Simple Butternut Squash Soup

• 1 medium to large butternut squash, halved and seeded

• 3 tbs butter or vegetable oil

• 1 large onion, chopped roughly

• 1/2 tsp ground ginger 

• 4 cups chicken or vegetable stock

• 1 tsp salt

• parsley or cilantro, chopped (for garnish)

1. Preheat your oven to 400. Place squash with the cut side down on an oiled baking sheet. Roast for about an hour until it can be pierced easily with a fork. Once cool, remove and discard the skin, leaving only the pulp.

2. Heat butter or oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and the ginger, and cook, stirring, until tender (about 5 minutes).

3. Stir in the roasted squash and the stock. Simmer and cook, breaking up the squash a bit, for around 20 minutes.

4. Puree the soup until smooth. I use my immersion blender (which I adore!) because that involves the least amount of clean up. You could also use a blender or food processor. Add salt to taste, and reheat. Add your garnish, and serve!

Simple Tomato Soup

Simple Tomato Soup (The Best Ever)

I’m completely obsessed with this tomato soup.  It’s intensely tomato-y and rich without being creamy.  It’s addicting, and it’s so simple to make.  I found out about it when I tried it at The Kitchen [Next Door], in Boulder, and then was overjoyed to see that they share their exact recipe for it online.  OVERJOYED!

So, this is very simple.  That’s a good thing.  Lots (and I mean lots) of butter give this soup its silky richness, onion is softened in that butter for a luxuriously long time, and then really high quality whole canned tomatoes are added.  San Marzanos are recommended, but we subbed in Muir Glens with great results. After all the simmering is taken care of, you puree this soup in the blender with a little splash of heavy cream.

The Kitchen serves this soup drizzled with flavorful olive oil, and a side of toasted chewy rustic bread.  It’s to die for.  If you like tomato soup, you’ve got to try this one.  My parting words – don’t be afraid of all that butter!

Simple Tomato Soup (The Best Ever)

Recipe from The Kitchen [Next Door]

• 1 1/3 sticks unsalted butter
• 1 large yellow onion
• 3 16 oz cans of high quality whole peeled tomatoes, undrained
• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• salt to taste
• drizzle of high quality olive oil for serving

In a large pan, melt the butter over low heat.  Finely slice the yellow onion and add to the melting butter with a pinch of salt.  Reduce heat to very low, cover the pan, and cook onions in butter for about 30 minutes or until translucent and soft but NOT browned.
Add tomatoes with all the juices from the cans.  Increase heat and simmer for 25 minutes.
Transfer soup to a blender and puree in batches, adding cream while blending.  Taste and add more salt if desired.
Serve drizzled with olive oil and a side of crusty bread.

Summer Garden Vegetable Soup

I had zucchini on hand the other night and decided to try this soup.  I loved it!  And with fresh garden produce it would be that much better.  I think you could even leave out the milk for a brothy - less creamy version.

Summer Garden Vegetable Soup
3 medium zucchini, chopped into bite-size pieces
4 medium tomatoes, chopped into bite-size pieces
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
1 teaspoon dried basil (or 1 tablespoon fresh basil, chopped)
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, chopped
¼ cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 (12 oz.) can evaporated milk (can use fat-free or low-fat)
1 ½ cups frozen or fresh corn kernels
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the zucchini, basil, parsley and onion and saute, stirring occasionally, for 2-3 minutes. Add the flour, salt and pepper and stir and cook for one minute. Gradually add the chicken broth, whisking or stirring constantly. Add the lemon juice; mix well. Bring the soup to a simmer, stirring to prevent sticking, and cook for 2-3 minutes, until the zucchini is tender but still has some bite to it (it will continue cooking for a few more minutes). Add the tomatoes, evaporated milk, and corn.
Bring the soup to a boil and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover the soup and simmer until the corn and zucchini are tender. Stir in the cheese just before serving.

Garlic Soup

Garlic for dinner
It's been a while since I last posted anything up on this blog. It's not because I've finally thrown in my apron after numerous failed  cooking projects (there have been many, the latest being an eggless chocolate cake which turned out lumpy -- go figure!). No. I recently got married and have had not much time to fool about in the kitchen as a result -- as it turned out, planning and execuing a disaster-free wedding takes a lot longer than I estimated as does recovering from planning and executing a disaster-free wedding. It was worth it in the end:  the day was really fun and my wedding cake (pic below) was just yummy.


Bride and Groom on the cake.
Cake (by JustHeavenly) was yum!
So anyway, almost settled in, I am ready to post my first entry, post-marriage. Now, I may not have been able to muck about in the kitchen but I did manage to score a couple of cookbooks during my honeymoon (yeah, how romantic is that!). Turns out, I have now in my hands two of my current favouritest cookbooks: Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Vols I and II) by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck.




