Soup what nourishes the soul

Or is just plain tasty.

Ah, my gentle readers, I'm such a negligent writer. I don't blame you if you seek comfort in the blog of another. But know that I am always thinking of you.

This soup was what happened when I went shopping for Italian chicken sausage at the Korean market. I ended up with chicken thigh.

For the soup, I slowly cooked half a large onion in a decent pat of butter. I cut two chicken thighs into bite size pieces and coated them in flour laced with salt and pepper. I added that to the pot, and cut my two red potatoes into chunks. Before adding the potatoes I deglazed the fond (the bits of flour and fat that had carmelized on the bottom of the pot) with a splash of cream sherry which I had looted from my former roommate's liquor supplies (Thanks Ellen!). The potatoes went in and I simmered it with enough chicken stock to cover until they were soft. I had already cleaned and stemmed perhaps half a bunch of kale. I tore it into bite size pieces as I threw it into the pot. This is perhaps the tastiest soup I have ever made. The perfect thing after tromping about in the rain.

The Boyfriend and I ended up finishing it off that night, so I'm planning on making another pot of it tonight. I often have problems making the same dish from scratch two nights in a row, but you have to understand how delicious this soup is. I recommend it to people who have the ingredients and enjoy delicious things.

That's the long and the short of it for this post, my gentle readers. I hope you have some delicious soup after your own trudgings through autumn.

I only know to call it delicious

Sometimes the Boyfriend cooks, usually to take mercy on an exhausted Sarah. It's always good, healthy stuff (a standard being "broc's 'n' potats" which are broccoli and red potatoes boiled together then drained and tossed with shredded cheddar cheese and black pepper). Last night he made something utterly delicious.

First, he sauteed some onion slices and some green bell pepper strips in a little butter. Then he set that off to the side (I think, I was playing "Animal Crossing" while this was going on. Those weeds aren't going to pull themselves). Then he fried two eggs sunny side up, and set those aside. Then he took a small tortilla and smeared it with refried beans and put an egg and half the veggies on top and put it back in the pan to toast. Then he put another tortilla on top and flipped it to toast the second tortilla (making a tortilla sandwich perhaps). Of course he repeated with the rest of the ingredients. Served with some chunky salsa (sour cream would have been nice too, get some microbial action going on).

Maybe it was the three hour walk that proceeded it, maybe is was the combination of egg and beans and butter, but it was really... really good. It's definitely going into the "keeper" list.

If it had been made with oil instead of butter, it would been proper "country" food: cheap, unrefined (read "honest"), healthy and quick.

The moral of the story is that even if you are the self proclaimed "Foodie" of the house, letting others cook can be quite the welcomed treat.

Right now, it's becoming autumn. I'm currently sitting in a laundromat washing my kotatsu quilt, and thinking about transitions.

Transitions leave me, like most people, in need of comfort.

You know what's comforting? Soup and cheese and bread.



French onion soup was something I'd seen in cans, and in "rethermalizers" where you scoop it into your bowl yourself and pay three dollars for it. It certainly wasn't a soup that was made in my house.

It turns out that onion soup is very easily made, if you can keep from crying. You see, I am from the land of sweet onions, where sulfur is so absent from the soil that if can be said "the land is sweet".

And though I have moved away from that place, I usually only use one onion at a time, and then I usually first halve them and put the cut surfaces down so that the wood of my cutting board can absorb the onion's defense.

Cutting five onions into crescents made me weep. Tears just leaked from my eyes. I may have cried aloud. Now I see why you can buy "onion goggles". Splashing my face with cold water helped a great deal.



So, aside from five sliced onions, I put a generous pat of butter, and a splash of safflower oil (to keep the butter from smoking) and a bay leaf into an electric skillet to melt and mingle. I may have also put two crushed garlic cloves in as well. It seems likely.

After the onions have cooked down and are sweet, I added a quarter of a bottle of red and about a cup of beef stock to the skillet. I let it reduce until it was almost syrupy, then ladled it into my soup crocks.

After toasting some French bread, I tucked it into the top of the crocks, and heaped grated cheese on top (I used an American Parmesan and a cheese called "Marco Pollo" which was a solid cow milk cheese with huge chunks of black pepper inbedded within).



A couple minutes under the broiler, and you have a super filling soup. It's also good with extra bread, and if you're feeling fancy, a little bit of steak cut into strips on the side.