Boil a chicken carcass from a previous meal in a Dutch oven with plenty of water. Add: onion skins and ends from one medium onion, ends and peels from six or seven carrots, tips and ends of seven stalks of celery, ten cloves of garlic, rosemary, thyme, and bay leaf. S&P.
(The onions, carrots, and celery from above will go into the soup).
Make the soup:
Rough chop a medium onion and sauté with three cloves of garlic, as well as thyme, rosemary, oregano (except for the oregano, I used fresh herbs).
Add six or seven chopped carrots and three chopped celery stalks.
Ladle in enough stock to cover and then some.
Add two tablespoons of tomato paste and two teaspoons of fresh grated ginger.
Cook until carrots are soft and then using an immersion blender, make a puréed soup.
Serve with chopped dill and thyme, more salt, and a swirl of garlic-infused olive oil.
I probably would have added a tablespoon or two of heavy cream or marscapone if I’d had any in the fridge, but this recipe was delicious without them!
This was a Jamie Oliver recipe from his Five Ingredient series. It was only okay. Lamb, onions, eggplant, curry sauce and yogurt. I’m sure his was better partly because of his excellent fry pan that requires no oil (look at the pools of grease in mine!)
My cold cucumber soups vary in result pretty widely. If I stick to the Love & Lemons recipe, however, the batch tends to be good (a dash of honey instead of a dash of hot sauce). The soup I made two days ago was outstanding. Incentive enough to keep fresh dill in the house.
As Jamie Oliver likes to say, “I whacked it with a little olive oil.”
I learned how to use the microphone on my computer today. Sort of. I guess it needs to learn my speech patterns because so far its mistakes make the text nearly unintelligible. Also — it adds two spaces after periods. Really? Is that because I haven’t upgraded to Windows 11 yet?
I’ll keep at it. It’s more direct than recording a Note on my phone, emailing the Note to myself, and then copying that text into a word doc.
Blah. Blah. Blah. Right? Very minor compared to typepad closing down which, in my humble opinion, ranks as technology cataclysm.
This morning’s swap shop find. “Maybe I’ll cover a few pillows,” is a thing I tell myself.
Ken’s rebuilt doors (all six of them along the upstairs hallway) are a huge improvement to the old grubby louvred ones. Horrible to clean.
As usual, a wall and ceiling repair project grew and grew until it included replacing baseboard trim, sanding and painting chipped baseboards, updating the light fixture, and rebuilding every one of those six doors after cutting out the louvres.
Have a good Saturday! I am shortly off to my library’s semi-annual puzzle swap!
Last night the house republicans passed their country-torching reconciliation bill. It’s astonishingly bad. Bad for almost everyone except the very rich and not only that, it’s beyond fiscally irresponsible. Today is 5/23/25.
“Fiscally irresponsible” should apply to unfair tax laws that would require an opposing party to tweak the regs later for a course correction and not to a bill that shoves the American economy off a cliff. We’re talking generational damage.
Also: the bill is morally repugnant. They do not care, the GOP, who they kill or how many they kill. They do not care.
So I made soup. And I offer you the recipe. It’s important to nourish ourselves and our loved ones.
Mushroom Bisque
This yummy soup is based on a recipe devised by personal chef Elizabeth Germain’s uncle, Arthur Grasso. Grasso ran a restaurant and wrote a cookbook called, The Tulip Tree Cook Book. Please note that just because a recipe is easy to prepare doesn’t mean it won’t produce an off-the-charts delicious dish.
Because this recipe uses one pot and an immersion blender, prep is streamlined. Rough chopping the veggies allows speed and gives you time to make croutons, an especially nice touch with this creamy soup.
Today’s variation is below. Note that this recipe is forgiving. For instance, today I omitted celery and parsley and it was just fine.
Ingredients
Olive oil to coat the pan and two tablespoons butter.
One big onion, rough chopped
Four cups or so or rough chopped mushrooms, stems included
A fist-sized potato chopped into cubes (no need to peel if using Yukon Golds)
One carrot, chopped (no need to peel)
Chicken stock
Dashes of nutmeg and cayenne
Salt and pepper
A splash of heavy cream in the serving bowl (not necessary) (3 tablespoons?)
Steps
In a mix of olive oil and butter, sauté the onions a little before adding the mushrooms and then the carrots and potatoes. Depending on how much liquid the mushrooms release, you might need to add a little more oil. You want the onions and mushrooms cooked down and covered with the fats before adding any liquid. Add salt and pepper, cayenne, nutmeg.
Pour in your chicken stock. Homemade is best but honestly boxed or bouillon (or a combo) is just fine. Today I used 3/4 of a box of organic stock and 1 and 1/2 cups water with a tablespoon of jarred chicken bouillon.
Also, I threw in the two cloves of garlic and the sprig of rosemary from the crouton-making (see below).
Cook until potatoes and carrots are soft. If you added an herbal sprig, be sure to remove before the final step.
Blend. Adjust for salt and pepper. Always needs more salt in my estimation.
Puddle a little heavy cream in a bowl and add three ladles of soup. Stir. Add croutons. Go to Heaven.
Note: even without heavy cream, the soup is creamy and delicious. Also, sometimes, I add a dollop of cream fraiche at the end instead of cream.
Croutons
I toast sourdough cubes in the oven (crusts removed) and then brown them in an iron skillet with olive oil, herbs (here fresh rosemary), and two cloves of garlic. Stir. Add salt and pepper.
Save the crusts to make homemade bread crumbs at another time.
Note: As Grasso directs, I do sometimes sauté mushroom caps and dice them to add at the end. It adds a nice texture. Not necessary though, especially if you really want to keep it easy.
Today I forgot the fresh parsley. It’s always a nice addition.
Given my deep-seated gratitude for pre-washed salad greens, it surprises me how much I love cleaning leeks.
Each pocket or smudge of dirt is revealed by peeling back the leaves. AHA! Found you! Only fingers and running water are involved. What a satisfying task!
Knowing that there will be potato leek soup is another reward, of course.
I used the New York Times cooking app recipe but it’s a very simple soup: two leeks and a garlic clove sautéed in butter (I used half olive oil, half butter), four cups diced potatoes (Yukon Golds are good), a good dumping of stock (yesterday I used box stock, not my top choice but good enough), S&P. Cook til soft and blend into a thick liquid (I use an immersion blender). Add cup of heavy cream and carefully bring back to temp. Delish!
If your vascular system can tolerate, more salt at serving. Potatoes always require more salt, IMHO.
Last night’s corn chowder was so delicious I thought I’d share. Short version? Make a chowder and add chimichurri.
Chowder consisted of:
One-half onion, diced 3 stalks of celery, cut in tiny half moons 3 ears of cooked corn, kernels stripped off the cob One-half green pepper, cut small Dash each of nutmeg and cayenne; S&P Two cloves of garlic
Sauté all of the above and then add a container of homemade chicken stock.
Cook at low boil ‘til potatoes are done and then add most of a pint of heavy cream. Warm up. Voila!
For the chimichurri (shown in mini-Cuisinart):
Parsley, basil, two cloves garlic, 1/2 shallot, splash of olive oil, smaller splash of vinegar, salt.
I also roasted six small sweet red peppers on my stovetop grill and added them. I wasn’t sure they’d work, but they did.
(P.S. I used my “panini bricks” to press the peppers down and make the sear better. Top photo: you can see the stovetop grill and the bricks).
The soup would’ve been bland and too creamy without the herb/pepper add-in so I really recommend it.
