Review: Russian Candy

I have a real weakness for cheap chocolate. Sure, I like the hoity-toity super dark stuff, but I won’t pass up M&Ms, or dark Mars bars, or Twix. I’ll even eat Hershey’s kisses, provided they’re the almond kind. (I’ll pass on plain Hershey’s bars, thanks.) I’m never more tempted to eat cheap chocolate than when I’m shopping at Russian groceries, all of which sell a big selection of candy. The quality varies, but the varieties are breathtaking: my little local store must stock at least 15 kinds. Some have been on the market since the Soviet times, others are new, many have baroque names. Anyone up for a mishka kosolapiy (clumsy bear) or a ptichie moloko (bird’s milk)?

In this third part of my series on stuff you can buy at Russian/Eastern European groceries, I will sample and review Russian candy. My goal is to taste my way through all of the God knows how many varieties and produce the definitive hierarchy of Russian sweets. (A hierarchy of American candy bars can be found here.)

This one’s called “Condensed Milk.” It’s actually dark chocolate-covered…something. The filling is off-white, grainy, and tastes kind of nutty and super-sugary. A C list-candy: good mostly when you crave a sugar boost.

The name means “little trunks with condensed milk.” Little trunks--aww! This one’s for the A-list: a soft, creamy, slightly lemony filling, covered with dark chocolate. A little too sweet, but I don’t mind.


Rachki! That means “crawfish” in Russian, but for some reason a lobster is pictured on the wrapper. What does this candy have to do with shellfish? I suspect “rachki” refers to the crunchy, hard exterior; inside is a crumbly chocolate-nut filling. Eh. I’ll eat this if I crave sugar and nothing better is around. C-list.

Two years of Yulinka Cooks

Holy crap, this little blog of mine is two years old! Last year I celebrated with a jaunt through my first 12 months of blogging. This year, let’s enjoy a slice of birthday herring in a fur coat (above) and take a look at what I accomplished since March 27, 2006:

Most popular and single most useful post: How to make tvorog (Russian farmer’s cheese). Tvorog is this blog’s raison d’etre, the post with the most page views and nearly the most comments. Tvorog is the number-one search term that brings people to Yulinka Cooks. Google tvorog and my blog is the first result! Take that, bloggers with book deals.

Most comments: Oddly, my kvass-making (rye bread beer) post just beat out tvorog for the most comments. Kvass is a pretty obscure beverage in the U.S. and making it at home requires an unusual interest in beer-brewing and Russian drinks. There was much discussion in this thread about method, technique, etc., but my kvass was still terrible and I have zero interest in making it again.

Common search terms that bring people here: Tvorog, eggplant caviar, lentil soup, kvass, borsch and blini. Last year I complained that my readers are boring: most of you use this blog as a reference source for recipes and click away. Indeed, my stats show that I have few repeat readers. Wham, bam, no spasibo m’am!

Most popular recipes: The usual suspects: eggplant caviar, tvorog, Korean carrot salad. My favorites are Georgian lamb and green beans, squash gratin, tomato bean soup with sausage and chana masala soup.

Biggest success: My first borsch was pretty damn good. In fact, all my soups have been pretty successful. I’ve made this pickled mixed vegetable salad three times in the past month and I will be making it again. Also: pickles and chocolate-covered sirki (mini cheesecakes).

Biggest failure: Kvass, but that was expected. My ill-fated sauerkraut really rankles, though. I’m supposed to be good at making vegetables. Also, most of my baking was just ok. Did I make it sound like my sweet yeast dough experiments of April-June 2006 were awesome? I may have exaggerated a little.

Least popular post: I guess no one cares about my wit and wisdom on food politics or forays into Indian cooking. I can’t imagine why.

Favorite post: On Tea. Few people realize just how important tea is to me, but I drink about eight cups of the stuff a day. I’m also fond of the kasha post and the holiday round-ups: New Year and Thanksgiving.

Want to give me an anniversary gift? Delurk in the comments.

