Week 11: Under Cover Corned Beef & Cabbage Soup

In the spirit of St. Patrick's Day, I decided to make corned beef and cabbage soup. The recipe calls for the soup to be baked in a small dish and backed with a cover of puff pastry, sort of like a pot pie. And for this rainy, stressful work week, nothing like some pot pie comfort food.

This story begins with me wondering around Nob Hill trying to figure out exactly what corned beef is and how to buy it. I ended up at Nob Hill because I saw from their weekly add that all their St. Patty's day fair was on special. Only, I didn't realize that there is corned beef you cook and corned beef in the deli. I figured the recipe called for the deli corned beef, but at $10.99 a pound (and I needed 2 pounds), I decided to buy and cook a corned beef brisket. This definitely saved me some money, but added about 3 hours of cooking time. The good news is the corned beef and the soup was delicious and I can't imagine changing a thing!

I ended up cooking the beef the night before. There wasn't much to it. I placed the whole brisket and accompanying seasoning in a pot, covered with water and boiled for 2.5 hours, or 1 hour per pound. I didn't realize the roast shrinks down quite a bit, so next time (and I WILL make this again) I will buy an extra pound or two if uncooked. I'm not sure the weight of the brisket after cooking, but I think I could have had more corned beef in the finished soup. Once the brisket was cooled, I refrigerated overnight until it was soup time. The puff pastry should also be defrosted overnight.

The next day, I prepped all the veggies by dicing the onion, chopping the cabbage to pieces 1/2-inch wide by an inch long and cubing the potatoes to 1/2-inch cubes. Although that sounds easy, at some point, I suffered my first soup wound: a cut on the thumb. But after some pressure and a Raider band-aide, I was back to chopping.

The first step was to cook about 5 slices of bacon in a big pot. Once crisp, I removed the bacon and chopped in small pieces. In the same pan with the bacon drippings, I sauteed the onions for a few minutes then added the cabbage and potatoes and simmered for about 3 more minutes. I then added the broth and mustard and let simmer for 20 minutes. After simmering, I added the corned beef and let cool. The soup at this point was already very good. I added ground pepper, but no additional salt was needed with the bacon and corned beef.

While the soup simmered, I prepared the pastry tops. I was a little nervous about this having never worked with puff pastry, but it was really easy. I floured the table, unfolded the puff pastry and used a bowl about an inch wider than my ramekins to cut circles. I used a butter knife to cut 1/2-inch holes in the middle of the tops for the steam to escape while baking. I prepared an egg glaze by whisking an egg with 1 teaspoon cold water and brushed one side of the pastry tops with the egg glaze.

Next, I filled the ramekins within 1/2 an inch from the top. I covered with the pastry tops, egg side down and tightly pressed the pastry dough to the outside of the ramekins with a fork. By this time, I was super hungry and I was thinking I would skip the hour of refrigeration the recipe was calling for next, but I came to my senses and realized those directions are probably there for a reason, so I compromised and put 8 ramekins in the freezer for 20 minutes. I purposely left 2 out of the freezer, just to see what would happen, knowing that I had plenty, just in case. I baked the ramekins on a cookie sheet for 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Glad I did refrigerate because once baked the pastry dough on the other ramekins shrunk up. So my advice to you is to use my 20 minute freezer trick or refrigerate (covered with plastic wrap) for the advised 1 to 4 hours. See the picture on the right for the non-refrigerated bowls.

And then, eat Under Cover Corned Beef & Cabbage Soup. Delish! The family also loved the soup, the only negative feedback were that the ramekins were too small and I'd have to agree. A bigger portion would make this soup even better!





Ingredients
5-7 bacon slices / $5.69 / Nob Hill
1 chopped onion / from home
1 small green cabbage / 3lbs @ $0.99 = $1.04 / Nob Hill
2 pounds russet potatoes / $0.89/lb = $2.85
6 cups chicken broth/ from home
2 tablespoons whole-grain dijon mustard / $1.78 / Trader Joe's
2-3 pounds corned beef brisket / $6.11/ Safeway
salt / from home
pepper / from home
One 17.3 ounce package frozen puff pastry / $5.39
1 large egg / from home
8-12 1-cup ramekins / 3 @ 4 for $3.99 = $11.97 / TJ Max Home

Prep Time: 20 minutes, plus 1 hr refrigeration,
Cook time: 40 minuets, plus 2-3 hours corned beef cook time
Servings: 8
Taste: 5
Prep: medium easy
Cost: $22.86 (not counting ramekins)

Week 10: Potato & Garlic Soup

Although my rule has been to stick to lower calorie, broth-based soup, with the few & easy ingredients and quick prep time for this recipe, I decided to go for it. Soooo glad I did!

