Cream Soup and Spinach dish

I was looking through a book called Vintage Notions, which had images and projects from the 1920s, and among them were two recipes for cream soups. When I went for lunch with Karen in Skowhegan, they had cream of spinach and cream of tomato soup on the menu, and the whole idea just struck me as something good. So last night I adapted the recips a bit and made home-made cream of spinach soup that was quite yummy:

Cream of Spinach Soup

2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp. flour
2 Tbsp (+/-) finely minced onion
2 cups whole milk
1 cup spinach puree (see details below)
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
additional half-and-half cream to taste, or enrich the 2 cups milk by substituting some cream
goat cheese for garnish (or sour cream, or feta, or maybe Parmesan)

The original recipe did not have onion or cheese, but I felt that taste in the 1920s was a bit more bland than today's taste, so I added them.

Melt butter in 2 qt. pan, add onion and saute till just translucent. Sprinkle with flour and cook together. Add milk gradually, stirring the whole time. Stir in spinach and stir well to distribute. Season and garnish.

For the spinach puree, here's what I did. I looked for spinach baby food, but there wasn't any at Albertson's (don't know if there is any anywhere in the world.) The original instructions said to force cooked spinach through a sieve, but that sounded like a mess and maybe a broken strainer. I don't have one of those cone-shaped sieves with a pusher thing. I contemplated the spinach issue for a while and finally did this: Cook a half bag (or whole box) of chopped spinach. Allow to cool, drain out any excess water, but don't squeeze. Place spinach in blender and puree. Yeah, it's a bit of a mess to clean up the blender, but the puree had a lovely texture. About a cup in all.

I had chevre goat cheese in the fridge, so I topped the soup with that.

The same book had another recipe that I want to try:

Cream of Tomato Soup
3 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp. flour
2 cups whole milk
1 cup canned crushed tomatoes

make the white sauce as above. Add the tomato slowly to avoid curdling.

And also while I was in Maine, I had something called Haddock Olympia at The Last Unicorn, and the accompanying spinach was delicious and would make a lovely side dish on its own with fish or chicken or lamb.

Saute a pound of fresh clean spinach in olive oil and garlic. Add some lemon juice. Top with chopped kalamata olives and crumbled feta cheese.

I also want to try to make a seafood chowder like the one at the Red Barn. But I won't have a lobster claw, sadly. (Unless I cook a lobster....unlikely.) Maybe crab claw? It had sea scallops, white fish, and lobster, in what seemed to be simply milk, cream and butter.

Fonduta

In Chicago, we went to Quartino, where we had a lovely meal that included Fonduta, the Italian version of Fondue. I wanted to try it at home, and found the following recipe online:

8 oz. Fontina cheese
2 cups whole milk
pinch of salt
4 egg yolks
8 oz. butter

I bought a piece of Fontina at Trader Joe's, and I also bought a bag of shredded mixed Italian cheese at Marukai. The mixed cheeses included parmesan, mozzarella, smoked provolone, asiago, romano and fontina. The shredded cheese smelled a lot sharper than the whole fontina, and I was a little torn as to which to use. In the end, I used mostly the mix, with an addition of some cubes of the Fontina.

I set up a small pan over a saucepan as a double boiler to melt the cheese and one cup of the milk. In another pan, I warmed a cup of milk, the butter (yeah, that's a lot of butter!) and the egg yolks. I was a little concerned that the egg would scramble, and there were no details about how to avoid that, and in fact, it did happen somewhat. Next time, I will maybe temper the eggs and add them at the end.



In any case, the finished sauce was not as smooth as it should have been, but the taste was very good. I jerry-rigged a serving mechanism that consisted of a small candle and a rack (from an old toaster over) supported on 4 small cups, to keep the sauce warm. It may not even be necessary, but it added a nice touch. This would be a nice meal on a cold winter night, but it tasted very good out on the patio tonight as well.

We used Spoon House bread cut into 1" cubes and a sliced Fuji apple. In the winter, I might add potatoes, but Papa really wanted to focus on the bread, which was very tasty.

It would be easy to cut this recipe in half, and this amount made too much for 2 people to eat as a dinner. I will see how the leftover sauce keeps and re-heats.

Super Bowl Buffalo Chicken Strips

This is excellent food for the Super Bowl, as proven year after year.

