Chicken soup with leeks and dinosaur kale
First real fall weekend always calls for soup. To call this a recipe is a bit of an overstatement, it's just what we had.
Ingredients
2 lbs chicken thighs, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
2 yellow onions, diced
2 carrots, diced
3-4 leeks, cut into 1/2-inch slices
8 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 lb baby Yukon potatoes, quartered
1 bunch dinosaur kale, sliced into 1/2-inch ribbons
6-8 cups chicken stock
How to
Over high heat, brown the chicken pieces in olive oil. Remove the chicken and cook the onions and carrots until they begin to soften. Stir in the leeks and garlic and cook for a few minutes more. Add the potatoes, kale, chicken, and broth, plus any spices (bay leaf, thyme, parsley) or spare parts (parmesan rinds) you have on hand and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the potatoes are cooked though.
Corn soup
This is one of those magic recipes. There appears to be nothing to it -- until you eat it and taste how sweet and creamy the result is. I told a dinner guest this week how I made it and she didn't believe me.
Ingredients
10 ears of corn, kernels cut from the cob
2 yellow onions, diced
2 tbsp butter
8 cups water
How to
In a large pot, saute the onion in butter until the onion is soft and translucent. Add the corn and saute for another 2-3 minutes. Add the water and bring to a boil; cover and cook for now more than 5 minutes. Allow the mixture to cool, then blend it in a blender or food processor and strain the liquid through a medium mesh. The solid left behind should look like damp polenta; just throw it out.
Serve warm or cold, optionally garnished with herbs or pesto.
Short rib and barley soup
A great recipe from Whitewater Cooks at Home. The balsamic vinegar at the end is inspired. Leave the beef in big chunks.
Momofuku ramen broth
One cold weekend is all it takes to get me thinking about soup, so here we are. This is a recipe that looks much more intimidating than it is. And the ingredients that you may have to go slightly out of your way to get -- dried shiitakes, pork neck bones, konbu -- are well worth the extra effort. A few (okay, maybe more than a few) hours later you'll have a stock so restorative it could bring a zombie back to life. And it'll taste good that you'll be happy to have a some of the leftover ingredients already in hand so you can make another batch.
As is usually the case, this recipe has already been reproduced online. I'll save myself the trouble and just point you there.
A couple notes:
- Don't skimp on the meats. Sure, the numbers look a little ridiculous -- 4 lbs. of chicken, 5 lbs. of pork bones and a pound of smoky bacon for just 8 servings of soup? -- but the result is 8 very, very flavorful servings.
- Don't feel constrained by the toppings. Use what you've got on hand, softboil and egg or two, and be creative.
- But do save the shiitakes from the broth for pickling. These are incredibly easy and absolutely fantastic. See the bottom of the page at the link above for details.
Fresh pea soup
Sunday night after a weekend in Philadelphia (read: Dalessandro's) requires a sort of detox dinner. Bread, salad, and something fresh to make you feel fully human again. Enter fresh peas.
The gold standard for me is a bowl of pea soup I had at Mercer Kitchen a year ago. It was perfectly smooth, vibrantly green, and tasted like ten thousand peas had be juiced and reduced to a single bowl. The key here is not to skimp on the peas -- they're delicate and so you need a lot of them to get that really intense spring flavor.
Ingredients
2 cups leeks, sliced
3 cups fresh peas, shelled
3 tbsp butter
5 cups water
Fresh herbs for garnish (thyme, mint, tarragon, chervil or chives all work)
How to
Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the leeks, stirring to coat. Allow the leeks to cook for about five minutes, by which time they will have significantly reduced. Add the water and bring to a boil. Toss in the peas and allow them to simmer for no more than five minutes. Remove them from the heat and allow to cool to a reasonable temperature, and then puree in batches until smooth. Garnish with herbs and parmesan.