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Black Bean Soup with Cumin and Jalapeño

Black Bean Soup

This marks the return of Thursday soup nights. For awhile last Winter, I was coming home from work on Thursday nights and making a big pot of interesting soup. I decided to start up the tradition again this year and the first experiment was this cumin-y, black bean soup. I thought it had great flavor and while I didn’t include all the seeds from the jalapeño, it was spicy enough for me. jwa, of course, opted for a little hot sauce.

The original instructions said to not drain the beans, but I wanted to rinse a little of the salt/liquid off, so I split the difference and drained one can/used the other without draining. Seemed like a good compromise and I probably added about 1/2 tsp of kosher salt at the end.

Black Bean Soup with Cumin and Jalapeño
Adapted from a recipe in Bon Appétit
2 tbsp olive . . . → Read More: Black Bean Soup with Cumin and Jalapeño

Thai Hot & Sour Soup with Shrimp Toast

Hot & Sour soup

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, if that is the holiday you celebrate this time of year. If not, happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, Festivus, what have you. Maybe you just like to sit around in December eating a lot of appetizers and cookies for no real holiday-affiliated reason. If so, hope you had a nice time doing that!

This was our dinner on December 26th, a day known far and wide for its sensible eating. Because of this, I chose to bake the shrimp toasts in the oven (originally, they were deep fried). This is actually a very nice change from the creamy-cheesey-red-meat-dips-crackers type of eating a person might tend to do around this time of year. This soup is light and full of spinach and mushrooms. It’s also vinegary and a little spicy.

Sure, the shrimp toast isn’t entirely necessarily, but it’s . . . → Read More: Thai Hot & Sour Soup with Shrimp Toast

Cooking with Pinterest: Spinach Lasagna Soup

Spinach Lasagna Soup

This was one of the first food images that I came across on pinterest.com (follow me here!) that I pinned and yes, it’s now the first recipe I’ve made from my Savory Snacks board. Not a bad choice. I changed it up a bit and made it a spinach lasagna soup and also decreased the meat a bit (using chicken sausage for the regular pork).

Cooking the noodles separately will let you easily save some of it for lunch the next day (I hate it when pasta sits in soup overnight and soaks up all the liquid).

As a funny anecdote, this recipe is originally (I think) from a Disney site at go.com which is the name of the web property that Disney turned infoseek.com into, which is my old company. I actually worked there when Disney bought us. By the way, I think . . . → Read More: Cooking with Pinterest: Spinach Lasagna Soup

FFwD: Corn Soup

FFwD: Corn Soup

This week’s French Fridays with Dorie features a Corn Soup and that’s about as seasonal as it can be, right now. I really had planned to make the recipe as written, but then…I changed a few things.

1. I had an avocado I needed to use, so I did a Mexican theme with the soup. To this end, I added a little chili powder and excluded the thyme. My garnishes were chopped avocado, cilantro and a little shredded cheese. Also, the soup was served with some Tabasco sauce on the side; the vinegar in that really worked with the rich, creaminess of the soup.

2. I used half milk and half low-sodium chicken stock. This was because I realized that if I didn’t use most of the quart of whole milk I had bought in the soup, I could use that milk making Malted Chocolate Ice . . . → Read More: FFwD: Corn Soup

FFwD: Warm Weather Vegetable Pot au Feu

vegetable pot au feu

This French Fridays with Dorie meal was delicious (of course they are all delicious)! But for this one, I opted to make my own vegetable stock with the recipe for the best vegetable stock ever, which you can find at epicurious.com. I pretty much did exactly that, except I omitted the canned tomatoes (I tossed in a small handful of sundried tomatoes instead) and I think I used less mushrooms (a few shiitakes). Oh and I used 5 cups water instead of a quart.

Things I learned/notes:
1. It is not warm weather here (in Portland). We are still 50-ish. Therefore, a nice hot bowl of soup was just the thing.
2. I made the herb coulis with basil.
3. I was surprised how much I liked the poached egg on this, the yolk added to the broth nicely.
4. I used kale from the garden instead . . . → Read More: FFwD: Warm Weather Vegetable Pot au Feu