Chilled Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Croutons

Our birthdays should actually be called "get pampered by food days." We use them as an opportunity to go crazy at restaurants and in our own kitchens, not restricting ourselves by anything but the size of our stomaches (and sometimes not even that.) For my birthday yesterday, I put in a tall order: I wanted Alex to cook me dinner. Although my expectations were high, I was really blown away by some amazing dishes that I'd like to share. He photographed them as always, but insists that I write so that I can "talk about how delicious they were." They were very delicious.

Take, for example, this lovely chilled roasted red pepper soup with croutons. I'd been yapping about making this soup for ages since I love the Trader Joe's version, and Alex made a delicious recipe from Epicurious. It had a sweet, smoky flavor, and arrived topped with his signature crunchy, homemade croutons. The soup was simple, pretty, smooth and refreshing. Yesterday was abnormally chilly for late April, and I imagine it would be especially welcome on a warm summer day.

Ingredients (serves 4):
(soup)
4 large red bell peppers
2 tbs olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cups chicken stock
1/8 tsp dried crushed red pepper

(crutons)
1 1/2 cups of 1/2-inch French bread cubes (stale bread works great!)
2 tbs olive oil
salt and pepper

Instructions:
To make the soup, roast peppers under the broiler until blackened on all sides. Wrap peppers in a paper bag and let stand 10 minutes. Peel and seed, then cut into 1/2-inch pieces. Heat 2 tbsp oil in large saucepan, add onion and sauté until brown on edges, about 6 minutes. Add peppers and 3 cups stock. Simmer until vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes. Transfer peppers, onions and stock to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Mix in dried red pepper. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and chill until cold. (Can be made 1 day ahead.) For croutons, toss bread, olive oil, salt and pepper in a bowl until well coated. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 min until bread achieves the desired crunch. Spoon cooled soup into bowls. Top with bread and thin slices of basil if you desire.

Borscht

It always surprises me when people associate Borscht with Jewish grandmother cooking, because, for me, it was never like that. My borscht has always been cool and velvety with a dolop of sour cream, and I like it that way. I never understood the reason for potatoes and cabbage in a soup that is so beautifully and simply pink.

After finding beets at our farmer's market this morning, we created a delicious borscht based loosely on a recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I love this version because it calls for roasting the beets, which give them a distinctly sweet flavor. Also, the recipe is extremely basic: just beets, onions, broth and lemon juice. We swirled in yogurt instead of sour cream for an all-around healthy and vibrant soup.

Ingredients:
approximately 3 lb. beets
1 onion, chopped
juice of 1 lemon
4 tbsp olive oil
approximately 6 cups chicken broth
yogurt to garnish
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350. Peel and halve the beets. Place in a roasting pan and drizzle with 2 tbsp olive oil. Roast for 20-30 minutes, until soft enough to pierce through easily with a fork. Let cool, then chop into small pieces. In a large pot, heat remaining 2 tbsp oil. Add onion, and cook for about three minutes until soft, then reduce heat and cook until golden, about 10 minutes. Add beets, and enough chicken broth to cover, about 6 cups. Bring to a boil, then let simmer for about an additional 20 minutes. In batches, transfer soup to a blender and blend until smooth. Return to pot, chill if you want, and serve with yogurt or sour cream.

Weeknight Barley Soup

Sometimes, we have great excuses for not posting for a while, but today we do not. Our parents were here this weekend, if that counts. I had a paper due today, though admittedly it didn't take that much time. Well, as always, we have a classically Als recipe to ease us back into the blogs.

It's not the most beautiful soup in the pot -- but here's a quick and simply delightful mushroom barley. We modified some classic recipes to create something that is do-able in about an hour, but still retains the wholesome, homey flavor that we love. The shitakes and soy sauce lend an interesting note, and complement the other ingredients without overwhelming. Served alongside olive-rosemary dinner rolls, this was more than we ever expected from such a basic recipe.

Ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
5 carrots, sliced into 1/4-inch pieces
3/4 lb. button mushrooms, sliced
1 cup dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in 2 cups of hot water (do not discard water)
1 onion, sliced
6 cups chicken broth
1 cup barley
salt and pepper
soy sauce
parmesan cheese to garnish

Instructions:
Heat olive oil in a large pot. Add onions, carrots and button mushrooms to pot, and saute until soft. Add barley and saute for five minutes. Add shitake mushrooms, chicken broth, and 1 cup of water from the soaking mushrooms. Bring to boil, then turn down to simmer for 45 minutes. Add a splash of soy sauce if you like, serve and garnish with cheese.

Favorite Soup: Vegetable and Matzo Ball

This is my great grandmother's recipe for vegetable soup with matzo balls. My mom has been making it for as long as I can remember, mostly on holidays and sick days. I think that it is the best soup in the world. It's far heartier than most matzo ball soups, which consist of a few lumpy balls in clear broth, and the vegetables blend together so subtly and intuitively that its truly harmonious. I’ve only recently begun attempting it on my own (and by that I mean with Alex, who does most of the intensive labor) but I know that I will continue making it for the rest of my life.

