Fish Soup with Rouille

Trekking on with our soup “diet”, this fish soup was the next in line. I wasn’t sure at first that I’d like a recipe that asked for puréed fish but it turned all right. The flavour of the soup itself was nice but the texture sort of turned me off. On its own the soup was mediocre. What I really enjoyed about this was the dollop of rouille in the middle with the toasted baguette sliced on which we melted parmesan. So far the accompaniments for the soups in this cookbook are better than the soups themselves. Well we gave this one a 3 out of 5. Were it not for the rouille and baguette, the soup would probably score closer to 2.3. Anywho, here’s the recipe for rouille.

Rouille

2 garlic cloves
1 tsp coarse salt
1 thick slice of white bread, crust removed, soaked in water and squeezed dry
1 fresh red chilli, seeded and roughly chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
salt and cayenne pepper

Long way…Put the garlic and salt in a mortar and crush to a paste with the pestle. Add the soaked bread and chilli and pound until smooth. Whisk in the olive oil, a drop at a time, to make a smooth, shiny sauce that resembles mayonnaise. Season with salt and add a pinch of cayenne.

Short way…Purée everything except olive oil in a small food processor. Slowly pour in olive oil till texture reached.

Pork and Noodle Broth with Prawns

To start, let me put you into the context of my Asian food exposure. I grew up in an isolated lumbering town where everyone was snow white except 1 African-Canadian family who was a doctor and 2 Asian families who owned the Chinese restaurants. No Greeks or Ukrainians or Mexicans or Arabs where I'm from. The first time I saw a black person speak French - which is basically the primary language all over Africa - I was amazed. Shows how much I knew.

Long story short, food was basically limited to the usual Canadian and French Canadian fare. So you can say that I was pleasantly surprised when I made this soup and found that my chopsticks smelled like authentic Asian food. Not to mention that I actually found Kaffir lime leaves at my local Asian food market. I mean, for all of you big city folks living on the American west coast or anyone in a larger city of the world, finding these ingredients might be as common as finding carrots. But when I tasted this soup I got an appreciation for the delicious, not too overwhelming flavours of Asia. This particular soup is supposedly of Vietnamese origin.

Like a good spaghetti sauce, I find soup is always better the day after when it's reheated. The flavours have come together and things are all beautiful and stuff. And your chopsticks can be sniffed for hours afterwards.

Finally, I find following a recipe to the T is not any fun. This one calls for 12 ounces of pork. Do you think I really went out there and measured 12 ounces of pork? No. I cut up the pork tenderloin and stuffed it into the soup. Recipes are made to be altered. But I found that when I was starting to cook that it was better to stick to the recipe. So, rule of thumb, you can depend less and less on recipes as you practice more and more. Like anything, really.

Pork and Noddle Broth with Prawns

350g / 12oz pork tenderloin

225g / 8oz raw shrimp tails

5oz thin egg noodles

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tsp sesame oil

4 shallots or 1 medium onion, sliced

1 tbsp finely sliced fresh root ginger

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tsp sugar

6 1/4 cups chicken stock

2 kaffir lime leaves

3 tbsp Thai fish sauce

juice of 1/2 lime

4 sprigs of fresh cilantro and 2 green onions (scallions) chopped for garnish

1. Remove fat of tenderloin and slice as thinly as possible. A good trick is to put the thawed pork in the freezer for 30 minutes to firm the flesh up. It's then easier to slice thinly.

2. If using raw prawn tails, peel and devein the prawns.

3. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and simmer the egg noodles until softened, or according to the instructions on the packet. Drain and refresh under cold running water. Set the noodles to one side.

4. Pre-heat a wok. Add the vegetables and sesame oils and heat through. When the oil is hot, add the shallots or onion and stir-fry for 3-4 minutes, until evenly browned. Remove from the wok and set aside.

5. Add the ginger, garlic, sugar and chicken stock to the wok and bring to a simmer. Add the lime leaves, fish sauce and lime juice. Add the pork, then simmer for 15 minutes.

6. Add the prawns and noodles and simmer for 3-4 minutes, or longer if using raw prawns to ensure that they are cooked. Add the shallots or onion.

7. Serve garnished with cilantro and the green onions.

Definitely a 4 out of 5.

P.S. Sorry the pork looks purple in the photo. My camera sucks. I do not like green eggs and purple pork. I do not like them Sam I...um...Fork?

Harira a.k.a. North African Spiced Soup

All right so I'm not going to spend $18 for 5 strands of saffron. Call me cheap but...well...maybe I am. Maybe it wouldn't have made much difference to this exotic tomato soup.

Supposedly this soup is served in the evening during Ramadan, the Muslim festival when followers fast during the daytime for a month. I found it warm both because that's the nature of soups and due to the cinnamon, grated ginger and chickpeas. This is perfect for a slight twist on a basic tomato soup.

North African Spiced Soup (always from 400 Best-Ever Soups)

1 large onion, chopped
5 cups stock
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tbsp grated ginger
pinch of cayenne pepper
2 carrots, diced
2 celery sticks, diced
1 hot pepper, cut into rings (my contribution to this recipe)
14 oz can chopped tomatoes
1 lb floury potatoes, diced
5 strands saffron
14 oz can chickpeas, drained
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper
fried or barbecues lemon wedges, optional

1. Place the chopped onion in a large pot with 1 1/4 cups of vegetable stock. Bring the mixture to the boil and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, mix together the cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, caryenne pepper and 2 tbsp of stock to form a paste. Stir into the onion mixture with the carrots, celery, pepper and remaining stock.
3. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, then cover and gently simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Add the tomatoes and potatoes and simmer gently, covered, for 20 minutes. Add the saffron, chickpeas, cilantro and lemon juice. Season to taste and when piping hot, serve with optional fried or barbecued wedges of lemon.

