Soup is Good Food

[SplatterTone]

I went through a bread making spell. I had a favorite that I can hardly remember. It used oatmeal, honey, and cinnamon. One had to be careful with the cinnamon because (iirc) too much would interfere with the rising.

You will need desert for that soup.
(*FANFARE*)
Here it is (A-1 ichiban!!):

Bavarois a l'Orange

4 egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated suger
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups milk
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold orange juice
2 tablespoons Grand Marnier or Cointreau (Grand Marnier better)
1 cup heavy cream
Sweetened orange sections

1. Place a small, heavy saucepan on an asbestos pad or Flame Tamer over a medium heat. Add the egg yolds, sugar, and salt. Beat with a wire whisk or rotary beater until lemon colored and fluffy.

2. Meanwhile, heat the milk without boiling. Gradually pour the milk onto the egg yolk mixture, beating with the whisk. Start stirring with a wooden spoon and stir continuously until the custard coats the spoon. Do not overcook or the mixture will curdle. To test for doneness, remove the spoon from the sauce and run a finger down the center. When done, the finger will leave a clear space with a custard coating on either side.

3. Soften the gelatin in the orange joice and add to the hot custard. Stir until the gelatin is thoroughly dissolved. Stir in the Grand Marnier and pour the mixture into a mixing bowl. Chill.

4. Whip the cream and fold it into the custard with a rubber spatula. Rinse out a one-quart ring mold with cold water and pour in the custard. Chill four hours or longer. To unmold, dip in woarm water. Serve filled with sweetened orange sections.

Personal note: I haven't made this for a long time. But I used to cook it very slowly for a long time to get it as thick as possible without curdling. I often thought it will be very handy to have one of those little laboratory heaters with the magnetic stirring bar.

[Chuck(G)]

Soup. Yup. Lots of it.

During the summertime, we get our veggies from a CSA (community-sponsored agriculture) provider. We rarely manage to eat everything from week to week. The remainder goes into a soup. I have some standards for disposing of various vegetables:

1) Vichysquash - when you're gifted with baseball-bat-sized zucchini. Peel, seed and cut them up and use them as you would potatoes in a vichysoisse. I think the texture's better than the potato variety and the taste is fresher. Serve cold with a dollop of sour cream and fresh dill.

2) French oinion soup. You can reduce a pile of oinions to a pot of soup. It's time-consuming to make, but my gosh, float a slice of french bread with some swiss cheese on it, put it under the broiler and you'll think you've gone to heaven.

3) Butternut squash, pumpkin; any of those yellow-orange squashes. Make a soup with it with onions and garlic and a few potatoes for thickening, load it up with curry powder and puree. Great stuff.

4) Vegetable. Start with the basic onion-garlic-celery base and toss in all the extra vegetables you have lying around, including greens.

5) Borscht. This is a Baltic classical recipe. Use beet roots as well as greens, serve cold with sour cream and a good rye bread. You'll pee pink for days.

Winter soups are generally bean, split pea, lentil or potato. Stick-to-your ribs stuff.

I discovered recently how to deal with excess kohlrabi--slice and make it au gratin. It's actually pretty good.

Soup really is good food.

[NickJones]

Cawl Cennin

It's a lamb broth eaten traditionally early in the week, although we felt that it was always better on Friday if there was any left as the vegetable had become a bit mushy and absorbed the lovely juice. It is not quick to make properly but it is very simple.

You will need a piece of lamb - usually shoulder or breast (whichever is cheapest). Cover the lamb with water and add a whole onion, roughly chopped, some peppercorns (about six) and a little salt.

Bring the water to the boil and then allow to simmer until the meat falls easily off the bone. This will take up to a couple of hours.

Remove the lamb from the water and strain the stock that is left. When the lamb is cooled a little, remove all the meat from the bone and discard the bone and any excess fat. Cut or break the meat into bite size pieces.

Allow the stock to cool and skim off the excess fat, if you wish (you can also do this by leaving the stock overnight and this will leave a hard fat covering on the top which can be removed in one piece.

The vegetables you will need are a small swede, two or three parsnips, three or four carrots, three or four large potatoes and about two or three large leeks and half a cup of pearl barley.

Clean and prepare the vegetables and chop into decent size chunks (not too small - you are making a stew rather than a fine soup).

Now you will need to melt some butter in large pan (O.K. - so this is not a low cholesterol dish!) and start by softening the vegetables in the butter. If you start with the firm vegetables like swede and carrot and leave them to fry for a little while before adding the parsnip, potato.
Add the leeks when the rest of the vegetables are nice and buttery and starting to soften. Then add back in your strained lamb stock and the lamb chunks.

