Soup of the Week – Pilot Edition

October 11, 2012 Off By Lisa

I know that I inherited my love of autumn from my Mother.

Nobody loves this season quite like my Mom – I am certain of it.  The second that the first waft of cooler air passes by, she throws open the windows and puts a pot of stew on the stove.

Mom is also good at soup.  Last fall and winter, she came up with a new concept – Soup of the Week.  This was such a good idea, I decided to adopt it for our own house and this year it’s back again!

I guess I really could have started my Soup of the Week posts sooner.  We’ve already had a couple of great ones in the last few weeks.  I have three soups to offer here today, so this pilot edition of Soup of the Week will be a bit long.  If you love soup, though, stick with me!

If you haven’t tried the butternut squash soup with chicken sausage and ricotta salata cheese, please do that while the butternut squash are so readily available.  I promise you will love it.

We also just had a terrific creamy tomato soup found in the October issue of Food Network Magazine.  You can find Ina Garten’s Easy Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese Croutons here on the Food Network website.  When Zilla and I made this one, we made a few small adjustments, but none that really made a dramatic change in the recipe.  First, we did not add the saffron because we did not have any in the house and I really just did not want to go hunting for it.  It tasted divine without it.  Instead of orzo, Zilla opted for mini whole grain, organic, vegetable ABC pasta.  (My Little Gourmet strikes again!)  And homemade chicken stock?  Um, no.  Unsalted Kitchen Basics in a box.  The rest of the items were things we always have on hand, so this one was really a no-brainer.  We skipped the grilled cheese croutons because we served this as one of several courses for a family dinner celebration.  If it were a meal by itself, the grilled cheese croutons would be well worth the effort, I’m sure.

This week, I felt like having chicken soup.  There are germs lurking everywhere.  Ten people I know have a cold or something equally germy.  Chicken soup seemed like the way to go.  Once again, Food Network Magazine inspired.  This week’s Soup of the Week is Emeril Lagasse’s Portuguese Chicken, Lemon, and Mint Soup from the January/February 2012 issue.

I completely missed this soup back in the winter months and I can’t imagine why.  I probably skipped it because I generally find Emeril’s recipes just a bit too time-consuming and fussy.  Honestly, this one is no different – total time is over two hours and involves a big ol’ uncooked chicken.  Not happening, my friends.  Not happening.

Here come the modifications…

We took leftover already-cooked chicken from Monday night’s dinner (conveniently a lemon-garlic offering so it did not contradict the flavor combos in this soup) and chopped it up rather than follow the step about cooking the whole chicken in the soup.

We did, however, combine the onion, garlic, parsley, lemon zest, mint, red pepper flakes and broth in a large soup pot and boil it.  Rather than simmer for 45 minutes, then a total of another 50 minutes for the next steps, though, I’d say the whole thing was on the stove for about 45 minutes (max), start to finish.  And that includes the time it simmered while I made sandwiches for everyone.

We did no such thing as strain the stock and reserve the chicken to add after reducing the stock for 30 minutes.  At around the 20-minute mark, we tossed in the given amount of rice, added our chopped leftover chicken, and let the whole thing simmer for about 15-20 minutes.

So the very abbreviated version is that we tossed all of Emeril’s ingredients in there together (minus celery because we all hate it), added the rice and the chopped leftover chicken, and called it finished.

On a weekend would I do it Emeril’s way?  Perhaps.  We liked it just fine this way, though – all the benefits of chicken soup with just a little kick of something different from the cayenne pepper.  Fab Hub and I enjoyed it; Zilla enjoyed the idea of it and thought she’d like it, but didn’t really care for the heat of the cayenne pepper.  Hey, she’s a budding gourmet, but she’s still only four!  Maybe next time I’d pull some out for her before adding the cayenne pepper or skip it altogether.  I do think it adds a little something special, though.

Photos, you ask?  Well, the butternut squash one can be found on that post – click over and see.  The two Food Network soups?  Let’s just say that my home versions weren’t nearly as attractively styled or camera-ready because both were made in under an hour on two different “school nights.”  We were on a mission.

I can promise you, though, that they were warm and delicious and so worthy of a place at the fall dinner table.

Soup’s on!

CategoryLife
Tagsautumn dinner food kids in the kitchen moms quick meals Soup of the Week

About The Author

Lisa A. Listwa is a self-employed writer with experience in education, publishing, and the martial arts. Believing there was more to life than punching someone else’s time clock and inspired by the words of Henry David Thoreau, she traded her life as a high school educator for a life as a writer and hasn’t looked back. She is mother to one glorious handful of a daughter, wife to the nicest guy on the planet, and reluctant but devoted owner of three Rotten Cats. You can find her adventures and thoughts on living life deliberately here on the blog.

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