Southwestern Corn Chowder

I adapted this from a recipe I got off of recipezaar. My mom had this soup at work one day and I thought I could do an even better version from scratch. Now my mom can't eat the one they do at work anymore, she says mine is so much better! And it is a fairly simple and quick recipe to whip up on a cold night. We serve it with crusty bread and butter. Em likes to dip her bread in the soup.

Ingredients

* 1 tablespoon butter
* 1 cup celery, finely chopped (I like to do the veggies approximately the same size as the corn)
* 1 cup onion, finely chopped
* 1 red pepper, finely chopped
* 1 teaspoon garlic, minced
* 2 tbls chili powder
* 2 tbls teaspoon cumin
* 3 cups vegetable broth or chicken broth
* 1 (15 ounce) can cream-style corn
* 16 ounces frozen corn (I like to do a half bag of regular corn and a half bag of Trader Joes Fire Roasted Corn, it really is a good flavor!)
* 1 cup heavy cream
* 6 tablespoons flour
* 2 cups cheese, shredded (I usually use cheddar)

Directions

Melt butter in a heavy pan. Saute onion, celery, red pepper and garlic until tender. Stir in broth, chili powder, cumin, and corn. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Bring the soup up to a medium heat. In a small bowl, add cream to the flour, whisking until smooth. Add to soup mixture. Stir until thickened. Cook approximately 5 minutes, stirring often. Add cheese, stirring until melted. Serve.

Cold, Frigid, Chillly, Soup, Soup, Soup!

Way back in September 2002, a family of five arrived in Columbus, Ohio, ready to settle down in a new town. They didn't know anyone, and the university family housing apartment they wanted to move into was not yet available. They were put on a long waiting list, and were told that the apartment would be available sometime in October. So they decided to find a temporary place until they could move into their new humble abode. Intown Suites, an extended stay, replete with a kitchenette was where they checked into and stayed until an apartment in the University Family Housing was available, alhamdulillah, a week later, way before October, sooner than expected.

We are that family. No longer a family of five, mind you, but a family of seven minus one, and we're still living in that humble abode. Been here for more than six years now, alhamdulillah.

But what does that have to do with the chicken soup in this post?

Well, it was at that kitchenette that I came up with this dish. I had a few dry ground spices, oil, raw chicken, and the usual onion and garlic. I wanted to make chicken soup, like here, but I thought I'd give it a new twist instead. So, I slathered the chicken pieces with the oily paste I concocted from the spices and oil I had on hand, and fried them. Then I proceeded to make the chicken soup as usual, except this time, I dunked in these fried chicken into the soup. The resulting soup was one that was pregnant with aromatic coriander and cumin specks floating in a thin clear steaming soup.

Suffice it to say, I was exhilarated with this new dish, whipped up mostly out of boredom and an intense need to settle down. This chicken soup has undergone a lot of changes throughout the years. This is the one I've carefully measured and noted down the ingredients for, and to this day, it is still unnamed. I suppose I'll call it the 'Unnamed Chicken Soup' until I come up with a good name for it (which might be never).

Unnamed Chicken Soup

Combine to make a wet paste:
2 tablespoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 tablespoon ground cumin
2 tablespoon olive oil

10 chicken drumsticks/ equivalent of chicken parts, bone in

1 -3 tablespoons canola oil
3/4 medium - large onion, finely minced
4- 5 cloves garlic, finely minced or finely pounded
1-2 inch ginger, finely minced or finely pounded
3 star anise
1 cinnamon stick, broken
3 whole cloves
3 cardamom pods

4 medium carrots, thickly sliced/ 1 1/2 cups thickly sliced carrots
4 small-medium sized potatoes quartered
1 large round tomato, quartered
12 cups water
1 bunch vermicelli bean thread
1 cup roughly chopped parsley
salt to taste
1 teaspoon black pepper (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Line a pan with aluminum foil and brush with about 1/2 tablespoon canola oil
3. Arrange chicken drumsticks/chicken parts on lined pan, and brush with wet paste until generously covered with it
4. Bake uncovered until juices run clear/chicken are done
5. Meanwhile, heat 1 -3 tablespoons canola oil and toss in onion, garlic, ginger, star anise, cinnamon stick, cloves, and cardamom pods
6. Saute until fragrant, about 2 -3 minutes, to coax the flavor of the onions, garlic and ginger out
7. Pour in the 12 cups of water and bring to boil
8. Dunk in the potatoes and carrots, immediately followed by the baked chicken pieces. (Soup will turn from crystal clear to brownish clear). Leave bubbling for 2 -3 minutes
9. Simmer until potatoes and carrots are fairly soft/done
10. Throw in a bunch of vermicelli bean thread and quartered tomato, keep heat on low
11. Salt to taste
12. Garnish with chopped parsley
13. Serve steaming hot in bowls with no accompaniments or with hot white rice

