Prawns, bacon and corn Chowder

When the weather gets cold, I start thinking more about soups….hmm!...Corn Chowder with bacon ...
Anyway, this is one of those recipes that you can make any time of the year.
I am making this corn soup since I purchased my ‘’ The New Basics’’ cookbook back in the 2003. I have altered the recipe a little bit to suit my tastes and I think you are going to love it too because it always wins rave reviews for us.
Corn chowder is a great American dish and a large bowl with some crusty bread makes a welcome lunchtime meal on its own. Chowders can be modified and developed by adding smoked fish, crab, lobster or clams to become a personalize chowder. It should be thick and chunky and full of flavor and you should almost be able to stand the spoon up in it.
To make a good Corn Chowder, really rich, that will keep you coming back for more you need to use homemade stock in place of the water and cream rather than just milk.
This soup is creamy, is fishy and loaded with vegetables - onion, carrot, potatoes, and of course sweet corn. I made garlic croutons with salmon roe to go with the chowder. They were the perfect addition to this delicious meal.
The result? Well, I'll let you be the judge.
Here is my way:
PRAWNS, BACON AND CORN CHOWDER
Ingredients
- 100gr butter
- 300gr onions
- 200gr chopped crisp bacon
- 200gr diced carrots
- 200gr diced celery
- 500gr diced potatoes
- 1 -400gr cans kernel corn
- 20gr chopped parsley
- Salt, pepper,
- cayenne to taste (optional)
- 1 liter of lobster or shrimps stock
- 500gr chopped raw shrimp or small shrimps
- 100gr flour
- 1 tbsp. lemon juice
- 1/2 tbsp. marjoram
- 500ml cream
-500gr Jumbo boiled shrimp
Directions
Melt the butter and saute the bacon, onions, celery, and carrots.

Stir in flour and cook 3 to 4 minutes.Add lobster stock and water to make a thin sauce.
Add diced potatoes, corn, small shrimps, lemon juice, marjoram, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Simmer about 40 minutes. Add cream and bring to a boil.Just before serving, add in chopped parsley.
Garnish each serving with 1 jumbo shrimp and a crouton with salmon roe.


Enjoy!! Pin It Now!

Cream soups - Cauliflower, blue cheese and black truffle soup

Making homemade cream soups is more easier than you think!
On a cool autumn or cold winter day, there is nothing better than a thick, hot soup to warm the body. Our soups conventionally uses a chicken base for flavor, but you can also use vegetable base to make the soup vegetarian friendly( here you can find the recipe for a base).
Making a cream soup will also allow you control fat and salt levels, as you can opt for healthier versions on and with key ingredients.
Soup is easy to personalize and you can use whatever ingredients you have on hand and fridge. Today I will outline some general rules that will guide you to making great soup. Add vegetables at different times, depending on how long they take to cook. Root vegetables, such as potatoes and turnips should usually be added first, tender greens can be added 10 minutes before serving.You can puree all the soup or just part of it. Consider pureeing half of the soup and then mix it with the non pureed soup for a difference in textures.
All herbs and spices can be used to flavor the soup.If use woody herbs such as bay leaves or springs of fresh thyme or rosemary or whole spices...etc, combine in a small piece of cheesecloth (you can also use a tea ball) so that you can flavor the soup while it's cooking, but remove them before serving. You can flavor your soup before serving with a splash of wine, sherry, brandy or lemon juice.Top soups with a dollop of creme fraiche, sour cream or yogurt.

Garnish soups with crumbled bacon, chopped herbs or croutons.
Here is one of my favorite recipe:
CAULIFLOWER, BLUE CHEESE AND BLACK TRUFFLE SOUP
INGREDIENTS:
Serves 4
1 medium cauliflower, trimmed and cut into small pieces, stalk included
50g butter or olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic
6 sprigs of fresh thyme
1L chicken stock
250g blue cheese
100ml cream
50g crumbled blue cheese
10g fresh slices of black truffle
2 tablespoon white truffle oil
Melt butter in a large pot, add onion and celery and sweat over medium heat for a few minutes until softened and transparent. Add cauliflower, garlic and thyme and season lightly with sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Add chicken stock and bring to the boil. Simmer covered for about 20 minutes or until cauliflower is soft.
Add cream and cook over low heat for 5 minutes.
Remove from heat, cool, then blend until really smooth and check the seasoning.

Serve in Martini glasses with crumbled blue cheese on top and garnish with fresh slices of black truffle and small drizzle of the white truffle oil. For a nice presentation, before serving add a small crouton made from tortilla and black salt.

Here are some other soups I made.

 Spicy tomato soup with mozzarela and anchovies foccacia.

 Lobster cream soup with salmon pate and salmon  roe.