This was by far the most quick & easy to prepare soup I have made. Also, it tasted great right after making, no need to make this the day before. The recipe called for new potatoes about 1 to 1-1/5 inches in diameter. I didn't have time to go to that farmer's market this week, so I went to Real Produce. Unfortunately, they didn't have new potatoes so I just tried to pick the smallest red potatoes I could find. I've never tasted the difference between new potatoes and the regular potatoes, but apparently they are young potatoes with thinner skin and less starchy than the potatoes that are common in supermarkets. The soup tasted fabulous with the regular potatoes, but I wouldn't mind making this soup again if I do find the new potatoes at my farmer's market one day, just to compare.

To make the soup, I washed and scrubbed the potatoes and cut into 1/8" slices, leaving on the peel (easy!). I boiled the potatoes for about 5 minutes until they were cooked. I drained them and set them aside while I melted Boursin cheese with the half and half. Once the cheese was melted, I added the potatoes. The cream was not garlicy enough for me, so I added some minced garlic and seasoned with salt and pepper. That's all. Soup's on!

I warned my friends that this soup would be quite rich and was definitely just an appetizer soup. We served it in small bowls and garnished with freshly chopped parsley. The parsley really added to the flavor. I could have added chives too, but they aren't my favorite and the soup was quite delicious without them. My friends and I ate the soup all up. This is the first time in the super challenge where I did not have leftovers! But in our defense, it was a small batch.


Ingredients:
12 ounces red potatoes (or new potatoes)
(1 to 1-1/2 inches diameter) / $$0.79 /lb = $1.58 / Real Produce
2 cups half & half / $1.69 / Trader Joe's
5 oz. Boursin cheese with garlic & herbs / $5.99/ Nob Hill
chopped fresh parsley for garnish/ $0.59 / Real Produce
chopped fresh chives for garnish / (didn't use it)
salt / from home
pepper / from home
additional minced garlic (optional) / from home

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes
Servings: 4-5
Taste: 5 stars
Prep: Super duper easy!
Cost: $9.85

Yummy!!!!!!

Spring Soups

1. Asparagus Soup with Tarragon Cream

2. Cream of Parsley

3. Vegetable Soup in Lemon Broth

4. Spring New Potato and Garlic Soup

5. Carrot Soup with Sesame & Chives

6. Creamy Artichoke Soup

7. Spring Risotto soup

8. Just Greens Soup

9. Salmon Chowder

10. Sweet Pea Soup with chives

11. Paella Soup

12. Penne, Asparagus, and Peas in Parmesan Broth

13. Thai-Style Lemongrass Soup with Shrimp

14. Corned Beef & Cabbage Soup

15. Watercress Soup with Scallops

Can't wait to start cooking? Which recipe should I try first?

Week 9: Los Angeles Soup

When I started this blog 9 weeks ago at 1 am, I didn't give a lot of thought to what would happen if I were away from my kitchen and didn't get to make soup. So here I am in Los Angeles for work for a full 7 days. Since it is my blog, I guess that means I can make the rules. So instead of making soup, I am eating soup. Not every day or all day long, but if I'm there and soup is on the menu and it looks good, I'm gonna order it, photograph it, and eat it! Sounds like a souper challenge to me!

Grilled Cheese Food Truck
I have been strangely obsessed with the new Food Truck movement that has blown up around the country. And LA had done it best. To be honest, I sought out this truck solely for the grilled cheese. But since tomato soup and grilled cheese are pretty much like peanut butter & jelly, this one was easy. Through tweets and facebook, gourmet food trucks have developed a following in LA County. I found out about the Grilled Cheese truck and followed it to Venice Boulevard. Even though this blog is about soup, I must discuss the sandwiches. We ordered the Cheesy Mac & Rib and the Brie Melt. Both were incredible amazing. The Mac & Rib is exactly what it sounds like: macaroni and cheese with shredded pork ribs. The brie melt was a double cream brie with fig paste, almonds and a bit of smoked turkey. Although these grilled cheese sandwiches contain more than cheese, make no mistake. Cheese is front and center in these sandies. And, of course, the tomato soup for dipping. The soup had a similar taste to my tomato fennel recipe from week 6. Delish! And although the sandwiches could stand on their own, the tomato soup on the menu just validated that food from a truck can be just as good as a 5 star restaurant!