Serves 5 - 6 (with second helpings)


Cook's notes:

• Instead of frying the chicken, I bake them uncovered instead. It's inshaallah healthier and more merciful to the surface on your stove. Translation: less clean up! (Always a good thing)
• You can garnish with sliced green onions as well
  
• You can experiment with your own spice combination to make the wet paste
• You can also omit the vermicelli bean thread if you don't have it. It merely adds more texture and interesting content to the soup; floating transparent strands of soft vermicelli
• Eggy variations:
• Egg Strand: If you wish, you can add a beaten egg to the soup to produce a soup with strands of egg whites swimming amidst the many schools of vegetables and poultry
• To do so, beat one egg lightly and pour into the soup at Step 10, Stir soup to create the strands of cooked egg
• Poached Eggs: If you wish, you can also poach eggs directly in the soup, resulting in the addition of floating eggs as your additional source of protein.
• To do this, crack the desired amount of eggs into a bowl, and gently slide them into the soup one by one, 1 -3 minutes apart, in Step 8. Do NOT stir soup. Eggs will cook.
• This soup can be eaten alone, with white rice, or with noodles.

This soup is a welcome dish to ward off the chilly and somewhat gloomy aspect of winter in temperate climates. To have a continuous flow of hot soup laden with aromatic spices trickle merrily down your throat, sending much needed warmth to your almost frostbitten extremities ... has to be heavenly

My Grandmother's Legacy

I grew up getting used to eating animal organs, such as intestines, lungs, and liver. But that's about it. Tongue, brain, hooves, and others, that's where I draw the line, or is it because I was never served those growing up?

It's pretty common to see animal organs cooked in many ways in both Malaysian and Indonesian dishes, but I would say that I see more of animal's internal organs in Indonesian cuisine, most probably because of Indonesia's rich cultural diversity. My father says,

"You can find more good food in Indonesia than Malaysia."

By that he meant more variety. And of course! Because Indonesia is comprised of so many islands, thus many tribes, ethnic variations, cultures and food compared to Malaysia. My father was also born and raised Indonesian, which would explain the indignant loyalty. In some ways, I feel a sense of loyalty to Indonesia too, because I was raised mostly eating Indonesian food, as my grandmother was the main cook for quite a number of years during my childhood.



I have to say I love the texture and chewiness of cow's intestines. Cubed, they are actually the main ingredient of this dish my grandmother would make for occasions like Eid when we held our open house events. I don't think people balked at the prospect of eating cow intestines, for Indonesian food is also now pretty common in Malaysia. For the record, I personally don't like to draw a definite distinct line between Indonesians and Malaysians, because I believe that we're not that different, but when discussing food, cultural differences, (in my humble opinion) have to be discerned, for it adds to the appreciation and knowledge of the discussion.

Soto is a dish mainly comprised of clear thin soup with meat and vegetables, eaten with vermicelli and compressed rice cakes. In Malaysia, Soto Ayam is well known, and is what I remember purchasing for some of my iftars at the evening bazaar in Malaysia while I was in college. There are many kinds of Soto, but Soto Ayam is the only Malaysian Soto I ate in Malaysia. Years back, an Indonesian sister made Soto Betawi, which I still crave now (not knowing how to make it myself). That was my second Indonesian Soto, but I have come to realize that Indonesia is really rich and abundant with many varieties of Soto, most of which sound and look delicious!

I have to admit, I don't know how to prepare animal organs for cooking, and I can just imagine my children's disgusted expressions if I do, seeing that they already feel weak in their knees watching me handle raw chicken. So, in my years of living far away from family, here in the United States, I have substituted cubed beef for the cubed intestines, and the Somali Global Mall's Halal Store, which sells beef cut sukhaar-style makes it even more convenient for me, as I don't have to spend time cubing chunky slabs of meat.


Fill your bowl with some vermicelli and a few rice cakes, and ladle the steaming soup, making sure to get a generous amount of cubed potatoes, carrots and meat. Garnish with fried shallots, and a small but potent dash of hot and spicy kicap sambal (mainly comprising of sliced bird's eye chilli swimming in sweet thick soy sauce and made tangy with lemon juice), and you're good to go.

This remains one of my favorite comfort food.