 Roast pepper soup with fresh pesto bruscheta.

 Green peas soup with crisby bacon and sage.

 Smoked tomatoes soup with spicy popcorn.

Roast pepper soup with black truffle cheese and salmon roe.
Enjoy!

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Modern Romanian cuisine (2)

Soups (ciorba or zeama - argot). In fact, in Romania, soup (supă) means something else; it's a homemade clear vegetable and meat broth where we add very thin homemade pasta (more like noodles) or semolina dumplings. But we can not translate ''ciorba'' in English, other then soup.''Zeama'' or ''ciorba'' is the way we call the soup In Romania and we use to eat a lot of them. We have a wide range of soups( zeama or ciorba) that are made with or without meat, or made with fish and they are offered on all menus in Romanian restaurants.Fresh ingredients are the basics to really tasty Romanian soups. As the climate and landscape changes thoughout Romania, regional favourites depend on what is available around the seasons.These can be made from meat and vegetable, beef tripe, pork foot or fish soups and all this can be soured with traditionally borş (fermented wheat bran), lemon juice, sauerkraut juice or vinegar.
Many of this traditional soups recipes use a lot of pork fat and the cooking time for this recipes are long...way to long. By cooking the vegetables to long we destroy not only the bad bacteria but we destroy the good things too. So here in my new modern Romanian recipes I will try to aproach them a bit different and try to save some vitamins beside a new presentation.
Recipes don't always have to be exact, try improvising to make traditional dishes not too traditional...try to make them in the way you like and try to use the fresh ingredients that you already have.
With the wide range of fabulous organic ingredients that exist in Romania today, you can be inspired to make fantastic soups. Organic ingredients enhance taste, and make recipes healthier for you and your family. Number one secret for a good soup is to make a good stock.Stock is most important in making soups because it has flavor, and it carries flavor in soups. Stock is the thin liquid produced by simmering raw ingredients. Then solids are removed, leaving a thin, highly-flavoured liquid. The stock can be made from any meat like... beef, veal, chicken, fish or vegetables. Soup stocks are best made with bone-in meat to slowly release the flavor carrier (collagen) from the bones. By slowly heating it, the collagen dissolves and brings out the flavor from the bones, and picks up the flavors of the aromatic vegetables. In this way stocks have flavours.
''Collagen - a flavor carrier is a substance, generally in liquid form, that can absorb organic molecules. That's because everything with flavor, with the exception of salt, is made up of organic molecules. Water alone cannot not do the trick. Water cannot dissolve organic molecules, which is why oil and water do not mix. Collagen is a substance that comes from bones, tendons, and other tissues of animals. And because it comes from these animal sources, it also brings along with it the flavors that reside within the tissues.''Here I show you how I made duck and goose broth that I used to the duck meat balls soup(ciorba de perisoare).A stock pot should be tall and narrow. The reason for this is that a narrow pot will have less evaporation than a wider pot, and this is a good thing for stocks. Stocks are not made with lids on, as this tends to increase the cooking temperature, which decreases the amount of collagen that is extracted from the bones.

Make sure you don't boil the stock rapidly. Keep it at a very very low simmer, with just a few bubbles coming up. When you remove the solid ingredients at the end of cooking, do it gently, removing large chunks with a slotted spoon or skimmer and then pouring it through a fine strainer. Then, don't mash the ingredients in the strainer to remove more liquid, as you will add little parts of the solid items too.

Once chilled - refrigerate your finished stock, the fats will separate and harden and form a layer on the top of the liquid that you can then easily remove. After you've removed all the chunks of fat from the top, freeze the stock gel (either from naturally occurring gelatin or by adding more gelatin), and then let the gel melt-defrost very slowly in a fine strainer that the clear liquid separates from the gelatin which holds the impurities.
The freezing technique leave you with a nice clear bulion '''consommé'' and takes almost no effort. But the process of chilling the stock, freezing it, and letting it thaw at refrigerator temperatures takes a minimum of 48 hours.

The soup that I liked the most in my childhood (only thinking of it I have mouth-watering) and I want to talk about today, is meat balls soup. There are many types of soups which I hope we're going to talk about in next posts.Duck meat balls soup (Ciorba de Perisoare din Carne de Rata)
Twisted with gold leaf stock is a delicious soup that's both healthy and low in fat!

I made the meat balls with minced meat from the duck legs mixed with thyme, uncooked rice, egg, garlic, one chopped onions cooked in duck fat and some choped parsley.

I serve the duck consommé very hot on the side with a gold leaf mixed in and the meat balls on top of some uncooked julienne vegetables made from carrots, zuckini and red pepper.

