Rub a Dub Grub

This soup is seriously....so.good.

Recipe from Chef Kent Andersen from The Chef's Table in Orem, UT

- 3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
- 1 Onion, Small dice
- 3 14.5-oz cans diced tomatoes
- 2 Cups Chicken Stock
- 1.5 Cups Heavy Whipping Cream
- 1 Cup Basil Pesto (make your own - basil, EVOO, parmesan cheese, and pinenuts blended in a food processor) or buy some...
- Salt and Pepper, to taste

Heat oil in a medium large soup pot. Add onions and cook over moderately low heat until completely translucent. Add tomatoes and allow to warm to a simmer. Add chicken stock. Bring to a simmer and allow to simmer for 15 minutes to allow for interchange of flavors.

Add whipping cream. Add pesto.

Blend to desired consistency in a food processor or blender. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

2/3 c butter
2/3 c flour
7 cups milk
4 large potatoes, baked, peeled and cubed
4 green onions, sliced
12 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled
1 1/4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup sour cream (8 oz)
3/4 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper

In large stockpot, melt the butter. Stir in flour; heat and stir until smooth. Gradually add milk, stirring constantly until thickened. Add potatoes and onions. Bring to a boil, sitrring constantly. Reduce heat; simmer for 10 minutes. Add remaining ingredients; sitr until cheese is melted. Serve immediately.

1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
4 cloves garlic minced
1 cup vegetable (chicken) broth
1 can (32 oz) crushed tomatoes
1 can (14 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can (14 oz) red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 to 1 ½ Tbsp cumin
1 to 1 ½ Tbsp chili powder
6 dashes Tabasco sauce
Salt
1 cup spicy refried beans
Cheddar cheese
Chips (I like Fritos for this)

Saute onion and peppers til translucent. Add garlic and cook 1 minute. Add broth, reduce by half (2-3 minutes). Add tomatoes, beans, cumin, chili powder, Tabasco, and salt. Thicken with refried beans. Serve with cheese and chips.

Ok. There's a story here. We were babysitting a girl in my ward once on a cool fall day. She was helping me pick the last of the carrots from my garden and she asked me if I could make her some carrot soup. I thought, "carrot SOUP?!?". But, I hopped online and looked up some recipes. This is what I found, and modified. It was yummy!

Carrot Soup with Orange and Ginger

3 Tbs. olive oil
2 leeks, including tender green portions, thinly sliced (I used an onion, as I didn't have leeks handy, but I think leeks would be awesome!)
6 carrots, about 1 lb. total, peeled and thinly sliced
1 red potato, about 1/2 lb., peeled and coarsely diced
1 1/2 tsp. peeled and minced or grated fresh ginger (I omitted the ginger, because I didn't have any, but you can throw it in if you like)
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
2 tsp. grated orange zest
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

In a large saucepan over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the leeks and sauté until just slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Add the carrots, potato and ginger and sauté until the vegetables are just softened, about 5 minutes more.

Add the stock, cover partially and simmer until the vegetables are completely softened, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat.

In a blender or food processor, puree the soup in batches, leaving some texture, and return the soup to the pan. Alternatively, process with a stick blender in the pan until the desired consistency is reached. Set the pan over medium heat and stir in the orange juice and zest. Season with salt and white pepper.

Ladle the soup into warmed bowls. Serves 4 to 6.

Dice an Onion, 3-4 cloves of garlic, two carrots, a handful of parsley and an entire clump of celery. trim of the bottom of course and any brown tips. But dice up the leaves as small as you can, the heart of the celery and the leaves are where all the flavor is. put that all in a pot with some Olive Oil (Extra Virgin) of course and saute for a few minutes. Add some salt to help draw out the moisture. after the carrots have softened and everything else is basically translucent, add a tablespoon or two or three of Butter, add equal amounts of flour and stir like mad the flour will burn if you let it sit still or have too much heat, but you do want the butter and flour to brown a little. Then add a box of chicken stock. Or a couple of cans, or 3-4 cubes of chicken, or vegetable bullion. or whatever you have on hand. If you added cubes, then you will want to add some water to make the broth. At this point I pull out the immersion blender and have a little party in the pan. You could however pour the contents into a blender or a food processor. when you have a thick non chunky consistency, pour back into the pan (if you poured out), and over med-high heat add a cup of cream or two. this combined with the flour under heat will cause the soup to thicken. I then salt and pepper to taste.

Today I made Alan and Becca's "Ghost Chili". Isn't it pretty? It was yummy too! And, yes, I will admit, I did NOT win the chili cook-off. It was a bit of a disappointment, but let's be honest here....Who were the judges anyway? They picked a chili that had bacon in it. Bacon? in chili? I'm sure it was tasty in a traditional chili type of way?? But my chili had character and STYLE. It's halloween...it was Ghost Chili! I mean, that's FESTIVE! I'm not bitter.

Anyway, on to the recipe! :)

Start by chopping up one onion and three jalepeno chili peppers. Remove the seeds and ribs of the jalepenos, unless you want a lot of kick! Then go ahead and toss the seeds and ribs in! Throw caution to the wind! Put the onions and jalepenos into the pan with some olive oil and sautee til the onions are translucent. Oh...and do not take any deep wiffs over the pan during this process unless you have a death wish for your eyes. The jalepenos can be kind-of potent! Oh...I almost forgot...I also diced up 3 large garlic cloves and added them to the sautee half-way through the process. (they sautee faster than the onions and you don't want the garlic to burn!)

I should mention...if you prefer, you can add 1/2 tsp of garlic powder instead of the fresh garlic, and you could add canned chili peppers instead of fresh.

