Thanksgiving rolled around and so did the turkey. Much as I like both, I’m not a tremendous fan of turkey soup, turkey tetrazzini, or turkey chowder. I like turkey pot pies pretty well, but I’m not up for playing with the crust just so my wife can point out all the calories I’ve stuffed into each one.

So I went surfing for ideas on the web, and found a turkey soup with lime and chile  over at the NYTimes, which they’d just popped up for the holiday. Which puts me in mind of two things that might work out: either a Turkey broth version of Tom Yum Gum, or a Turkey Tortilla Soup.

Browsing around for recipies to steal ideas from I came across the ultimate stock of Turkey Soup ideas at the National Turkey Federation’s website: eatturkey.com.

Turkey Soup Recipes – National Turkey Foundation Website

Suddenly the pot of broth I’ve got boiling away downstairs doesn’t seem so ominous.

Turkey Soup with Black Beans and Tortillas

• 8 cups turkey stock
• 2 15 oz cans Black Beans
• 1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
• 4 oz can diced jalapenos
• 1 cup sweet corn
• 1 med onion, diced and sauted
• 3 large clove garlic diced and sauted
• 1 cup salsa verde (medium hot)
• 1 tbs chili
• 1 tbs cumin
• 2 tbs corn flour (I put 2 tbs grits trhough a coffee grinder and called it flour)
• 1 tbs salt
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Basically, I threw all the ingredients except the cilantro together willy-nilly and stood back for 40 minutes while it did a slow simmer. Then I added the cilantro and let it simmer for another 10 minutes before turning off the heat to let it come together for about an hour.

Tortilla Strips

• Corn Tortillas (one per customer)

I tried cooking the tortillas up in olive oil in a frying pan, but never got the results I wanted. I had much better luck with this method:

1. Heat oven to 350 f
2. Cut tortillas into long strips, about 1/3 of an inch wide
3. Lay them down on a cookie sheet and lightly spray them with olive oil
4. Salt lightly and pop them into the oven for 8-10 minutes, until they get some color and are crunchy

Serve them on top of (or under) the soup.

Links / Sources

• Turkey Soup With Lime and Chile – Recipe – NYTimes.com
• Hot and Sour Thai Soup: Tom Yum Goong – FoodNetwork.com
• Chicken, Lime and Tortilla Soup – Cooks.com
• Chicken Tortilla Soup | the Pioneer Woman
• Hearty Turkey Tortilla Soup: Campbell’s Kitchen

You’ll notice that soup #35.5, Crab and Corn Chowder, doesn’t get a whole number to itself, though it got some pretty great raves from the crowd.That’s because it’s really Soup #35, Crab Confetti Soup, reinvented as a chowder. Continue reading →

I scored a one pound tin of crab meat at Shoppers Food Warehouse while shopping and wanted to see if I could improve on the last Crab Bisque I made, which was pretty good, but left room for improvement. Of course, all soup leaves room for improvement, or being taken in a different direction. Today’s direction is away from a crab bisque and into a confetti of onions, peppers, carrots and bacon bits. This isn’t actually a bisque, BTW, because it uses a flour and butter roux for thickness.

We’re currently hosting a vegetarian nephew, but he’s willing to concede that crabs aren’t animals for the purposes of today’s adventure. Bacon, even minced up is, unfortunately, but I suppose we could leave that out. I suppose.

Crab Confetti Bisque

• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
• 1 medium onion, minced
• 1 cup celery, minced
• 1 cup carrots, minced
• 1 poblano pepper, minced
• 1 red pepper, minced
• 1/4 cup of salted butter
• 1/2 cup general urpose flour
• 1 qt of chicken stock
• 1 tsp Old Bay Seasoning
• 1/8 tsp cayenne
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 pint of half and half
• 1 lb can of crab meat

This soup isn’t going to be blended, so the size you cut to is the size you’ll get. We’re looking for a colorful bunch of little bits here, somewhere between a 1/4 and an 1/8th of an inch square.

Add the vegetables into the oilve oil medium low as you cut them, and I suggest the order listed in the ingredients. When they’re all in, cook the collection until they’re slightly soft and add in the stock.Set it to smmer.

Now, let’s make a roux. Heck, let’s make a white sauce.

A roux is what you get when you cook oil and flour together in roughly equal quantities (by weight) until the flour is cooked to the desired degree.We’re looking for a “white” roux, which means we just want the flour to lose it’s “raw” smell, but if you went further you’d get a darker roux with interesting flavors. A blond roux on one end of the spectrum tastes a little toasty, while the coffee colored roux used in Gumbo tastes like toasted nuts. You can use any cooking oil for a roux, though French cooking leans heavily on butter…as we will.

Melt the butter in a medium saute pan over medium heat. When it starts to foam, shake the flour in a bit at a time while whisking it in so that it doesn’t lump up. Stir this mixture for about three minutes, which cooks the flour so that it loses a “raw” flavor. The consistency should be about that of a cake frosting.

Now, blend in the pint of half and half by whisking it into the roux in a slow stream.  When it’s all in and reaches a sauce-like consistency, that’s it. You now have a (very) basic white sauce, which you can take in any number of directions, including adding cheese into it to form a cheese sauce, which is pretty much what we did in the Beer and Cheese Soup.

Blend this into the soup. If it’s too thick to blend easily, take some stock out and add that to it in the saucepan first.

Add in the spices and let them cook on low for about fifteen minutes. While the soup is coming along, drain your crab meat and chop it into whatever size you like, probably somewhat larger than the vegetables, on the order of 1/4 to 1/2 inch cubes.

Add the crab to the soup and continue on low for twenty minutes.

Add water (or milk) to adjust thickness. Remember it’s not a pudding…it’s a soup. Adjust salt as required and shut it down until you’re ready to serve.

Beer and Cheese Soup - It's really, really, good. Here I've garnished it with a slice of bread and a sprinkling of cayenne...not enough to make it hot, but just enough to add a little bite.

Beer and Cheese Soup. Sounds like a joke, right? If so, then you probably haven’t had any, or (even worse), it wasn’t as good as it could have been. This is, hands down, one of the best soups I’ve made, but considering the ingredients maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise.

Just as the iPad is just a bigger iPod, you can say that soups, especially cream soups, are just bigger batches of sauces. In both cases it’s a perfectly reasonable observation, but that doesn’t diminish the goodness of the antecedent item. Raquel Welch could be thought of as just a bigger Twiggy too. Continue reading →