April Showers have arrived, more in the form of heavy downpours. It's all good for our local agriculture, and I love soup on a rainy day. I've been cleaning out the refrigerator and pantry, and I had some cremini mushrooms that had to be either used-- or tossed. I settled on making one of my favorite recipes for Golden Cream of Mushroom Soup. (The soup gets it's golden color from a little tomato paste and the darker color of the cremini mushrooms.) A salad is always a great side dish, with soup. But, fresh baked bread is something that makes it even better.
I found this recipe on my friend's blog, Monica, from "Lick the Bowl Good", while searching for a quick bread recipe. I decided to cut the recipe in half, because Craig and I don't need two dozen freshly baked rolls to tempt us.
I didn't photograph the process of making these rolls, because I wasn't sure how they'd turn out. (In retrospect, I should have grabbed my camera. Sorry about that.) They were really easy to make, using a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer, with a dough hook. A few of the "secrets" is to heat up the mixing bowl, get the liquid ingredients to about 110F. I also like to turn on my oven to "warm" for just a few minutes-- then turn it off. This makes the perfect incubator to speed up the proofing of the dough.
The dough rose in about 20 minutes! The dough had a texture similar to my German Rohr Nudeln (sweet rolls with jelly). You can make clover leaf rolls, but I prefer to cut my dough into square pieces and then shape them into roundish rolls-- well, just click here if you want to see how I shape them.
I took no more than 10 minutes for me to shape the rolls, and then I covered them for about 15 minutes. While the oven preheated, I set the rolls on top of my stove. The warmth of the oven helped to proof the dough.
They baked to a lovely golden brown in about 15 minutes. I brushed a little melted butter on them, then carefully set them on a cooling rack.
I'm not kidding-- in one hour, I baked homemade rolls and made the soup. Ta-da!
Hot soup and freshly baked rolls, homemade and not from a can-- how comforting is that?!
Fluffy and tender...
TASTING NOTES: I've made a few versions of dinner rolls, and have posted several on my blog. These rolls are now my favorite "go to" recipe. The texture is very tender, and they are just so darn easy to make. I'm going to play around with the recipe to come up with a whole wheat version. My son will be sad to see that he missed out on these, because soup and fresh bread is one of his favorite meals. I'll just have to make it for him on his next day off. My pleasure! (Guess what's packed for my lunch box tomorrow, as it will be raining again? )
UPDATE: I tweaked this recipe, using whole wheat flour-- plus, I decided to photograph step-by-step photos on how to make this. I'll be working on that post, and will link to it-- in the meantime, if you want a whole wheat version, the printable recipe card is at the end of this post or click here.
A printable recipe card is at the end of this post. If you can't view it, click here.
It looks like Mother Nature has finally stopped playing "spin the bottle" on what season it is. It's finally raining! Of course, we Californians don't have a true Four Seasons. Yes, we're spoiled. We also pay hefty taxes, so I guess we're even.
Did I ever mention that I meant my shy andhandsome husband at a golf course? No?
Take note, those of you mature single women who are hoping to meet a single man-- golf courses are ripe for the picking! I figured that out, when I found myself divorced, with a teenage son, 8 years ago. I hadn't torn up the dance floor since the BeeGee's were all the rage, after Saturday Night Fever was a box office smash. So, I took golf lessons and started a Singles Golf Club. True story. Oh, did I mention that I used Match.com to help recruit members? Never let is be said that I'm not an enterprising woman.
What does golf have to do with this recipe? You have to think as I do. Random. This weekend is the world famous AT&T Golf Tournament at Pebble Beach. That means that I'm staying home-- far and away from the crowds. It also means that it's raining today, because the tournament will usually bring out the Rain Gods. That means soup is a perfect meal. My man loves them--especially anything with barley.
To make Beef and Barley soup, you begin with.... well, naturally, you would buy beef. I learned a tip from America's Test Kitchen that has forever changed what kind of beef I use for soups and stews. If you've never heard of chuck eye roast, please ask your butcher about it. Unliked neat labeled "stew cut", I find that chuck eye roast is very tender.