"If 1960s Las Vegas had its Rat Pack and 1980s cinema its Brat Pack, early 21st century food has its Fat Pack."

Foodies are fat, says the New York Times. No surprise here: I looked at my weight history at the doctor's a few weeks ago and noticed that I really porked up around March 2006, when I started this blog. I was at my lowest weight since college in February 2007, when the blog went on hiatus. Coincidence? I think not. I hesitate to write about my weight neuroses, but I fret about staying slim as much as I do about what I’ll eat for dinner.

My solution is to eat with abandon once or twice a week and then watch it the rest of the time. Monday through Friday, my diet is mostly fish, lean protein and vegetables (cooked in varied and delicious ways, thanks), plus some fruit, dairy, lentils/beans and olive oil. I watch my portions, and I’m never quite full after a meal. Small sacrifice, since weekends are for pasta, bread, larger portions, etc. This works: I’ve stayed pretty close to my ideal weight for more than a year. I’d sign a Faustian deal to stay at this weight for life.

(More interesting is that foodies swear that it’s only processed junk that makes you fat. Surely pork belly from that local, organic, humanely-raised pig that you bought from your good friend the farmer at a charming little outdoor market will not make you gain weight... Er, never mind.)

One-Track Mind

This has been a common sight in my kitchen for the past month. Pickling in action, that is. Mushrooms, cabbage, you name it. If this mystery project is any good, I’ll write about it.

Blogging Notes

Has it been a week since I last posted? Gulp. I swear, time runs faster when you have a blog. Cooking has been haphazard lately; so enjoy these crumbs:

* “Our rock stars are ricotta makers:” I sometimes have Marie Antoinette-like fantasies of tending a little farm in the country, raising my own chickens and growing vegetables. Well, some New York hipsters are are doing just that. I bet urban farming will soon overtake knitting as the “it” retro-chic hipster activity.

* HR cant about diversity makes my eyes roll to the back of my head, but real-world multi-culturalism makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. This weekend I shopped on Chicago’s Devon Avenue, a mostly immigrant district where Hasidic Jews share the sidewalk with women in burqas. I bought vegetables from one of about a dozen Indian groceries (all super cheap), jostling my way past sari-clad women and employees carting huge bags of rice. I also stopped by Argo, a Georgian bakery, for some kiln-baked bread. (I blogged about another trip to Devon here.)

* I used to think that American-style baking was too easy. You mix dry stuff in one bowl, wet stuff in another, combine, shove the whole thing in the oven, and voila. Not so: Helen of Beyond Salmon shows that good baking is an exact, complicated science. I hardly ever bake anymore, but if I have a hankering for a cake, I will follow Helen’s guide.

* Regina Schrambling of Gastropoda has harsh words about amateur cooks who blog: "…nattering about what they fed their boyfriends last night, or fuzzily photographing their latest batch of heart-shaped cookies…" Ouch. That’s more biting than Pete Wells' anti-blog rant.

* A thought: bloggers need editors for style rather than content. I read Gastropoda because it’s short and sharp, a rarity in the blogosphere. (The same reason I read, say, Gawker.) It’s too easy to go on for freakin’ forever when you don’t have a word limit.

Soviet Kitsch: Soup

It’s time for another installment of Russian Retro Recipe Cards. This time, the topic’s soup. I've documented Russians’ love of soup pretty thoroughly on this blog, but I’m always surprised by the variety and the sheer oddness of some soups described in Russian and Soviet cookbooks. Let’s take a look at a few (from Soviet soup recipe cards circa 1988): Got random processed meat products in the fridge? Here's the soup for you: solianka, which one Russian cookbook author calls "mixed-up meat soup." This basically a beef-based vegetable soup with chunks of sausage, hot dogs, bacon, etc. Every soup needs a side: above are potato dumplings. I think the best side, good rye bread aside, is homemade pirozhki.
Fruit soup! Rhubarb-apple-strawberry soup, with a side of marinated apples (yes, you can pickle apples) and slices of lemon. This is served cold in the summer.
Milk soup--hot milk with rice or pasta, served with a pat of butter in the middle of the bowl. I think of this as comfort food, even though I've got no good reason to eat it anymore (milk, carbs and butter will no longer make me grow big and strong, alas). This is food for when you're sick with a cold or flu.
Some sort of fish soup. Is that smoked herring to the right?
That's 24-hour schi (sauerkraut soup). Schi is usually made a day in advance to allow the flavors to settle, but this recipe has you freeze the soup for a day and then defrost and heat before serving.

