Soup’s On!

There is nothing more comforting than a hearty bowl of soup on a freezing cold day.  Living in Colorado, that means you could pretty much plan to make soup on ANY given day, basically from September to May.  Don’t be fooled when it starts out as a sunny day with clear blue skies!  By dinner time, there may be snow flurries and an icy wind, and you’ll be clamoring for a bowl of something hot.  For some reason, Waco-dwelling Joanna  dedicated a huge chapter to soups, despite the lack of snow, and I have been plowing through them since August.  Here’s a sampling of her creations thus far:

Pictures never do a soup justice, so you have to use your imagination.  Chicken & Wild Rice Soup may not look so pretty, but it tasted great and used up the bits and bobs left over in the veggie drawer.  You don’t even need to worry if they are somewhat past their prime!  Celery, mushrooms, onion and parsley make up the base, as well as the ever popular pre-roasted chicken from the market.  I have determined that Jo must have a little “arrangement” on the side with the Uncle Ben’s people, because she promotes the heck out of their Long Grain and Wild Rice Fast-Cook blends!  I suppose you could possibly try a Rice-a-Roni flavor you prefer, because the rice is cooked separately and then added to the broth and veggies at the end.  Just remember you want to eat this soup quickly, because that rice acts like a sponge!

Look, it’s a soup!  It’s a consommé??  No, it’s a White Cheddar Bisque!  What the heck IS a bisque, anyway?  I had to look it up, and there were conflicting reports.  One definition said it required a shellfish base, such as lobster or crab.  Other definitions just say it has to be smooth-textured with cream.  Sounds good to me!  This particular soup was prepared on a night when I had ZERO time, nothing thawed, and minimal interest in working hard on food.  Dinner was on the table in about 20 minutes!  The hardest part was shredding the cheese… so I just bought pre-shredded!  As usual, Jo had me start out with a base of (LOTS) of butter, onion and celery, but this time I also threw in a thick slice of bacon.  Jo next gave me the option of adding chicken broth and/or wine (pssst…. I used the wine, duh) to form a liquid base, and then I dumped in a pound of shredded cheese.  When that melted, another cup of heavy cream and salt and pepper finished it.  What I had in the pot looked nothing like the picture, so I read the directions again: “Use an immersion blender to blend until smooth and velvety”.  Um… there was still a big floppy piece of bacon in there, which I envisioned wrapped around the blade of the blender.  Upon the third re-reading, I finally found where it told me to remove the bacon, which had already imparted all the flavor it could offer, and with relief I whipped that chunky soup into the very definition of “bisque-i-ness”.  The recipe called for a topping of crème fraîche, but who the heck has that?  I used sour cream and some chives and called it a day.  Honestly, it took me longer to write this paragraph than it took to throw the meal together!

All hail soup from a can!  Not to be confused with “canned soup”, which is a totally different animal.  Soup from a can simply uses canned ingredients, and is transformed though alchemy into something WAY better.  No offense, Campbell’s… The Magnolia Table Tomato Basil Soup is just such a creation.  Jo called for four cans of diced, fire-roasted tomatoes, but as a spice-fearing woman, I used only two.  The rest of the tomatoes were Italian stewed and plain diced.  Chicken broth and cream, fresh basil and garlic stepped the canned tomatoes up about about 15 notches and all I needed to do was hit it with that trusty immersion blender.  I made this for poker night last month and it was quite a hit with the group.  However, my plan for keeping it off the Scoville scale failed miserably.  This soup was HOT, and I don’t mean temperature.  I could only eat half a bowl, which was delicious, but had too much fire for my taste.

Remember how easy I said it was to make that whole chicken in the Instant Pot?  Well, I meant it, so today I threw a still-frozen bird into the IP while I went to the gym, and by the time I got home from walking the track, I had auto-magically made the basis for today’s lunch!  I had to overcome a Tortilla Soup that I ate last weekend at a well-known Mexican restaurant.  Actually, “ate” is too strong a word for it; all I did was have a taste.  Ok, “taste” is also overstating, because frankly it was flavorless…  I knew Jo had to be able to do better than that.  She did not disappoint!  While I wanted flavor, I was a little worried about “spicy” after that pot of tomato lava, but I dutifully included both the red onion and the jalapeño.  The IP chicken produced plenty of broth and shredded in minutes, and lo and behold, Jo wanted me to use that darn Uncle Ben’s rice again!  Sorry, today she didn’t get her bonus check from them, because I used HER rice instead!  A few weeks ago I put together a Magnolia Table Tex-Mex dinner featuring Blackened Fish Tacos and Mexican Rice.  As per usual, even cut in half the recipe made way too much, so I decided to find out if the tomato-based, seasoned rice would freeze well.  I’m pleased to report that indeed it did, and I was saved from wasting time on cooking rice separately.  I just threw the frozen chunks right in the pot, and voilà!  The real stars of the dish were the toppings, or “bottomings”, as the case was.  All the good stuff was added to the bowl first, so I layered in crumbled tortilla chips, avocado slices, mozzarella cheese, and fresh cilantro, the topped it all with a big scoop of the soup.  Flavor = Check.  It’s fair to say, it kicked the Mexican restaurant’s butt!