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I promised Woolly that I’d post a chicken soup favorite of mine and by golly, I’m doing it. Seems fitting as it has been snowing since this afternoon (big grin here). What did I tell ya? March means psycho weather: sunny and warm, stormy and snowy. It’s all good to me. Sort of like a degustation.

Apologies to Sarah and Kevin. For some reason, my spam filter keeps tucking your comments away as spam until I go and rescue them. Just to let you know that you are not flagged for my black list or anything! xxoo

See here now, my good man installed new blinds in our great room this week! There was a sale at [twenty] three-day blinds and we made the move to replace those old ones that came with the house. No offense to M&B, from whom we bought the house because we love those ladies like nobody’s business, but these dual cell honeycomb blinds are soooooo energy efficient and the diffuse lighting Rocks My World. Whooooooo!

if you will recall from before

and now!

So what’s this chicken soup thing? It’s another easy peasy with tremendously satisfying results. There’s only one hitch. You need to procure some of this:

fried rice cakes

Chicken sizzling rice soup was one of my favorites to order in Chinese restaurants when I was a kid. The sizzling rice was the main event as it slid into the soup and - sizzled. So as some of you know, I can’t read Chinese. I shop for most Chinese groceries by sight and pattern recognition. Can’t tell you how much it screwed me over when one of the brands I grew up with changed their label design… If you decide to make your own sizzling rice (which involves frying and other things that I avoid by buying it) then no worries - although it does remove the whole “easy peasy” concept. If you purchase it, this is the only brand I’ve been able to find out here in landlocked country. The translation of “rice cake” can lead to many things that are not these fried rice cakes, so just be warned if you flag down the grocer for help in an Asian market, okay?

crispy and light

I’ve seen some people add carrots and other vegetables to this soup, but really, I think snow peas and chicken (or fish) do the trick just fine. I have a habit of picking snow peas one by one. It’s something I learned from my grandma. I can’t stand limp snow peas. That’s just… perverse. I pick the ends off of the snow peas and try to remove the woody strands. The chicken is just chicken breast sliced against the grain.

snow peas and chicken

Obviously homemade chicken broth is going to kick canned chicken broth in the balls, but canned works here. I actually made this batch with half homemade and half store-bought because I ran out of the homemade. Bring it to a boil.

add the chicken first

Stir the chicken around so the pieces don’t clump together in an embarrassing mess. It won’t take long before they are nearly cooked through, at which point…

add the snow peas

The snow peas cook in no time flat. Once you add them, turn off the heat and get the ladle ready. Smash a rice cake or two in a bowl and sprinkle with some white pepper before pouring the soup over top.

add the hot soup to the rice

Oh, I guess the whole reason I ordered the soup as a kid was for the fanfare of watching the little fried rice bits tumble to their sizzling demise in the soup. So if you want to dazzle your friends, you can add the rice last. As an adult, it is now the eatin’ and not so much the sizzlin’ that I love. Easy peasy, kids.

soup’s on

Chicken Sizzling Rice Soup

2 quarts chicken broth
1/2 lb. chicken breast, sliced against the grain
2 cups snow peas, trimmed and washed
fried rice cakes (1-2 per bowl)
white pepper to taste

Bring broth to boil over high heat. Add chicken and stir to separate the slices. When chicken is nearly cooked, add the snow peas. Remove from heat. Ladle soup into bowls and sprinkle crushed rice cakes over the soup. Season to taste with white pepper.

My local hill got five inches of powder last night, so I grabbed my teles and headed out this morning. There’s no more powder, because I skied it all up. Powder feels like silk - except when you biff (and I did one very nice skis-over-head tumbler), but even then it’s a lovely way to wipe out.

dude in front better not track up my freshies

it snowed the whole morning

That was tiring (but fun), pushing powder around. I mean more tiring than usual because I haven’t been able to eat much solid food lately so I’ve been rather low on the blood sugar. My body’s weak after the last cycle’s myriad of side-effects anyway. I’m on the front end of that period when my body is sort of returning to normal and I desperately work out to bring it up to speed before the next dose. Consider it the inflection point of the sinusoid. It’s good to get the tele legs back. More snow in the forecast. More tele.