Vol I

Yes, this is the book that inspired the Meryl Streep movie Julie and Julia. No, that's not the reason why I decided to buy the book. After all the movie has been out for about  a year already. The books have recently been reprinted into paperbacks (divided into two volummes) and Marty recently reviewed Volumme One for our Don't Call Me Chef column (Every Mondays in The Star: shameless plug, I know). I took the chance to browse through the book which Marty so cruelly flaunted on her desk (she got it for free as she was reviewing the book!) and I was immediately hooked.

The book isn't visually stunning. In fact, there are no pictures. At all. Its all text with some hand sketches of how the various (not all, mind you) dishes are to be prepared. Not at all visually attractive. But the book is really a very good instructional. It strips away all the pretensions that are sometimes falsely associated with French cooking. If you've seen any YouTube clip of Child in action, you'll know that she isn't about fancy presentation. She is, however, all about technique which, Child promises, once mastered will enable anyone to cook almost any dish. All it takes is passion and practice.


Garlic soup... who would have thought.

I decided to start at the very beginning: with the chapter on soups. I like soups even on sweltering days like today. I chose to make the most unlikely of soups: Aigo Bouido or Garlic Soup. Uh-huh. Its a soup made with, well, garlic and seasoned with herbs, salt and pepper. Egg yolks add some bulk but that's really it. I am a huge fan of garlic and use it unsparingly in almost everything I make. But never once did I imagine making garlic soup. But, as Child promises, the bold after-taste one often gets  when cooking with a lot of  garlic is absent from this soup because of the method used. And, as she also promises, the flavour  is exquisite, aromatic and almost undefinable.




The recipe
I seperated head or about 16 cloves of garlic
Drop the garlic gloves in a pot of boiling water and boil for about 30 seconds. Drain , run cold water over them and then peel.

1.5 liters water (Childs uses 3 pts)
2 tsp salt
pinch of pepper
2 cloves
1/4 tsp sage
1/4 tsp thyme
1/2 bay leaf 4 parsley sprigs
3 tbsp olive oil
A 5 pt saucepan
Put the garlic and the rest of the ingredients in the saucepan and boil slowly for 30 minutes. Correct seasoning.

A wire whisk
3 egg yolks
 2-3 tbsp olive oil
Whisk the egg yolks till they are thick and sticky. Drop by drop beat in olive oil  till well incorporated. It is important to add the oil literally a few drops at a time for it to blend well into the yolk mixture.

Strainer
Rounds of hard French bread
Swiss or parmesan cheese
Just before serving, beat a ladleful of the boiling soup into the egg mixture, bit by bit. Strain the rest of the soup in beating and pressing the liquid out of the garlic. Serve with bread and cheese immediately.

Broccoli Pesto Pasta

unbelievably tiring week. My body is weary, my mind's a blank. My plan for the weekend? Vegetating in front of the television, reading Paul Auster's Sunset Park (I started it four months ago and am barely past the third chapter. Shame!) and ... nope, that's it. That's my plan for the weekend.

While I generally find cooking and baking quite relaxing, I really couldn't muster up the energy to cook an elaborate meal this weekend. Forget about an elaborate meal; I didn't even want to peal and chop an onion. And, don't be shocked but I didn't even feel like brewing m own tea — I used a three-in-one mix (where you just add boiling water to a premix of tea, milk and sugar).

Lazy, lazy weekend.

Now back when I was living on my own, this wouldn't have been a problem — I'd be content to just eat a bowl of cereal for dinner or a tub of yoghurt. Or a bowl of nuts. Or some instant noodles. Or just a bag of nuts. But I don't live alone and, tired as I am, I'd feel incredibly guilty if I served my husband a bowl of muesli for lunch.

So, I settled on the next best thing: I decided to make a dish that looked impressive and tasted phenomenal but took hardly any time or effort.

I made pasta. And for the sauce, I made pesto. I seriously thank God for pasta and I thank the Italians, particularly the Genoans for their pesto.




I find pesto to be the most incredible sauce ever created. Ever.  Its simply mind-blowing how much flavour you can get from simply crushing basil leaves, garlic, Parmesan cheese, toasted (pine) nuts and mixing the paste with olive oil. Mind-blowing.  And, you can use a blender to get this done although I've been told that to get the best out of your pesto, you have to chop/pound the ingredients by hand, this way yielding a slightly chunkier paste. I used a blender, of course.

