Dark Days: Soup Weather

Sunday, January 11, 2009

All I wanted to eat this week was soup.  Happily, it gave me an excuse to try some new soup recipes!

Early in the week I made Roasted Garlic Soup with Cheese Croutons.  I was a little freaked out about the idea of using so much of the carefully hoarded garlic from last year’s garden: the recipe calls for five heads of garlic!  How could I resist all that roasted garlic, though?  And it was delicious.  My husband accused me of trying to kill him with all that garlic.  Well, so what if I had severe garlic breath?

5 heads garlic, unpeeled (my garden)
10 shallots, unpeeled (Tuscarora Growers Coop)
olive oil
salt and pepper
2 c. onions, coarsely chopped (Rineer Family Farm)
1 c. dry white wine
3 c. chicken stock (canned from a local chicken)
2 c. baking potato, peeled and diced (Green Meadow Farm)
1 tsp chopped thyme (my garden)
1 c. milk (Natural by Nature)
Challah bread (Four Worlds Bakery)
shredded raw milk cheese (Green Meadow Farm)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Remove outer skin from garlic heads, cut off tops, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes.  Add shallots drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper to pan.  Cover and bake 25 minutes.  Cool; squeeze out garlic and peel shallots.  Set aside.  Heat remaining oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat; add onion.  Cover and cook 15 minutes.  Add garlic pulp, shallot, and wine.  Reduce heat; simmer uncovered for 5 minutes.  Stir in stock, potato, and thyme; boil.  Cover, reduce heat; simmer for 20 minutes.  Cool slightly and puree half of soup.  Return to pan and stir in milk, salt and pepper.  Cook over medium heat for five minutes.  Place bread slices in single layer on cookie sheet.  Lightly coat bread with cooking spray and bake for 8 minutes at 400 degrees.  Sprinkle cheeses evenly over bread and bake three minutes.  Serve warm on soup.

The second soup was a recipe from Sunday Soup.  The Cold Weather Potato Chowder with Caraway Cheese jumped out at me - mostly because Valley Shepherd Creamery makes a cheese called Carameaway, a gouda-ish cheese with caraway seeds.  The recipe calls for a havarti with caraway seeds, but the Carameaway was close enough.  The only problem with the cheese is that is not the most stellar melting cheese.  It melts but not all the way, and not really that smoothly.  Still, for all that, the soup was delicious.  How could it not be - bacon (I used the double smoked stuff from Green Meadow Farm) is cooked, removed from the pan, and then the onions and celery are cooked in bacon drippings.  Anything cooked in bacon grease is okay by me.

Aside from the salt and pepper, this soup was entirely made from locally grown ingredients.