Creamed Carrots: Crema de Zanahoria

Another easy one; to make with stuff from the veggie bin in the fridge.

I like mine on the thick side. You may make it more soupy.

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Crema de Zanahoria : Creamed Carrots

Serves: 5

Ingredients

• 700 gr carrots, peeled & chopped [1 1/2 #]
• 1 onion, diced (maybe a shallot or 2 if you’ve got some)
• 2 leeks, white part, chopped fine (or 1, or 3, or none)
• olive oil
• 1/2 t cumin
• salt
• pepper
• 1/2 C dry white wine (I used cava)
• 1 C cream
• 1/2 C milk
• 1/2 C carrot water

Procedure

1. Oil into a sauté pan
2. Sauté the onions and leeks slowly, not browning
3. Meanwhile, boil the carrots in water just barely not covering
   • Until they’re 1/2 cooked, just getting softer
   • Reserve the carrot-water when draining the carrots
4. Carrots go into the pan with the onions and sauté lightly until tender
• Add a tablespoon of carrot-water if things threaten to get burnt/toasty
5. Set carrots and onion etc aside
6. Deglaze the sauté pan with white wine, reduce by 1/2 or 2/3rds
7. Put carrots, onions, leeks, & pan juices into a container and run the whole mess through a vegetable mill, or use a stick blender or a mixer of some sort
• Get it as fine as can be. Add some carrot-water if it’s too thick to process properly.
8. Put this goop into a pot on the stove and add the cream
9. Heat and stir – do not boil
10. Add 3 T olive oil, stir
11. Season with the cumin, add salt and pepper
    • Taste it before continuing
12. Add the milk – watch out for the thickness
13. As required, add carrot-water to obtain a syrupy consistency
14. Heat and stir – and taste
15. When you feel it’s about right that means that you’re done

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Chilled Cream of Potato and Leek Soup : Crème Vichyssoise : Lesson 10 : Part 3 : LCB at Home

Neither this nor the Rice Pilaf are about to produce anything in the way of interesting pictures; alas. Between that and the fact that the soup was dug into prior to the picture being took gives me this…

It was very decorative before the ladle-ing.

I did this recipe at an Italian restaurant I worked at; it was pretty much the same: leeks, onions, potatoes, water, some dairy, salt, pepper - simple enough.  And lovely, served cold on a warm summer evening.

What I did was…

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Crème Vichyssoise : Chilled Cream of Potato and Leek Soup

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• oil
• butter
• 6 leeks, medium, the white part, chopped
• 2 onions, medium, chopped
• 3 potatoes, baking, chunks
• 6 C chicken stock
• salt
• pepper, white, fresh ground
• 1 1/2 C crème fraiche
• chives, fresh, cut, for garnish (and flavour)

Procedure

1. Oil, with maybe a little butter, into a pot , leeks & onions in too - medium-low heat
   • Cook until soft but not colored
2. Add stock and potatoes, simmer
   • until very soft (15 minutes, maybe)
3. Purée with a stick blender (best) or in batches in a blender-blender
4. "Temper" 1 C of crème fraiche with a couple of tablespoons of the purée
5. And then the cup of crème fraiche into the pot of purée
   • Salt and pepper to taste (please, use enough salt)
   • Allow to cool and then into the fridge for a couple of hours
6. After it's cool check the salt and pepper again - it probably will need a touch of pepper
7. Finish, upon serving, with the rest of the crème fraiche and some chopped chives

Notes

1. At the restaurant we didn't use crème fraiche; we used 1/2 cream and 1/2 2% milk
2. Some cut the potato down to just one spud - and it's good with more leeks; but leeks are blindingly expensive here in Toronto thus we'll not be doing that.

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Gratinéed Onion Soup : Soupe à l'Oignon Gratinée : Lesson 8 : Part 3 : LCB at Home

What I would call "French Onion Soup". Onion soup with toast floating on top and melting cheese on the toasts.

Thank you for not noticing that the floating toast is somewhat more than "toasted" on the edge (okay... charred). I'll delve into a couple of little problems related to that in the notes.

You will however notice that the soup broth is white-ish. That is, cloudy. It seems that there's two versions of this soup, one with a clear and one with a not-clear, onion broth. This one is a not-clear broth.

Although the idea of this cooking exercise is to do the recipes just as they are in the book this particular one was cross-bred with the recipe in La Varenne: Pratiqueto give a slightly different result - - but still traditional.

