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Kitchen sink soup

Kitchen sink soup #2

When you’ve just eaten a chicken and you’re getting sleepy, take a couple of minutes before getting out that tub of ice cream to put the remaining parts of the chicken – it’s soul really – into your favorite leftover repository. Then you can make soup the next day, making the $15 you spent to get that organic, free range, kosher chicken a little closer to worth it.

Ingredients:

  • chicken stock
  • a bunch of vegetables, such as carrots, onion, celery, beets, cabbage, leeks, bell pepper, collard greens, etc.
  • bacon

Start by making some chicken stock from the remains of that poor chicken – simmer whatever was left in some water with maybe some onion, carrot, celery, peppercorns, allspice, and thyme. Simmer for around 1/2 hour, probably over low heat, but it depends on your stove. Once that’s been going for a few minutes you can start softening the vegetables. Ideally, you had bacon for breakfast and left the pan dirty – if so, use that pan! Pretty much any vegetables will do, but I think chicken soup should at least contain onion, carrot, and celery. And more bacon. Once the vegetables are soft, pour in the stock. If there’s chicken left on the bones you can throw that in the soup too once it’s cool enough to pull off the bones. Do some tasting to check for saltiness. Some vinegar or lemon juice will add a lot of flavor if you’re avoiding salt. To make my soup even more likely to be accepted as dinner, I added some cooked lentils and garnished with creme fraiche and cheese.

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Salmon Thai curry

Salmon Thai curry

Ingredients:

  • the other half of that onion, sliced
  • thinly-sliced celery, like one big rib or several small ones
  • about 1/3 of a bell pepper, whatever color you’ve got
  • chopped chili (Thai, habañero, jalapeño, etc.), as much as you like
  • about a teaspoon of grated ginger
  • 2 cloves chopped garlic
  • a spoonful of red curry paste
  • 1/2 can coconut milk
  • about a teaspoon of honey
  • about a tablespoon of lime juice
  • maybe 1/2 cup stock – chicken, fish, shrimp, etc.
  • about 3/4 pounds of salmon, in chunks or strips
  • salt and pepper

Start by softening the onions, celery, and peppers in butter over medium-low heat. A little salt helps the vegetables soften. Once the vegetables look soft, add the garlic, ginger, and chili pepper. When the ginger is stuck to the bottom of your pan, add the paste, honey, lime juice, coconut milk, and stock. Scrape off the ginger and let the mixture simmer a few minutes. Taste the sauce at this point – add salt, chili paste, or hot sauce as necessary. Cut up the salmon in the meantime. I made about 1-inch cubes, but strips might be better because they’d cook faster and get more flavored. They might just flake apart though – my cubes held together pretty well. Toss the salmon in the simmering sauce, putting on a lid for faster cooking. Small chunks or strips of fish will cook very quickly – check a chunk for flakiness after a couple of minutes and every minute after that. Serve it in a bowl, topped with cilantro if you’ve got it and it hasn’t turned into green goo like mine.

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Cod soup

Cod soup

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 big onion, sliced
  • 2 ribs celery, chopped
  • 1 strip of bacon, chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
  • a pinch of saffron
  • pinch of thyme, salt, pepper
  • 2 cups chicken stock (fish or shrimp would probably be better)
  • 1 cup canned diced tomatos
  • about 1/2 pound cod fillets

I wasn’t sure what to do with the saffron so I heated up some water, poured it over the pinch of saffron in a bowl, then strained the saffron liquid into the soup towards the end…it’s probably possible to just toss the threads in the soup though.

Start by rendering the bacon a bit over medium heat. Add the onion, celery, and pinch of salt when the fat is mostly rendered out of the bacon. My bacon wasn’t very fatty so I added some olive oil. When the onion and celery change color and seem soft, add the garlic, pinch of thyme, and some pepper. Do not burn the garlic – I turned the heat down a little at this point. After that has cooked a couple of minutes add the stock, tomatoes, and saffron water. Some white wine could be added at this point. Simmer a few minutes, then add the cod chunks. You don’t want to cook the cod very long – just until it gets opaque and flaky.

For something closer to traditional bouillabaisse, use several types of fish and serve with aioli and little toasts – see the Wikipedia page for more details.