Marinated Mixed Vegetable Salad, Take Two

I was planning to write off this marinated vegetable salad as another one of Anya von Bremzen's inspiring but not quite thought-out recipes. The instruction say the salad is ready to eat the day after you make it—well, no. I think Anya forgot about the “marinated” part. I sampled the salad at 24 and 48 hours, and it tasted like cabbage sprinkled with salt and vinegar. Then life got in the way and I shoved the salad to the back of the fridge and forgot about it. A week later, eureka! It finally tasted the way Russian homemade, pickled vegetables are supposed to: briny, sweet and sour, with a tingly zing. (The recipe still required some tweaking--see my instructions below. For one thing, the amount of brine Anya has you make was not nearly enough to cover all the vegetables.)

Method:

-Finely chop 1 medium head of cabbage; mix with 1 tbs. kosher salt in a large bowl and let stand for 1 hour.

-In the meantime, make the brine. Combine 3/4 c. water, 3/4 c. white vinegar, 12 whole black peppercorns, and 1.5 tbs. sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil, then turn off the heat. Let cool. (I had to make another 1/2 recipe of brine to cover the vegetables.) When the liquid is cool, add 2 tbs. sunflower oil to marinade.

-Squeeze the cabbage with your hands so it releases water; drain as much water as possible. Combine with a thinly sliced: carrot, 3 red peppers, 2 white onions, and 2 green tomatoes (I left these out). Toss with 3 peeled garlic cloves and 2 dried, hot chili peppers.

-Toss the vegetables well with the marinade. Let stand 1 hour, then put into clean 2-quart jars. I didn't have extra jars, so I put the vegetables in a big soup pot and simply covered it with a lid.

-The vegetables will need to marinate in the fridge for a few days; start tasting around day four. Eat with chopped dill or parsley. This salad is great with roasted chicken, pork or beef, and it’s also good on its own as an appetizer.

Recharging

Food hasn’t been on my mind lately. I’ve been busy, I’ve been sick, I’ve been on the road. I’ve been taking too many shortcuts, cutting too many corners. Last week I was fighting a low-grade cold, the kind that dulls your appetite and makes everything taste flat. And then, when I had a chance to redeem myself on a long weekend in Puerto Rico, I just gave up. Being a foodie can be exhausting: always looking for that authentic, out-of-the way little place where the locals eat. This is not as fun as it sounds. Oh, no: It takes research, reading, asking the Chowhounds. I said to hell with it. My traveling companion doesn’t care much about food, my lingering cold wore me down, and so we ate at chain restaurants with nary a second thought. This week, though, I’m back on the mends. My cold is almost gone, my appetite is back and my palate is sharper. I’m itching to make something new, something different. First up, a belated write-up of this marinated vegetable salad. In brief: it's a keeper. Recipe coming soon.

Pickled

I'm making good on my New Year's resolution to experiment with pickling vegetables in 2008. Above is pickled mixed vegetable salad from Anya von Bremzen's Please to the Table: shredded cabbage, onions, carrots and red peppers in a marinade made with water, vinegar, salt, sugar and sunflower oil. I'll post a recipe if this is any good.

