French Red Onion Soup

My first encounter with French onion soup came after my family had moved to Ohio when I was 13. We were staying at a hotel until we could find more permanent housing, and as a treat, my parents chose to eat at the hotel restaurant for dinner. Back then, going to McDonald's was still a special thing for me, so this was probably the first sit-down meal I had where a waiter served me and everything. My mom ordered the French onion soup, and when she let me try some, it was love at first bite. The melty, salty cheese and not yet soggy bread crouton floating on top of the beef broth and sweet onions was the undoing of me. If such a thing existed in this world, then I was all the more glad to be living in it.

Fast forward to my undergrad days at Cornell. At the Ivy Room, one of the a la carte dining halls, they served French onion soup every day. Of course, being on meal plan, it didn't really make sense for me to be eating there because I could have been getting all-you-can-eat at Oakenshields next door, but that didn't stop me from going to the Ivy and getting my favorite soup at least once a week. Unfortunately, by my junior year, they had stopped serving it there, although they had started making paninis, which is how I had my first Cubano, but that's another story for another day.

I've never made French onion soup myself because the usual recipes call for beef broth, baguette bread, and cheese, which are 3 ingredients I don't usually have in my fridge or pantry. But then I ended up with 2 red onions from Boston Organics which I didn't know what to do with and in the same week, came across this recipe for French red onion soup from the September 2008 issue of Gourmet, which uses chicken broth instead of beef broth. I already had all the ingredients except for the baguette and Gruyere, but I figured just this one time I could shell out for them, and boy, am I glad I did.

French Red Onion Soup (based on this recipe)
makes 4 servings

2 cups homemade chicken stock
2 cups water
2 whole star anise
6 black peppercorns
2 lbs. red onions, cut into 1/2-inch wedges3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup dry red wine
4 (1-inch-thick) slices of baguette
2 cups coarsely grated Manchego or Gruyère (6 to 7 oz)

Bring broth, water, spices, and 1/2 teaspoon salt to a boil. Remove from heat and let steep 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook onions in oil with 1/4 teaspoon salt in a heavy medium pot over medium heat, covered, stirring occasionally, until deep golden, about 15 minutes. Add wine and boil, uncovered, until reduced to 2 tablespoons, about 1 minute. Strain broth through a sieve into onion mixture and briskly simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes. Season with salt.

Preheat broiler.

Ladle soup into 4 ovenproof bowls set in a 4-sided sheet pan. Place baguette slices on top and sprinkle each with 1/2 cup cheese. Broil about 6 inches from heat until cheese is melted and bubbling, about 2 minutes.

I wish I had oven-proof bowls that were closer in diameter to the size of the baguette slice for aesthetic purposes. For gastromic purposes, it didn't really matter as the cheese that melted on top of the soup stayed nice and melty while the cheese on top of the bread protected it from getting too soggy. This particular recipe had a bit more onions in the soup than I prefer, but the taste of the soup itself was sublime. I couldn't even tell that it came from a chicken stock and not a beef broth, that's how much depth and body the caramelized onions, spices, and reduced red wine gave the soup.

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Potato Leek Soup with Bacon

When I was a college student living in a apartment with 3 other girls and a tiny kitchen and a small, small budget, I loved going to Costco and getting a big tin of Bear Creek Creamy Potato Soup. It was delicious by itself, but once you added some cheese, broccoli, corn, or bacon, it became awesome. And because it came in powder form, you didn't have to worry about it going bad if you didn't end up cooking for a while.

Now that I'm grown up and getting potatoes from Boston Organics, I figure it was time to learn how to make a potato soup from scratch, especially after reading the ingredients of the powdered soup: Dehydrated Potatoes, Food Starch-modified Corn Starch Solids, Sweet Whey, Partially Hydrogenated Canola, Cottonseed, and Soybean Oil, Onions, Salt, Monosodium Glutamate, Sodium Caseinate (Milk Protein), Titanium Dioxide Color, Maltodextrin, Disodium Inosinate and Sodium Guanylate, Dipotassium Phosphate, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Spices, Parsley, Dry Sherry Wine, Garlic Natural and Artificial Flavoring, Chicken Broth Arabic Gum, Rendered Chicken Fat, Casein (Milk Protein), Citric Acid, Silicon Dioxide, Yellow No. 5, Mono and Diglycerides, Annatto Color.

Scary.