There’s nothing quite like a steaming hot bowl of soup or stew after skiing. Well, there wasn’t any to be had since I hadn’t made it. Easy enough to fix. Brunswick stew is a local specialty where I grew up. It’s simple to make and all of the ingredients are easy to get your hands on. I find it surprisingly delightful every time I make it because for some reason the recipe looks dull to me. I think it’s the sugar.

the veggies

The recipe I have comes from The Williamsburg Cookbook which lists a lot of traditional recipes, as in from the Colonial Days. Brunswick stew was originally made with squirrel, not chicken. I have never had squirrel before and I have no desire to trap any of the ones twitching in our trees. Organic chicken works for me.

chicken

I like to make my stew in two steps. First I boil the chicken in water and when the chicken is ready, I remove the skin and bones and shred the chicken. Then I strain the broth and refrigerate it until the fat has solidified (organic chicken fat is less solid) and remove the fat. That’s the first step.

some tomatoes

Yeah, no fresh tomatoes right now. I like this brand of organic toms. I also substitute zucchini for okra, and I typically like to use baby lima beans instead of standard limas. But my local store didn’t have baby limas, so I had to settle for adults this time around.

into the pot

The second step resumes the recipe by heating the broth and adding the vegetables. Cook until the potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes.

add the chickie

Then add the meat and spices (salt, pepper, and sugar - I told you it was simple) and the instructions just end there. I like to let it simmer for another 30 minutes at least. What you end up with is a satisfying hearty soup or sort of thin stew. Good and hot.

brunswick stew - desquirrelized

Chowning’s Tavern Brunswick Stew
The Williamsburg Cookbook

1 stewing hen (6 pounds), or 2 broiler-fryers (3 pounds each)
2 large onions, chopped
2 cups okra, cut (I subbed zucchini)
4 cups fresh or 2 cans (1 pound each) tomatoes
2 cups lima beans
3 medium potatoes, diced
4 cups corn cut from cob or 2 cans (1 pound each) corn
3 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tbsp sugar

Cut chicken into pieces and simmer in 3 quarts water for thin stew, or 2 quarts for thick stew, until meat can easily be removed from the bones, about 2 1/4 hours. Add raw vegetables to broth and simmer, uncovered, until the beans and potatoes are tender. Stir occasionally to prevent scorching. Add chicken, boned and diced if desired, and the seasonings. The book notes that Brunswick stew benefits from long, slow cooking, and that some people believe the flavor improves if the stew is left overnight and reheated the following day. 8-10 servings.

Congratulations to Reema T. Bhakta! You’ve won the Menu for Hope raffle for the prize offered here on Use Real Butter! If you are Reema, you need to send me an email so we can discuss your choice of prize and where the heck you are so I can ship it to your hot little hands pronto! Thanks to everyone else who bid for such a terrific cause. If you really had your heart set on a print, drop me a line and we can make arrangements.

This morning a kind, portly dude knocked on the door at 7:55. I was in my bike shorts, ready to ride for an hour because these guys weren’t scheduled to arrive until 10 am to 2 pm. But here they were, not necessarily bright-eyed and bushy-tailed either. It was snowing, and the fellows in Denver aren’t too keen on the lovely mountain weather I cherish.

