Doctored Soups: Corn and Roasted Pepper Soup; Tortellini and Spinach Soup

I love a good soup, made from scratch. With a homemade long brewed stock. But during the winter, especially when our lives are very busy and/or we're fighting illness, I want to eat soup more often than I have bones to make homemade stock.

So instead, frequently I doctor prepared soups:

Trader Joes Corn & Pepper soup:

+ frozen corn

+ some type of already cooked protein (in this case, Langostino Tails, which I've been dying to try. Ok, but I wouldn't buy them again) Canned chicken, frozen shrimp, leftover poultry or sausage would all work.

Heat and serve!

Another soup - tortellini & spinach soup.

Chicken broth:

Add some flavors:

frozen tortellini:

+ some frozen spinach

Chicken Corn Chowder

Chop one large onion and sautee:

Use microwave to thaw frozen corn:

Chop onions. To make a large dice, first cut off the ends and remove seeds, and then cut in two:

Force the two halves to lay flat:


Cut into strips:

Cut the strips into squares (sorry for the blurry picture)

Add the peppers (I used a mixture of green and red for visual interest) to the pot, along with chicken stock or canned chicken broth. I added cumin, cilantro, salt, pepper, and ancho chili powder. If you're not trying to be careful of the heat level, you can add hot sauce as well.

Add the chicken in the last two minutes, so it doesn't dry out. I added half of this chicken meat - so the meat of one chicken.




Serve with salsa or hot sauce for anyone who wants to add more heat.

Freezing summer's goodness

Did you buy a little more corn than you can eat this week? Or maybe your coworkers are bringing in the fruits from their tomato vines? "Put it up" for winter!

Corn: to prepare sweet corn for the freezer: use a serrated knife to saw down the edges of a corn cob (stand the corn on end). Gather the golden nuggets into a air tight container (Tupperware, freezer proof canning jar, etc). The kernels will be wonderful for soup later - especially a crab-corn chowder!



Tomatoes: If the skins don't care to come off, score the bottom with an "x":

Plunge them into boiling water for just one minute. Pull them out with a slotted spoon, and wait five minutes so you don't burn your fingers. But then it will be easy to peel away the peel.

Some tomatoes don't seem to require blanching (the minute in boiling water)

Don't look now! Naked tomato!!

Chop the tomato and pack tightly in a plastic container (leave head room for expansion). Obviously you won't be able to use the thawed tomatoes for a perfect summer burger in the dead of winter, but they are healthy addition to stew or soup in February.

Taco Salad

I happen to have lots of wonderful tomatoes on hand this week. I also found 80/20 ground beef at the grocery store at a really good price. It was already on sale for 2.69 pound, but then this package also had a $2 off coupon .... so I paid under $5 for two and a half pounds of ground beef. So what better to make with tomatoes, corn and ground beef than a taco salad?

ground beef (I used a 2.5 pound package, but had lots leftover)

2 large tomatoes

2 large onions (I used Vidalia)

1 bell pepper

2 ears corn

salad greens

tortilla chips

taco seasoning (in a packet or from a jar)

2 limes

cilantro

garlic

Brown the beef in a pan. Using a spoon, drain off the fat. Mix the taco mix with about 1/2 cup of water and stir into the beef. I also added a few cubes each of garlic and cilantro. Dried cilantro would work just as well. Roll two limes on the counter before juicing them over the beef:

Peel the two onions. Cut off the ends, cut them in half, and then slice into half moons. These go into another pan (following a splash of oil):

Stir frequently. Remove the browned onions to a bowl.

Turn the heat back up on the pan. Cut the kernels off the two ears of corn (a light sawing motion with a serrated knife seems to work well). Throw them in the hot pan just long enough to warm and give a touch of color:

Meanwhile wash your salad greens. Wash and cut the tomatoes and bell pepper.

Have another veggie you want to add? By all means chop it up! Jalapenos, olives, shredded carrot, cucumber, zucchini, canned beans ... all would be lovely additions to the party. I used guacamole, sour cream, shredded cheddar and salsa as toppings. If you happy to have a cherry tomato, it makes a great "cherry" for your fiesta sundae.

Help! Cooking on Gas

Ok - I need help from anyone who has been cooking on gas for more than ninety minutes. I just made a simple soup (fresh sweet corn with canned crab in a seafood/paprika broth). I burned the roux WHILE watching it. How do I get the knack for this??

My oven also cooked my salami/croissant rolls in about half the time they should have. Any thoughts? (to make this easy soup accesory: open one can of croissants, roll each one with three thin slices of hard salami or pepperoni and bake as directed)

Here's approximately how you make the soup:

Melt 1/2 stick butter in sauce pan, whisk in 1/4 cup flour. Brown until just nutty smelling and a light toast color. (or darker brown if you want to do it EXACTELY as I did today) Stir in about 2 teaspoons paprika, and a teaspoon of seafood (or chicken) soup base. Add 2 cups water and stir while it comes to a boil. Add some herbs. I forget which ones. It's more about green flakes looking good than taste - the main flavor is paprika, crab and sherry.

Cut the kernels off six ears of sweet corn with your knife (or thaw a bag marked "sweet corn" from your freezer). Add the kernels to the pot.

Open two cans of crabmeat (the cheaper ones on the shelf in the grocery store - not the mortage-the-children cans in the seafood department). Add both the meat and the juice to the pot. Refrain from adding the wax paper.

Bring back to a simmer. Serve with a tablespoon or two of sweet sherry per bowl. The Southern resident also likes hot sauce for a bit more heat.

Weeknight Pork Ribs

I wanted ribs. But my sister was out of town. This might seem an irrelevant fact, but the past two summers when I wanted ribs I bribed her with appetizers and beer in exchange for her slow smoking the ribs in my side yard.

In the past I've had fairly good results from slow roasting ribs, say at 250, for six hours in my oven. They turn out very tender, but it isn't QUITE enough. And who wants six hours of oven heat added to the general warmth of a summer day?

So I decided to try a two prong approach. First I rubbed the ribs with a Penzeys spice rub, and cooked them on low in the crockpot for about six hours. My other crockpot has a setting where it cooks on low for six hours and then switches to warm - so I could set that before I left for work in the morning. But that crockpot is currently in a box.

I then removed them from the heat and just finished them on the grill for about twenty minutes. Only in the last five minutes did I add barbeque sauce - from a bottle, but with a generous addition of freshly grated ginger for extra punch. I have to say they turned out VERY good. Only 93.2% as good as long smoked ribs, but I would certainly do them this way again.

I served them with sweet corn, just warmed on the top rack of the grill and sliced tomatoes.