El Paso Inn, Olvera Street
I took a little walk down Olvera Street in LA's Chinatown neighborhood with a friend and we randomly chose on of the many Mexican restaurants in this little tourist area. It was a rainy day, and we didn't have much time, so we figured a nice big bowl of soup would be perfect. (And yes, it does rain in L.A.). I ordered abondiga soup. This is a traditional, broth-based Mexican soup with meatballs (abondigas in Espanol) and veggies. At home I don't often see this on the menu; rather the menudo, pozole and cocido are the more popular sopas. This soup was quite good, but not great. The broth had a lot of flavor and the different zucchini and slices of carrots were also very tasty. The abondigas tho, which should be the star of the soup, were not extremely flavorfull. They were not bad, but not fabulous. Still, the soup hit the spot on a rainy day and photographed very well. My friend had the tortilla soup. I didn't try it but she said it was delish and ate it all up. We were both quite satisfied with this souper lunch!




Philippe's
L.A. can be intimidating if you don't know where to go. So when my USC friend suggested dinner near Chinatown at the "home of the french dip" sandwich shop, I said YES! Again, I went there for their sandwich, and it was AWESOME, but I also ordered one of Philippe's daily soups. I tried the cream of spinach since the navy bean didn't appeal to me. I usually try to stay away from cream based soups as a general rule. They are very rich and heavy and they are bad, bad, bad in terms on fat & calories. But, I'm on vaycay (sorta) so I figured what the heck. Although I was expecting a savory, creamy, buttery flavor mixed in with some spinach, the soup reminded me more of dip. If I would have had some cheese to melt in it, it would have been the perfect cheesy spinach dip! Oh well, not all soups can be as good as mine ;-)

I still have 2 days left in LA, so I might be updating this if there is more soup to be eaten. Otherwise, stay tuned next week for the first of the Spring soups coming from my kitchen. I can't wait to hit the farmers markets for the new spring veggies!

Week 8: Pozole Verde

In a way, I've been preparing my whole life to make this soup. At least, I've been eating pozole my whole life, so that in itself is similar to training. But of course, I'm changing it up from how my family has made it. We are used to the red chili sauce pozole with chicken & pork. Instead, I'm paying homage to my cousins on the other side of Mexico and going with a green chili recipe. I LOVE LOVE LOVE chile verde, so this has to be good, right....

My cook book did have a recipe, but I'm a little skeptical of dishes
with such a family signature, so I did my research for this. (Reason why I haven't attempted the gumbo despite all of the requests). I asked around, googled, and thought about it a ton! Mostly my family was no help. They are all a little afraid of the green pozole since it doesn't look like Auntie Rene's, so here it goes, my little concoction. And if it turns out terrible, mom has a backup plan. She has some of her red, traditional pozole in the fridge, ready to go!

I invited over some family and friends to enjoy this with me, so I'm making a huge batch and just kinda vaguely referencing some recipes from family & google. I will do my best to document this. I'm also starting a day ahead per my usual soup regimen. I am a working girl after all, so if we want to eat before midnight tomorrow, I'm gonna have to start cooking at 8 pm tonight.

Step 1: Cook the chicken & pork butt. I threw a whole chicken and a big pork roast each in their own pan with water, onions and garlic. I cut then in 4 parts each and cooked for about 20 minutes (?) or until they looked done. I took them out and shredded the meat, discarding any fat, skin and bones. Don't throw out the cooking liquid, you will use that later. Be sure you are left with at least 8 cups each of the cooking liquid. I refrigerated the liquid and finished the soup overnight. The next day I removed the fat and strained the broth through a paper towel and strainer.

Step 2: Make the sauce. Clean and half the tomatillos. Coarsely
chop onion, cilantro, garlic and jalepenos. Puree together, salt. Add
a little cooking liquid to help puree become smooth. In a pan with a little oil, saute sauce until it turns darker green (about 12-15 minutes). At this point, I had no idea what I was doing. My recipes were for a much smaller batch and they were all just a tad different. In retrospect, I would add another onion and 1 or two more jalapenos. The ingredients below reflect this change. At this point, it was 1 am and I was ready to go to bed. I refrigerated everything separately and resumed the pozole making the next day.