There are so many things to love about this soup. It tastes super healthy, and with its strong kick of ginger, it has healing effects on bellyaches, colds, stressed minds or pretty much anything. Plus, the steps are simple: Throw stuff in a pot and let it simmer for two hours before blending. In fact, if you ask my mom for further instructions, she gets very ambiguous. When I was younger, I was convinced that this was because she was hiding a secret ingredient or step that perfected the soup, but now I think that its because no matter what you do, it still tastes delicious.

The vegetable soup is amazing alone, but we always add matzo balls. My favorite brand is Streits, but since my local grocery stores doesn’t carry it, I used Manischewitz. The trick to making perfect matzo balls is to make sure that your hands are very wet, and to only lightly bring the matzo meal together. Try not to pack them; it doesn’t matter if they aren’t perfectly round. I’d take a light and funky-shaped matzo ball over a heavy one any day.

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken, cut into its parts
5 carrots, peeled and cut into very large chunks
3 parsnips, peeled and cut into very large chunks
top 1/3 of a celery bunch, cut into very large chunks
1 potato, peeled and cut into very large chunks
2 onions, cut into very large chunks
4 garlic cloves
3 inch piece ginger, peeled
1/2 bunch parsley
1/2 bunch dill
1 can stewed tomatoes
1/2 cup tomato sauce

Instructions:
Put all ingredients in a large pot and fill pot with water. Add a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer for two hours. Remove chicken pieces and set aside for later use (makes great chicken salad). Using a strainer, remove remaining solids and separate any leftover chicken from the mass of vegetables. In a blender, puree vegetables in batches with a bit of the broth, and add back into the soup. Adjust seasonings (salt) and add matzo balls, as per instructions on the box.

Egg Drop Soup with Egg Noodles

As far as college campuses go, Penn's offers some great eating-out options. Pod, a Stephen Starr restaurant, is just 2 blocks away from Alex's apartment, and favorite local-food haven White Dog Cafe is just a block beyond that. Plus, we have three Starbucks and an impressive range of Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, Thai, Middle-Eastern and other ethnic restaurants. Somehow, though, we're seriously missing decent Chinese food. That's not to say that there aren't Chinese restaurants, but rather that the dishes served at many of them are more greasy than flavorful, and known to induce nausea and self-loathing after consumption. So when we wanted the comfort of Chinese take-out without the aftermath of ordering locally, we decided to try making a classic egg-drop soup ourselves.

We were surprised to learn that the dish is very simple -- both in flavor and production. We based our recipe on one from Cooks Illustrated that called for cilantro, which we thought added a nice complexity to an otherwise basic broth-based soup. We ended up adjusting the seasonings even more to give the soup more flavor. And because we planned it as our main course, we added yolk-less (why not?) egg noodles, which went nicely.

Ingredients:
(broth)
3 quarts low-sodium chicken broth
2-inch piece of ginger, unpeeled and sliced thinly, lightly smashed
3 medium scallions, halved lengthwise and lightly smashed

(soup)
3 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp water
2 medium scallions, finely chopped
3 tbsp cilantro, minced
6 large eggs, beaten
1 package egg noodles

Instructions:
Make the broth by placing all of the ingredients in a large saucepan and simmering them for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, cook the egg noodles according to package instructions (should take about 10 minutes) and place them aside. Discard the solid ingredients in the broth (you can do this by pouring the soup through a strainer). Return the soup to its pot, and bring it to a simmer. Add soy sauce to taste. Combine cornstarch in water in a small bowl and stir until smooth, then whisk this mixture into the soup until it thickens slightly, about one minute. Add scallions and cilantro. Whisk the eggs into the broth by stirring the broth gently in a circular motion and adding the eggs in a continuous stream. Then, let the soup stand until the eggs set, about one minute. Once they have set, break up egg ribbons with a fork. Divide egg noodles among bowls and pour soup over them. Serve immediately.

Broccoli Soup

Growing up, Wednesday was Cream of Broccoli Soup Day at the local Giant food store. I loved the huge chunks of broccoli swimming in milky, cheesy broth. Now, anything with that much dairy would subject both of us to a killer night of cramping and indigestion. And while you'd think that would turn me off the stuff, I sometimes can't help but crave that salty, creamy bowl of deliciousness. Yesterday was one of those days, and I wondered whether it was possible to recreate the smoothness of a real cream-based broccoli soup without actually adding dairy. Alex convinced me that we could, and we came up with a great recipe that satiated my craving and caused zero sickness! In fact, it's super healthy.

