Mushroom Soup with Parsley Dumplings

So Alayna had a board meeting and in a strange swing of ambition I decided that I'd tackle a hard soup all by myself. And tackle is exactly what I did. I feel like this soup and I had a love hate relationship for the entire 2.5 hour cooking process. Maybe it was after going to the food store and spending $35 mostly all on ingredients (dried mushrooms, $8- actually you can remove this step if you want and just add 2 more cups of broth- it is less of an earthy taste but I mean, I'm cheap and sort of regret it, so just sayin.' Also, note I bitch that I spent $35 on soup supplies, which is way more than we normally spend, but still I have 6+ meals out of it. Not bad.)

Or maybe it was getting home, exhausted with 5 bags in my hands from work/gym/grocery store (this is essentially my gym/tan/laundry only it ends with a book in my bed and not a makeout in the bar) and the prospect of starting this big cooking process seemed daunting.

But I knew if just gave up and put veggies and lentils in a soup pot again and called it a different soup because I added say, both kale and chard, Alayna would kill me. So I embarked.

Note in this picture how I'm using all my burners. Then note how the cabinet above my stove which holds pots is totally empty. God bless dishwashers. All in all this soup was really good. I sort of butchered those dumplings because I never used an electric mixer or processor and instead did it all with fork and bowl. So they were eh, a little lumpy. Whatever, I'd eat lumpy dumplings over washing two more things any day. This soup was souper good though. At 10:30pm when I finally sat down with my bowl of mushroom soup and dumplings I was pretty proud of myself. Soups up laddles!

Ingredients

• 2 cups water
• 3/4 ounce dried chanterelle mushrooms
• 3 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 pound crimini (baby bella) mushrooms, sliced
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• Fine sea salt
• 3 tablespoons dry white wine
• 1 big onion
• 3 thinly sliced leeks
• 4cups vegetable broth (such as Swanson)
• A big pinch of cayenne pepper
• a couple handfuls of carrots
• 1/2 bag of spinach
  

Parsley Dumplings

• 3/4 cup (scant) low-fat cottage cheese
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) butter, room temperature, divided
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup all purpose flour, divided
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• Pinch of ground nutmeg
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• 3/4 cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley

Preparation

Soup

• Bring 2 cups water and dried mushrooms to boil in small saucepan. Simmer for 20 minutes. Put aside (with liquid)
  
• Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic; stir 30 seconds. Add baby bella mushrooms and thyme; sprinkle with sea salt and sauté until mushrooms are browned, stirring often, about 12 minutes. Add wine; stir until liquid is absorbed, about 1 minute. Set mushroom mixture aside.
• Heat 1 1/2 tablespoons oil in another heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion; cook until translucent and beginning to brown, stirring often, about 6 minutes. Add leeks and carrots reduce heat to medium, sprinkle with sea salt, and sauté until vegetables are soft and golden, stirring often, about 15 minutes.
• Bring broth to simmer in large pot over medium-high heat. Pour in reserved mushroom cooking liquid, leaving sediment behind. Add all mushrooms, onion mixture, and cayenne. Add spinach. Keep this pot simmering while you make your dumplings, occasionally giving it a stir.

Parsley Dumplings

• Puree cottage cheese in mini processor until smooth. Using electric mixer, beat 3 tablespoons butter and eggs in medium bowl. Add cottage cheese, 1/2 cup flour, 1 teaspoon sea salt, and nutmeg; beat on low speed just to blend. Stir in 1/2 cup flour, cheese, and parsley.
• Bring large pot of salted water to boil. Using teaspoon, scoop piece of dough about size of cherry. Holding spoon just above boiling water, use second spoon to push dough into water. Working quickly, repeat about 10 more times. When dumplings rise to surface, simmer until cooked through, 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer dumplings to large plate. Repeat with remaining dough.
• Melt 3 tablespoons butter in large skillet over medium heat. Working in 2 batches, add dumplings to skillet. Cook until brown in spots, 2 to 3 minutes per side.
• Bring soup to simmer. Divide dumplings among wide shallow bowls. Divide soup among bowls and serve.

The Highest Nutrient Soup You Can Make

If you know me you know I love nutrition. The 700-page "Alternate Nutrition," is my bathroom book. I go to the Health Section first on the Times online. And I have some weird thing for Martha Shulman. Not to be confused with Martha Stewart- whom I also have some weird thing for, and have since I was the weirdest eight year old of all time. Alison Smith, please feel free to testify to this.