It's a great way to get some vitamins and it's beautiful to serve when entertaining during the Holidays with the beautiful red and green uncooked juliennes vegetables in the soup.
To be continued.... Pin It Now!

Miso soup

I love this Japanese soup – salty broth with the miso flavor, tofu and uncooked vegetables. Miso soup is served with nearly every meal in Japan, including breakfast. It is very simple and quick to make, nutritious and low in calories.In Japan the people who are known for living long, healthy lives, over 100 years old, drink miso soup every morning. The characteristic that defines miso soup is that the miso paste is mix with a fish stock called Dashi. All the other ingredients are added depending on personal preference.
Miso is a thick paste made from fermenting and ageing(10 months to a year for miso to be ready) soybean and/or rice.The ratio for miso and water is 1 tablespoon of miso paste per 250ml of water and is enough for 1 serving. The most important thing about making miso soup is that you never boil the miso paste because boiling it will kill the enzymes. Only add miso after you’ve turned off the heat. If you are using anything that needs a little cooking time, just do that before you add the miso paste.
Dashi is Japanese style fish or vegetables stock, which is the base of many Japanese dishes, such as soup or dipping sauce. It can be made from dried small sardines or dried bonito for fish stock and kombu (dried kelp) or dried shitake mushroom for a vegetables version. In this recipe I use instant fish Dashi. If you don't have Dashi, you could use some fish or chicken stock. Here is my version of this lovely soup.
For 4 serves.
- 1l of water.
- 4 Tbsp red miso paste.
- 2 teaspoons instant dashi.
- dash of soya sauce.
- 200g tofu cubed.
- 50g sprouts.
- 20g coriander.
- 4 shitake mushroom sliced - I use from conserve.
- 100g daikon( white radish),tiny slice.
- 1 red chili pepper slice.
- 2 pack choy salad sliced in half.

Pour the water into a pot and bring to a boil. Add the instant dashi and soya sauce and whisk to dissolve then turn the heat off. Place the miso paste in a small bowl and add 2-3 Tbsp of the hot water to the miso and whisk thoroughly, to a smooth paste. Then whisk the miso mixture back into the pot, and stir well.
In the individuals bowls and add tofu, mushrooms, sprouts, coriander,daikon radish, pock choy and red chili. Ladle hot broth into a bowl over vegetables and whisk with chopsticks to mix.

Top with fresh coriander and serve immediately.
Enjoy. Pin It Now!

French onion soup with Guinness and mozzarella baguettes

In France - ´´French onions soup´´ is a standard bistro fare, in Ireland they do a version with Guinness and today I combine both recipe to do my own version of this classic soup were I will add a Italian twist. A classic soup perfect for winter, is packed with onion flavor and is delicious for those occasions when soul food is needed to raise the spirits. Make sure that you use a good beef stock and allow the onions to caramelize to get the maximum flavor in your onion soup. For vegetarians, the beef stock can be replaced with vegetable-based stock.
The trick for this great onion soup is starting with good stock. Another important step is to caramelize the onion. Caramelizing onions take at least thirty minutes of slow cooking the onions over medium heat. The browning, or caramelizing, of the onions brings out the sweetness of the onions.
Recipe below make enough for 4-6 portions.
Chopping onions note
Chopping onions is a nice 'crying' experience! The way to stop you from crying when chopping onions is tricky! Just use a very sharp knife, serrated knives are no good. When you chop an onion you break the walls of the cells, this allows the juices of the onions to go into the atmosphere. Sharper the knife is, the less cells are broken.

Ingredients
6 large Spanish onions peeled and thinly sliced.
olive oil
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 ½ liter beef stock
1 of 500 ml can of Guinness
1-2 table spoon worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon of fresh chopped thyme
salt and pepper
12 slices from French baguettes
150 gr grated Gruyeres cheese
6 of 80 gr French baguettes with garlic butter
4 of 125gr Buffalo Mozzarella
pot of basil to garnish.

In a large saucepan, sauté the onion in the olive oil on medium high heat until well browned, but not burned, about 30 minutes.
Turn the onions every minute or so to ensure they are evenly cooked.
Add the minced garlic, sugar and thyme and continue cooking on a medium heat for 10-15 minutes until the onion is well browned, stirring frequently.

Stir in the Guinness,  worcestershire sauce and stock and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.Cook the onion until gets a light brown color so that is soft but not falling apart.
Put the French baguettes slices under the grill or into the oven, to toast them.

Rub each slice of toasted French bread with a garlic clove.
Top with grated cheese, and grill or oven backed for 3-4 minutes until cheese begins to melt and bubble. Put the cheese croutons on the top of the soup, garnish with fresh basil and served.

To make a meal on its own I served on the side with a mozzarella and garlic baguettes.

Enjoy! Pin It Now!