Product Review: Lutenitsa

Here’s the second installment of my occasional series on worthwhile items you can buy at Russian/Eastern European grocery stores. (In the first write-up, we sampled baked milk.) I highly recommend lutenitsa. Depending on the brand, this is a sauce or a spread made with red peppers, tomatoes, onions, sunflower oil and usually something spicy, like a little hot pepper. Lutenitsa is Bulgarian, not Russian, but I hear it was a very popular imported product in Russia during the Soviet times. I like adding lutenitsa to tomato-based soups and stews, especially borsch, or eating it as an appetizer with cheese on crackers. It's also good eaten right out of the jar. Just sayin'.

Roasted Tomatoes

When life gave me five pounds of crappy supermarket tomatoes last week, I considered tossing them. But, as often happens, my thrifty Soviet housewife side came through. What do you mean toss them, I thought. My grandmother almost starved to death during World War II—I can’t waste food. Growing up, I often heard the saying “a Soviet housewife can make candy out of s#*t,” meaning, of course, that Russian women developed a knack for making good food using inferior ingredients. These days it’s all about the fresh, local and organic, but resourceful cooks will find a home for those squishy or wilted vegetables. Waste is for amateurs.

Here’s an example: It often surprises me how much the most underripe, out-of-season supermarket tomatoes benefit from roasting. I’ve blogged about successfully roasting cherry tomatoes, but even the usually useless Roma and beefsteak tomatoes are pretty good after some time in the oven. All you do is slice them up and put them in a foil-lined pan with a couple of teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of sugar, and a good splash each of red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Add some red pepper flakes and ground pepper, too, if you like. I usually toss in a handful of peeled garlic cloves. Roast at 400 for an hour, an hour and a half. The tomatoes will release a lot of juice; they’re done when the liquid evaporates and the tomatoes are shrunken and blistery. Let cool; they taste best at room temperature.

I often add these to salads, but they’re limitless in their use. This time I roasted some red and orange peppers alongside and made pepper and tomato salad the next day. And here's another recipe that promises to transform winter tomatoes into something edible.

End of the Week Notes

*Mark Bittman is blogging in the New York Times dining section. I think of Bittman as the Dr. Spock of home cooking: he’s so calm, so reassuring. Sure, you can make a meal in 10 minutes or whip up one of these 101 appetizers for your next shindig. Don’t worry. You know what to do. I’m rarely inspired by his recipes, but I’m glad he’s around.

*I like it when people resurrect their abandoned blogs. Welcome back, Seasonal Cook.

*The Amateur Gourmet blogs in two modes: zany, off-kilter foodie and earnest gee-whiz newbie. Which do you prefer: his review of Per Se (former mode) or a write up of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore's Dilemma (latter mode)?

*I made baba ghanouj last weekend and had a revelation (cooking is full of revelations): a little sugar makes this eggplant dip taste so much better. Leave out the eggplant, if you like, just don’t forget the sugar--seriously. Without sugar, baba ghanouj is harsh and acidic. With sugar, it’s smooth and rich. Thanks to Is That My Bureka for this tip.

*If you live in Milwaukee and are looking for cheap groceries, especially produce, consider Lena's. Lena’s attracts six types of shoppers: 1) poor black people, 2) poor Russian retirees, 3) poor Chinese immigrants, 4) poor Indian immigrants, 5) poor college students, and 6) me. Last Sunday, though, I spotted crunchy, organic co-op types picking up their fruits and vegetables at the Capitol Dr. location. A sign of the recession?

Two Mushroom Recipes

When people find out I was born in Russia, they’re all, “Is it really cold there?” I just shrug. I guess we had cold winters when I was growing up, but that’s not what I remember. You know what I do remember? Going mushroom picking. I’ve waxed Proustian about gathering mushrooms in the forest, and that’s what I think about whenever I cook with ‘shrooms. Granted, these days I usually use plain old white button mushrooms, not the fancy, rare varieties we picked down on the dacha, but making mushroom stuff still fills me with the warmest, fuzziest feelings on this side of my mom’s borsch.