So as you can imagine this soup excited me plenty. Ever reach for the processed filled not-real-food snack in your cubicle on a Thursday afternoon. Stand up for the first time in 6 hours and hear your legs creak like an 85-year old then get on the over-crowded subway to have people cough on you- you get out at that dive bar in the East Village and drink watery beer? I know and I have. And it doesn't make me feel healthy. (As I write this out I can almost hear my I-live-in-a-town-that-has-a-much-higher-quality-of-life friends shake their head with that satisfaction. I geeeeet it.)

Okay, sorry, distracted, the reality TV boy of the moment is about to realize he's gay. And there those friends go. The friends who don't own TV. The friends who write, "TV, what's that?" on their Facebook TV show interests (And don't get me started on the friends who don't even have Facebook to begin with.) Whatever, Alayna is flipping between "NYC Prep" and "16-and-Pregnant" right now. I know what you're thinking, "16-and-Pregnant!" That's too far! That's unethical! Whatever. Okay. I'm getting off point.

Soupie contest! It's going on for another week. Alayna and I just didn't have the time to go through all our soupie submissions. Now that we're famous in Dubai those are starting to roll in in addition to our United States fan base. And Alayna and I are like, Shoot, now we have to translate Arabic. So anyways, if you, say, didn't have time to submit your entry about your favorite soup today is lucky your day because you have another week! And trust me the prize is going to be awesome!

...Oh my gosh, the 16-year old is actually having the baby. Right now. Alayna looks like she is about to cry but she keeps turning back with this sad-like-amusement. "Sad-like-amusement," really, actually, sums up the way I see most things. Ohhh, you and your TV-less satisfication head shakes are endless.

Regardless of where and how you live friends, hope you're in the mood for a bowl of fiber filled natural health. Salud.

Your Bowl of Feel-Better-Ness

• First, put 2 ounces of dried porcini mushrooms into hot water and let soak for about half an hour while you start up the rest of the soup
• Peel and chop two sweet potatoes and a handful of red potatoes into bite-sized pieces and boil in a separate pot
• Roughly dice 6-8 cloves of garlic and saute in olive oil until translucent with some hot pepper
  
• Add a handful of carrots, chopped, and cover
  
• Add the leaves of a full bunch of kale to the pot
• Slice 2 yellow squashes and halve the pieces and add to the pot
• Add a handful of shitake mushrooms, sliced, and a box of baby bella mushrooms
• Once everything is getting soft, add the strained porcini mushroom juice (you might want to squeeze out excess juice... they are delicious) and cover the rest of the veggies with chicken (or vegetable) broth
• Simmer until things are getting soft, adding the potatoes when they are easy to put a fork through
• Blend and serve!
  

We were so excited about health we broke our blender. Over our heads. Holla.

That's how Amal looks when she is really excited about Health.

There you go. A bowl of 10 more years to your life. Enjoy.

Chickens Soup

I know. It doesn't have to do with Chicken and Rice soup but it is a good photo series.

Okay. First thing is first and that is the WINNER OF THE FIRST MONDAY SOUP HAIKU CONTEST.

This person is someone who is no stranger to poetry. From his first published poems in Folio to beautiful free style raps in car rides, I can't think of anyone who deserves it more.

Ladies and gentlemen, lets give a big hand to Mr. Ziggeh Karp for this quietly powerful master piece:

There comes a time when

everyone must choose, chicken

noodle or chowder?

Sadly, Alayna and I didn't snap any shots of this soup but Alayna did do an incredible job of sending me so many chicken soup cartoons in a row that I began to wonder if she has a chicken soup cartoon fetish thing.

Anyhoot, here she is: Chicken and Rice Soup. It was good. A nice mix of light but filling. This is a soup everyone likes and everyone should master. So get your chicken friends out of the coop and start ringing some necks.

To-Do!

In a side pot, cook 1 cup of rice (white or brown... or even fancy wild rice!) according to instructions

In your soup pot, dice about 6 cloves of garlic and an onion

and sautee in olive oil

(add a few shakes of hot pepper if you are cold and stuffy and feel the need to be revived)

Add chopped carrots (either 3 real carrots or a handful and a half of baby)

and a head or two of broccoli, also chopped

Add a small box of baby bella/cremini mushrooms and/or shitake

(and, if you still have those dried porcinis laying around, you could soak some of those and put in the broth and I think it would be delicious)

Once things are almost all the way soft, add two whole tomatoes, chopped,

and lower the temperature to simmer covered

In a separate covered pan, cook 2-3 boneless/skinless chicken thigh (or breast) cut into bite-sized pieces in olive oil with salt and pepper

When the rice is done cooking add it to the soup pot,

cover everything with chicken broth and bring up the heat

Once the chicken is cooked through, add it to the soup pot

and put in more broth if needed.