Traditional pesto is made with basil leaves but there are numerous variations: from sun-dried tomatoes to parsley to spinach ... you name it. Pesto incidentally means to pound or crush and therefore these variations may feature different main ingredients but the process is the same and they almost always incorporate the garlic, cheese, nuts and olive oil that are part of the original recipe. So far, I've stuck to making herb-based pestos: basil, parsley and coriander are my favourites. Oh. And once, when my friend bought me a tub of sun dried tomatoes from Italy, I made a sun-dried tomato pesto. Twas delicious, of course.

Today, I made broccoli pesto. Yeah, I balked at the idea too at first but I was eager to give it a go. I wasn't disappointed, let me tell you, If you ever want to trick someone into liking broccoli, this is the way to go. The pesto was delicious. Broccoli has a very distinct taste (which I love) but it is hardly overpowering in this pesto, despite it being the main ingredient.

All in all, it took me 15 mins to cook lunch. That wasn't too painful...




Broccoli Pesto Pasta

1 cup broccoli florets. steamed until soft (but not mushy)
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley leaves
1/3-1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 tbsp toasted pine nuts (or walnuts, sunflower seeds, peanuts, etc)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Pasta

Blend (or pound/chop extremely finely) the broccoli, parsley and garlic until finely minced. Add the cheese and pulse a few times. Gently let the oil stream in as you blend until the oil is incorporated and pulse a few more times to incorporate the oil with the paste. Season.

Cook the pasta. Toss it in some olive oil and then coat as generously as you wish with the pesto. Garnish with some chilli flakes.

Fruit Soup

This is another good dish for a gathering. I got this recipe from The Sisters Cafe and the "sister" who posted this recipe called it the "epitome of chick food." :) I certainly enjoyed it. Just make sure you plan ahead for this one - the liquid mixture has to chill overnight.

Fruit Soup3/4 c. sugar
1 c. water
1 c. peach juice (or another cup of water - which is what I did)
3 Tbsp "Minute" brand tapioca
6 oz. orange juice concentrate
1 1/2 c. water

2 cans mandarin oranges (with or without juice)
1 large can sliced peaches (Lite peaches bottled w/ pear juice are perfect. If you use peaches in heavy syrup, don't add the syrup. Also cut peaches into bite-sized pieces.)
2 cups fresh strawberries, sliced
2 bananas, sliced
1 bag frozen raspberries or tri-berry mix, thawed but still cool and firm (or equivalent amount of fresh)

Bring sugar, water, peach juice and tapioca to a boil. Continue boiling for about 10 minutes, stirring often. Some tapioca will be clear and other granules will have a white center. Take off heat. Let sit for 30 minutes. (This is when tapioca becomes more clear.) Add orange juice concentrate and 1 1/2 cups water. Chill overnight.

Add mandarin oranges and peaches. Just before serving add strawberries, bananas and raspberries (or other berry mixture).

Celery Soup

It's the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year and I need a break from cooking Malaysian Chinese delicacies simply because they are so difficult to make. After devoting three weeks or so to local kuihs, I have come to the conclusion that Western desserts are so much easier to execute.

Sigh. For next month's Don't Call Me Chef column, Marty, Blessed Glutz and I decided the theme should be Nonya Kuih (read the column in StarTwo or online on thestar.com.my on March 1).

We thought it would be fun. For one thing, we all love eating Nonya Kuihs; and the idea of being able to make these traditional delicacies was just exciting. We were psyched and selected the desserts of our choice. So excited were we that we embarked on our project weeks in advance.

And then we discovered to our extreme disappointment that these were complex recipes and weren't as straightforward as we though. The many recipes for local kuihs online or in recipe books borrowed from my aunt have been just impossible. There were just too many unanswered questions and no solutions.

An example of my most recent failure was my attempt at making my favourite cookie, Kuih Bangkit or melt in your mouth tapioca cookies (pic below). I followed the recipe to the T. Really, I did. And it wasn't the easiest of recipes. You have to dry fry the tapioca flour for about 30 mins or more and then store it overnight before actually making the cookie the next day. I bought the mould and everything. But my cookies didn't melt in the mouth. I kinda needed a sledgehammer to break them in two. Ok, I exagerate but they were hard. Why? Who knows. I looked at 6 recipes and no answers. Sigh.  (Keep a lookout for a future post ... I will make this work).



So today I decided to make something healthy (no coconut milk) and, most importantly, easy. A recipe that was sure to work. I made a delicious bowl of cream of celery soup with two cheeses. And home made croutons. I followed Mark Bittman's recipe from his How To Cook Everything Vegetarian book.  Want an example of a perfectly concise and clear recipe? Check Bittman's out.