The measurements below are merely estimates, but the ratio of the meat, potatoes, and carrots to each other should be about the same.

Soto Madura

Beef cut sukhaar (as much as the potatoes and carrots) - boiled in 8 cups of water till fairly tender to your taste (keep the stock)
4 potatoes, peeled and finely cubed and soaked in water
4 carrots, peeled and finely cubed and soaked in water
2 onions cut into chunks
7 cloves of garlic
1 -2 lemongrass stalk, bruised
2 -3 dried asam gelugor
2 bay leaves
3 tsp ground turmeric
2-3 Tbs ground coriander
oil
squirts of lemon juice
5-6 bird's eye chillies
sweet thick soy sauce (llook for Indonesian brands)
vermicelli
Nasi Himpit (compressed rice cakes) - a good explanation and recipe on Pahang Delights.


1. Blend 1 onion and 3-4 garlic cloves with turmeric, coriander, and lemongrass
2. Pound or blend the remaining onion and garlic separately
3. Heat oil in tall stock pot, and saute the blended onion and garlic in Step 2 till fragrant
4. Add the blended mixture in Step 1, and continue sauteing to draw out the flavor of the spices and bulbs
5. Dump in the potatoes and carrots and and saute them along for about 5 - 7 minutes
6. Add in the beef, and water and bring to boil
7. Add in the bay leaves, a few squirts of lemon juice, and salt to taste
8. Prepare the vermicelli by submerging them in hot water until they're soft, then drain them and set aside

To prepare the spicy Kicap Sambal:
9. Put in a blender the bird's eye chillies and enough sweet soy sauce so they would blend smoothly. Blend till chillies are thoroughly broken up, and add a few squirts of lemon juice


How do you eat it? (Like you would chicken noodle soup!)

1. Using a spaghetti server/tong, scoop one serving of vermicelli in an empty individual soup bowl. Add in a few cubed rice cakes.
2. Ladle the Soto, replete with potatoes, beef, and carrots over it, such that the white thin rice noodles are swimming in the pool of yellowish soup.
3. If you wish, top it with a teaspoon (or less, depending on your hot and spicy tolerance level) of spicy Kicap Sambal. (It is like the Somali Bizz Baazz).
4. Eat it with fork and soup spoon, or if you're feeling dexterous, chopsticks.

Soup for A Wintry Day

Nothing like a hot soup to take the edge off the biting cold of winter. This soup brought back memories of a wintry day years ago. If I'm not mistaken, it was during the blizzard of '04. I love blizzards. We got a lot of them in Iowa. I loved it then because it usually meant classes were canceled, though since it's Iowa, it took a really bad blizzard for them to cancel classes. I love it here because it meant family time, since we would all be stuck at home, especially hubby.

There is something tranquil and calming, not to mention sentimental, about being in the middle of white. It's the purest white you could ever imagine, making you forget that there's filth and dirt underneath. It gives you a sense of calm and hope, not to mention utter serenity.

Physiologically, I'm not too joyful about it, because to be honest, I can really do without the frigid temperature, but ahh..such is life. We don't always get what we want. It's all in the package. You can't pick and choose. Take it or leave it.

A bowl of steaming hearty soup is a welcome food item in such a condition. Especially when your kids have spent minutes outside building ice castles with slabs of ice and your husband has shoveled packed and dense snow from the walkway and around the van. Dashing in the door, exhaling puffs of little dragon breaths, the kids squealed with delight that there was something hot to come inside to. Hot cocoa is their favorite. There were times when I found myself making cups and cups of hot cocoa again and again while they dash in and out again and again. Imagine the hot hearty soup traveling down your throat, warming you inside out all the way to your almost numb extremeties. A welcome item indeed.

The first time I had red lentil soup was when we were invited to a Jordanian friend's house. I personally am not used to thick soups and don't really care for them. But as soon as I put the spoonful of soup to my lips, I knew I had fallen in love. There was no turning back. I asked her for the recipe. And here is my version.

