Oui, Chef

Meatless Monday: Butternut, Carrots and Fennel.....Oh My!

 

Here's another great meatless recipe that includes some of our favorite veggies and fruits.  We love making soups and stews of all sorts this time of year as they are great to have in the freezer for a quick weeknight meal when you just don't have time for anything else.  Heat a pot full of soup, toss together a quick salad, warm a loaf of crusty bread, and all is good with the world.

An Impromptu Chili

 

The pork shoulder roast used to make this chili was originally scheduled for a little "low and slow" oven love before being served up to the gang as a Sunday roast.  However, mid-way through prepping it for this purpose I had a change of heart, prompted by my need to get our fridge and pantry inventory below the level that would feed a small country (you think I'm kidding?).  Turns out this lovely chili allowed me to use up not only the shoulder roast, but also a box of baby spinach, all the carrots, onions, shallots, celery and cilantro left in the fridge, a can of crushed tomatoes and a bag of flageolet beans from the pantry, and a cooked bag of bacon shards in the freezer.  

How's that for a kitchen sink recipe!

Ming and Muppets Chicken Noodle Soup

Doesn't that rich chicken stock look delicious?

 

We call this Ming and Muppet's Soup because at it's base is a poached chicken and broth that comes from a recipe I adapted from Ming Tsai, and that appears in his great cookbook Simply Ming - One Pot Meals .  Ming serves his dish Chinese style, with each diner getting as piece of chicken and a cup of the broth to dip it in.  The other night when Muppet was begging for some homemade chicken noodle soup, we turned to Ming's chicken dish and just took it a few steps further by adding a couple more ingredients, and serving it over pasta for an unvbelievably tasty soup.

Fennel Soup with Chorizo

I’ve never had the opportunity to eat in a Gordon Ramsay restaurant (Santa, are you listening?), but I do own a few of his cookbooks, and while I’m not a rabid fan of his TV shows, I’ve enjoyed a few episodes over the years.  I know lots of people hate the guy, or at least the personality he puts forth on TV, as he berates contestants on Hell’s Kitchen or The F Word, but I have to say that I appreciate his approach to cooking.

He may be an challenge to work with, but his application of classical technique to the very best ingredients he can find, and his ability to conjure bold, yet approachable flavors for his guests, has earned him a spot among the very best chefs in the world.  I’m a fan.

French Lentil and Sausage Soup

I've been making this soup for years in one form or another, but until now had never written out a recipe for it.  Truth be told, even though this version was quite fantastic, the next time I make it I'll probably tweak it again and come up with a slightly different twist on the bugger.

Sweet Corn Soup

This dish is one that Grid and I worked on the other day for submission to a Food52 contest for their best "Corn Off the Cob" recipe.  At first, I thought of submitting a succotash, which is a favorite summer dish of mine, but I've always wanted to work up a recipe for a creamy sweet corn soup, and this contest provided a perfect excuse to do just that.

Smoky Tomato Soup

Peyton, home from school the other day, was banging around the kitchen at lunchtime looking for a way to enhance her standard lunch fare, a classic grilled cheese.  She was looking for something to elevate the dish to something more befitting the special occasion that is a SNOW DAY.  Her first inclination was to make a croque monsiuer (a brilliant idea for a future post), but as we didn't have any ham in the house, decided instead to whip up some tomato soup as an accompaniment.

The girl was in luck, not only did we have all the ingredients needed to make a delicious tomato soup from scratch, but I had recently stumbled across this recipe and was dying to give it a try.  In our studied opinion, there are few things more perfectly matched than a gooey grilled cheese sandwich and a creamy bowl of tomato soup.  I don't know about you, but the combo was one of my favorites as a kid, ranking right up there with a PB&J with potato chips!

Ad Hoc's Split Pea Soup

Ever since Boris tried his first bowl of split pea soup over the summer, and with startling regularity, he has been HOUNDING me to find a good recipe for one so that we could make it at home.  It’s taken a while for us to get around to it, not because I didn’t have a good recipe, because I did, it’s just that I tend to see split pea as a 3 season soup, and not one I generally feel like cooking in the heat of the summer.  Now that cooler weather is upon us, Boris is getting his reward, and it is coming courtesy of none other than our good friend, chef Thomas Keller.

I received Keller’s latest cookbook, Ad Hoc at Home for my birthday in September, and upon my first reading, decided that when the time was right, Boris and I would make his split pea soup with ham hock, fresh peas and mint, as it looked to be an excellent interpretation of the classic soup.  

Vichyssoise

This dish is the first I ever remember cooking with one of the kids.  Arthas and I whipped up a batch of Vichyssoise back when he was a little tyke attending the local Montessori Elementary School, and needed to bring a French dish to a year end multi-cultural celebration.  I still have the framed pictures of the presentation he made to his class, all smiles and pride as his class devoured this tasty treat.

Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Corn and Cilantro

This dish came together one afternoon just before the kids went back to school, and was designed with a few different thoughts in mind.  First, it is a vegetarian option (well, not quite, it does have chicken stock) that will pass Peyton's "pescatarian" hurdle, it used some beautiful heirloom tomatoes, cilantro and thyme from our garden, and it qualified as an entry in Food52's weekly competition for "Red Pepper" recipes.

For those of you new to "Oui, Chef", Food52 is a fabulous website that I have contributed to over the past year or so.  It was founded by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, and acts as a food lover's portal that brings together terrific and passionate home-cooks to share recipes, and compete in weekly contests where the winners get their recipes published in the Food52 cookbook.  I was lucky enough to win one of their first round of competitions, and will get to see one of my recipes published in their 1st cookbook that will come out later this year (click HERE for a look at the winning recipe).  

I am THRILLED to tell you all that this recipe for roasted red pepper soup has been chosen as a FINALIST in this week's competition. The gang is now working on their second book, and with your help, I just may be able to pull-out another win and earn the honor of inclusion in the second annual Food52 cookbook. Please visit the site by clicking this link: Food52, and if you're not already a member (you really should be), join the fun community and VOTE for my "Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Corn and Cilantro".  Voting closes at 12 AM ET on 9/15/10, so don't delay and please go NOW to vote. Thanks all....you're the BEST! 10/4/10  UPDATE:  Thanks to all of your support, this recipe won the "Red Pepper" competition and will be featured in the 2011 Food52 Cookbook!  Below you can see a video of Amanda and Merrill making the soup.

Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Corn and Cilantro from Food52 on Vimeo.