You may need to add a little extra water - just make sure the vegetables are covered at all times. Bring to the boil again and simmer for about one hour until the vegetables are cooked.

The only other seasoning you will need is a handful of chopped parsley and you might like to adjust the salt and pepper content at the end.

Serve the stew piping hot with some freshly ground pepper and a good chunk of crusty bread and maybe a piece of good caerfilly cheese."

[finnbogi]

Cawl Cennin

This sounds very similar to the Icelandic lamb soup, except that we usually put more swedes in and less leek (there goes the cennin part, I suppose). Also, we make it in one go.

First boil the lamb (traditionally we use rather fatty pieces, on the bone), onions and pepper corns for an hour or so. Then add the swedes, carrots, leek, potatoes and oatmeal (but I'll try pearl barley sometime - it sounds like a good idea) and boil for another hour. Salt and pepper to taste.

The is better on the second day than the first, and even better on the third day than the second. So by mathematical induction...

[NickJones]

Scouse: Spiegl refers to this dish with a pun: pot-au-feu l'hiver poule. The word comes from lobscouse, a sailor's (very likely a Norwegian sailor) dish of stewed meat, vegetables, and ship's biscuit, not unlike Irish stew. Lobscouser became a slang name for a sailor. As a port city, Liverpool became known for this dish. The word Scouser came to refer to a native of Liverpool, the city where they ate scouse, and Scouse referred also to the pronunciations and usages of that speech community. Debates about details continue, but some of the details are fascinating, for instance the fact that in Norway today Lapp Skews (not all that far from labscouse) are stewed strips of reindeer meat. In welsh it is known as Lob Scws ( like cawl)

[LoyalTubist]

I am resisting the urge to post a food picture.

Go for it, Bill!

I love phở (pronounced fwa)

No pic this time.



Maybe later.

[finnbogi]

lobscouse

We use the same word for a thin stew, lapskássa. It probably came to Iceland from Danish labskovs or Geman Lapskaus. The second part of the word, kássa, is used for stew in general.

[tubatooter1940]

So I like to "cook" on occasion (meaning I usually prefer to slap hunks of some dead animal on a fire out in the yard) and will on occasion even bake.

Recently my wife got me a bread machine and I have been using the thing quite a bit. I am still just doing basic white bread at this time, but fully intend to explore more exotic fare in the near future.

However, one day I got the idea that I would, with zero experience and no "recipe" to use as a safety net, just start making soup from scratch. So I bought a lot of veggies and started to use some of our really nice German-made knives for tasks not involving trimming fat.

You know, you really cannot screw up soup. It is good, and if it is not really all that good, you can reheat it and add stuff. It lasts surprisingly long in the fridge, is really cheap, and is pretty good for you if you only use fresh-chopped stuff.

I am 41 and feel really stupid that I love soups so much but only ever opened cans or otherwise purchased the stuff. How stupid of me. Because, dollar for dollar, fresh, homemade soup with fresh, homemade bread simply rocks.

How many of you have already discovered this, and how many enjoy the canned stuff but have never thought to make your own? It really is very easy, takes about an hour and a half to make like a gallon of it, and you can eat it for nearly the whole work week.

AND DID I SAY THAT IT IS INEXPENSIVE? About $15 will feed you ten times (or more).

My point? I have no point, neither in this post nor as a human being. I just really like to make fresh soup.



Soup is good food.

(Note my avatar choice . . . )

Folks in the Southeast start most every soup with a roux. Gumbo is a local roux-based favorite.
Offer a cajun a pot of roux or a pot of gold and he may have a hard time chosing.
Pass a good time, cher,
toots

[Chuck(G)]

With all this soup talk, maybe the administrators should consider a "Recipe" category. People could post all the food pix that they wanted there.

This could be the only major brass website with a recipe board.

And a fine tradition it is too, as anyone who's read the liner notes from ths CD can attest:

[Tim Olt]

I will second the motion to include a recipe section on Tubenet. Yes, it is unusual, but I have found that many musicians (and especially tubists) cook. I consider myself beyond the mere hobbyist at the culinary arts, and often cook for my studio.

Sean, waddaya say? I'll even offer to take on the role of moderator if you'd like.

Tim

[Tim Olt]

Alright.... I'll email Sean....

Tim

[MaryAnn]

Can someone translate the UK word "swede" that apparently is some kind of vegetable? I always thought a Swede was someone from Sweden, and I doubt that is what goes in the soup.

??

