Family recipe Monday: staying warm, giving back

Barn buildings in the snow

I haven't done nearly as much photography in the past couple of months as I would like or need to. It's been difficult to get away from the museum, and sometimes impossible to drive on the blue highways in this not-quite snow and not-quite ice we've been having. And that just feels wrong. I'll do better, at least monthly. The light is terrific these days, and so far the snow has been minimal.

Today is the Martin Luther King Day of Service. We're throwing our support to the Reach Out and Read program.All other factors being more or less equal, early literacy makes the most difference in building rich and productive lives. Get out there and give a book, or read one to a child. It's a huge investment in the future of your community. MLK Day is no longer just another three-day weekend.

But make sure you stay warm out there. No one can understand you if you are trying to read aloud with your teeth chattering or your energy flagging, after all. Building on last week's stocks, here are some good winter soups to fuel your community spirit.

There are a number of elegant squashes that are winter vegetables, often overlooked in the produce aisle. This recipe calls for the warm-weather scallop or patty-pan squash, but can be used with any of the others. It's especially good with butternut squash. Use chicken stock for this one.

Volunteer butternut squash arising out of a stray seed in the compost pile, from Delaware.

Squash soup with rosemary

¼ cup vegetable oil

6 large white scalloped squash, coarsely chopped
1 large sweet onion, coarsely chopped
2 T chicken broth base
2 cups water
1 pint half-and-half
2 T minced rosemary
Salt and pepper
Nutmeg

Heat oil over moderate heat in a large skillet. Add squash and onion, and sauté for 4 minutes while stirring. Add chicken broth base and water. Stir and cover. Reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are soft. Drain and reserve liquid. Process the solids to puree. Combine puree with liquid and half-and-half. Add rosemary and stir. Add salt and pepper to taste. Heat and stir. Serve either warm or chilled. Garnish with a sprinkle of nutmeg and a sprig of rosemary. Serves 8.

Multi-bean soup mixes are always good to have on hand. They are easy to make, too, and incredibly inexpensive. Many of us were sent off to college with a pretty glass jar filled with a colorful bean mix and strict instructions to make soup for ourselves, since dorm food could not be trusted. You can substitute other kinds of meat or protein for the bacon and sausage, or leave them out altogether, depending on your tastes. If you're not in Ro-Tel country, use crushed tomatoes and chopped green chilies. Extra points if you grew them yourselves. You can substitute stock for part or all of the water. This is a natural for a slow cooker. The lemon juice really adds a shine to the taste--don't add it until you are ready to serve.

Seven-bean soup

Bean mix

Use 1 lb. each of the following dry beans:

Lima beans
Kidney beans
Pinto beans
Navy beans
Lentils
Black beans
Split green peas

Mix together thoroughly and store in closed glass jars.

Soup

2 cups bean mix
5 quarts water
2 slices bacon
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
Salt to taste
10-oz can Ro-Tel tomatoes with chiles
1 lb. country-style breakfast sausage, browned
2 T lemon juice

Wash and pick over beans carefully. Place in a large pot and cover with 2 1/2 quarts water. Soak at least 2 hours. Bring to a boil and remove from flame. Discard water. Fill with fresh water (2 1/2 quarts again) and bring to boil again with bacon slices. Add onion and garlic. Bring to a boil again, reduce heat, and cook over low heat for 1 1/2 hour or until beans are soft but not mushy. Add Ro-Tel and cook for 30 minutes. Add browned and drained sausage. Add lemon juice and salt to taste. Remove and discard bacon slices. Simmer for a few more hours. Serve hot with tortilla chips or over rice.

Here is another version.

Nine bean soup

Bean mix

Use 1 lb. each of the following dry beans:

Dried yellow split peas
Black beans
Red beans
Pinto beans
Navy beans
Great Northern beans
Dried split green peas
Red lentils
Dried black-eyed peas
Barley pearls

Combine all beans and barley. Divide into 10 2-cup portions.

