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Year: 2007

Carrot Soup

This is a basic soup that can be complemented with several flavors to keep everyone interested. Try the following additions: Sautéed, shaved ginger
Roasted peanuts
Caramelized onion
Roasted red pepper

2 Tablespoons butter, olive oil, or a mixture
1 Onion, sliced thin
1 lb. Carrots, sliced thin
1 Bay leaf
2 Tablespoons chopped parsley
3 Tablespoons white rice
1 Teaspoon paprika
1 Teaspoon cumin
Half teaspoon coriander
Salt and fresh pepper
7 Cups water or vegetable stock

Heat butter/oil over medium heat in soup pot. Add onion, carrots, bay leaf, parsley, and rice cook until onion softens, about 5 minutes. Add spices, half teaspoon salt, and a pinch of pepper. Cook for five more minutes. Add the water/stock and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, partially covered for about 25 minutes.

Remove the bay leaf. Take 2 cups of soup and puree until very smooth and set aside. Puree the remainder of the soup, leaving some “texture”. Put the two portions together and add salt/pepper as desired or other additional complementary ingredients.

Homemade Chicken Broth

It’s easy to make your own broth to use in cooking or as the basis for soups. It’s healthier, too, than buying canned broth, since you can control the amount of salt you add and can remove fat from the stock after cooking.
Use stewing chickens, chicken backs, or the leftover carcass from a roast chicken. Place the chicken in a large stockpot with yellow onions with the skins on (to add color), celery ribs, carrots, bay leaves, whole peppercorns, thyme, and salt.
Cover the ingredients with water and bring to a boil. Remove any debris that floats to the top, reduce to a simmer, and cover.
Once done, strain the liquid to remove the vegetables, bones, and any meat pieces. Let the stock cool completely and refrigerate. Remove any fat that congeals at the top.

Cooking time: three to four hours.

Freezing Tomatoes

First, think about how you would like to use your tomatoes over the winter and how much room you have to keep them in the freezer. This will guide you in the best way to freeze them.

• Freezing whole toms gives you the most options as they can be used one at a time to make chunky style soups or sauces. The downside is whole tomatoes take up a lot of freezer space.
• Making a sauce or puree is space efficient when freezer space is limited but doesn’t allow for much in the way of “texture”. You are also forced to thaw a whole ziplock at a time.

Freezing whole:

Boil 2 quarts of water. Core tomatoes and cut a small ‘X’ on the bottom of each one, just piercing the skin. Plunge the toms in the boiling water a few at a time for 1 minute. Pull them out and run them under cold water or place them in an ice-water bath until all the heat has left them. Starting at the ‘X,’ use a fingernail or a butter knife to peel back the skin.

Place tomatoes on a cooking sheet so that they are not touching and freeze. Pull them out in a few hours and pack them in ziplocks. Use them one by one all winter.

Freezing sauce/puree:

Boil 2 quarts of water. Core tomatoes and cut a small ‘X’ on the bottom of each one, just piercing the skin. Plunge the toms in the boiling water a few at a time for 1 minute. Pull them out and run them under cold water or place them in an ice-water bath until all the heat has left them. Starting at the ‘X’, use a fingernail or a butter knife to peel back the skin.

After the skins are gone you can roast them in the oven -6 hours at 200 with the seeds removed, or cook them down on the stove starting with onions, garlic, etc.

Seeding and pureeing them is also an easy option that provides a good base for lots of stuff.

To freeze, fill your ziplock, jar or tub no more than ¾ in from the top of the container, this will allow room for the contents to expand a bit. Try to place bags on a flat surface in the freezer. This makes the ziplocks more modular for moving around with your other frozen stuff.