Posts Tagged ‘soup’

Oct

2012

Peter’s Test Kitchen

Healthy Kale and Sausage Soup

Poultry & Pork • Tags: Guest Test Kitchen, kale, October, sausage, soup, white beans

Peter is a co-worker of Amir’s who loves a healthy meal. Today he shares with you a simple, no-fuss soup that showcases one of our most beloved leafy greens–kale! This recipe would serve well as a course during a holiday meal, or even made with leftover collards from Thanksgiving dinner. Here’s Peter with the low-down.

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Aug

2011

Give It Another Chance

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Roasted Orange and Sweet Potato Soup

Vegetarian • Tags: fall recipe, ginger, mace, roasted orange, soup, sweet potato

Have you ever heard of the spice mace? Even better, have you ever cooked something with it? Well, don’t feel bad if you’ve answered no to one or more of these questions. Last Christmas, we made an obscure turkey stuffing recipe which called for many spices that had us scratching our heads—the stuffing was a disaster in of itself, but that’s another story. One of those spices was mace. For the last few months, it has been pushed aside, knocked down, and flat out forsaken to the back of the cupboard. It seemed time to blow the dust off the lid and find another use for it. It may still be the summertime, but sweet potatoes are available year round. When you get a craving for them and the spices that make a perfect match, follow your instincts.

Dec

2010

Ready to Spice It Up

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Spiced Butternut Squash Soup

Vegetarian • Tags: butternut squash, capsaicin, cayenne, chili pepper, ghee, ginger, Indian, soup, spicy, warm, winter

It is perfectly chilly here in Los Angeles. But we are wimps about it. We are wimps about weather in general. During the summer, we’ll tell you it’s blazing hot, the air is dry, and we can barely go outside. Let the first and only drops of spring rain hit the ground, and we turn into maniac drivers and complain about getting wet. Come fall, the cool breeze that forces us into wearing a light jacket is rather upsetting. And don’t get started on winter. Once the temperatures reach the 40s at night, you’ll hear our teeth chattering, and folks are wrapped snug as bugs in a rug when it’s time to go to bed. We are weather wimps, and it’s time everyone admitted it. One of the best ways to stay warm right about now is with soup. Soup is healthy, comforting, nutritious and, well, it’s warming. Especially if you make it spicy.

Feb

2010

Waste Not, Want Not

Turkey Noodle Soup

Poultry & Pork • Tags: leftovers, soup, Thanksgiving, turkey

During every holiday season, it’s almost a given that one has lots and lots of leftovers, especially turkey (unless you’re Chrystal and do not consume turkey during such a festive time of the year). For Amir, however, his family always made a pot of soup with the leftover bird each Thanksgiving and Christmas. It seemed like a magical event–one day there was a whole carcass of meat and bones, and the next day, a wonderful bowl of homemade soup made by mom. Well today, this is all demystified, and it actually couldn’t be easier. To help ring in the New Year, we each had our own special meal amongst friends–Amir in sunny SoCal and Chrystal in NYC. To keep this childhood Thomas-tradition alive, Amir made sure there was a turkey at his dinner for the only reason to make soup with the leftovers. And it was perfection!

Dec

2009

‘Tis the Season

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Cream of Red Pepper and Tomato Soup, Cream Drop Biscuits

Vegetarian • Tags: biscuits, roasted peppers, soup, tomatoes

We’re past Christmas, and the days leading up to jolly St. Nick’s arrival have come and gone. Now we’re just about to jump into a new year. It’s a beautiful thing. The holidays are closing shop, but we can still say ’tis the season–the season for soup. The season for soup actually started once fall hit, but now we’re well into winter. There’s no better time than now. Depending on where you are, it’s most likely quite chilly. Maybe you have snow or freezing rain. Here in LA, we do get our share of ‘winter’. It’s a strange type of winter for anyone who hails from the East coast, but it is possible for this ‘cold’ to set in your bones. Rather than hiding under your Snuggie, there are ways to warm your spirit. Soup does that. Make one big vat of soup, and you’ll never pick up the canned version again.

Apr

2009

The Product of Inspiration

53 Comments

Sweet Potato, Squash and Apple Soup

Vegetarian • Tags: apples, kabocha squash, soup, sweet potato

We took another class at Hipcooks a while ago–a class all about soup. We made seven soups in just over three hours, and it was a very mind and gut filling experience. Although we’ve made soups and stews on our own, we don’t normally fix them just on a whim. This class, like every other Hipcooks class before it, always sends us into a tizzy about what we can make in our own kitchens. It’s an addiction, you know. Once we start the brain a-moving, we can’t stop. It goes without saying that we are very excited by food. When we start talking about food and recipes, it is clear that we are in our own world. It was evident to others in the class because we spent a third of the session whispering to each other different soup ideas, substitutions and additions that were coming to mind at the time. We were paying attention to our lovely teacher, really we were, but so many thoughts were running through our heads, we had to let them out. This one came to mind somewhere between the preparation of a chunky butternut squash and white bean soup, rich cream of mushroom and …

Mar

2009

No Obstacle Too Big

44 Comments

Sweet Onion Soup

Vegetarian • Tags: bouillon cubes, onion, soup

What do you do when you want to make something so badly and you don’t have all the ingredients? In fact, you really only have a couple of the ingredients. From our last post, a few people said they just make it happen. We like that idea. In fact, we fully support it. You can ball up the recipe in hand and toss it into the trash…or you can keep it movin’! And by keep it movin’, we mean forge ahead into culinary unknown. We wanted to make a soup. We wanted to make a French onion soup. We had no yellow onions, only a couple of lonely red onions and a shallot. That made us remember we’ve seen a red onion soup before that sounded pretty good. The best we could do was try our best, right? And then, as Carrie Underwood said, ‘Let Jesus take the wheel!’

Jan

2009

Swirl a Spoon In It

Chayote Squash and Roasted Pepper Swirl Soup

Vegetarian • Tags: chayote squash, roasted peppers, soup

Playing with your food takes on a new meaning once you’re an adult. Especially once you’ve realized just how fun it is to play with your food. You can push a pile of peas around with your folk, stack french fries into a fortress or squish a summer squash into a pulp. We guess that’s fun for some people. But when we think of playing with food, we like the idea of tweaking textures, enhancing natural flavors, creating pretty patterns and messing with colors. The colors found in foods are so amazing. How often do you stumble across blue potatoes, purple carrots and green pumpkins without being entranced? Maybe only the rest of us food geeks can relate to that one! We didn’t fool around with the genetics of any foods this time, but we did fashion a zen-like homage to the world’s varied color palette of vegetables.

Nov

2008

Recession Proof Soup

11 Comments

Asparagus and Chickpea Soup

Vegetarian • Tags: asparagus, peas, soup

Times are hard. Times are tough. We are all broke! When you know you should spend those hard earned dollars on your rent rather than ingredients for a new recipe, it’s time to get creative. We all have ingredients in our pantries and refrigerators that we have either forgotten about or no longer know how to use them. No fear! A lovely soup is here. Poking around our cabinets, we pulled out a few items that not only needed a purpose, but also seemingly paired together so nicely together, it was a shame we hadn’t thought of it earlier.