Soup

2 cups nine-bean mix
2 quarts water
1 lb. diced ham
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
½ to ¾ tsp salt
10-oz can Ro-Tel tomatoes, undrained
16-oz can tomatoes, chopped, undrained

Sort and wash beans carefully. Place in a large pot and cover with water 2” above beans. Soak overnight. Drain beans. Add water, ham, onion, garlic and salt. Cover, bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer 1 1/2 hours or until beans are tender. Add remaining ingredients and simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Makes 2 quarts. Serve with cornbread or corn tortillas.

Happy Monday. Go make your corner of the world a little brighter today.



Schoolhouse, South Dakota.

Family recipe Monday: winter stocks

Best doorway ever. Photo by Pat Monaco

“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.”
--William Blake

One solid week into 2011, and everything seems to be holding together. It's been an emotional roller coaster of a week, as we deal with getting the new building dried out and put back together, deal with the impact of the tragic shootings in Arizona, and get ready for the search for the new director while missing the old one.

The problems that caused this particular little incident in the building have been fixed, and hopefully we will hear nothing more from the sprinkler system until and unless it has an actual job to do, which Heaven forfend. Classes start next week, and we need to be ready to rumble.

We also started the Nostalgia Night series of vintage films shown in the big-screen vintage movie theatre downtown for the next 10 weekends. This is a fundraiser for the campus library: Best. Idea. Ever. Cheapest date night ever, too. Nostalgia Night is a treasure; there just aren't that many big screens any more, and the older films look wrong in any other format. More on that later.

On the home front, we are bracing for some seriously cold weather. No high winds or heavy snows are in the forecast--just bitter cold. The forecast keeps changing, too. By Tuesday, the low will be -9* F. That kind of weather sets off some genetic switch in my brain to drag out the stockpots and get some serious soups going.

I like to have stock on hand in the refrigerator or freezer at all times, usually chicken or vegetable, to act as a base for creative (aka "good grief, clean out the refrigerator") soup-making. My grandmother would have called these broths and would have had them on hand at all times, too. My dad's grandmother never took the simmering stock pot off the back of the wood stove in east Texas, and legend has it that she added a newly killed and cleaned chicken to it every morning. You are supposed to keep the stock pot going. I usually drag it out every week or two and put the stock in the refrigerator (especially chicken, so that it nicely defats itself) and then the freezer. We like having soup on weekend nights or when we need to thaw out.

For stocks and soups, I use the low temperature-long time (LT²) approach. You can use a slow cooker to get the same results, in fact. Simmer, don't boil. Boiling too fast cheats you of deep flavor and texture, kind of like real life.

Quick and easy vegetable stock

½ lb. carrots
2 medium onions
4 green onions
½ lb. leeks
2 ribs celery
3 T butter or oil
10 cups cold water
Small bouquet garni (2 sprigs parsley, small bay leaf, and 1/8 tsp thyme tied up in cheesecloth)

Peel and slice all vegetables. Sauté vegetables in stockpot in butter until soft. Cover with the water, bring slowly to a boil, skim well with a fine-mesh skimmer and add the bouquet garni. Simmer for 2 hours or until liquid is reduced to 8 cups. Strain stock through chinois or strainer lined with cheesecloth. Store in refrigerator or freeze. Makes about 2 quarts.

Basic chicken soup

1 5 to 6-lb. fowl, or 7 to 8 lb. of broilers, with neck and all giblets except liver

10-12 cups of water, as needed
2 medium carrots, scraped and quartered
2 or 3 celery stalks with leaves, whole or cut in half
1 medium yellow onion, whole or cut in half
2 to 3 tsp coarse salt
8 to 10 black peppercorns

Clean and trim chicken; quarter if necessary. Place in a 5-quart soup pot. Add 10 cups of water for broilers, 12 for a fowl. Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to a slow simmer and skim the foam as it rises to the surface. When the foam subsides, add all the remaining ingredients with only 1 tsp salt. Cook chicken until it loosens from the bone (~1¼ hours for quartered broilers, 1 ½ for whole broilers, 2 ½ to 3 hours for a quartered fowl and an extra 30 minutes for a whole fowl). Add more water during cooking if chicken is not 7/8ths covered. Turn chicken 2 or 3 times during cooking. Add more salt to taste gradually. Remove chicken, giblets, and bones. Pour soup through a sieve, rinse the pot and return soup to the pot. Skim the fat. The chicken can be trimmed, cut into smaller pieces, and reheated with the soup.