Last weekend I marinated some mushrooms using a recipe from Anya von Bremzen’s Please to the Table. It needed quite a bit of tweaking--thanks to the Seasonal Cook for sharing her tips--and next time I may use another recipe altogether. Still, for a first attempt, these are pretty good and a no-brainer to prepare.

You clean a pound and a half of mushrooms (I used white button mushrooms, but you can use fancier ones if you have them), cover them with 2 cups of cold water and bring it to a boil. Then you add 1 tsp. kosher salt, and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Remove the mushrooms with a slotted spoon and strain out a cup of the mushroom liquid. In a small saucepan, add 1 cup of tarragon vinegar to the liquid, along with some peppercorns, bay leaves, and 1 tsp. sugar (I’d use 2 tsp. next time). Bring the liquid to a boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Cool. Put the mushrooms in a clean jar with layers of peeled garlic cloves and dill sprigs. Add the marinade and top with a tablespoon of sunflower or olive oil. Refrigerate for at least 4-6 hours, preferably a couple of days.

The mushroom soup I made to chase down my pickled fungi (mmm…) is not at all Russian, but I wanted something different from my previous soups. I soaked and cleaned some dried porcini mushrooms as described here. For the soup, I sautéed some chopped onions, carrots and celery in olive oil and butter in a heavy pot; added a sprinkle of sage and thyme; deglazed with white wine; and poured in 4 cups chicken stock, the dried mushroom soaking liquid, a splash of the mushroom cooking liquid left over from making pickled mushrooms, and maybe an ounce of goat cheese.

All this simmered for a little while; then I pureed it in a blender. I added the soup back to the pot, brought it to a simmer, and tossed in 1 peeled, chopped potato. In the meantime, I sautéed about ½ pound of sliced white button mushrooms in olive oil with a bit of bacon (maybe two slices) and some minced garlic. When the potatoes were done, in about 10-15 minutes, I added the mushroom chunks to the soup, stirred, and served the soup with tons of chopped dill and dollops of sour cream.

Mushroom Madness

It's been all about mushrooms this past weekend. Pickling them with garlic, dill and tarragon vinegar.

Waiting the recommended 4-6 hours until they are ready.
Eating them as a prelude to this creamy mushroom soup made with dried and fresh mushrooms, chicken stock, goat cheese, potatoes and just a hint of bacon for that smoky flavor.
Recipes later this week. For now, just stock up on mushrooms and dill.

Korean Carrot Salad

Here’s a salad and a history lesson for you. This spicy dish is known as “Korean carrots” throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics. How did that name come about? “Korean carrot salad, morkovcha koreyska, is a legacy of Stalin's mass deportations of ethnic Koreans from the far eastern Soviet Union to its western frontiers," explains the New York Times in this excellent article.

This salad is often served as part of a zakuski (appetizer) spread for holiday meals and special occasions. I’ve had a couple of different versions of these carrots—recipes vary by household—and came up with the version below.

Method:

Make this salad a day before you plan to eat it. It needs to marinade overnight.

You will need about 1 pound of carrots, cleaned and peeled, the longer the better. Use a mandoline to slice them into thin, spaghetti-like strands. Place in a large bowl. Mince 2 garlic cloves; add to the carrots.

Sauté a small, diced onion in about ¼ cup of sunflower oil until the onion is soft and translucent. Add 2 tbs. of whole coriander seeds and cayenne pepper to taste (I used about ¼ tsp.) toward the end of the cooking time. When the onion is done, immediately add it and any leftover oil to the carrots; toss.

In a bowl, mix 3 tbs. of white vinegar, 2 tsp. of sugar, and 1 tsp. of salt. Add dressing to the salad, and mix well. You can also another handful of whole coriander seeds. Refrigerate 4-5 hours; preferably overnight.

Chicken Soup with Spinach and Pelmeni

I think making chicken stock is pretty easy. Admittedly, I’m probably doing it all wrong, but that doesn’t stop me and it shouldn’t stop you, either. Chicken stock, according to the super chefs quoted in this San Francisco Chronicle article, is a Herculean task. I wouldn’t pit my stock against Thomas Keller’s, but I think my amateur efforts a) taste really good, and b) are reasonably low-maintenance.