**(I did not get any photos of the next step as I was solo in this cooking operation and was touching raw chicken, and well, raw chicken does NOT mix with my camera!)**

Next add 1 pound of diced chicken to the pan and brown it on all sides. Once the chicken is browned, add chicken stock to the pan. It will look like this:
Truthfully, it doesn't look like much at this point...but it does smell good!

Next, open your 2 cans of Cannelli (or Great Northern) white beans, drain them and add them to the pot.


Now bring it to a simmer and allow it to simmer for 20 minutes or so....


Lastly add 1/2 cup of cream & 1 cup of sour cream to the mix. (no photos...sorry!)

And then add some seasonings. I added 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper to the mix. Oh, and as a last minute effort at winning the cook-off (futile!) I also threw in 4 oz of cream cheese. . . .

It was yummy!

So tonight I thought I would experiment. Nancy and Ariel were gone...and since they don't like mushrooms, I though it would be a perfect opportunity to try making cream of mushroom soup. I know Alan makes this often, and he probably has a perfect recipe, but it was getting late, and I didn't want to bug him, besides, sometimes I just like to experiment and see how it turns out. So, that is what I did. Just to explain a little about my cooking....I don't really do recipes. I like to approximate. So, see if you can keep up! Here we go. These are the ingredients I pulled out of my refridgerator:
Mushrooms (of course!) an onion, garlic, milk, chicken stock, butter and half and half. Okay, first of all I have to confess that I was in a big hurry when I picked up the half and half at the store. I thought I was only picking up like 3 items, I could do this on my own and just walk with my cane. It turned out to be challenging. We'll just leave it at that. But suffice to say that pushing a cart AND walking with a cane is not easy on the healing broken ankle. That said, I was in a hurry and accidently picked up "Fat Free" half and half. Fat Free? yes. I did not know there could be such a thing. It turns out, it worked decently well...but I'm not sure it is really better for you. Anyway, in the spirit of total disclosure, yes, that IS "fat free" half and half, and yes, I bought it. If you decide to follow my cooking experiment, feel free to try fat free half and half, or the real deal, or even cream. I'm sure they would all work just fine. For what it is worth, you can even stick with just milk...it just won't be as creamy. So, first things first, I chopped up an onion. Here is my method. First remove the skin (I didn't take a photo of that, but I'm sure you can manage! Next cut the onion in half from root to top and place the onion half (cut side down) on your cutting board. Next you are going to make a series of radial cuts, taking care not to cut all the way through the root, this will hold the onion together for now....see the picture?
Ok, next turn the onion 90 degrees and slice through, producing a very nice dice, if I do say so myself

Ok, now for the garlic. Take one clove of garlic, and you are going to smash it with the knife blade. Use the heel of your hand on one side of the blade to help give it some force.

If you have smashed it well, the outside papery "skin" will come right off leaving a perfect clove.


Give the clove a bit of a rough chop. Now, I was thinking I definitely did not want any chunks of garlic, but I did want the flavor, so I decided to make a garlic paste. Basically, once you've rough chopped the garlic, you are going to smash it into the paste. Again, using the heel of your hand, press the side of your knife blade onto the chopped up garlic. Throw a little bit of kosher salt on it to help grind the garlic up. Just rub the salt into the garlic with the knife blade...It works pretty well...

Ok...next put both the onions and garlic into your pan with a few tablespoons of butter.

Then add in your chopped up mushrooms:

And saute them for a bit.

Once they are nice and sauteed, add them to your blender along with a cup or so of chicken stock. Normally I would totally have left them in the pan, and added the chicken stock, and then blended using my new Cuisinart Hand Blender that I got for Christmas...but, sadly, the hand blender was downstairs, and I was upstairs, and with my ankle...it was too much of a problem to go get it...but next time...and there will be a next time, that is what I will use. If you are lucky enough to own your very own hand blender...you can skip this step.

Meanwhile, back in our pan, I left a few peices of mushrooms hanging out with some butter. I thought it would be nice to have a few chunks of mushrooms in the soup. So, I added a few tablespoons of flour to the pan. Basically we are making what the French call a "Roux" - equal parts fat (in our case butter) to flour. Then you stir it around and "cook" the flour. The purpose here being that the proteins in the flour get cooked, and they thicken your soup without adding a "flour" taste. Long story short add about as much flour as you did butter earlier. If you find that it isn't quite coming together, add a little more butter or flour.




Here is what it should look like, consistency wise. Stir it around for a minute or two until it browns ever so slightly.

Then add your blended up mushrooms and chicken stock back to the pan

and again...I'll just mention...if you are lucky enough to own one of these, well, you are lucky!


Next add your cream, or half and half, or milk, or (in my case) fat free half and half

Bring the whole thing to a simmer so that flour can go to work and thicken it all

And YUM! You have something delicious to eat!


I served mine up with some oven roasted asparagus. (something else I love) They don't necessarily go together, but they were both delicious!

What did I learn? Well, next time I might leave out the garlic and add some fresh thyme. I didn't have any thyme or I might have tried it. I think I had too many onions compared to the other ingredients...or maybe they just weren't blended well enough. And, of course, that whole fat free half and half fiasco...well, I would try something different next time. All in all though, I'd give it a 7 out of 10. Not bad.

Post Script: After doing some internet research, I believe I now know where I went astray. I found this recipe And suddenly it all makes sense....use the food processor to finely (very finely) chop up the mushrooms and onions BEFORE you cook them. Yes, that is the ticket. I will try it! :)