Saturday Night Chicken Soup 

Saturday Night Chicken Soup

Like it or not, I’m following on the soup idea for today’s posting. My sinuses are stuffed, leading to the medical condition I like to call “Bowling-Ball Head.” (Yes, Mom, I went to the doctor and am on some meds.) This lack of post-nasal drip has required me to drink a lot of tea, and eat soup. The freezing weather is not helping matters at all. Thankfully, my son had a birthday party to attend to, so I could make some homemade chicken soup. (More on that later.)

There really isn’t a recipe for this. It is more of an assemblage of ingredients on hand, in hopes that that it will make me feel better. This is how the process went:

Defrost lonely single chicken breast in microwave. Chop a small onion.

Cube chicken, season with salt and pepper. In large pot, add some olive oil. Cook chicken.

While chicken is cooking, peel and chop 3 small carrots (giving ends of carrot to dog who runs from the other end of the house when he hears me peeling a carrot or apple.)

Look for any celery in crisper, none to be found. Pick though packages of herbs which were required for other recipes. (Hubby bought me Rachel Ray’s new cookbook for Christmas – the girl is into fresh herbs, big time!) Scavenge some thyme, rosemary and flat leaf parsley.

Removed chicken from pan. Add a little more oil, stir in onions and carrots. Pull out 2 pints of frozen chicken stock, nuke to defrost.

Chop thyme and rosemary, place in metal tea-ball (easier than cheesecloth, or picking out the herbs). Onions are beginning to smell good. Chop parsley, put aside.

Answer phone call. (“Uh-huh…. Sure…. ok…..”) Add chicken stock and chicken to pan. Add more salt and pepper. Add bay leaf and tea-ball with herbs. Doesn’t look like enough liquid, add another cup of water. Hang up phone.

Look for stray bags of veggies in freezer, find peas. Look for stray bags of pasta, only find orzo (little itty-bitty pasta). Shrug and go with the orzo, even though it will be the smallest thing in the soup. Remind self not to place entire bag of orzo into pot, or the whole thing will be a sticky mess.

Soup looking good, boiling away. Add orzo, peas and parsley. Boil for 6 more minutes – more or less. Take picture with digital camera, which now must live in the kitchen to record great culinary events, such as this. Pick out bay leaf and tea-ball.

Eat with hubby while watching a Food Network special “Mario Full Boil.” Add more salt. Watch Mario Batali have a hard time keeping within his ten-million dollar budget for his “world class” restaurant in Manhattan, and tasting a new dish on his menu featuring duck balls. (And no, those are not like meatball.) Wonder how many stinkin’ times they are going to say “world class” or “4-star.”

Finish off soup with hubby. Start to watch “Giada's Italian Holiday” Get extremely jealous of skinny woman eating her way through Italy. Laugh at her inadequate description of Nutella gelato. “Vanilla ice cream with mounds of chocolate fudge and a hint of hazelnut.” Oh please, that comes no where close to describing such an orgasmic experience. Hubby notices that she never pays for anything, and is therefore a free-loader. Feel slightly better.

French Onion Soup 

French Onion Soup

Denver finally has gotten some snow. After weeks of dry, mild weather, winter has once again made its presence known. One of my favorite things to eat on a cold night is French Onion Soup. It is the epitome of peasant cuisine, no fancy ingredients, just a nice slow cook time.


Soupe à l’Oignon (French Onion Soup) based on the recipe from “Paris: Authentic Recipes Celebrating the Food of the World” by Marlena Spieler
Serves 4

1 Tablespoon butter
2 Tablespoons oil
Three cups of very thinly sliced onions (About 2 large)
Pinch of Sugar
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
¾ - 1 cup red wine
2 14-oz cans beef broth
1 ½ cups water
1 bay leaf
4 slices thick bread (dried out French bread is ideal)
4 slices of Swiss or gruyere cheese
Fresh chopped parsley (optional)

Melt the butter in a large pot with the oil, add the onions stirring to coat with the butter mixture. Add sugar, salt and pepper and cook gently for 20-30 minutes, until the onions are golden and very soft.

Add the wine, and reduce the liquid by half, cooking over medium high heat for about 10 minutes. Add the stock, water and bay leaf; simmer for 30-40 minutes.

Preheat over to 400 (or turn grill on low). If using soft and/or fresh bread, lightly toast in oven. (If bread is already dried out, you may skip this step.) In oven-proof bowls, pour soup in bowl, top with bread, then cheese. Place in over for 4-6 minutes, until cheese bubbles and browns. (It may be easier to place the bowls on a cookie sheet, and then place the sheet in the oven.) Garnish with parsley and serve.