I actually make two types of stock. The first is what I call “American” chicken stock, based on recipes I gleaned from cookbooks and blogs. This involves simmering chicken parts or roasted chicken carcasses with aromatics for 3-4 hours. I often freeze batches of this to use in stews, sauces and pureed soups. The other type is Russian chicken stock (broth, if you want to split hairs) as my mother makes it, and which I once vaguely described here. This involves simmering a whole chicken in a pot with just a few aromatics added toward the end of the cooking time. Russian home cooks don't really make chicken stock for later use; it's usually served immediately as part of a meal. My mom puts chunks of the cooked chicken and either cooked rice or tiny pasta shells in a bowl, tops with ladlefuls of stock, and garnishes with chopped dill and parsley. This type of stock is richer and more concentrated than my American version. It's also my submission to the comfort-food themed Monthly Mingle over at What’s For Lunch Honey.

The last time I made my mom’s chicken stock I decided to forgo the rice and chicken meat for pelmeni and spinach. Pelmeni are Russian meat dumplings, not unlike ravioli or tortellini. Frozen pelmeni are sold in every Eastern European grocery. It’s a pleasure to slurp fat, brothy dumplings and silky spinach out of an oversize café au lait cup a cold January weekend.

Method:

1. Take a whole chicken (between 3 and 4 pounds) and put it in a stock pot or a Dutch oven. Cover with cold water. On medium-high heat, with the pot partially covered, bring the water to a boil. As soon as the water begins to boil, turn the heat down to a very low simmer.

2. At this point, you will need to skim the foam that will form on the surface. Get a slotted spoon and a bowl and remove the foam every 4-5 minutes for 20 to 25 minutes. You will have murky, grimy-looking stock if you skip this step. This is by far the hardest part of this exercise; the rest is easy.

3. Once foam stops forming, add 1 small, peeled onion, cut in half, a couple of bay leaves, and a handful of black peppercorns to the pot. Then let the chicken simmer for about an hour and a half. (If you must have your chicken rare, take it out of the pot as soon as it’s cooked through. Remove most of the meat when the chicken is cool enough to handle; add the bones back in and keep simmering.)

4. In the meantime, finely dice 2 medium carrots, a large celery stalk and two cloves of garlic. Twenty minutes before time’s up, add the celery and carrots to the pot; keep simmering until the vegetables are soft. At about 90 minutes from the time the stock came to a boil, carefully remove the chicken from the pot but don’t turn off the heat.

5. Add the minced garlic and kosher salt to taste to the stock; stir. Keep in mind that salt really bring out the flavor in stock.

6. Add pelmeni to the pot. Don’t add more than you’re planning to eat—leftover dumplings will get soggy. Five-six dumplings per serving should be enough. A few minutes before the pelmeni are done-- they will take about 8 minutes-- stir in a couple of cups of baby spinach leaves. I love spinach; so I usually add more, but it’s up to you.

7. When the spinach is wilted and the pelmeni are cooked, remove the onion and turn off the heat. Serve. This is great topped with grated Parmesan cheese.

8. Eat the cooked chicken with leftover stock ,or use for blinchiki or hachepouri.

Short and Spicy Blog Writing

Do you like reading food memoir-type blogs? You know, the kind that feature charming and moving episodes from the blogger’s life, followed up with companion recipes and food porn-y photos. I do, but I think the poignant story/recipe/glossy photo format can be overused and stilted. Reading these blogs sometimes feels like eating rich meal after rich meal, and feeling unpleasantly full. Bloggers aren’t to blame for sort of writing, though; it seems to be a trend in food journalism these days.