Red Lentil Soup

1 lb packet of red lentils
1 onion, minced/pounded
5 cloves garlic, minced/pounded
1 stalk celery - sliced
1 carrot - sliced
1/2 Roma tomatoes, cut into small chunks
1 Tablespoon ground cumin
2 Tablespoons ground coriander
2 Tablespoons black pepper
1 Tablespoons tomato paste
2-3 Cups water

1. Soak the lentils for about an hour or so (some packets say they don't need to be soaked though)
2. Heat oil in a deep saucepan and saute the onion and garlic for about 2 minutes
3. Add the carrot, celery, tomatoes, tomato paste, cumin, coriander and continue sauteing till they're soft and fragrant
4. Add the drained red lentils and water and bring to boil
5. Simmer until lentils are cooked
6. If you have an immersion blender, blend the soup until you have a smooth consistency (or if you like it slightly chunky, stop before it's smooth)
7. Season with salt and black pepper


Cook's Notes:

• The longer you saute the first few ingredients before dumping in the red lentils, the more flavor you're going to get, because sauteing extracts the flavor of the ingredients.
• I didn't have an immersion blender, so I blended the hot soup in a normal blender. If you do this, be very careful because blending a hot soup can create a red lentil soup volcano. What I did was to hold down the top of the blender with a wad of cloth so if the contents do threaten to spurt out, there is something between it and my hand or face.
• The amount of water I gave above is an estimation. You can adjust your soup's thickness, but try to keep it on the thick side.

Other versions of red lentil soup

Ethiopian-Inspired Red Lentil Soup from Fatfree Vegan Kitchen
Red Lentil Soup from Cream Puffs in Venice
Spicy Red Lentil Soup from Vegetarian Times

The red lentil soup I recently made (to finish up the packets of lentils sitting around in the bin under our dining table), I ate with tortilla that I reheated by way of steaming. It almost tastes like roti canai (paratha) eaten with thick non spicy curry. Even Zeyoudee loved it. And there I have my allergy free roti canai breakfast (MalaysianFood.net).

Potato Soup

Before I had my surgery I cooked myself up a batch of delicious potato soup to eat when I got home from the hospital! I didn't really follow a recipe and since I'm not really up to trying to remember how much of each thing I put in I'll just post a basic rough recipe which can be changed to ones liking. I like my soup a bit chunky, but you can blend it as well.

Ingredients:

3-4 tablespoons butter

1/2 large onion diced

4-5 meduim potatoes any variety, chopped into small to medium sized pieces

Salt, pepper, garlic powder and herbs (I used oregano, thyme and chives)

Water or Stock

Milk or cream or both

1. Heat the butter in a meduim saucepan and saute onions until translucent.

2. Add potatoes and saute lightly.

3. Add seasonings and water/stock enough to just cover potato.

4. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15-20 mintues.

5. Add milk and/or cream and continue to simmer on low until desired consistency. Add enough to make it pretty thin because it thickens up as the potatoes finish cooking and after it cools.

Chicken Soup for the Soul

Chicken soup, Malaysian style, is a very simple dish. It's one of the first dishes I learned or rather, was taught to cook. I also taught my 11 year old daughter to make it. My mother, introduced to me a way of making the soup really clear, that is by bringing the water to a boil before dumping in the chicken pieces, so the blood won't mar the transparency of the soup.

I have tweaked the basic chicken soup recipe and come up with variations of it, but the basic Malaysian chicken soup is clear, best served piping hot with white rice, and for those who like to kick it up a notch, with an accompaniment of chilli-spicy sambal.

Sup Ayam (Chicken Soup)

1 whole chicken, cut up into 8-10 pieces
1 medium sized onion, minced/pounded
5-6 garlic cloves, minced/pounded
1-2 inches fresh ginger, minced/pounded
2-3 star anise
2-3 whole cloves
2-3 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
1-2 carrots, peeled and sliced thickly (1/4-1/2 inch thick)
2-3 potatoes, cut into chunks
1 small packet vermicelli thread (optional)
1/4 cup oil
sliced spring onion/green onion for garnish
5 cups water

1. Heat oil and saute minced/pounded ingredients (onions, garlic, ginger) and whole spices (star anise, cloves, cardamoms, cinnamon sticks) till fragrant
2. Add water and bring to a vigorous boil
3. Add in the chicken pieces and cover until chicken is 3/4 cooked (or won't leak out anymore blood)
4. Add carrots and potatoes, continute to boil for another 3-4 minutes
5. Uncover and let simmer till chickens are done, and potatoes and carrots are soft
6. If wish to add vermicelli threads, add at this point and leave to simmer until they become soft
7. Garnish and serve with hot white Jasmine rice

Cook's Notes:

• I had added some taro balls in place of fish balls in the soup, but you can do without it.
• You can also vary this by adding one lightly beaten eggs while the soup is boiling towards the end to produce a Chinese-type soup that has stringy cooked egg bits floating around.

I have to warn those who think of soup as thick soup, that Malaysian/Indonesian (or maybe plain East Asian) soups are usually clear and thin, more akin to the Chinese soups than the Middle Eastern thick and rich soups.