boring. Try pureeing your soup either with a bar blender or a hand held immersion blender. (Be sure to do it in batches with a towel over the lid if you use a bar blender.) While the ingredients might be pretty similar, blending a soup can add just the right amount of psychological difference to ease the ennui that leftover soup can cause. Blended soups are also a great way to use up stale bread. What looks unsightly in a brothy soup makes an excellent thickener for a blender soup. So do mashed potatoes, by the way.
5. Serve your leftover soup with a garnish. This can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like. It’s amazing how much better a soup looks and tastes with just a little something on top. Think of the garnish as a preview for the soup. Use the same ingredients. For example, save some of your chopped carrots to sprinkle on top. Or roughly chop your celery leaves. Or a fresh sprinkle of the herbs and spices you put in the soup.  This is another great way to use your theme. Garnish your Mexican soup with some pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds) or fried tortilla strips. Pureed soups look great with a drizzle of olive oil or soy sauce. Most of my soups get a last minute dollop of yogurt or sour cream. Maybe a sprinkle of an herb. Just that little effort can improve the aesthetics of your soup, which should not be belittled because, as we all know, we eat with our eyes first. There’s also nothing else quite like a dollop of sour cream and sprinkle of herbs to make you feel very accomplished and successful at finally making that problem child behave.

This post is part of Pennywise Platter Thursday at The Nourishing Gourmet.

I love those days.

I’d puttered about with a shrimp soup idea for awhile, but without any concrete ideas. I just knew I was tired of shrimp scampi. And my spicy Asian stir-fried shrimp. I was in a shrimp rut. (A shrut?) So when I began making the soup, I was determined not to use any of my normal shrimpy ingredients. No parsley, no red pepper flakes, no soy sauce.

The part that gives an extra pinch of fairy dust to this recipe is that everything (apart from the shrimp) was just lying around my fridge. The lemon had been lying naked in a drawer since I zested it last week. The onion and leek were left over from the cooking class I taught on Sunday. I always have quarts of whey sitting around as I make my own mozzarella cheese every week. And the collards were leftovers from last night’s dinner. Whenever I’ve attempted such “leftover soups” before, the individual ingredients, like ugly step sisters, have never played well together. But in this soup, they all seemed to grow up and realize each other weren’t so bad.

This soup even got it’s own “happily ever after” ending at dinner. Mr. Quotidian, the ever skeptical prince, pronounced throughout all the kingdom that this was a “soup-er soup.”

A note about the whey: This is actual, real, living, whey. It was drained off of cheese, not mixed from a powder. They are two completely different products and should not be substituted for one another. However, if you are not like me and do not have excess quarts of whey sitting in your fridge, a good chicken stock (or shrimp/fish stock- even better!) would substitute quite nicely.

This post is part of Pennywise Platter Thursday at the Nourishing Gourmet.

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