too good not to share!

this recipe is adapted from my Thai cookbook, but having just finished a huge bowl of soup, it IS too good not to share with all my adoring fans (...snort!)

Galangal, chicken, and coconut soup

(first off, i don't even know what galangal is, i substitute ginger, and, i am not a fan of coconut.  but coconut milk is ok!)

Ingredients:

4 lemon grass stalks (now available at the safeway on 25th st, of all places!! otherwise, Han-Ah-Rheum, or the thai place off of greenmount & 33rd-ish)

2 14oz cans coconut milk

2 c chicken stock (i make my own veggie stock, it works fine.  and i add more like 3-4 cups, to thin out the soup and make it last longer!)

1" piece of galangal (yup, i use a couple long slices of ginger)

10 black peppercorns, crushed (used a mix)

10 kaffir lime leaves, torn (or the rind of half a lime)

11 oz skinless boneless chicken breast, cut into thin, bite size strips

1 cup button (white) mushrooms, halved if large (i just realized that i'd previously read this as straw mushrooms, they are yummy too!)

1 can baby corn cobs, quartered lengthwise and cut in half to make it easier to eat!

4 tb lime juice

3 tb Thai fish sauce

chopped fresh red chillies (though i just bought some red chili oil & pouring that on top makes it look like thai landing's soup!), scallions, and cilantro leaves to garnish

Directions:

Cut off the lower 2" from each lemon grass stalk and chop finely.

Bring coconut milk and stock to a boil in large pan over medium heat.  Add lemon grass, ginger, peppercorns, and half the lime rind, reduce heat to low and simmer gently, 10 min (actually, longer, since i LOVE the lemongrass taste!)

Strain the soup into a clean pan.

Return the soup to low heat, stir in the chicken strips, mushrooms, and corn.  Simmer gently until the chicken is cooked.

Stir in the lime juice and fish sauce, then add remaining lime zest.

Garnish with cilantro, scallions, chillies or chili oil.

YUM!

Oldie but goodie

...from the college days (made for lunch/kids dinner)

Ingredients

1 package Original Uncle Bens rice (orange box with "23 herbs & spices"--hard to find these days with the surgence of 1-minute rice, microwave rice, etc.)

1 can black beans

1 can (tho i use frozen) corn

1 can diced skinned tomatoes (optional, we used to just do beans & corn)

lotta grated cheddar cheese

Directions

Cook rice accd'ing to instructions.

if using canned corn, throw in oven-safe container with black beans and tomatoes.  I opted to cook the frozen corn in the tomato juice poured off the canned tomatoes, seemed to work fine.

mix corn, rice, beans, tomatoes in oven-safe dish

cover (LOAD!) with cheddar, bake in oven til melted.

fingers crossed kids eat it (or, they'll just go hungry, kidding!)

make do with what you've got, part deux...

sooo, i had a horrendous day but i had planned on making onion soup.  mostly because, i have a bag of onions, and some green shoots were poking out of the bag, so, time to use 'em up, i'm guessing!  also, as usual, i had a ton of veggie stock in the freezer, so may as well use that up too!

Ingredients:

4 onions

about 6 chinese-soup containers' worth of stock

almost 1 stick of butter

fresh thyme

some chardonnay that's been tucked in the back of the fridge forever

sherry

salt

soy sauce 

pepper

(really, that's it?! that's all i need? oh wait, i forgot the piece de resistance....)

baguette (though all they had was an italian with sesame seeds, ah well)

swiss cheese (most recipes seemed to call for gruyere, but close enough.  i had some leftover from making artichoke dip for a super bowl party.)

Directions:

peel, slice onions.  heat butter in pan (cast iron was perfect for this job!!) on high (electric stove, boo.)  add onions, stir around for a bit (~5 min, then it was time to walk the dog to meet the man at the train station).  Turn on low (so as not to burn the house down in my absence).  

Got the baguette and a bottle of red (crucial to my state of mind, opened as soon as we returned!)

onions looked fine, so i "deglazed" (i'm guessing, that's what some recipes called for--i just dumped some white wine in) the onions with the wine.  This is where i added the fresh thyme--i love my barrels in the backyard, that stuff lives all winter long!

Turned the heat back up, moved all the onions into a bigger pot, and added all the stock.  (in retrospect, good thing i had so much stock! 4 onions is a LOT!)

While it was heating, I cut some thick slices of "baguette" and put them in the oven @ 350 on a pan, wrapped the rest of the bread in foil & threw that in too.  Also grated the Swiss at this point, too.

Brought it all to a boil (probably effectively killing any nutritional value of the onions/stock, but all in the name of flavor), but only for a moment.

then added salt (all in all, about 1 Tb salt and 2-3 Tb soy sauce, to taste) and pepper.  It was still missing that tangy bite, and luckily the sherry did it!

By now the bread slices were just a bit browned, took them out, (and the loaf) spooned the soup into a bowl, threw some cheese in, floated the bread (2 slices per bowl) and added more cheese, and put in the oven on broil.  (Also in retrospect, next time i will cut the bread up into more crouton-y sizes, it was kinda hard to cut it into bites sized pieces in the steaming hot bowls!)

After about 2 min it looked ready!

Boy was it yummy!  The man had had some reservations about this alone for dinner ("umm, isn't it kindof , brothy?") but we were both nicely full!  

And, I totally felt like I was reincarnating nights that my friends across the street who now live in Chile made french onion soup.  Awww...