With good stocks on hand, you can do just about anything. I substitute stock for plain water in a lot of entrée and vegetable recipes for better nutrition and flavor. We know what went into our stocks and what didn't, so these are much better for Gene, without the added salt and starch of commercial products. They also make the whole place smell good for hours.

Here is a cold-night favorite. I would and do substitute chicken stock for the water called for.
 

Hot and sour soup

6 dried Chinese mushrooms

8 cups stock or water
4 cubes vegetable bouillon
6 sliced green onions, green and white separated
2 cakes tofu, silvered (1/2 lb.)
2 T dry sherry or Chinese rice wine
¼ cup cider vinegar or Chinese rice wine vinegar
2 T tamari
2 T cornstarch or arrowroot
¼ cup cold water
2 eggs, beaten
¼ cup carrot cut in 2” matchsticks
¼ cup bok choy or celery, cut in 2” sticks
¼-½ tsp ground black pepper

Before preparing vegetables, place mushrooms in a small bowl. Bring 2 cups of water to boil and pour over mushrooms. Let stand 15 minutes and prepare other vegetables. Place 6 cups water and bouillon cubes in a large saucepan, Drain mushrooms and add liquid to pan. Simmer. Cut mushrooms in slivers and add to stock with white part of green onions. Simmer 5 minutes and add tofu. Simmer 5 minutes and add wine, vinegar and tamari. Dissolve cornstarch in cold water. Stir into soup and bring to gentle boil, stirring. Drizzle beaten eggs into boiling soup, stirring so that egg forms shreds. When soup becomes clear and thickened, remove from heat. Stir in pepper and adjust vinegar and tamari. Distribute carrots, bok choy and green onion tops among bowls. Ladle in soup and serve at once, passing additional pepper and vinegar. Yield: 4 servings.

(This will cure any cold on the planet. And you can still make it without a prescription.)

Happy Monday. Let's make this a year of inclusiveness and not polarization, k?

Family recipe Monday: soup's on

October light on a prairie church, which may have doubled as a schoolhouse

It's October, and soup sounds good on the chilly nights. Soup recipes include the ultimate comfort foods in our (and most likely your) families. There is nothing quite like them, especially for a crowd on a cool night. Many soups are meals in themselves. What’s even better is that many of these are very forgiving recipes that encourage and respond well to experimentation, substitutions, or panic-stricken corrections. Ask us how we know. Better yet, don’t.

Many soups really didn't have written recipes as much as they had vague directions that start with making a stock and end with "...and see what else is in the refrigerator that can be added." For many households, the soup pot stayerd at the back of the stove on a permanent low simmer, with ingredients tossed in the night before for the next day's supper. Dinner is the big main meal at noon in the country, remember. Supper is a lighter meal, at night, and often consists solely of a hot, hearty soup and some form of bread.

Here are a few of our favorites from the Simple Gifts files. We've already shared the definitive, classic chicken and dumplings recipe; the first three of these are from the Pennsyvania Dutch side of the recipe box.
  

Basic white chicken broth

6 lb. chicken backs, necks or bones, or 6 lb. stewing hen cut into 8 pieces
1 medium-sized onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium-sized carrot, coarsely chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
1 bouquet garni (10 fresh thyme springs, 1 large bunch parsley, 1 bay leaf tied together, or 2 T dried thyme, 1 bunch parsley, including stems, coarsely chopped, and 1 crumpled bay leaf, all in cheesecloth bag)