It's real simple. You just need celery (I used a bunch I had in the fridge ... about 6 stalks, peel away the outer layer so its not stringy and then chop roughly), 2.5 cups stock, salt and pepper, butter and milk (or cream if you prefer). I must add that Bittman included potato, diced and cooked with the celery. But I am not a fan of potatoes so I left them out. Melt butter and add celery and cook on medium heat till the celery softens. Add boiling stock and let it simmer for about 10 mins till celery is soft. Season with salt and pepper. Blend in batches till pureed. Return to heat, add milk/cream and before turning off the heat and sprinkle grated parmesan and hard cheddar over it. Serve with crisp croutons.

Hong Kong Cafe style breakfast

Hong Kong is a food paradise. When I was working there few years ago, I hardly ever cook. Dim sum with friends was the routine every Sunday. During the working week Cafe restaurants were probably where I went for breakfast, lunch and sometime dinner most of the time. I love HK cafe restaurants or 'cha chaan tian' 茶餐廳, they serve food and drinks all day long from egg and bacon sandwich, french toast, Portugese egg tart to stir fried noodles/rice etc....

One of my favourite cafe breakfast is 'chaan dan tung' 餐蛋通 to wash down with 'yin yan lai cha' 鴛鴦奶茶. Chaan dan tung is macaroni soup with fried spam and fried egg, while yin yan lai cha is a milky tea with coffee. Both sound very strange but really quite tasty and reasonably cheap.

Here is what I do to recreate this at home occasionally for weekend late breakfast.

For the chaan dan tung 餐蛋通, all you need are these ingredients then assemble together

some tasty chicken or pork stock

cooked macaroni

one fried egg per person

2 slices of fried spam or Chinese luncheon meat per person

some blanched Chinese green (like choi sum) or iceburg lettuce

light soy and ground pepper to taste

Heat the stock add cooked macaroni and seasoned to taste then top with fried spam, fried egg and some veg.

For the yin yan milky tea coffee 鴛鴦奶茶

Blew some tea, preferably Lipton, Ceylon red tea or any far east brand English tea. If not use normal Tetley or other English tea.

Blew some light fragrant coffee like Arabica or Columbian, freshly ground is better but can also use instant if you like

Some hot milk or evaporated milk

some sugar (optional)

Mix 50:50 brewed hot tea with coffee add plenty of hot milk or some evaporated milk. Evaporated milk gives a distinctive S E Asian tea/coffee taste. I don't normally add sugar to tea or coffee but yin yan tea coffee is nice with some sugar.

Yin Yang tea coffee is nice too cold with plenty of ice. If you fancy you can add crushed iced, black pearls to make bubble tea 珍珠鴛鴦奶茶, serve in a tall glass with extra wide straws.

Spicy 5 beans Italian Sausage Soup

A spicy 5 beans and Italian Sausage Soup is great for those cold nights. Serve with a some warm French bread and butter and a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Serves 4-6
2 Sweet Italian Sausage Links (medium to large in size, if they are small use 3)
1 Tbsp. Olive Oil
1 can Goya Pink Beans
1 can Goya Pinto Beans
1 can Goya Black Beans
1 can Goya White Beans
1 can Goya Small Red Kidney Beans
½ Cup of small diced onion
3 Tbsp.  Sofrito
1 tsp. Cayenne Ground Pepper
1 tsp. Smoked Ground Red Pepper
1 tsp. Black Ground Pepper
2 Chicken Broth Cubes (found in Spanish Markets I like to use Maggie’s or Knorr)
1 Envelope of Sazón Goya with Saffron
½ Cup of Penne or Rigatoni Pasta
6 Cups of water
Sour Cream (optional)

Procedure:
In a hot skillet, add olive oil and brown sausage. After the skin is browned removed from heat and let stand for 5 minutes. Slice sausage about ¼ inch thick, add to hot skillet and brown more.
Drain beans and rinse in cold water. Add all ingredients except  Pasta and Sour Cream to a 4 quart stock pot and bring to a boil. Once soup boils, lower heat to medium.  Add Pasta and occasionally stir soup so beans won’t get stuck on the bottom of the pot, skim off any fat that rises to the top of soup.  Cook until pasta and beans are tender.  Serve with a dollop of sour cream.