I myself often fall into the personal story/recipe rut. As I was re-reading my original fish chowder post-- it went “this is a wonderful soup to eat on a cold day and it reminds me of this story from my childhood blah blah blah”-- I realized I was bored. So I re-wrote the post to make it more amusing for myself and my readers (all five of you.) Granted, my pictures are about as far from glossy food porn as you can get, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be just like the cool kids. The first thing I tried to do when I laid my hands on my parents’ far nicer camera was to attempt to take arty close-ups set against a blurry background. Nobody bloggers like me imitate the big guns.

Still, there’s something to be said about blogs that just do recipes—no soul-searching, no memoirs, no food porn, just recipes, and lots of them. Anne's Food is a very charming example of such a blog; Simply Recipes is the best of the bunch. I’d also like to see more acidic, snappier food blog writing out there. Gastropoda is reliably curt and bitter but useful mostly to New Yorkers. I love The Hungry Tiger for its charming collection of vignettes that rarely exceed 200 words per post. (This blog is also my candidate for the next book deal.) The now-defunct Seasonal Cook demonstrates here and here how to write food memoirs that aren’t affected or dubiously upbeat. It’s all fine and good to eat rich, cheesy, starchy comfort food. But sometimes all you want is a spicy, citric starter.

The poor and lazy man's fish chowder

The road to the poor and lazy (wo)man’s fish chowder:

Three months before you make this soup: Stock up on frozen tilapia. Buy lots and lots of it, more than you’ll ever want to eat. Hey, it’s a) cheap, b) healthy, and c) a no-brainer to cook. (When you start making more money your tilapia consumption will fall drastically, as you’ll be able to afford more exciting seafood.) Nothing against tilapia, mind you. It’s a perfectly pleasant fish that you’ll be thoroughly sick of by the time you’re ready to make this soup. You can also substitute cod.

Two months: Start keeping an eye out for specials on shell-on shrimp. Eat most of the shrimp, but save and freeze the shrimp shells in a Ziploc bag. Try to save up about 3-4 cups of shrimp shells. Don’t forget to freeze some shrimp for the soup, you glutton.

Two weeks: You should really clean out your freezer. Did you know that you have tilapia that’s been in there for God knows how long? Maybe you could do something new and different with it. Think about that. Look up some recipes.

One week: Remember those shrimp shells that you froze, like, months ago? Don’t they look disgusting? Remember how you’ve been meaning to do something new and creative with them, like make shellfish stock? Why don’t you try that? Go look up half a dozen recipes for shellfish stock.

Two days: You’re planning to roast the shrimp shells before lovingly simmering them for hours with aromatics, like more ambitious bloggers? Ha. No, you’ll actually toss the shrimp shells in a crock pot. You can make shellfish stock in a crock pot, right? Googling “fish stock crock pot” proves inconclusive, but whatever. Cover the shrimp shells with water, and add a splash of white wine and some carrots, celery and onion, and simmer on low for eight hours. Cool, strain, and pour into containers and freeze. Wasn’t that easy? Don’t you feel like a good, virtuous little housewife? Oh, and don’t forget to air out your apartment.

Fish chowder day: Pick a bitterly cold day. Soup tastes better on a cold day. Get out your shrimp stock, shrimp and tilapia. Sauté some chopped onions, carrots, and green pepper in olive oil on medium-high heat in a heavy soup pot. Lower the heat and added minced garlic, some dried thyme, red pepper flakes and salt. Deglaze the soup pot with ½ cup white wine.

Add 4 cups shrimp stock; ¼ tsp. crushed saffron threads; 1.5 cups of good canned tomatoes, chopped; 1 tsp. sugar; and a couple of bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and let the whole thing simmer for 10 minutes.

Add a tilapia fillet (about 8 oz), cut into chunks. When the tilapia is done, in about 4 minutes, add about ½ cup of shrimp (about 4 oz). Simmer the soup for a couple of more minutes, and add 2 tbs. chopped basil, a splash of lemon juice, and a pinch each of salt and sugar. Top the soup with chopped parsley before serving. Eat with crusty bread or over rice. Want more starch? You could even make this with potatoes (add some peeled potatoes, cut into ¾-inch chunks, to the simmering shrimp stock. Cook until the potatoes are done before adding the tomatoes and other ingredients.)