Trim excess fat and all skin from chicken. Put vegetables and bouquet garni in the bottom of a 10- to 12-quart stockpot, add the chicken and pour over enough water to barely cover. Heat over medium to high heat until the eater comes to a simmer. Turn the heat down low enough to keep broth at a slow simmer and cook for about 3 hours, For the first 30 minutes, occasionally skim off any fat or froth that comes to the surface. When broth is done, strain into clean heat-resistant container. Let cool for an hour before refrigerating. Next day, spoon off and discard any fat on surface. Yield: 3 ½ quarts.
--Dolly Shaffner Hess

Dolly’s matzo soup

Sent to Gene, Friday, November 7, 2003. In her own words:
I like to soak the chicken in salt water overnight...Use as much chicken as you like, any parts you want. After soaking, rinse well and put into a pot big enough to hold it and enough water to cover it. This is not an exact science so you have to use common sense with the seasonings.

Add to pot:

• ½ to 1 tsp (more or less) coriander seeds—crushed—amount depends on how much chicken you use and how much you like the delicate lemon flavor of coriander
• 1—3 cloves (more or less) of garlic—chopped finely if you plan to leave it in or sliced if you intend to skim it out.
• 1—2 ribs of celery cut in chunks or ¼ tsp celery salt—not seed
• ½--1 tsp whole black peppercorns or ¼--½ tsp ground
• 1 tsp salt to start—add more later as needed
• If your matzo mix has a flavoring packet in it, add it at the end.

Bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Cook an hour or so until chicken falls off bones. Remove chicken and let cool, then bone. Using a skimmer spoon, remove everything you can from the broth. Return chicken to broth. Add 2—3 envelopes Herb Ox chicken bouillon (or flavoring packet if you have one). This comes in a green box not a jar and be very careful you don’t get the low sodium junk. Bring broth to a boil and reduce to simmer. Taste for salt and flavor. Add more bouillon if needed.

Meanwhile, mix the matzo ball dough as directed on the box. Drop by small spoonfuls into simmering soup. Cook as directed on box. Serve immediately. Bon appetite!
 --Dolly Shaffner Hess

White bean soup with rosemary

2 T olive oil
1 ½--2 cups finely chopped yellow onion (1-2 medium)
2 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
1 large branch rosemary (5-7”)
~3 cups drained cannellini beans (2 14.5-ounce cans)
4 cups chicken stock or broth
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

In a large, wide-bottomed stock pan or saucepan over medium heat, heat the oil. Add onions, garlic and whole rosemary branch and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are softened and translucent, about 15 minutes. Add the beans and stock, cover partially, increase the heat to medium-high, bring to a simmer and cool for 3-5 minutes. Remove from heat; cool for 5-10 minutes. Remove and discard the rosemary branch. Transfer cooled soup to a food processor and puree in batches. Return soup to pot and place over medium heat until warmed through. Season with salt and pepper.
--Dolly Shaffner Hess

This one will warm you through in any weather.

Tortilla soup

2 fresh medium tomatoes
½ cup light olive oil
3 large garlic cloves, minced
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 fresh jalapeño, chopped
8 cups chicken broth, with bay leaf
Salt and black pepper to taste
8 6” corn tortillas, cut into slivers

Hold tomatoes one at a time over the burner flame, using a long-handled fork, or cut in half and broil cut side down on foil under broiler. Skin will brown and is easily peeled off. Squeeze seeds and juices from peeled tomatoes and chop. Heat all but 3 T oil in a small skillet and sauté garlic, onion and jalapeño until wilted and just beginning to turn golden. Add tomatoes and sauté until juice evaporates and mixture thickens a bit. Add to chicken stock in a 3-quart saucepan. Simmer for 15 minutes and adjust seasonings. Meanwhile, heat remaining 3 T oil in a heavy 10” skillet and brown tortilla strips in batches, turning frequently so that strips are and even golden brown. Drain on paper towel. Divide strips among 6 to 8 bowls and ladle soup over them. Garnish with grated Monterey jack cheese, minced jalapeños, diced avocado, fresh cilantro, sour cream or yogurt and lime wedges.


Happy Monday. Happy 50th birthday to Gnat! We will provide a birthday feast when we see you next.