Step 3: Cook hominy. After draining, add hominy to a large pan
with water, a few cups cooking liquid and salt. Bring to a boil. Let cook until hominy is soft, about 30-45 minutes. Drain liquid.

Step 4: Make soup. Combine 8 cups of the cooking liquid from the pork and the chicken. Add the chili and hominy. Salt to taste. Add Oregano. Bring to a simmer and let simmer for 20 - 30 minutes.

Step 5: Garnish & Eat: Prepare the garnishes by shredding
cabbage, slicing radishes & limes, chopping onion & avocado and heating corn tortillas.

For my first attempt at making such a traditional dish, I think I did pretty well. I was a bit too conservative with the sauce. It needed a bit more heat but overall, everyone liked the pozole, even though it was green. Even Dad, Mr. Traditional, liked it. And now I totaly understand why this is a special meal that is prepared only a few times a year and why it's always made in a huge batch and served to the WHOLE extended family! It's A LOT of work.
So if you are going to make it, you may as well make a lot.

As for the cost, it wasn't a cheap soup to make, but considering how many servings I made, it wasn't too bad. I got 10 servings out of my big pot, plus probably enough for left overs for 4! Not bad! Also, I had many of the expensive ingriedients like the chicken and pork roast already in the fridge. I also had a big can of hominy and the corn toritllas. So, if you do not have these items on hand, be prepared to shell out some dinero at the supermercado! And of course, you can bring down the cost by omitting either the chicken or pork. I chose to use both.

Prep time: many hours, lost count, but if I were more familiar with how to make it, I would have been faster
Cook time: 2 (approx.)
Servings: about 12 - 15
Taste: 4 stars
Prep: lots of work!
Cost: can be costly, depends on your ingredients on hand

Ingredients:
Whole Chicken (4- 5 lbs) / from home
Pork butt or shoulder roast (4 lbs) / from home
2 Onions (2 coarsley chopped, 1 finely chopped for garnish) / $050/lb = $1.09 / Chavez Market
Garlic cloves / from home
Salt / from home
Tomatillos (2 lbs) / $1.09/lb = $2.29 / Chavez Market
Cilantro (1 bunch) / $0.79
Jalapenos (4-5) / $0.99/lb = $0.54
Largest can hominy / from home
Oregano (2 teaspoons) / from home

Garnishes
Limes / $0.69 each = $3.54 / Chavez Market
Oregano / from home
Onions / see above
Radishes / $0.69 / Chavez Market
Shredded cabbage / $0.99/lb = $2.69 / Chavez Market

Week 7: Black Bean & Chorizo

Wow, time flies when you are making soup. I can't believe it's been 7 weeks now. And even though I love soup, I can't believe I'm not sick of it yet. I'm sure it helps that all the recipes are so different, and soooo yummy. Also, there is just 1 more week of winter soups! Then it's on to Spring for a whole new menu.


This week, I choose the black bean and chorizo soup since I still had some chorizo in the freezer since week 1 and I thought it was time to use it. Also, I had all the ingredients except the beans, so the soup only cost me $1.48. Awesome!!!

This soup was quite easy to make. Once again tho, I failed to plan ahead and soak the beans over night. Instead, I did it the fast way by boiling water and poring it over the rinsed beans and letting it sit for an hour. This is usually not my method of choice, but I ran out of days in the week. I chopped the onion and cut the Spanish Chorizo while I let the beans soak. If you do not remember from Week 1 soup, the chorizo is actually a smoked Spanish chorizo from a sausage shop east of downtown San Jose called Goulart. If you aren't familiar with the Spanish chorizo, I recommend you take a trip to Goulart. It's $5 for two big links and so worth it. The sausage is smoked so it's not as greasy as the Mexican chorizo that we are used to (and love).

To make the soup, I sauteed the chorizo and onion for just a few minutes until the chorizo was warm. I added the oregano, salt, broth, and soaked, rinsed beans. This was brought to a simmer and covered and let simmer for about an hour or until the beans were soft. After, it simmered, I added the orange juice. If I make this again, I will even add more orange juice. Somehow only a few bites had orange flavor and that really helped to bring out the chorizo. My first taste of the finished soup was so-so. It tasted like beans and sausage. But overnight the flavors blended together and I had a great meal the next day!