Post-soup: Feel virtuous. Rub your belly. Glow. You’ve made a delicious soup out of boring frozen fish and gross-looking shrimp shells. You’re a resourceful and creative cook. You rule. Your fish chowder rules. Peace.

Soup blogging: Ugly yet delicious spicy chicken rice soup

This is a delicious yet very ugly soup that I don’t recommend you make for company. For yourself, sure; for others, no. The original recipe, which, unlike mine, is quite photogenic, ran on a Finger in Every Pie back in November. That recipe calls for simmering lemongrass and ginger in turkey stock before adding the aromatics, shredded turkey, bok choy and herbs. When I got around to making this soup last week, I didn’t have all of the ingredients or remember the recipe instructions, but that never stops me. I wanted a gingery, spicy chicken rice soup, so this is what I came up using what I had in the kitchen.

For the stock, I used a roast chicken carcass, which I put in a crock pot with an onion, a couple of carrots, and some celery stalks, 2-3 bay leaves and a splash of white wine. All this was covered with cold water and simmered on low for about eight hours. I cooled the stock, refrigerated it and degreased it the next day. (This is the easiest, laziest way of making homemade chicken stock.)

For the soup, I brought the 6 –7 cups of stock to a simmer and tossed in a couple of 1-inch pieces of peeled ginger, 1/8 cup fresh lemon juice, and a couple of teaspoons of salt.

Meanwhile, I sautéed a large chopped onion, a couple of chopped carrots and celery stalks, and some minced garlic and ginger in olive oil. When the onion was golden and the vegetables were soft, I added them to the stock, along with ¼ cup of uncooked rice, and let the soup simmer for 9-10 minutes, until the rice was almost done. I then added a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tablespoon of hoisin, two tablespoons of chili garlic sauce (I used Blue Dragon brand, not very spicy. Adjust to taste.), and a splash of fish sauce.

I took the soup off the heat and pureed about 1/3 of it in a blender, along with some chopped scallions and basil. (Actually, I tossed in some spinach into the soup pot before pureeing by mistake, which accounts for the soup’s hideous green color. Oops. Do not do this--add your greens after pureeing). The soup went back into the pot with shredded roast chicken meat, and another splash of soy sauce, fish sauce, garlic chili sauce and lemon juice. I topped the soup with chopped scallions, but it would also be good topped with sesame seeds, sesame oil or herbs like cilantro and basil.

2008 Food/Blog Resolutions

It’s a bit late for New Year’s resolutions, but what the hell. In 2008, I resolve to:

*Drink more coffee. I like coffee and cappuccino and lattes and all that crap, but I’m rarely willing to shell out $3+ for a shot of espresso and some hot milk. Food snob that I am, I’m also not willing to drink pre-ground, drip coffee. So this year I am acquiring a coffee grinder and a French press. Hey, the local coffee expert says my attempts will be at least as good as Starbucks'.

*Try more new recipes from my cooking bible, Please to the Table, especially soups, salads and appetizers. I’m a pretty lazy cook, actually. Sometimes all I want to make is roasted cauliflower or butternut squash, my equivalent of sticking a frozen pizza in the oven.

*Cook more with alcohol. French onion soup made with brandy. Chicken and pork in Calvados-spiked sauce. Coffee with steamed milk and Bailey’s. Fruit-infused vodka.

*Make more appetizers, period. Small plates are all the rage, haven't you heard?

*Pickle and marinate stuff. Attempt to make homemade sauerkraut, again. And pickled mushrooms.

*Give a dinner party, and, consequently, be praised for my cooking by people who are not related to me.

*Do all of the above and while sticking to my calorie restriction/optimal nutrition experiment five days a week. At least the optimal nutrition part.

*Have this blog noted just once in the local media. Come on, MKE and OnMilwaukee, it’s not like you have anything better to write about.

*Blog more. Ha.