Bring to a light boil, and then take the temperature back down

Add a handful and a half of fresh parsley and voila!

Chicken soup for the soul.

The Veggies in Your Fridge Soup & Pizza

Well, well, well, wasn't last week an exciting Monday? For reasons unknown Alayna had the Monday after Easter off. Did anyone else in the world have that day off? I haven't heard of a soul except for the Easter bunny... ba-da-bing... but I was still excited because that meant she could start cooking earlier.

Sometimes Alayna and I worry that we aren't going to be fed enough so we make things in addition to soup. Turns out we're always fed enough. But still. So we made soup, and a pizza because she had a vat of left-over pesto she made last week. (That I would sometimes stick various objects in, cover entirely, and eat.) And a sheet of brownies.

We ate all of this within an hour. Granted we had Lindsay's help. And Kate's meager attempts at slicing off the smallest brownie sliver I have ever seen. But still. Everything was eaten. And we were merry. Even after we realized Gossip Girl was a repeat.

Sigh.

Mmmmkay, now that you're getting the hang of soup you should have realized that veggies can be swapped pretty easily. Especially for soups like these which are mostly a hodgepodge based on what we have a lot of in the refrigerator and what we worry is going to go bad.

So ladies and gentlemen, cats and kiddies, here you go...

The Veggies In Your Fridge Soup ... & Pizza!

Start by heating 2 cups of water in the microwave for 3 minutes

and then adding 1 oz of dried porcini mushrooms for 30 minutes

chop up 1 yellow onion and saute in olive oil
add fresh rosemary and thyme, a few shakes of red pepper
add in 3 celery stalks, also chopped
add in a large handful of chopped carrots
add 1 smallish eggplant, cut into pinky sized pieces (Alayna always likes to compare her veggie slices to parts of the human hand.)

Cover the pot to catch the steam
cut up 1 box of baby bella mushrooms,

2 porta bella mushroom caps (optional)

& a handful of shitake mushrooms (with bottom of stems cut off)

& add to the mix once the eggplant is becoming more cooked

let it all hang out together until things are becoming cooked through.

Once they're almost done,

add in the porcini mushrooms WITH THEIR SOAKING JUICE
add chicken broth (or water with cubes) to cover the rest of veggies

bring to a light boil
toss in several handfuls of spinach and cook until wilted (about five minutes)

stirring occasionally
blend (in a blender) chunky and serve!

Adding milk (whole) is optional (but good).

Here is the lovely pizza we had in addition to the soup.

Alayna put on (store bought pizza dough) home-made pesto, andre cheese, tomatoes and broccoli

and it was all DELICIOUS

Look at that. I just learned how to make fuzzy things around the edges so it looks like a postcard from long ago.

While we enjoyed our soup, Zizi enjoyed her shoes.

Hello Mrs. Mushroom, Meet Mr. Potato (Soup)

Ah, It seems like only yesterday I had to call Alayna to ask her what a leek looked like when she told me to pick them up from a store.

"A bloated scallion," she said. She was right. That's like, exactly what leeks look like.

However, many months later when I was a seasoned leek hunter Alayna called, frantic, it was soup night and she had not been able to find leeks at Whole Foods. I was leaving the gym, I was red as a beet but was up for the challenge.

In the east village there is at least one bodega on every street corner. I was walking home fourteen blocks, this means I must have gone into at least fourteen bodegas. That was the night I discovered bodegas don't sell leeks.

Oh well, we did without. But as we enjoyed this soup... which let me tell you, is a winner, we discussed how leeks would have added to it. And then the discussion trickled into our Monday night stream of conscious which often include a mixture of thoughts concerning the kitten, MTV's "Bromance," and the meatiness a leek can provide for a soup.

Ingredients:

Butter 2 leeks, chopped (use yellow onion if you have no leeks, or combine one leek, one onion for more flavor)

Large handful of baby carrots

6 cups chicken broth

dried dill weed

salt

ground black pepper

bay leaf

2 pounds red potatoes, diced

1 pound fresh mushrooms (mix regular and baby portabella, or any other type of mushroom you like!), sliced

1 cup half-and-half 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

Directions:

1.Melt some butter butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Mix in leeks and carrots, and cook 5 minutes. Pour in broth. Season with dill, salt, pepper, and bay leaf. Mix in potatoes, cover, and until potatoes are tender but firm (about 20 min).

2.Melt more butter in a skillet over medium heat, and saute the mushrooms 5 minutes, until lightly browned. Stir into the soup.

3.In a small bowl, mix the half-and-half and flour until smooth. Stir into the soup to thicken.