from my office perch - the snow conditions

The package is a new treadmill I’ve been contemplating for several years now. We found a great deal on a heavy duty model because I can’t stand those little flimsy wimpy home-version treadmills that fall apart the minute you hit a decent clip. I want to run, not jog on my treadmill. I’m a big fan of the commercial treadmills at gyms, but my doc advised me to keep away from public gyms for a while. So this is what we have. It rounds out my personal gym nicely. I call it my gym because Jeremy’s too tall for my bike frame and he’s rowed all of 15 minutes on my rower, ever. He tells me he will run on the treadmill. Yeah, whatever ;)

floor plan

Pardon the mess. Not sure where to put the bike. I like to look out the window when I ride because we don’t own a brain rot box (tv). The beauty of the rower and the treadmill is that they can both be folded and moved. Anyway, the treadmill is downstairs because the delivery guys looked scared when I said I planned to put it on the second floor. I let them off the hook and told them Jeremy and I would move it ourselves - all 280 pounds of it. They were like, “you?”. Yeah guys, me - strong as a horse. I’m so stoked! Now I can enjoy my favorite season AND run, bike, row, which ice, wind, and freezing temps render practically impossible outside.

It really is soup weather here and I finally got around to making a soup I love. There is no good reason why I haven’t cooked much with lentils other than I never knew what lentils were until I went to college. Lately, I’ve seen pictures of lentil dishes and I find myself craving lentils. What’s up with that?

green lentils, green french lentils

I am lentil stupid, as in I have never gone and bought them from the bulk section. I knew I needed green lentils. I found lentils that looked green. Turns out those were green French lentils and I’m not sure if there is much difference between those and the regular green lentils, but I went back and got the proper kind. I was also unaware that they had to soak overnight (sort of like the time I decided to make Panettone at 11 pm and didn’t read that it had to rise, three times). What does it mean to pick over lentils, anyway? I found nothing that shouldn’t have been there…

soaked green lentils

Once the lentils were ready (the next day) I was jazzed to get going. There is a terrific Lebanese restaurant in Alhambra, California, Wahib’s Middle East Restaurant, that we used to frequent. This soup was one of my favorite ways to start a meal. I found a recipe for it in Christine Osborne’s Middle Eastern Cooking.

sauté onions in butter

add the drained lentils

Once the lentils are added, seasonings and broth go into the pot. The recipe calls for homemade beef broth. Homemade beef broth is amazing and nothing like the store bought versions, but I just don’t have that on hand (chicken broth is another story entirely - I always have homemade chicken broth in my freezer). I used Better than Bouillon beef stock concentrate paste and it didn’t detract from the end product. Now since my pal, Liz, just got a crock pot, this is when you could crock pot the whole ordeal until soft, or if you’re impatient like me, cook on the stove top for 1.5 hours at a simmer. When the lentils were soft I scooped about 2 cups’ worth into my food processor.

ready to purée

The recipe says to wait until the soup cools before blending the lentils - and she blends them all, but… I didn’t wait. I don’t think it hurt the soup. You can blend it to a fine paste or a chunky paste, whatever you like. This gets stirred back into the soup to create a thicker body. Next time I might should blend 3-4 cups, but I still like having whole lentils swimming in my soup.

pour and blend into the soup

add lemon juice and olive oil

Once blended, I was supposed to reheat the soup, but mine was still hot. I stirred in lemon juice and olive oil, then ladled it into a bowl. Serve it up with a garnish of croutons and chopped parsley. I love this soup.

soup to warm the heart and soul (and tummy)

Lentil Soup
Middle Eastern Cooking by Christine Osborne

1 onion, finely chopped
4 tbsp butter
1 cup lentils, soaked overnight and drained
5 cups homemade beef stock
1 tsp ground cumin
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 slices white bread, crusts removed, diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp lemon juice
finely chopped parsley, to garnish

Melt half of the butter in a soup pot and sauté the onions until soft. Add lentils and stir until glazed with butter. Add stock, cumin, salt and pepper. Simmer until lentils have almost disintegrated, about 1.5 to 2 hours. Test lentils to ensure they are tender. Let cool. Purée the mixture in a blender or food processor. Fry diced bread in remaining butter with crushed garlic to make croutons. Return soup to pan, reheat to a gentle boil. Let stand for a few minutes before serving. Stir in oil, lemon juice, and croutons. Garnish with a little parsley.