There are millions of recipes for broccoli soup, and we probably read a good number of them yesterday. I once heard that Gordon Ramsay makes his by simply pureeing broccoli with the water in which he cooked it, and then seasoning and serving it just like that. But we wanted to acheive the creaminess of my favorite grocery store version, so we decided to add some potatos for a thicker consistency. From there, we brought in leeks and carrots for a more complex flavor, and mustard seeds and lemon to lighten it up with a touch of tang. We added a dollop of fat-free sour cream for garnish, but you could also likely stir some into the soup just before serving.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 lb. broccoli, cut into florets
1 carrot, sliced
2 leeks, sliced
4 small potatos, cut into chunks
1 cup onion
5 cups chicken broth (or 4 cups broth and 1 cup water)
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp mustard seed
juice of 1 lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Heat the oil in a large pot. Add onions, potatos, leeks, carrots and mustard seed, and cook for 5-7 minutes. Add the broccoli and the broth, and simmer for about 20 minutes. By this time, the vegetables should be cooked. Working in batches if necessary, blend the mixture (in a blender) until smooth. Add the lemon juice, season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with sour cream or parmesean cheese if you like, and serve.

Mexican Lime Soup

Here is a recipe that's been in my family ever since Bon Appetit first published it in 1997. It's soup that people who don't cook soup can cook, and that people who don't like soup will like slash love.

This dish is healthy and fresh -- perfect for a cool night when you are looking for something to warm you, but not stuff you to oblivion. Besides, everyone loves toppings, and they absolutely make this meal.

We'd cooked it before, but we were still surprised at how easy it was. Really, all you do is heat chicken, pour chicken stock and lime juice over it, and let it cook. (Quick brag: We made homemade stock for the first time from the chicken we roasted two nights ago!) Also, if you prepare the toppings while waiting for the soup to cook, everything should be ready to serve in about 30 minutes.

Here is the recipe from Epicurious. We give it a guarantee, so if you try it and hate it, we owe you 3 beers.

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

First and foremost, I'd like to thank the Academy -- I've been dreaming of this moment since I was a little girl. Wow. Where to start? Oh, let me just get out this list here that I've tucked into my dress. Okay, here we go: Thanks to Orangette, whose blog post inspired the proportions and ideas of my soup. Thanks to Peter for testing the recipe first and providing me with such constructive feedback. Thanks to Alex and everyone in production for their incredible blender work. Of course, thanks to my mom for suggesting such great flavors and for providing me with incredible moral support when I call you frantically from the grocery store. Thanks to my soup pot, you are my rock. And finally, thanks to everyone who tasted it and ate it and asked for seconds -- I don't know where I would be without you.

Ingredients:
6 pounds butternut squash, chopped into 2-inch pieces
12 gala apples, chopped into 2-inch pieces
2 granny smith apples, julienned, or cut into very thin strips (for garnish)
3 cups onion, finely chopped
3 quarts chicken stock
3 cups apple cider
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Instructions:
Heat about 3-4 tbsp olive oil in a large pot. Add the onions, and saute until soft and slightly browning. Add the butternut squash and gala apples, and cook, stirring frequently, for about 15 minutes. Next, add the apple cider and bring it to a boil for a few minutes. Afterwards, reduce the heat to medium and cook partially-covered under the squash is soft, about 30 minutes. Transfer batches of the soup to a blender, and blend until smooth. Return everything to the pot, and season with salt and pepper. Garnish with a few slices of the granny smith apples.

Curried Lentil and Spinach Soup

hearthy [har-thee]
-adjective, hearth-i-er, hearth-i-est
1. heart-healthy
2. warm and cozy, like the feeling you get when sitting around a hearth
3. filling (syn. hearty, as in a stack of pancakes for breakfast)

We had to invent this word because no other so accurately describes tonight's dinner. Curried lentil soup is extremely hearthy -- lentils are proven to lower cholesterol, and the dish is satisfying and filling despite being low in calories. Still need convincing? Here are the stats:

Cost: $20 (we doubled the recipe, which intends to serve 4)
Calories: 479 per serving, and it's pure protein
Time: about an hour, start to finish
Difficulty: Easy

Check out the recipe here on Epicurious. We threw some chicken bullions into the water to add flavor, as per the advice of the reviewers. Also, be sure to add enough salt.

Gazpacho

This afternoon we endured 100 degree heat to visit the Oakmont Farmer's Market in Haverford, which is run by one of Alex's professors. Thanks, Janet, for your warm welcome and amazing produce! Not only did we score free samples of Great Harvest S'mores bread, but we found some beautiful tomatoes and a cucumber for the Gazpacho soup we've been intending to make all summer.

We looked up a recipe on Cooks Illustrated, but added a few extra ingredients recommended by the various Gazpacho experts in our lives. No actual cooking required, and the speed of the recipe depends on the preciseness with which you care to chop. I am obsessive, it took about 30 minutes. We also made delicious garlic croûtons with our leftover Bittman bread by simply brushing them with olive oil and garlic, and toasting them in the oven. This soup was so easy to make, and made for a great, cool meal on an unbearably hot evening.

Ingredients:
3 large tomatoes
1 large bell pepper
1 cucumber
1/2 red onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
4-5 cups V8 juice
2 cups cilantro
salt
pepper

Instructions:
Chop the tomato, pepper, cucumber, chopped cilantro and onion into very small pieces, and combine in a bowl. Let sit for about 5 minutes. Add the vinegar and garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Add V8 juice and stir. Add a few ice cubes and refrigerate until cool.