This recipe from thekitchn.com, on the other hand, only has 2 ingredients. Well, 4, if you add bacon and substitute homemade chicken stock for water. And 5, if you count salt. (I don't like pepper, so it doesn't count.) Take that, Bear Creek!

Potato Leek Soup with Bacon (based on this recipe)
makes 4 servings

5 cups peeled and cubed potatoes
2 1/2 cups sliced leeks
3-4 slices bacon
1 quart homemade chicken stock (or water)

Wash the leeks very, very well. Leeks are notorious for having a lot of dirt and sand in between layers. Drain and set aside.

In a large saucepan, brown bacon until crisp. Remove bacon and let drain on some paper towels.

Saute the leeks in the hot bacon fat left in the pan until wilted. Add potatoes and toss to coat. Add chicken broth to cover, about 1 quart. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer until potatoes are soft and cooked through, about 30 minutes.

With an immersion blender, or very carefully in batches in a food processor, or even with a potato masher and your own brute strength, blend until the mixture reaches the consistency you prefer.

Salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot with crumbled bacon, grated cheese, and chopped scallions on top, if you prefer.

Other variations: Add chopped broccoli stems at the same time you add the potatoes. Add fresh or frozen corn kernels after blending the soup and heat through. Top with sour cream or creme fraiche.

I found that the soup needed a lot more salt than I thought it would, but otherwise I was very pleased with the result, especially since I was able to get a nice, creamy consistency without needing any dairy products. Adding the fresh, chopped scallions also brings out an unexpected vibrancy to the soup.

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Homemade Chicken Stock

The basis for any soup is a good stock, which is really so simple to make that there's no reason to ever use the canned kind. I used two great tips from thekitchn.com to make my latest batch:

1. Save vegetable scraps for stock. I had some leftover celery and carrots from making the clam chowda and extra onion left from making roast chicken which I threw in a freezer bag until I was ready to make the stock.

2. Use the pasta strainer insert. A great way to remove the carcass and vegetables after the stock is done without having to awkwardly dump everything into a strainer. You still have to strain the stock, but it's a lot easier without the huge carcass in the way.

Homemade Chicken Stock (based on this recipe)
makes 6 quarts
Chicken carcass or 4 chicken breast carcasses (preferably with a little meat left on it)
A handful or two each of onions, carrots, and celery
Bay leaf
Peppercorns
Garlic cloves

Pull apart whatever is left of the chicken carcass. It's good to split small bones apart; this helps the stock jell. Cut up one or two onions, a few stalks of celery, and a couple carrots and pile into the pasta insert of a large pot with the chicken pieces. Add a bay leaf, a few peppercorns, a couple of garlic cloves, and any other wilting greens you have around - leeks and turnips are good too.

Fill the pot with water, cover, and put over high heat.

Bring to a rolling boil then lower the heat. You don't want this to boil briskly; the water should just gurgle, with a few bubbles occasionally hitting the surface.

If a foamy muck comes to the top, skim it off. This is just fat rising to the surface. Don't worry if you can't get all of it. Let simmer for about four hours - or however long you have. Two hours will produce a reasonably good chicken stock, although it is not ideal.

Once the stock is done, remove from heat. Remove the pasta insert and drain. Carefully ladle stock through a sieve into storage containers, pouring it out once it is at a manageable volume.

If it is cold outside, set the containers of stock outside to chill; otherwise, let cool to room temperature and then transfer to refrigerator to chill.

Once it has chilled, skim off the fat from the top of the stock. The stock will keep in the fridge for a few days and in the freezer for a few months.

If you don't feel like your stock has enough body, you can reduce it in volume by boiling it until you get it to where you want it. Whatever you do, do not add salt to your stock. That should be done when you are making your soup; you can always add salt to a soup but there's no way to save an over-salted soup.

Next up: Potato Leek Soup with Bacon

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Gourmet Magazine, March 2009

I usually feel lucky if I can tear out more than one recipe to try from an issue of Gourmet or Bon Appetit, but I found so many recipes from the most recent Gourmet magazine that I just had to share.

First of all, the cover has a picture of the Monte Cubano sandwich, a "two-in-one induglgence [that] has the irresistible makings of a Cuban sandwich, including Swiss cheese, pickles, and sliced meets--but it's also dipped in egg batter and fried like a Monte Cristo." Strangely enough, my cover (a mailed subscription) is different from the one on the website in that mine just has the picture and the words "Gourmet, The Magazine of Good Living", the date, and the price. I guess you want to have a hint of what's inside for the issues on the newstands.

