Carrot Ginger Soup

A few days a week I am on my own for dinner. Usually I am lazy and I make a grilled cheese or reheat leftovers. Occasionally I get motivated to be creative and make myself a nice meal. When Ryan isn't around for a meal I like to make something that he wouldn't be crazy for, or something vegetarian. Ryan and I have lived together for about 3 years now and I learned real quick that a meal without some sort of meat or seafood is not really a meal. (Or it at least means a late night snack for a hungry husband) Before I lived with Ryan I would go a week or two without meat and not think anything about it. Sometimes, it's nice to a take a break from being a carnivore.

On this particular night I didn't have much in the fridge but I knew I had some homemade chicken stock, carrots, and a bit of fresh ginger that I need to use up before it starting growing things in the fridge. A few weeks ago Adam Roberts, the Amateur Gourmet, had "The Great Soup Battle of 2010". In this epic battle was an intriguing recipe for Carrot Ginger Soup. I've never had carrot soup before but the more I thought about it the more my mouth started to water. And, I had the major ingredients. So I started looking on some of my favorite recipe web sites (Epicurious and My Recipes) for additional inspiration. Although the recipe form AG's Soup Battle sounded tempting, the winning recipe was from Bon Appetit from 1997 that I found on Epicurious.

I sauteed onions, garlic, and ginger in butter until soft and then added the carrots and tomatoes and lemon zest. Look at how pretty!I let that cook for a few minutes then I added the chicken broth. Once the broth had come to a boil, I reduced the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes. (The recipe said 20 minutes or until the carrots were soft). I used my favorite kitchen tool, my hand blender, to blend the soup. I'm not a huge fan of smooth and watery soup so I only blended mine until there were a few chunks of carrot and tomato for texture. But that's just me. When you make your ginger carrot soup, you can do what you want. :)So the soup was blended, but it still tasted a little bland to me. So, I added a little cilantro, cumin, and a bit of Siracha (Thai hot sauce) for heat. When the carrots cook they get very sweet, so I added the heat for balance.

While the last of the spices were simmering away to perfection, I tore up some wheat bread and put them under the broiler and made little "poor man" croutons to serve on top of the soup. I also added some crumbled blue cheese and chopped scallions for texture and color. Not bad for a lonely Wednesday night?

So if you are cooking for one or just tired for the same old grilled cheese or PBJ for dinner, try this soup or any recipe that inspires you. You might end up with some tasty results.

Code Cracked: Bangkok Bistro

Tonight Ryan and I had a nice evening, we were productive before dinner and got the tuxes ordered for the wedding (check that off the list) and then we headed to dinner.  We were in Kenwood/Montgomery area, and folks if there is a great, local restaurant in this area of Cincinnati, please tell me, because all we ever seem to see is chain restaurants and the mall food court.  I'm sure there have got to be a few, but Ryan and I have even tried asking someone last time we were at the mall, and they had no idea where to send us, besides Max and Erma's or Macaroni's across the street.  Don't get me wrong, those restaurants are just fine and dandy, but I can eat there any time in any city in America.  We wanted something local and non-chainy.

So we headed back to the Hyde Park area. Of course I was wanting Thai food so we decided to go to Bangkok Bistro.  This is not our first time eating at Bangkok Bistro and I have always had a great meal here.   They have really good Paad Thai and pretty decent sushi.  Our dinner tonight was really good, we had a fun waiter, which is always nice and a few great things happened...1.) i had an awesome duck noodle soup that made me realize that Thai and Asian soups are my new best friend and 2.) I have cracked the code when it comes to ordering spicy food on the spice scale.  ha!

I'll start with my soup, I had the duck noodle soup which is new on the menu at Bangkok Bistro, and in this wonderful soup contained noodles, duck (duh, and duh) cooked lettuce, onions, tons of fresh parsley, and bean sprouts in a tasty beef broth.  The aroma of the soup when it was set before me was amazing, the fresh parsley brightened every bight and the duck (although a little fatty) was really tender and delicious.  I only wish I could have gotten a photo of it...but I forgot my camera. I've been very good about eating healthy and not going overboard because I'm trying to watch what I eat.  I've come to the conclusion that Asian soups are a really great option if you are a watching your diet.. I know the broth was probably super super high in sodium, but I ate my soup with chopsticks so by the time I was done (and stuffed) I still had 3/4 of the broth left in the bowl.  So, the other ingredients are not that bad for you and very filling! 

OK- so here is the big news...Many blogs posts ago, Ryan blogged about the plight of the white man and spicy food.  He wasn't sure how he was supposed to go about getting the really spicy food that he so loves...Well, I told you about our fun waiter, Ryan asked him what he recommended and our waiter told him he really likes spicy food.  So he recommended the Drunken Noodles and Ryan challenged him by saying "10" spice level.  The waiter was like, "are you sure" and Ryan said yes and I  added my two cents by saying "give it to him good!" The gauntlet was laid..  When Ryan got his dish he was pretty impressed, it wasn't so spicy that it wasn't enjoyable for him, but it had enough heat to satisfy his taste buds.  so yay!  

But here is where the code was cracked, I heard the waiter talking to another table about spice levels and he said that if you want it really spicy and the spice level is 1-10, say you want a 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15, therefore challenging the cooks and letting the waiter know you mean business.  If you say 9 or 10, they might take it easy on your thinking you can't handle it...Another suggestion the waiter made is ordering a 1o spice level and then asking for more sauce on the side, so if it's not spicy enough, you can always add more.  

Quite a productive evening I must say!!  So next time we are at an Asian or Indian restaurant that has spice levels, I want Ryan to test this code... I'll let you know what happens. 

Put everything in a pot...

So Ryan and I wanted to cook our first dinner of 2008. Problem was, we didn't have much left in our kitchen. (see left for some of our initial ingredients). Ryan thought that we could make a soup using some of our tomato sauce and the chicken stock as a base. Pre-blog, I made a chicken tortilla soup using a similar base and we had seen Giada make a seafood soup with this base as well. Referencing several of our cookbooks we settled on a ratio of roughly 4 cups of stock to 1 cup of tomato sauce. Here is how it all went down.

We started with a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and cooked down 1/2 of a large red onion and three teaspoons of minced garlic. Taking a tip from Alton Brown's Good Eats we cooked a bag of frozen mixed veggies in the microwave (this particular mix had broccoli, carrots, snow peas and baby corn) and added it to the onion and garlic. Then in went the chicken stock, about 1/2 cup of white wine, and the homemade tomato sauce. We brought the soup to a boil and considered adding some acini di pepe pasta, but decided to use some beans as a starch instead. We used one can of cannelloni beans and one can of red kidney beans.






















Ryan (in his new red apron) seasoned with a bay leaf, dried rosemary, lots of salt (maybe too much), ground black pepper, crushed red pepper, and dried parsley. We also smashed some of the beans and added some tomato paste to thicken the broth. We let it simmer for 15-20 minutes as I made some grilled cheese sandwiches with American and mozzarella cheese. Just before dinner we added what was left of a small bag of frozen, pre-cooked shrimp.

We finished it with some croutons. Ryan liked it with some tobasco sauce and I even put a drop of that in mine. The soup was a little salty, but otherwise very good. The veggies held up and didn't get too mushy (which I was a little worried about) and the rosemary didn't overpower the rest of the spices and ingredients. Overall, it had great flavor and the beans and shrimp gave it some good heartiness. If I had to compare it to a well known soup I would say minestrone. I was so proud of us.