1/3 c. flour
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1/4 c. milk
1 lb. chicken tenders
corn oil
1/2 stick butter, melted
1/4 cup Franks' Red Hot Original

Dip chicken in milk and then flour. Saute in oil. Turn off heat and cover. Mix hot sauce and butter. Remove chicken to serving plate and drizzle sauce over it. Serve with blue cheese and celery sticks.

Shrimp Curry and Snow Peas

Sorry, no picture--we ate it all up too fast! But here are the instructions for Shrimp Curry. This started out as a recipe in The Key to Chinese Cooking as Fillet of Flounder in Curry Sauce, and has had ingredients crossed out and the flounder changed to shrimp, so by now, the recipe is a little hard to follow in the cookbook!

1/2~1 pound fresh shrimp (medium size)
1 tsp. minced garlic
1 onion, chopped fairly large
3 Tbsp. oil
1 Tbsp. American curry powder
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 tsp. cornstarch dissolved in 1 cup water and 2 tsp. sesame oil

Remove shells from shrimp and slice back and remove black "vein." Heat oil in frying pan. Saute onion for a few minutes, then add garlic and continue sauteing. When onion is nearly soft, add shrimp and cook till pink. Stir curry powder into shrimp/onion mix and stir and cook for a bit. Add soy sauce. Stir up cornstarch mixture and pour into pan. Cook and stir for a few moments until sauce thickens up. Turn off heat and let rest while you prepare snow peas, then reheat and serve. To make a single serving, probably .25 to .33 pound of shrimp would be enough, and you might cut the cornstarch/sesame/water and curry powder down.

Snow peas: Pinch off ends of snow peas and pull off any thick strings. Heat 1 Tbsp. oil in pan and drizzle a small amount of sesame oil in as well. Add dry snow peas and sprinkle with salt. Saute on high heat till wilted and slightly browned.

Creamy Wild Rice and Turkey Soup

This cannot make any claim to being health food, but it turned out really delicious. Mostly from the Reese wild rice package, as adapted by me (they didn't think of adding turkey!)

Wild Rice Soup

1/2 a stick of butter
3/4 cup onions
1 cup celery
1/4 cup flour
1 quart whole milk (I fortified it with some half and half I had in the fridge)
a cup, more or less, or cooked wild rice
cooked turkey in bite-size pieces (2 cups? I don't know, I didn't measure)
chicken base
1/8 tsp. white pepper (or black)

Melt butter but do not brown. Saute onion and celery till soft but not brown. Sprinkle flour over vegetables and stir well. Slowly add milk, stirring continually till thickened. Add cooked wild rice and turkey and barely simmer for a few minutes. taste and add bits of chicken base, dissolved in a spoon in the hot soup, to taste. Add white pepper. Do not allow to boil. Makes about 6 cups.

Chirinabe for a chilly night

This turned out so good! Ingredients cost about $27.

Broth:
1 quart of water
1 packet of dashi no moto
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 Tbsp. sake

Mix broth in a large bowl and pour into two nabes and heat.

Add, in this order, cut into large chunks:

enoki mushrooms
chicken tenders
salmon
black cod (could skip next time)
king crab legs (3/4 pound, 2 pieces, cut into sections)
large sea scallops
(next time include clams!)
a few leafs of nappa
large pieces of green onion

Simmer till fish is just cooked through.

Simply Spaghetti

Papa developed a craving for spaghetti this evening, and I pulled together a simple sauce that turned out fantastic:

1/2 pound ground beef (80% lean)
1 fresh sweet Italian sausage, cut open and chopped into pieces
1/2 ~1 onion, chopped
1 small can sliced mushrooms, drained, reserve juice
1 fresh green pepper, chopped
1 24 oz. jar of Classico Tomato and basil sauce
1 lb. Trader Joe's spaghettti

Yes, right, I had the half-tube of ground beef and a leftover Italian sausage in the freezer, and I quickly defrosted them in warm water. Not the recommended method, but that's what I did. When the meat was defrosted, I sauted it in the frying pan, chopping and breaking it up with a wooden spoon. When it was just about done, I added the onion (half an onion because that's what was in the refrigerator. a whole onion would be fine too) and green pepper and mushrooms and sauted a bit more. I didn't add (or subtract) any oil, what came out of the meat was just right. Stir with a wooden spoon till the onion and pepper start to soften. Pour in the jar of sauce and thin with some mushroom juice. Simmer for a half hour or so, adding more mnushroom juice as needed. Cook spaghetti, serve with sauce! It was yummy! I only cooked 3/4 of a pound of the spaghetti, but there's excess sauce, so it's enough for a whole pound.