On page 4 is a recipe for Key Lime Coconut Cake and page 17 has a recipe for Key Lime Pie, one of my most favoritest desserts ever. Page 47 has Panfried Smashed Potatoes, "crisp-skinned yet pillowy [potatoes], sprinkled with a generous amount of salty parmesan" and on page 49 you have Chocolate Raspberry Calfoutis, "somewhere between custard and cake...a simple French country dessert."

Then starting on page 68 you've got a whole article on Korean food with Soy-Pickled Jalapenos, Warm Tofu with Spicy Garlic Sauce, Shrimp and Scallion Pancakes, and Mandarin Orange Ice Cream with Sesame Brittle.

Finally, two recipes for roast chicken, Glazed Chicken with Porcini and Crisp Potatoes on page 86 and Roast Chicken with Pan Gravy on page 98, and a recipe for how to use the carcasses to make Leftover-Roast-Chicken Stock.

Surfing around on their web page I found a video for how to carve a whole roast chicken (a skill I should really learn) and a recipe for Coconut Panna Cotta that would use up the leftover coconut flakes from the Key Lime Coconut Cake.

Yay, I can't wait to start trying these recipes!

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Panna Cotta, Take 1

I think I had panna cotta for the first time 2 years ago when Karen made it for the Soul Food volunteers training dinner. She had made an orange version, and I couldn't stop consuming it. It was perfectly creamy, sweet, and tangy, and the texture was similar to tofu pudding--the silkiest, softest phase something could be while still remaining a solid. I've been meaning to make it ever since but never got around to it until this week.

I'd been playing around with the idea of makind an almond-flavored panna cotta, kind of like an upscale version of almond tofu. And instead of fruit cocktail, I'd add poached pears. This was my first time making both, so I did a little research. I did ask Karen for her panna cotta recipe, but it didn't say how many it served (I should have just asked her) so I tried this one instead. Since I wanted to serve 6, I multiplied the ingredients by 1.5, although I did end up adding a full teaspoon of almond extract because when I tasted the mixture with only 3/4 teaspoons it didn't have as much almond flavor as I wanted it to have.

Almond Panna Cotta (based on this recipe)
makes 6 small servings

1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon powdered unflavored gelatin bloomed in 3 tablespoons water

In a small saucepan over medium-high, combine milk, cream, and sugar; bring to a boil. Stir in the almond extract. Remove from heat, and let stand for 20 minutes.

Microwave the gelatin and water for 8 seconds and stir it in the cream mixture. Pass the mixture through a sieve and divide evenly among 6 small ramekins or other servings dishes. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours.

Even after chilling the it overnight, the panna cotta still looked suspiciously jiggly, and it was definitely softer than I wanted it. I'm not sure if the answer is to add more gelatin because I don't really want the stiffness that's associated with Jell-O Jigglers. I think next time I make this I will try boiling the milk and cream mixture longer to reduce it a bit as instructed in Karen's recipe.

For the pears I found these two recipes for vanilla poached pears which were pretty different from each other, so I decided to try a amalgam of the two. I also wanted to add cherries, but the only ones I could find were dried, tart cherries, so I tried to reconstitute them in the poaching liquid, which didn't work too well.

Vanilla Poached Pears with Dried Cherries
makes 2 pears

1/2 vanilla bean
2 cups white wine
1/2 cup water
1 cup sugar
2 Bosc pears
12 dried tart cherries

Split the vanilla bean lengthwise in half with a knife and scrape out the seeds.

Add the vanilla seeds and pod to the white wine, water, and sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Reduce to a simmer.

Peel the pears, leaving the stem intact. Slice off the bottom 1/8" of each pear to create a flat, stable base.

Add the pears to the simmering poaching liquid, laying them on their sides so they are almost completely submerged. Cook, turning pears occasionally so they become saturated on all sides, until they are just tender when pierced with a fork, about 7 minutes.

Allow pears to cool completely in their poaching liquid. Add dried cherries to the poaching liquid.

Once cool, transfer 1 cup of poaching liquid plus cherries to a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook for about 10 minutes to reduce the liquid. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Use an immersion blender to (try to) puree the cherries. Strain and set aside.

Cut each pear into thirds lengthwise, removing the core. Make vertical cuts into each section so you get very thin slices. Fan the slices out and carefully transfer to the top of panna cotta. Drizzle with cherry liquid mixture.

