Fat Tuesday’s coming up this week, so the only soup I could possibly consider is a gumbo. I’ve made a few gumbos, but never as good as the ones I’ve had at the Gumbo Shack in New Orleans French Quarter. The weather here in Alexandria is a fine early spring rain, with plenty of buds on the tree outside my window. I’ve got Zydeco on Pandora and andouille sausage in the pan. The only thing that could be better would be if I was in the Big Easy sipping coffee with chicory at Cafe du Monde on the bank of the Mississippi.

This is a simple gumbo, made from the Louisiana Holy Trinity, Onion, celery, and bell peppers, with sausage and chicken, garlic and Zatarain’s seasoning. Oh, and of course a roux made from flour and oil and stirred over medium heat until it’s the color of lightly roasted coffee. Continue reading →

I think the only beef and barley soup I’ve ever had was actually Campbells’s, though it’s one of my favorites. Not that I tried to duplicate theirs here, just saying.

Some days I hew closer to recipes than others. This wasn’t one of them. Saute the beef, add some barley, cook for a while and throw some carrot in at the end. How hard could that be?

The challenge here is that I wanted the beef tender, the barley soft but not too mushy, and the carrots (and any other vegetables that might show up) firm but not crunchy. Maybe some tomato for richness.  Having never cooked with barley didn’t seem like to much of a handicap. Continue reading →

Kojo Nnamdi: Soups for All Seasons
Wednesday, Feb 23, 2011 at 1:06 p.m.

listen here

UPDATE: I got on the show as the first caller. Hey, for me it was a big deal. I asked if the pros had any suggestions for alternatives to making stock from scratch, since I’m making a gallon of soup every week…and they knocked the idea that any base could compete with fresh stock. Haunt the butcher for bones, they said. I also asked about shipping soup, which threw Kojo for a minute, but besides sending it FedEx, they didn’t have much to say…well, so much for my two minutes of soup fame… Continue reading →

Red Lentil Soup w Bacon and Parsley Yogurt Sauce

This week’s soup was going to be Chicken Little Noodle Soup but my gal put in a request for lentil, which wasn’t a bad idea either. Of course, she wasn’t talking about plain old grayish green lentils. She wanted red lentils, which I’ve never cooked with and you can’t find at the nearest grocery store. Well, I can’t anyway.

Red lentil’s aren’t really red lentil’s by the way. They’re actually yellow lentil’s with their shell’s milled off to show the red inside. As a result, they’re a fast cooking legume, ready in minutes. Continue reading →