To begin with the soup, it does start with a skillet. Using a couple tablespoons of vegetable (in my case, I used olive oil), cooked chopped onion, some tomato paste, and thyme (dried or fresh) until the onions are softened and slightly browned.
This takes about 8-10 minutes. In the meantime...I lined my removable slow cooker insert with a plastic liner (easily found at your local grocery store). These make cleanup super easy.
To build more flavor, we add dry red wine, then add the cooked onions to the slow cooker. Next, we add in crushed tomatoes, beef and chicken broth, chopped carrots...
...soy sauce (I use Tamari sauce),
...barley and then the cut up meat, that has been seasoned with salt & pepper. At this point, I covered the slow cooker insert, put it into the fridge and went to bed. Obviously, if you are a homemaker, you can do all of this earlier on the same day you want the soup. Early in the morning, I turned on the slow cooker to the low setting and came home 11 hours later.
This is when I don't gripe about having to prep my slow cooker meal, the night before. It's a nice feeling to come home to smelling your dinner cooking away. ATK says to remove the meat, and then shred it into bite-sized pieces. I skipped that step, by cutting my pieces into bite-sized chunks in the first place. Simple details. I didn't have much fat to skim off the top, either.
I added some fresh chopped parsley, made a quick green salad and sliced some fresh French Bread.
For the finishing touch, we had a roaring fire going and listened to much needed rainfall outside.
TASTING NOTES: This soup has a very rich red color to it, because of the crushed tomatoes and red wine. The beef is super tender. I felt a little disappointed in that I didn't go with my gut instinct to increase the amount of barley from 1/4 cup to at least 1/2 cup. I really appreciate a higher barley to beef ratio, and I could barely detect in the soup. As for the flavor, I liked it. I'm a lover of all things flavored tomato, but I felt that the crushed tomato overpowered the flavor of the beef. However, my son disagreed with me. He loved this soup. That is not to say that this isn't a good recipe. It is. I would say that you need to adjust the recipe to have less tomato, if that's your preference. I would definitely double up on the pearl barley, if not more. Other than that, this is a lovely soup and I would make it again. In fact, I did! Only, this time, I made it on the stove with a few changes. I will share that soup with you, as well, since it's a bit different than this one.
I am glad that I have re-bonded with my slow cooker. Sure, I spend a half hour prepping dinner the night before. But, it is gives me the next night off from having to prep, cook and clean pots and pans. I've bookmarked a few more recipes from this cookbook that I hope will be as good as the last three I've posted and shared with you. Let's see who won my giveaway to receive a copy of America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution.
I think I'll tune in to our local news to see how Tiger Woods and all the other professional golfers are doing with this weekend's golf tournament. Did I also mention that I haven't swung a golf club in about four years? At least I scored well with my Valentine-- my wonderful husband. I figure that once we both retire, we'll have plenty of time to hit the putting greens.
A printable recipe card is at the end of this post.
When I was young (and dangerous), I met a handsome Hungarian man. In the mid-1970's, we took a trip to Europe. He spoke five languages, including my mother's native tongue (German). We visited his family in beautiful Budapest, and I experienced some of the wonderful (and familiar) flavors of Hungary. This was long before digital cameras were even invented, so I don't have any photos to remember the trip by. It's a shame, because I got to visit parts of Romania (including "Count Dracula's Castle") at a time when the Iron Curtain was still in force. In other words, as a 19 year old girl, I got to experience first hand what it's like to live in a Communist Country. I returned home with a deeper appreciation for my American Citizenship, and I will never forget that.
Once we returned to America, Mr. Hungarian took me to a restaurant in San Francisco, called "Paprikas Fono". It was located at Ghirardelli Square, and we loved two of their dishes so much that I continued to make pilgrimages to the restaurant--even after the relationship ended. Because my mother was born and raised in Bavaria--and her hometown is just a stone's throw from Salzburg, Austria-- I could detect similarities with a commonly used spice... paprika. One of the two dishes was a rich and flavorful "Gulyas Soup", that was served with lángos bread, with fresh cloves of garlic rubbed all over it. Divine. (My brother, clearly, remembers coming with me, to find out what I raved so much about. He ate so much lángos, that he was doubled over with a gluttonous bellyache.)
