Soupy Sunday





There is no better antidote to the Sunday night ritual of harried workweek prep/Monday dread than a steaming bowl of nutritious and filling soup. I planned to be extra-productive this weekend, putting the finishing touches on my thesis for final submission, and Saturday was excellent for that; however Sunday, which followed a very late night, was a total bust. Nevertheless, after lazing around all day and watching reruns of Lie to Me, I decided to try my hand at a new recipe for one of my all-time favorites, broccoli cheddar soup. Surprisingly easy to make, this broccoli cheddar soup has a mild kick to it that plays nicely off of its cheesy richness. The only major change that I made to the original recipe was the addition of extra milk and broth to thin the soup out; the original yielded a soup that was far too thick and chowder-like. I added a couple of extra dashes of Tabasco at the end just before serving as well, but then again, I add Tabasco to pretty much everything.

Broccoli cheddar soup
Adapted significantly from guiltykitchen.com

Ingredients

-       3 heads of broccoli, florets separated from stems and diced finely
-       ½ white onion, diced
-       1 clove garlic, minced or crushed
-       3 tbsp butter or margarine, separated
-       1 ½ cups skim milk, warmed and separated
-       1 ½ heaping tbsp flour
-       3 cups vegetable/chicken broth
-       1 cup sharp cheddar, shredded
-       ¼ tsp paprika
-       Tabasco, to taste
-       Salt and pepper, to taste

1.     In a large soup pot on medium heat, melt 1 ½ tbsp butter or margarine and add broccoli and onions; cook for about 6-7 minutes, or until softened.
2.     Add garlic and cook for 2 more minutes
3.     Add vegetable or chicken broth and bring to a boil; reduce heat and let simmer, uncovered.
4.     Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, melt remaining 1 ½ tbsp butter. Add flour and whisk together to make a roux; add ½ cup warm milk slowly, whisking constantly, to make a thick creamy sauce. Bring to a simmer and allow to thicken (no more than 5-7 minutes).
5.     Slowly add cheddar to the roux and allow the cheese to become incorporated. Add remaining 1 cup of milk and whisk until smooth; pour the finished sauce to the soup pot and season with paprika and Tabasco, if using. Bring soup to a simmer and leave on low heat for about 15 minutes. 
6.     Remove from heat and add salt and pepper, to taste. Garnish with a bit of extra cheddar if desired.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scone Witch

Image
There is an amazing little restaurant in the outskirts of downtown Ottawa called The Scone Witch, which makes scones in more varieties than you can imagine.   Savory scones with ingredients such as fragrant rosemary, cheese and scallions; sweet scones in which are embedded bits of candied ginger and tiny, tangy currants. M and I ate there recently, and our exceptional lunch reminded me of how much I love the decadent and infinitely adaptable pillows of butter and cream. I have previously only attempted to make scones once – the effort, thought valiant, was somewhat subpar – but this week I decided to try my hand at it again. In browsing the web, a recipe caught my eye, from my favorite food blog, Smitten Kitchen (featured prominently in many of my posts). The recipe, though not too labor-intensive, took more time than I had anticipated, and M and I ended up indulging quite late in the night. A delicious bedtime snack, no doubt, but also the recipe for a burnt
Read more

Birthday torte

Image
M loves chocolate, adores it in fact. He will always make a beeline for the chocolatiest dessert on the menu at dinner, and we always have some iteration of dark chocolate stashed away somewhere in the apartment. So, it seemed appropriate that his birthday cake request was as chocolately as birthday cakes get, in the best way of course. Home for the weekend, we spent a lovely, relaxed evening together, starting with a fantastic dinner at Brooklyn Warehouse, a low-key bistro in Halifax's North End; definitely a culinary gem in the city. Dessert was, of course, M's cake of choice; a luxuriously rich torte made with a sinful amount of dark chocolate and butter, bourbon syrup and just a touch of flour to hold the whole thing together. We paired it with a sweet-tart mixed berry-orange compote, scotch, and 'Blade Runner'. Bayou chocolate torte with bourbon and dark chocolate, with mixed berry-orange compote (recipe to follow) From 'Rebar Modern Food Cookbook&
Read more

Decadence

I am recovering from a weekend of gastronomic hedonism. Too much sushi, wine, 4 am pizza (incidentally, the best ever, even the next morning), poutine, more ethanol, maple syrupy French toast etc etc etc….so good, but 48 hours of indulgence leaves one feeling a bit….heavy. As would be expected, lethargy descended upon us on a cold and rainy spring Sunday night, and all I wanted to was to eat something filling, that was easy to make, and that was light . Because let’s face it, this squid’s diet can only take so much of a beating. So I turned to my old stand-by, Madhur Jaffrey, the queen of vegetarian and Indian, cooking. She hold a special place in my culinarily-inclined heart, ever since I discovered her classic cookbook in my mother’s cupboard a few years ago, “An Introduction to Indian Cooking”, which is unfortunately now out of print. Her’s is one of the only cookbooks that my mom has that is not annotated to death – it’s as though every recipe she writes has been tested to perfe
Read more