15 January 2014

Soup's on

Turnip, rutabaga, carrot, corn, red bell pepper, collards, onion, diced ham, diced chicken, and brown rice. I had all these things in the refrigerator, so it was time to make soup. Never throw anything away... if you can possibly help doing so.


There's always a container of broth lurking in the freezer. This time is was what I'd call "pot liquor" — the liquid left after you've cooked greens. This was a by-product of cooking a mess of collard greens and I had saved the "liquor" and a few stray leaves specifically to use as a soup base. And then over this past weekend I poached and  roasted a chicken for Sunday dinner, so that gave me several liters of chicken broth plus half a cup or so of diced chicken. The ham was half a slice left over from recent pizza-making.


The turnips, rutabagas, and carrots were already cooked — left over from a recent lunch of confit de canard (slow-cooked duck). Turnips and rutabagas (yellow turnips) are especially good with duck — blanched and then sauteed in duck fat. Carrots are good with just about everything. The corn came out of a can, and the roasted red pepper was the last one out of a jar of them that we had bought at the supermarket.


Much chopping and dicing was required, but the only soup components I actually had to cook on soup day were the brown rice and the onion. They simmered in the broth while I sliced and diced all the pre-cooked ingredients. Then all those went into the broth just long enough to get good and hot. Those are cilantro leaves (feuilles de coriandre) floating in the soup, but they could have been any other fresh herb, added at the last minute.

10 comments:

  1. Fridge soup...
    always good...
    'allways' unique...
    and this one actually looks commercial!!

    Sniff...
    sniff...
    yup! I can smell this...
    olfactory memory?

    I so wholw heartedly agree about using all the leftovers...
    Nice one Ken.

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  2. For wholw...
    read whole.
    For Mash get Smash!
    For embarrasment get Blogger!!
    Why won't "blodga" ever let us edit our mistakes!!

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  3. Picture perfect! A hearty soup, a wonderful salad, a good piece of bread and I am a happy camper.

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  4. Oooooh... I love the idea of the cilantro on top. For me, it adds such a nice, fresh taste. Your soup is très appétissante.

    Ken, I know that you don't do FaceBook much, but I mentioned you in a post in which some other language friends and I were discussing difficult-to-translate-easy-to-make-an-embarassing-mistake phrasings between French and English. Being "excited" is one that still stumps us, in certain contexts. Could you weigh in?

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  5. Judy, I don't know how to find that discussion on Facebook.

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  6. Sub barley for brown rice and lamb for ham, and that's going to be our dinner too. It's one of my favorites.

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  7. I always think it is a sign of a great cook to take a little of this and that and make something delicious.

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  8. Ken,thanks for checking -- I assumed that FB would notify you that I was mentioning you in the discussion, but it didn't, because the discussion was on one of MY friend's pages. So... I've summarized the discussion on my own page, and, having included your name in my comments, it is also appearing directly on your FB page, too. If you would like to give input, that would be great! (I do love these language discussions!)

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  9. That looks so good and we are having our version of "soup weather" right now. This has really put me in the mood.

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