The restaurant closed, years ago, I'm sad to say. A few months ago, a friend gave me a cookbook on Hungarian recipes. I forgot about it, until last week. Decades later, I found myself longing for that Gulyas soup from a past life. I decided to make my own version, since it was so similar to one of my most viewed recipes, "Austrian Goulash". Instead of researching recipes, I decided to adapt my familiar recipe into a soup. So, I grabbed my camera and started to get creative. My favorite cut of beef for stews and soups is "Chuck Eye Roast". It's economical and tender. I seared two pounds of it, cut-up, in a few batches.
I began with two thinly sliced onion, one red and one green bell pepper.
Three small Yukon Gold potatoes, cut-up, and I needed paprika (of course).
I can find Hungarian paprika at my local grocery store. I buy two varieties-- sweet and hot.
Once the meat had been browned, and removed I had lots of flavor in my Dutch oven. Adding a bit more olive oil, I cooked the bell peppers until slightly tender and set those aside. Then, I added the onion and cooked them until tender-- about 4 minutes.
I added a couple cloves of garlic, 2 Tablespoons of tomato paste, 1 1/2 Tablespoons sweet paprika and about 2 teaspoons of hot paprika. NOTE: The reason that the tomato paste is "steaming" is that it's frozen. I do that with any leftover tomato paste, once I open a can. Clever, eh?
Now, I add the browned beef back and all of the juices and toss everything around...
... then I added a quart of Beef Broth. I suppose you could use beef bouillon cubes and water, but that's not my favorite way of making soup. I added the bell peppers back to the soup and a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes.
One tablespoon of caraway seeds, two bay leaves, and then the potatoes. I brought the soup to a simmer.
I decided to cut some fresh thyme, from our herb garden, tied it and tossed it in-- for more flavor. The soup simmered on low for a couple of hours, allowing for all the flavors to build.
I realized, a bit late, that I should have added a couple tablespoons of flour to the onion, as I cooked them. That would have thickened the soup to my liking. I'm not a fan of thin soup. My quick fix is to take a couple tablespoons of flour (sometimes potato starch), add some water, while whisking away to prevent lumps.
I carefully add it to the simmering soup, while stirring. It thickens right up!
There it is. An American Girl, who-once- knew-a-true-Hungarian's version of Gulyas Soup. I say this, because when I later researched recipes, I found that people can get rather "testy" if you don't make it the way that their grandmother once did. I believe I captured the flavor, as I remembered it, well. Now, it was time for my son and husband to taste it:
TASTING NOTES: This is a rich beef soup, with a lovely balance of tomato and sweet paprika. The hot paprika comes through, in a subtle way, because I didn't add a lot of it. If you don't like bell peppers (which my son didn't, and he picked them out) then leave them out. My husband likes them, and liked the soup very much. The beef is so tender. I wish I had cut the potatoes a little larger, but that's just a personal preference.
I served this with my first attempt at lángos bread. It's a fried bread, rubbed with fresh garlic while hot. I will share how I made it, on my next post. It was quite an experiment for me to create, and I was happy with the results. I can see why my brother ate himself sick the first time he ate them. They are that good, especially if you're a garlic lover. I'm happy to say, I wasn't as gluttonous, tempted as I was. For a brief moment, I was back at that restaurant in Ghirardelli Square-- but I was sharing the moment with the man I'm lucky to call "My husband".
I am linking this post to Deb at Kahakai Kitchen for her weekly Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sunday. It's been a while since I've done so, because..well, it's now winter in California and Soup's on! Come see what's cookin'!
A printable recipe card is at the bottom of this post.
While I was stirring this delicious Potato Leek Soup, my 23 year old son said that he suddenly remembered his Bavarian "Oma" serving him a similar soup when he about 4 years old. (Mutti didn't add leeks, as far as I can recall.) It's funny how certain aromas or recipes can transport us way back in time.
It's been a long time since I've participated in a food blog recipe roundup. For the last year and a half, time is a rare commodity with my job and evening classes. Still, I find that food blogging (is that a new verb like "face booking"?) is a fun way to discover new food blogs. I decided to join "The Secret Recipe Club", after seeing a few of my blog community friends had join as well. The idea is that I am assigned to peruse, choose and post a recipe from a blog that is assigned to me.