MA

[finnbogi]

Can someone translate the UK word "swede" that apparently is some kind of vegetable? I always thought a Swede was someone from Sweden, and I doubt that is what goes in the soup.

A swede is a yellow turnip. According to Wikipedia, the American (or actually Swedish) word for it is rutabaga.

[Captain Sousie]

As a rule I hate most soups. When bought in a store or most chain restaurants they are so salty it tastes like you are drinking sea water. They are always either too hot or too cold and rarely are they 'just right'.

That said...I love chicken and dumpling soup. You boil/simmer the chicken in a pot of water with spices to taste for a few hours or until stripping the meat off the bone is easy and strip it. You then boil the carcass for about 45 min to get some good stock going. Then you make some dumplings, poor-man dumplings are the best, and throw them in for about another hour along with whatever veggies sound good. It can't be beat.

Poor man's dumplings:

4-eggs - lightly beaten
about 3 cups or more of flour
a pinch of salt.

Mix 'em together until you have dough, let 'em rest for 1/2 hour, portion to about a spoonfull (regular spoon from your silverware drawer) boil 'em and viola.

[Chuck(G)]

That said...I love chicken and dumpling soup. You boil/simmer the chicken in a pot of water with spices to taste for a few hours or until stripping the meat off the bone is easy and strip it.

Foolproof way to boil a chicken for soup meat:

Take a big pot of water, sufficient to completely cover the bird. Add some salt and bring to a boil. Put the whole bird in and return to a boil. Turn the heat off, cover and go away for an hour. The result is a perfectly cooked bird. Strip meat and boil the bones (add onion skins to the stock for color) and herbs for stock.

Another tip: use Kosher salt or sea salt when cooking. There really is a difference in taste between those and the regular iodized table salt.

[Captain Sousie]

Another tip: use Kosher salt or sea salt when cooking. There really is a difference in taste between those and the regular iodized table salt.

I agree completely.

Also, thanks for the bird cooking tip.

Sou

[LoyalTubist]

Phở

... best eaten with...



Banh mi

Who would ever believe that the national dishes of Vietnam are chicken noodle soup and a submarine sandwich?

[Dylan King]

Soup has been around for quite a while, and sure is good, mmm. It's caused some trouble as well, as those in need of it are often subject to unwise actions...

Genesis 25:29 Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.â€

[NickJones]

I really like cold soups , the best example is spanish gazpacho
The important thing is to chill it thoroughly before serving. Some people add ice but this tends to water it down too much. In Córdoba, they make a thicker variation called Salmorejo.

Once again, there are many different ways of preparing it but here’s my recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

1½ kg red tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 scotch bonnet chilli pepper

2 - 5 cloves garlic

1 small cucumber (or half a long cucumber), chopped

1 small bread roll, soaked in water

olive oil

white wine vinegar

salt

green peppercorns

water

RECIPE:

There are two ways of preparing gazpacho: you can either use an electric food processor/blender and then pass it through a sieve, or you can use a food mill (a mouli). The important thing is to get rid of all the pips, skins, etc.

First, blend and sieve, or mill, all the vegetables into a large bowl. Then squeeze the water out of the bread roll and add to the tomato/vegetable mixture. Add two tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of vinegar. Season with salt and blend well. Check the taste and add as much water as necessary depending on whether you will be drinking or eating it with a spoon. Chill thoroughly before serving. If you are using bowls, finely chop some cucumber,chili, green pepper, tomato,peppercorns and hard-boiled egg to use for the garnish.

[Philip Jensen]

I've recently learned a new QUICK way to make chicken based soup with great depth of flavor. Start with a whole chicken. I cut out the backbone to start, and then split the rest in half. Take the legs off, cut the breasts off the bone. Same for the thighs and legs. You don't need to be very thourough in this. Set the meat aside. Take all of the bony scraps (and skin and wings) and cut into 1" pieces and saute them until nicely browned. I do this in batches to not overcrowd the pan. After they are all browned put them all back in a pot and add 2-3 cups of water. Put a lid on and let this simmer for 30 min to 1 hr tops. Now I strain the liquid from the bones and pick off any meat. Now I put this in the stock pot, add my vegetables and the chicken (diced up while the bones were cooking) your herbs of choice and more water - 6-10 cups to your taste. Boil for about 10 minutes or until the chicken and vegetables are cooked. It can be done start to finish in less than one hour.

The sauteing really helps to get the collagen and other flavor components out quickly so you don't have to simmer for several hours. You can get even more flavor if after you've browned the chicken, brown your vegetables in the same pan (or another pan to save time) and then set them aside until you've finished making your stock. If you put this in your refridgerator it will set up solid from all of the gelatin released.