Mulligatawny Soup 2/27/2010

I can't remember what caught my eye about this, but it looked good.  There are several recipes on All Recipes with this name and I ended up using a little from several of them (not surprising).


1 med.onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
4 carrots, diced
1 cup red pepper, diced
6 Tbl butter
2 teaspoons curry powder
1/2-1 tsp ground ginger
pinch of saffron
1 bay leaf
4 cloves of minced garlic
1/2 apple, cored and chopped
3 skinless, boneless chicken breast half - cut into cubes
6 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white rice
salt to taste
ground black pepper to taste
1 pinch dried thyme
1/2 cup heavy cream

1. Melt butter on low heat until slightly brown in large soup pot.  Saute onions, celery, carrot. Add curry, ginger, saffron,  bay leaf, garlic, and apple and cook 5 more minutes. Add chicken stock, and chicken breasts.  Mix well, and bring to a boil. Simmer about 1/2 hour.  Add rice, salt, pepper, and thyme. Simmer 15-20 minutes, or until rice is done. Just before serving, stir in cream, simmer until heated through.

This soup was FANTASTIC!  A definite keeper and a meal in itself.

Just a little update 2/3/2010

I have not been doing as well as I wanted to with the recipes.  I did discover a possible way to keep my online recipes organized.  It is called Springpad.  I just started playing with it, but I think I like it.  Now I just need a way to not have to print out recipes.  I'd just bring my laptop in the kitchen, but I don't trust myself to not get it wet or sticky.

The peach trees and roses got pruned this week.  Hopefully we will get some nice big peaches again.

Here are some of Patrick's recent projects from his sculpture class last semester. (A steel 3-sword stand and a pair of cast bronze axes with really long spikes)

The best addition to the house was my Christmas present.

Potato Cheese Soup 11/14/09

Last winter my fall back for our Saturday soup was potato soup.  There were several variations, but the best one by far was a simple version made with the stock I made from the Christmas ham.  The simple substitution of the ham stock instead of my usual chicken stock.

With all the plans we had for today, I wasn't sure if we would have soup tonight, but the snow storm this morning changes our plans and you get another soup recipe.

I don't have any ham stock in my freezer, but I did have a ham hock so I tried a quick one.

Ham Stock
1 ham hock
handful of baby carrots (worked out to be about 5)
about 6 small stocks of celery (I needed about 5 for tomorrow's dinner so I just pulled out the little ones on the inside)
3 bay leaves

Fill a soup pot with water, add all the ingredients - no need to chop the carrots and celery as you will just pull them out later.  Cover the pot and bring to a boil.  Drop the temperature to a low/med and let simmer for several hours.  Pull out the hamhock and bay leaves.  Pull the meat off the hamhock and return to pot.

.....
I waited too long to finish this so now I don't remember what I did.  I probably cut up some potatoes, let them simmer in the ham stock.  Blended the mix and then added cheese.  I used velveeta in this one, it melts very nicely.  Add salt, pepper to taste and finish with a bit a cream or half/half.

The real point of this potato soup recipe was to try the quick ham stock option - well not so quick, but still good.