Foodmomiac

Pickle Soup (aka Cold Cucumber Soup with a McClure kick)

Last summer, our friend, babysitter, colleague, food blogger and all around great person Jessi came to visit us at our rented Michigan cottage with her boyfriend Jason (Dylan's guitar teacher, and an absolutely amazing musician). After sharing a pitcher (or two) of Oberon at one of the local bars, we convinced them to come back to the house for an impromptu dinner. We made a lot of great food that night, but the most momentous part of the evening came when I pulled out the jar of spicy McClure pickles.

Jessi was smitten, and when she made Cold Cucumber Soup later in the summer, she had a brilliant stroke of genius. SHE ADDED PICKLE JUICE. It was at that moment that a sweet summer soup became a sultry and spicy summer sensation.

Here is the recipe as I make it, just slightly adapted.

Pickle Soup

One seedless English cucumber, peeled and cut into 2 inch chunks (if you only have a cucumber with seeds, just remove them)
Small handful of fresh dill
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 can low fat cream of chicken soup (trust us)
1/2 cup McClure's spicy pickle juice
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Combine everything in a blender. Chill for at least an hour. Enjoy!

Foodmomiac's Guide to Chicken Stock

I got this email yesterday from my old friend Kate:

Hi Danielle,

I've got a chicken carcass in my freezer waiting to be made into stock.  And I want to use some of that stock to make chicken soup.  Trouble is I've never done either.  I figure you can do this in your sleep - got any great resources to guide me through the process?  I figure I will get a rotisserie chicken for the dinner tomorrow and use the left over meat for the soup, giving me a second carcass for the stock so I can make a good amount of it and stash some away in the freezer.  If you have any words of advice I'd appreciate it!

-kate

So... I don't really have a set recipe I follow. I kind of just do my thing and it usually works out. I take the carcass(es) and put them in a giant soup pot. Then, I cover them with filtered water. I add a couple of onions cut in quarters, some carrots, some celery (including leaves is GREAT), and some parsnips (this is optional, but makes the resulting stock taste like soup from a Jewish deli). I put the heat on medium, bring it up to a low simmer, turn down the heat to low, and let it all cook for a while. If the water gets low, you can add more. If there is scum on the surface, you can skim it.

When the stock seems "stock-y," I strain it, reserving all of the chunks in a colander. I then start sorting. I discard the onion and celery as they are tapped out, but I slice the carrots and parsnips into coins to be used in my soup. I also take on the ultra messy job of sorting through the carcasses. I pull off all of the good meat and shred it up into bite size pieces. This is also for the soup.

We actually prefer more of a stew with our stock, so I add back in the carrots, parsnips and chicken and then make spaetzle dumplings right into the pot. If this is too fancy for you, you can just dump in some egg noodles (or better yet, get the Hungarian dumplings from a gourmet market). The more noodles you add, the stew-ier the soup with be. You can also not add ANYTHING back into the stock and just use it for cooking.

Hope this helps!

Uber Healthy Soup That Your Kids Might Very Well Eat: Nutty Vanilla Sweet Potato and Kale Soup

I've known Kath from Kath Eats for many months now (we frequently hire her to write articles on our clients' sites), but for some reason I've never tried one of her recipes until now.

What was I thinking?? We are always trying to be more healthy, and she uses the most fabulous ingredients. Consider this a lesson learned. Go make this soup!

Some changes I made (because I'm allergic to following recipes exactly):

- I peeled the sweet potatoes
- I used curry powder instead of Garam Masala
- I think I used too many sweet potatoes (I didn't pull out my scale), so I thinned the soup with two cups of chicken broth (veggie broth would have been fine too)
- I think raisins are evil, so I didn't use any, and I didn't use any shredded coconut either (not quite so evil, but I'm not a fan)

Dylan declared this the best soup she ever had. Max liked everything about this except the kale, but I think he was confused, because he actually DOES like kale, but I think he thought I said it was "cow." And, quite frankly, he also likes cow, so the whole thing was bizarre.

Michael loved this soup with every fiber of his being. And, no, I am not exaggerating. He thanked me for it about three times.

Thanks Kath!

The World's Most Expensive Chicken (with a recipe for Hungarian Dumplings)

  Homemade Chicken Soup - Max's Bowl 
  Originally uploaded by Foodmomiac

I think I mentioned that after I finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I did my food shopping online. I got my staples from Peapod, and then ordered my meat and produce from Fresh Picks, a local service that gets food from (mostly) local farmers, and delivers it once a week. One of the items I ordered was a whole chicken, cut up. It was about 5 pounds, and the total cost was $20.

For those accustomed to buying their chickens at Costco or the supermarket, this price is outrageous. But, when you consider that this chicken was organic, and was raised at a family farm, allowed to roam free all day, it becomes worth it. Also, if you compare it to eating out, it's way cheaper. This $20 chicken fed three adults and two children on Wednesday (we made a version of Chris' recipe). And then it make a delicious soup for two adults and two children last night. AND, I have a really big container of the soup left over. See?? A bargain.

For the soup, I was craving Hungarian dumplings (virtually the same thing as German Spaetzle), which are really easy to make, especially if you have a Spaetzle Maker. I put the leftover chicken in a big pot with carrots, celery and onion. Then, I covered everything with fresh water and let it cook for a few hours. I removed and discarded the onion. I pulled the chicken off the bone and chopped it up, adding it back into the stock. I also chopped up the carrots and celery and added those back as well. This soup went into the fridge to hang out until we were ready to eat.

About 45 minutes before dinner time, I put the soup pot back on the stove. In the meantime, I prepared the dumpling batter. The recipe came from The Frugal Gourmet on our Immigrant Ancestors. It's super easy. Combine 2-1/2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/4 tsp. baking powder. In another container, combine 2 eggs beaten, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup water and 2 Tb. oil (you can also use lard for a more authentic Hungarian flavor). Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix well. This will produce a very sticky batter. Let it hang out on the counter while you wait for your soup to get nice and hot. When the soup is ready to be dumpling'd, put the batter into your spaetzle maker, and let the dumplings fall in. They will quickly rise to the surface, at which point your soup is ready to eat. If you don't have a spaetzle maker, you can put the batter in a large ziploc bag and cut a 1/4 inch size hole in one corner. Then, squeeze out small pieces into your soup.

You can also cook spaetzle in salted, boiling water. Once done, transfer them to a colander. If you cook them this way, you also have the option to follow the boiling with some pan frying in butter. Yum.