Strawberry "Fool in Love" 

Strawberry "Fool in Love"

Day late and a dollar short.
I was planning to include this with this week’s “Sugar High Friday” event on Valentine’s Day recipes. However, some bad allergic reaction required me to visit Benadryl la-la land for most of yesterday. (Thank God I don’t teach on Fridays.) So sadly, I missed the deadline, but I thought I would share my recipe anyway.

Strawberry “Fool in Love”

I am in a mixed marriage – I love chocolate, but my husband does not. He’ll eat some milk chocolate, brownies, and the occasionally cookie, but that’s about it. If I were to make a chocolate dessert, he might taste some, but it certainly would be consumed by my son and yours truly. Not exactly the effect one’s aims for on Valentine’s Day.

What my husband loves are strawberries. When picking fresh berries, we would joke that he should be weighted before and then after, to see how much we would owe the farmer for his “sampling.” He simply can not resist plump, crimson berries, warmed in the sun.

The difficult thing with strawberries is getting good ones. Sure, you could plunk down a five bucks for a pint of berries in the middle of February – but what would you get? A bunch of white, watery berries – with barely a hint of flavor. Blah. This leaves poor hubby berry-less on both Valentine’s Day and his birthday (which was in December).

Frozen berries can be used in a pinch, but they need some help. In this recipe, it’s cassis that comes to the rescue. Crème de Cassis, a blackcurrant liquor from Dijon, France, pairs lovingly with the strawberries, deepening their flavor.

A “fool” is a dessert found in Britain typically during the summer. Quite simply, whipped cream and fruit are folded together and chilled until set. Nearly any fruit will work. Some may require cooking with some sugar, such as gooseberries or peaches. Softer fruits, (raspberries and strawberries) are simply mashed and mixed with a little sugar. It is really best to taste the fruit first, to see how much sugar is needed – if any.

This dessert looks great in any type of glass that shows off the attractive layers. A crisp cookie nicely contrasts with the whipped cream, and is a fun scoop to eat the fool with.

So move over chocolates, this is how I make food-love for my hubby.

Strawberry “Fool in Love”
1 16-oz bag of frozen strawberries, thawed
3-5 Tablespoons sugar (depending upon the sweetness of the strawberries)
2 Tablespoons Crème de Cassis
1 pint heavy whipping cream

Chocolate curls, wafer cookies, for garnish (optional)

Taste the berries. Depending upon the berries, add 1 to 3 tablespoons of sugar and the cassis. Smash the berries with a potato masher, or the back of a fork. Set aside. (This could be completed while the berries are still slightly frozen, and the allowing the flavor to blend until completely defrosted.)

With a mixer, beat the cream. After one minute, sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of sugar. Continue beating until stiff peaks form.

Gently fold half of the strawberry mixture into the whipped cream. In serving glasses, layer the strawberries with the cream, starting with a layer of strawberries, and ending with a layer of whipped cream. Chill in the refrigerator for about an hour, until set.

To serve, garnish with chocolate curls and/or cookies.

Dutch Eggs 

Dutch Eggs

Isn’t it amazing that when you have an unexpected event happen and take a couple days off, it feels like it takes ages to catch up on life? My absences has been doing just that, though I’m not convinced I am truly “caught up.” Laundry, grading, working, errands – a seemingly never-ending cycle.

I wanted to continue the tribute to my Mimere by writing about her “Dutch Eggs.” My Pipere (grandfather) was in the Air Force and for a while in the 60’s the family lived in Germany. He would often go to Holland for work and would bring home fat red wheels of Gouda. (He was a strong genetic source for my love of cheese.) So Mimere, being ever frugal and resourceful, used the Gouda in this recipe. She remarked that she liked this egg dish because she could feed the family of nine all at once – and no one had cold eggs.

My aunts say there is really no “recipe” for this dish – you’re assembling the ingredients and popping them in the oven. You can, of course, make the eggs as you normally like them – scrambled, over-easy or sunny-side up. If you are making a lot of these eggs, or if your breakfast companions are not yet fully awake, I would suggest having your eggs slightly on the runny side, so while they are in the oven they can firm-up without becoming too hard.

Isn’t this just a fancy Egg McMuffin? I guess so– but Mimere would claim she had the idea first.

Dutch Eggs

For each serving you will need:
1 English muffin, sliced
2 slices of ham (Black Forest would be our traditional choice)
2 eggs
2 slices of Gouda

Preheat oven to 400°.

Toast English muffin. Meanwhile, cook one egg over-easy. When muffin is toasted, butter if desired. With muffin in baking pan, place ham on top of muffin, then the cooked egg. Top with Gouda. Place in oven while repeating process for second egg.

Bake until cheese is melted.

Alternatively, you could broil them to melt the cheese faster, or set the oven temperature a bit lower to give you time to make more eggs without over-baking the first batch.