Chicken Soup

THICK NUTRITIOUS CHICKEN SOUP This is my hubby's recipe, he makes the most divine chicken soup, it is thick and full of nutritious goodness. One of those real 'feel good meals'.  A lovely winter meal or when you just need a pick me up, coz the immunity has dropped.  He never follows a recipe and just raids the fridge and veggie garden for whatever is in season and available at the time.  But this is more-or less, give or take the standard recipe.  He makes an enormous pot and then we freeze it in Tupperware, for a quick meal in nights to come. -

Ingredients
: 2kg of chicken pieces enough water to cover the chicken and some 1 Tablepoon chicken stock powder, or 1 stock cube 1 large onion,  finely chopped 1 potato, peeled and cubed into 1cm blocks 2 stalks celery, including the leaves, chopped finely 1 large red caspium pepper, finely chopped. 4 cloves garlic, crushed 2 baby marrow (zucchini), top and tailed and finely chopped 1 red chili, finely chopped 2cm piece of ginger, finely chopped 1 cup soup mix or barley 1 teaspoon turmeric Large pinch of cayenne pepper 1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper 1 teaspoon sage 1 teaspoon parsley 1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice 1 Tablespoon soya sauce Salt and pepper to taste



Method: - Put the chicken in a large pot with chicken stock.  cover with water and boil until the chicken is tender and starting to fall of the bone. - Take the chicken out of the water with a slotted spoon and put in a colander reserving the liquid in the pot that it was boiled in. - allow the chicken to cool enough to work with and take all the chicken off the bones and add back into the soup pot.  Discard the skin and bones - Add the remainder ingredients to the soup and allow to simmer for about 30-40 minutes until the barley and the potatoes are soft -

Black Bean Soup Recipe

Ingredients :

2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons butter
1 pound black beans, soaked overnight, drained
1 ham bone, cracked
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup sherry, or dry white wine
salt and pepper, to taste


How To Prepare :

1. Saute onions and garlic in butter until transparent.

2. Combine with beans, ham bone, celery, bay leaf, and 2 quarts water in the Crock Pot. Cook on high, covered for 2 hours, then on low for 8 to 10 hours.

3. Remove ham bone and bay leaf.

4. Puree soup and return to pot. Add sherry, salt and pepper and heat through.

Service: Serve  in soup bowls garnished with sliced jalapeno.

Egg Drop Soup Recipe

I bought wonton shells (wrappers) at the grocery store (found them in a refrigerated area of the produce section), sliced them into thin strips, and fried them over med-high heat in 1/4" of oil to eat with this delicious soup. Such a fabulous recipe, if I do say so. :) If you like egg drop soup from the restaurant, you'll like this! Serves 4.

Egg Drop Soup

6 c chicken broth, divided*
3/4 tsp fresh ginger, grated, or 1/8 tsp ground ginger powder
1/4 c fresh chives or green onion, chopped
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
4 oz mushrooms, sliced (optional)
2 Tbsp corn starch, or more if desired
5 eggs
salt and white pepper, to taste

1. Pour 5 c of the chicken broth in large saucepan. Mix 1 remaining cup of chicken broth with corn starch; set aside. Add  ginger, chives or onion, soy sauce, sesame oil, and mushrooms if using, to saucepan. Bring to a boil; lower heat and let simmer 5 minutes. Add corn starch and broth mixture; stir. Add more corn starch if you like a thicker soup.
2. Beat the eggs in a small bowl. Drizzle into boiling broth, the thinner the stream the better. Season with salt and pepper, if desired.

* Or use 6 cups water and 6 tsp chicken bouillon.

Spicy Chicken Soup Recipe

Ingredients :
•    2 quarts water
•    8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
•    1/2 teaspoon salt
•    1 teaspoon ground black pepper
•    1 teaspoon garlic powder
•    2 tablespoons dried parsley
•    1 tablespoon onion powder
•    5 cubes chicken bouillon
•    3 tablespoons olive oil
•    1 onion, chopped
•    3 cloves garlic, chopped
•    1 (16 ounce) jar chunky salsa
•    2 (14.5 ounce) cans peeled and diced tomatoes
•    1 (14.5 ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes
•    1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed tomato soup
•    3 tablespoons chili powder
•    1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained
•    2 (16 ounce) cans chili beans, undrained
•    1 (8 ounce) container sour cream

How To Cook : 
1.    In a large pot over medium heat, combine water, chicken, salt, pepper, garlic powder, parsley, onion powder and bouillon cubes. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 1 hour, or until chicken juices run clear. Remove chicken, reserve broth. Shred chicken.
2.    In a large pot over medium heat, cook onion and garlic in olive oil until slightly browned. Stir in salsa, diced tomatoes, whole tomatoes, tomato soup, chili powder, corn, chili beans, sour cream, shredded chicken and 5 cups broth. Simmer 30 minutes.

Read also:Garlic Mashed Potatoes Recipe