As you can probably tell from the pictures above, my attempts at incorporating the cherries into the poaching liquid did not turn out too well. And because the panna cotta was so soft, the pears kind of sank into it instead of nicely resting on top. But I really liked the taste of the whole dish. The almond was definitely noticeable in the panna cotta, and the texture of the pears was akin to the canned pears in fruit cocktail but the flavor was a whole lot more sophisticated. Definitely a recipe I want to try again and perfect.

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Boston Organics, Week 2

So it's been 2 weeks since I got my first delivery from Boston Organics, and I think I've done pretty well. I used the Swiss chard and mushrooms in hot pot last week, added the broccoli stems to fried rice and florets to roast chicken, used the potatoes in clam chowder, lemons in lemon bars, and avocado in avocado ice cream, braised the collard greens with bacon, poached the pears, and ate the rest of the fruits. One banana was pretty brown by the time I got to it so I peeled it and froze it so I can use it for banana bread in the future. And I have 2 red onions left which I'm thinking about using to make French onion soup. Luckily, onions keep for a bit.

click on the picture to see what everything is

This week I received 1 rio star grapefruit, 2 royal mandarin oranges, 2 pink lady apples, 2 minneola tangelos, 2 red navel oranges, 2 anjou pears, 4 bananas, 1 bunch broccoli, 1 salad tomato, 1.5 lbs. yukon potatoes, 1 box white mushrooms, 1 bunch kale, 1 bunch scallions (yeah, I forgot to add them to the picture because I had already put them in water), and 1 box Munchin' Mix sprouts.

So I can make eggs and tomato over rice with the tomato and scallions, add the mushrooms and kale to hot pot next week, stir-fry or roast the broccoli again, eat the fruit, and maybe make some gnocchi with the potatoes (or more duck fat potatoes, yay!). But what da heck do I do with the sprouts? They're not real bean sprouts (which I love) but just sprouted adzuki beans, lentils, and peas. Any ideas?

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Wok-Fried Edamame with Garlic

I've been getting Gourmet and Bon Appetit for a couple of months now and try to always rip out at least one recipe from each issue that I would like to try. And since I'm usually reading these magazines in bed, I'll just add them to my growing collection of recipes that I have on my wall, stuck there with a single thumbtack. Not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing of decorations, but it means I see them at least twice a day; reminders that I should be trying them out. I've had this one stuck up there for weeks and finally tried it this past week. And it's probably a good thing I've waited so long because it is absolutely addicting. I'm sure if I had made them sooner I'd be waist deep in edamame shells by now because I. Just. Can't. Stop. Eating. Them. I love eating edamame just boiled in salt water, but these...these are a higher species of edamame. The soy sauce and oyster sauce add a depth of umami, the hot sesame oil brings just enough kick to transcend the saltiness, and the garlic makes this dish deeply satisfying yet keeps you wanting more (yes, I realize that doesn't really make sense, but it's true).

I get my edamame frozen from Trader Joe's. And if you don't have hot sesame oil, you can use regular sesame oil and add one minced, seeded jalepeno pepper. The original recipe also called for 2 teaspoons of minced fresh ginger, but I don't like ginger that much so I omitted it from mine.

Wok-Fried Edamame with Garlic (based on Alan Wong's recipe from December 2008 issue in the R.S.V.P. section)
6 to 8 appetizer servings

1 lb. unshelled fresh or frozen edamame (soybeans)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons oyster sauce
1 teaspoon hot sesame oil (spicy hot, not temperature hot)
2 teaspoons peanut oil
2 garlic cloves, minced

Bring 4 cups of water to a boil and add edamame. Once the water is boiling again, cook for 5 minutes or until tender. Drain and transfer edamame to a bowl of ice water to cool. Drain and pat dry or use a salad spinner to dry. Set aside.

Mix together soy sauce, oyster sauce, and hot sesame oil in a small bowl. Set aside.

Heat peanut oil in a heavy large work or skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic; saute until beginning to brown, about 1 minute. Add edamame and stir to heat through, about 2 minutes. Add soy sauce mixture; stir 1 minute to coat evenly and heat through. Transfer to platter and serve.

To eat the edamame I pick it up from the stem end, put the other end in my mouth, and squeeze the beans out, sucking off the sauce and garlic as I pull the shell out. It can be a little messy, so make sure you have something to put the discarded shells in and a napkin to wipe your fingers with afterwards.

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