This one scored a 3.3 out of 5. It's good but it's not "holly shit is this ever good" good.

Parsnip Soup

This is the first time I ever ate parsnips that I'm aware of. They're a carroty, potato-ish, sort of rutabaga-like flavoured vegetable. I guess someone whose familiar with parsnips would just say that they taste like parsnip but hey, I'm a rookie in the foodie world.

I love starchy, purréed soups like this one. My girlfriend is nuts about my Leek and Potato Soup - also known as a Vichyssoise - which is pretty similar in preparation and texture to this soup. What really makes this soup remarkable is the very tasty flavour of cumin with the parsnip. It gives it real depth and warmth which is perfect for a snow shovelling day...and boy did I ever shovel alot of snow lately. We got 43 centimeters of snow in 2 strait days of storm. Which would equate to a natural workout for all of you positive thinkers out there.

Parsnip Soup

2 lb parsnips
1/4 cup butter
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
5 cups hot chicken stock
2/3 cup light cream
salt and black pepper to taste
chopped fresh chives, parsley and/or croutons to garnish

1) Peel and thinly slive the parsnips. Heat the butter in a large heavy pan and add the peeled parnsips and chopped onions with the crushed garlic. Cook until softened but not coloured, stirring occasionally. Add the groudn cumin and ground coriander to the vegetable mixture and cook , stirring, for 1 to 2 minutes, and then gradually blend in the hot chicken stock and mix well.
2) Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the parsnip is soft. Purée the soup, adjust the texture with extra stock if it seems too thick, and check the seasoning. Add the cream and reheat without boiling.
3) Serve immediately, sprinkled with garnish.

This one scored a 4.2 out of 5.

Our new bowls are again featured here. Isn't the contrast of white and red totally mouth watering or is that just me....

Curried Salmon Soup

Forging on with our soup suppers, I made a sort of Indian-ish/east coast soup whose main features are yellow curry paste and coconut. Being in a medium sized Canadian town, I had to cross my fingers and hope that the only Asian food store in the city would have yellow curry paste. Luckily for me, they did have curry paste and the friendly guy at the counter told me that coconut milk and yellow curry paste with chunks of baguette is a great way to have it. This soup is along those lines. It also looks nothing like the picture in the cookbook...I'm sure those food stylists used dye or something. Stlylists! Phaw!

Curried Salmon Soup

1/4 cup butter

2 onions, roughly chopped

3 tsp mild curry paste

2 cups water

2/3 cup white wine

1 1/4 cups heavy cream

1/2 cup creamed coconut or 1/2 cup coconut cream....I used coconut milk...you work with what you got

2 potatoes, cubed

1 lb salmon filet, skinned and cut into bitesize pieces

4 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley...use the rest of the bunch to make tabbouleh

salt and pepper to taste

1. Melt butter in a large pan, add the onions and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, until beginning to soften. Stir in the curry paste. Cook for 1 minute more.

2. Add the water, wine, cream and creamed coconut or coconut cream, with seasoning. Bring to the boil, stirring until the coconut has dissolved

3. Add the potatoes to the pan. Simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes or until they are tender. Note: I forgot the covered part of this recipe and ended up having to add water as it evaporated all which caused the potatoes to take twice as long to cook. Do not allow the potatoes to break down into the mixture.

4. Add the fish gently so as not to break it up. Simmer for 2 to 3 minutes until just cooked. Add the parsley and adjust the seasoning. Serve immediately.

We gave this one a 3.5 out of 5. And also featured in this entry is the appearance of our new bowls. Sexy, non?

New Apartment, New Soup Diet

To make a long story short, we moved into the apartment building we never should have bought to make our lives easier, put it up for sale, and have only been able to get back in the kitchen in the last few days. There's 3 feet of snow outside (the above photo is about 2 months old) and I'm walking distance to work. Life is alright now. Backed up into a corner but alright.

On the food front, we've decided to go on a soup diet...and by diet I just mean what we're eating and not the weight watching obsession of the 21th century. Every night we make a different soup from the cookbook 400 Best-Ever Soup by Hermes House publishing. We then rate and date them that way we're actually getting some use out of our cookbook, are better able to track our progress through it and are making lighter meals that don't sit in our gut till midnight. All in all, it's a fantastic way to eat. More for breakfast and lunch, less for supper. And, of course, everything except the stock itself is from scratch.

The first soup we made in our soup diet wasn't very good...a 2.5 out of 5. You see, I don't like eggplant. I've tried it time and time again but that big purple bulbous plant just doesn't do it for me. However, I thought I'd swing another kick at a dead horse and tried the Greek Aubergine and Courgette Soup. I thought to myself, "What could go wrong with roasted vegetables in a Greek inspired stock with a fresh dollop of tzatziki in the middle?" The answer: three watery vegetables - eggplant, zucchini, and cucumber - and a taste that just doesn't inspire a wow. The only good thing about this recipe is that I find putting tzatziki in a soup is a great take on the usual dollop of crème fraiche. It was flavourful and cooled down the soup nicely. So let's forget the recipe for the soup and just go with the one for the tzatziki.

Tzatziki
1 cucumber (english)
2 tsp salt
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1 cup plain yogurt
small bunch of fresh mint leaves, chopped

1. Peel, seed, and dice the cucumber. Place the flesh in a colander and spinkle with salt. Leave to dehydrate for 30 minutes.
2. Mix the garlic with the vinegar and stir into the yogurt. Pat the cucumber dry on kitchen paper and fold it into the yogurt.
3. Season to taste and stir in the mint.
4. Chill until required.