For my first assignment, I was given "The Haggis and the Herring". After reading their "About Page" (...and can I just say that I love it when bloggers tell me who they are, where they live and a bit about themselves?) I discovered that these are Toronto, Ontario bloggers who originally created their website for their wedding. Like most of us food bloggers, their blog has evolved into a place of sharing recipes they've created for their Friday night dinners with friends and family.
I spent a bit of time to get a feel for their theme of recipes. I noted that there is a lot of Indian flavors like, curries, vegetarian and then-- some English, European and Mediterranean influences. My visual taste buds were changing like a chameleon. I narrowed down my recipe picks to either "Hamentaschen" cookies, "Chocolate Bonk" or a Welsh dish of "Potato Leek Soup". This weekend, rainy and cold weather has finally come to stick around my part of California. So, I chose a savory hot soup. This would give me a perfect opportunity to bake bread to go with it.
I usually keep leeks on hand, because they are perfect for making soups. Trader Joe's carries leeks that have already been trimmed, and the price is right.
I like to split them in half...
...the cut them into half moons. . Sometimes soil hides inside leeks, so I carefully wash them, then strain them.
I used my mandolin to easily slice a large onion and three Russet potatoes, nice and thin. In a Dutch oven, you'll need a bit of olive oil and butter. Begin to saute the leeks and onion, just until soft (about 5 minutes). Next, add 2-3 small cloves of garlic and cook for just the last minute.
I decided to add thyme to the soup recipe. Fresh is usually my go to, since I grow my own. But, I took a shortcut and used dried thyme How much? About two teaspoons. Give it a stir. Add the potatoes. I like to make my own chicken stock, but there is no shame in buying boxed chicken broth/stock. I added one quart of chicken broth to the sliced potatoes.
One of my favorite ingredients that I add to creamed soups is white wine. The wine gives a nice touch of acidity, and I think, enhances the flavors of the soup. I like to use sauvignon blanc, as my cooking wine (or dry vermouth). I covered the soup, brought it to a simmer until the potatoes were fork tender-- about 20-25 minutes. At this point you could mash the potatoes. Or, you could puree the soup in a blender. Me? My immersion blender is one of my favorite kitchen tools. I like to puree my soups to leave a bit of texture. I added about 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese.
Then I tasted the soup and added a little and pepper. I used a low-sodium broth, but I didn't want to add salt just yet. Why? Because I'll be adding Parmesan cheese, which can be salty in itself. What's next? Ah, heavy cream. What can one say? It's got some extra calories and fat grams. But, it leaves such a silky and creamy flavor to soups. I added about 1/2 cup-- not too bad, considering this 8-10 cups of soup. Last, but not least, I add a little salt until the flavors all seemed balanced.
I baked a loaf of Whole Wheat Bread, and decided to add a Parmesan Crisp (that I buy at Trader Joe's. These are wickedly good.)
Photographing a white soup isn't very easy to do, especially when you have white dinnerware.
VERDICT: My husband, my son and I love soups. To me, they are the ultimate in comfort food. The potatoes give the soup a lovely thick viscosity, and the leeks and onion add so much flavor. The thyme, I think, is a good addition. The wine....oh, the wine. You don't taste alcohol. White wine really kicks up the flavor buds, and the Parmesan cheese. My husband usually reads my blog (hi, honey), but I will rat out that he ate three bowls of this soup. I ate two. The bread...well, I'm not sayin' how many slices of hot, fresh bread and butter were devoured. The bread? Oh, that recipe is coming up next. (NOTE: I realized that I had made and blogged another version of Potato Leek Soup, in April 2009. That version uses bacon. It's good, but I liked this version better, I would say.)
The next day, I reheated the last bowl of soup. I made chive oil, and I think that added some pretty color and subtle flavor.
Thanks, Dan & Meredith, for inspiring me to make your Welsh soup. My tweaks were minor, but I do believe I captured the recipe as you shared it. I will definitely make this again. A printable recipe is at the end of this post.
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