After making this soup, I found out that my family doesn't like black beans. Huh, what now? A whole pot of soup and no one to eat it, so the next day I brought it into the office and I invited my favorite coworkers to east soup with me. They were a little camera shy, so I didn't get a picture, but trust me, they ate it and loved it. It also helps that it was a cold, rainy week and that put people in a soup mood, but also, the soup was good. I might even play around with this soup a little more and see what I could add to it. I think it's on the verge of being something really awsome. I can imagine eating it with corn tortillas. The recipe suggests a bit of sour cream. That might work. Or I wonder what would happen if I ate it over Spanish rice. Hmmmm... that sounds quite yummy. A little cheese on top. I think I might be on to something :-)

Ingredients:
1/2 pound dried black beans / $1.48 / Lucky's
8 ounces chorizo (more for more chuncky soup) /Goulart
1 cup onion / from home
4 cups broth / from home
1 tablespoon oregano / from home
salt / from home
1/2 cup - 1 cup orange juice (to taste) / from home

Prep time: 5 minutes (plus 1 - 8 hours soaking beans)
Cook time: 1 hour
Servings: 4
Taste: 4
Prep: super easy
Cost: $1.48

Week 6: Tomato & Fennel Soup

Only 3 more weeks of winter soups, and still so many yummy soups to make. I've never cooked or eaten fennel (just the seeds) so I was very curious how this would come out. A woman at the farmer's market even asked me what I was going to do with all that fennel, and I answered "soup" with a big smile, and then she asked me what it tastes like and I answered "I don't know," pretty embarrassed.

I mostly choose to make the tomato & fennel soup since I had some creme friache left that I needed to use up. It was a costly ingredient, so I didn't want to let it go to waste. Also, with all this soup making, I've been freezing the extra chicken broth, and was able to use it for this soup. So by far, this was the best bargain soup of the Souper Challenge. Because many of my ingredients came from home, I spent $5.45 on this soup. Still, it's more of an appetizer than main dish, so your family would still need an entree. But it was super quick & easy to make, so I'd say to go for it! I will absolutely be making this again.


Oh, and another cool thing... I was thrown off by my search for fresh tarragon. It was not at my farmer's market, and it was not at Real Produce, and I really didn't want to buy a whole jar of dried spice knowing I would never use it again and it would probably cost more than all the rest of my ingredients combined. I remembered Whole Foods sold bulk spices, so I went over there and filled a little baggy full of dried tarragon (using the rule of half as much dried herb than fresh herb) and went to the checker to pay. Free! My baggy wouldn't weigh, so Whole Foods gave me some free herbs for my soup this month. And it was kinda fun putting a itty bitty plastic bag of dried herbs in my purse too. I got a little chuckle out of that. ;-)


To make the soup, I chopped the fennel, carrots and onions. The fennel was easy to cut and so fragrant. I was sure to cut off all stalks and remove the middle core. Once chopped, I sauteed all the veggies in olive oil until soft and then added the tarragon, salt, tomatoes and broth. This was brought ot a simmer and continued to simmer for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, I pureed the soup in batches and returned to the pot. I whisked in the creme friache and added more salt to taste. And thats it! Done! Easy! I served with a dollop of creme friache, but that was not necessary since there was plenty in the soup already; it was more for the presentation. The fennel really came through in a good way. It gave an earthy flavor to the soup and the smell was amazing. Consensus: I like fennel! It was a big Superbowl Sunday hit for the fam. Definitely a starter to a much bigger menu and not too filling at all.


The recipe also called for a bit of Pernod liquor. Apparently this is a licorice flavored liquor. I chose not to include it since I'm not a huge fan of licorice and I didn't want to go looking for this liquor and purchasing it just for this soup. I thought of adding an anise extract to it since I did have some on hand (left over from holiday baking), but again, I thought the fennel gave enough of the earthy licorice flavor, and I was already very happy with the soup. I suppose I can try the extract in my leftovers in a small amount, but might not. I think the soup is great just the way it is.


Ingredients:
1/4 cup olive oil / from home
3 cups (4 fennel bulbs) / $1.00 each = $4.00 / farmer's market
1/2 cup chopped carrots / $0.50 / farmer's market
1 cup chopped onion / from home
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes / $0.95 / Smart & Final
1 tablespoon tarragon / free / Whole Foods
4 cups chicken broth / from home
Salt / from home
Creme Friache / from home

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Servings: 6
Taste: 4
Prep: super easy
Cost: $5.45