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Soupe à l'Oignon Gratinée : Gratinéed Onion Soup

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 6 T butter
• 1 kilo onions, julienne, fine [2#, sliced finely]
  
• flour
• 1 C wine, dry white
• 1 C stock, (guinea hen stock, very special) [or chicken stock]
• 5 C water
• a boquet garnis (thyme, celery, bay leaf, tied in leek greens)
• salt
• pepper
  
• 1 baguette
• gruyere cheese, grated

Procedure

1. Slowly cook the onions in the butter, until soft, golden brown - practically caramelized. This could take 45 minutes
2. Add a couple of tablespoons of flour and stir it through the onions; cook it for 3 or four minutes
3. Slowly add the wine, whisking/stirring the whole while - get it to boiling - it'll thicken a little
4. Then the stock (we had a wonderful, aromatic, stock of guinea hen and fennel flavors) - whisk this in likewise
5. Then the water, stirring that in too
6. Then add the boquet garnis & salt and pepper to taste (enough salt will bring out the sweetness of the onions - - too little will not achieve that)
7. Bring to a boil
   • You can put everything on hold at this point and stash the pot in the 'fridge for a couple of hours; or a day
8. Cover and simmer for half an hour - just before serving (remove the boquet garnis of course)
   
9. toast baguette slices (make the bread yourself too - - hey, why not?)
10. sprinkle the toasts generously, and completely, with cheese
11. and stick under the broiler to brown them
12. float a couple on each bowl of soup

Done

Notes

1. You can make this the day before and do the final boiling at the last moment
2. Cover the entire toasted baguette with cheese to prevent burning of the exposed edges of the bread
3. Ideally the whole pot of soup is broiled in the oven with soup, toast, cheese and all. This requires oven resistant soup bowls. Which we don't have. Thus, the floating bread on the soup. it works okay too; a very nice presentation.

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Country-Style Soup : Soupe Villageoise: LCB at Home : Lesson 2 : Part 2

A leek and cabbage soup; got surprising raves for such a simple little thing.

The fun was to make the stock from scratch; dead simple, as such things so often are once you have some sort of a technique to do it. It can be made well in advance (couple of days) so the assembly at the last moment is not a big sweat at all.

Purports to serve 6 - could serve 10. It's a very produce-filled bowl; lots of cabbage and leeks and only a relatively small amount of liquid. Next time I'll put in more stock to start with.

What I actually did was...

Soupe Villageoise : Country-Style Vegetable Soup with Noodles

Serves: 6

Ingredients

Stock

• 1 chicken (chop head off, separate neck and feet from body [for more compact occupancy of the stock pot])
• 3 L water [3 quarts]
  
• 2 celery stalks
• 6 springs parsley (big ones, stems and all)
• 3 carrots (generous sized)
• 2 onions (medium)
• 3 cloves (of clove)
• 6 cloves garlic
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 t salt
• 12 peppercorns, black

Soup

• 1/4 C butter (unsalted of course)
• 1/2 cabbage (1/2 a medium size that is)
  
• 1/4 C butter (need I repeat myself?)
• 1 kg leeks [2 #]
  
• 8 C stock
• salt
• pepper
  
• 1 C vermicelli noodles
• parsley for sprinkling

Procedure

Stock

1. Truss chicken [wrap with string]
2. Cut onions and veggies in 2 (or maybe 4) (big chunks)
3. Put chicken into a very big pot
4. Put the veggies and everything else into the pot too
5. Put a lot of water into the pot as well (see note 1)
6. Bring to a boil
7. Reduce to a simmer
8. Skim off the scum and froth and fat that rises to the top (yucky)
9. Continue simmering for an hour
   • Skim as necessary
10. Remove the chicken (save it for something; see note 2)
    • add more water now if it all didn't go in earlier
11. Simmer for another 1 1/2 hours (skimming)
12. Remove some of the large chunks of veggies with a slotted spoon (prevents splashing in the following step)
13. Strain (best would be a fine strainer but I didn't have one)
14. Cool, uncovered, the resultant, golden, stock as quickly as possible (see note 3)

Soup

1. Big pot of water on the boil (for the cabbage)
2. Remove out cabbage leaves, remove hard center, quarter it, rinse it, drain, julienne (slice in fine strips [little-finger wide])
3. Blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes, drain
4. Butter into a large pan, low
5. Cabbage into the pan, coat with butter
6. Cook, covered, until soft (but not colored - thus the low heat)
   • stir once in a while
7. Leeks, use the white and first third of the green
8. Clean leeks (the usual way [see notes]), slice thin (thinner than the cabbage)
9. Butter into a pan (for leeks), low heat
10. Leeks go in, coat, cover, cook - until soft (& not colored)
    • stir once in a while
11. Then, leeks, cabbage and stock into a big soup pot, high heat
12. Boil, reduce to simmer
    • 40 minutes will do it
13. Season (salt and pepper) (use enough salt this time, please - and a touch more pepper - don't be afraid)
14. When ready to serve
    1. add the vermicelli,
    2. get it all boiling,
    3. simmer 5 minutes ('til vermicelli is done)

Done

Notes

1. If there's not enough space for all the water at once put in as much as possible and add the rest later when the stock has boiled down and you pull the chicken out
2. I made croquettes
3. To cool quickly plug sink, put pot in sink, surround with ice cubes from your refrigerator ice machine
4. Cleaning leeks:
1. Remove the ugly bottom root, and much of the useless green
2. quarter the thing vertically from 1" [2 cm] from the bottom to the top (it'll look like a feather duster if you use your imagination)
3. rinse under running water, hanging upside down (the leek, not you) to get out the inevitable dirt from between the leaves

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