Sopa de Fideo

Sopa de Fideo

One of the best things about moving from New England to the Southwest is I am being acquainted with a new culture, traditions, food, and people.  So different and yet we are still so much alike!  The mind and the waistline are expanded, grins.

Fideo is like the Italian vermicelli and the vermicelli can be substituted if your grocery does not have a well-stocked Hispanic food section.  The vermicelli just needs to be broken up into small pieces and you're good to go.

It seems to me that a lot of Mexican style food is pretty spicy, with the addition of different chili peppers, cumin, turmeric and oregano.  And no question, we have acquired spicy taste buds and will crave wonderful, warm (hot!) deliciousness. But then there is this little soup.  Very simple to make and delicate in flavor as written.  I belong to a Hispanic cooking site on Facebook and one of the ladies recommended adding pinto beans and hamburg; it's the way she makes it in her home.  I love that she shared that with me, and I think that would be good as well.  Make pinto beans as if for refried beans but pull some out before they are mashed and just add them to the soup towards the end to heat through since they'll already be cooked.

This would be a great soup when you aren't feeling tip-top but need to eat something.   The one thing I really liked about this soup is that it uses fresh tomatoes and with some nice buttery avocado.  Very farmers' market.

SOPA DE FIDEO

2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
6 Roma tomatoes, roasted
1 thick slice of white onion
1 large clove garlic or 1/2 teaspoon jarred minced
3 cups chicken broth
1 cup of fideo noodles
salt and pepper to taste
garnishes:  avocado, cilantro, lime juice

Oil a boiler proof pan and roast the tomatoes on both the top and the bottom until the sides have blacked slightly.

Add the tomatoes, the onion and the garlic to a blender or food processor and blend until pureed.

In a medium skillet heat some oil and add the uncooked fideo.  Cook the fideo over medium heat until golden brown. Add the chicken broth and the tomato mixture.  Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to medium and cook for 7 or 8 minutes or until the fideo are almost done.  Add the cilantro, if using, and cook an additional two minutes or until the fideo are done.  The fideo will continue to expand upon cooling.

Serve in bowls with diced avocado or other garnish of choice.

DIY Dried Onion Soup Mix

Make It Yourself Dried Onion Soup Mix

Okay, true story--not the most inspiring picture in the world.  Kind of an ugly duckling, but we all know how that story ended.  The ugly duckling was actually a swan and looks can be deceiving.

It's the same with this DIY dried onion soup mix.  I haven't had the packaged stuff in a very long time.  I mean, two pouches for over $2.00, wow!  I suppose $2.00 in a world of billions is laughable chump change, but my world isn't made up of billions, millions, or even hundreds.  There have been times when I had to shake out my handbag or couch dive to find loose change.  So yeah, $2.00 does matter.  You need $2.00 before you can have a million.

Some years back I used to ride the bus to work, and there were a couple of young people who were having a loud conversation for the benefit of their bus buddies, being snarky about people trying to save nickles and dimes at a local gas station. Waiting in line at a gas station to save five cents a gallon at the gas pump was incomprehensible.  Well, I said to them, if you found fifty cents on the ground in a parking lot, would you pick it up or would you walk over it. They quite smugly assured me they'd walk over it, that fifty cents was "nothing" but I think most people would pick it up and pocket it. When I find money like that I tend to donate it to charity but okay, whatever.  Bless your heart.

Anyway, saving money is as close as your spice cabinet or pantry and I kid you not when I say this is superior to the packaged mix. Big beefy and onion flavor, just what you'd expect. How many spices do you have in your cabinet that go stale from years of not being used.  Many of us are guilty of that.  We buy a spice for a recipe and then don't use that spice or herb for another year or so.  Like celery seed.  Just how often do you use that?  I use it in my potato salad that I make several times a year but other than than it's pretty neglected.

So, with making your own spice mix or bulk food mix, not only do you save money and have equal to or better quality and flavor, but also in the long run save money because you are using ingredients that you have on hand at their optimal freshness and not tossing them out.

I repurposed a spaghetti sauce jar (it was a jar of Classico spaghetti sauce); I love these jars.  They have markings for ounces on the side, which I don't use, but it gives a bit of pizzazz to the jar, and I feel green re-using it.  I appreciate that it has a wide mouth so I fit a tablespoon in it. No fighting to get the spoon in and out. Just as an aside I'm keeping more of the jars to store other pantry items in it, like brown sugar and flaked coconut, dried beans and the like.  It looks nice, takes up less space on my pantry shelves, and is a great way to store food if you're not one who happens to like a lot of plastic.

To fill the jar, I double the recipe.

MAKE-IT-YOURSELF DRIED ONION SOUP MIX

3/4 cup dried, minced onion
1/3 cup beef-flavored bouillon (I use Knorr)
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon crushed celery seed
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Combine all ingredients.  Shake to combine.  Makes 1 cup mix.

5 tablespoons is equal to one store-bought packet.

COOK'S NOTES:  I wrote the recipe on a 3x5 card and taped it with clear packing tape to the side of the jar so that way I always have the recipe on hand and I don't have to do a search to remember how much to use to equal one packet.  I suppose I could've posted a picture of the jar but how many ugly brown pictures do we want to look at?  LOL

Tortellini and Spinach Soup

Tortellini and Spinach Soup

Monsoon season in Arizona means sideways, blinding rain and loud cracks of thunder fill the sky.  The days can look a little gray, threatening but not always following through.  When the torrents do come, they don't last for long, but our three cats vanish under the bed or in a closet, and those few brief hours can turn even a human heart to look for a spot of comfort.  This tortellini and spinach soup is just such a soup—warm and filling and satisfying.  It was so good and easy and was even better the second day.

Simple, simple, simple.  For us the only "exotic" ingredient was the tortellini, easily found at our local market with the other fresh pastas and cheeses, or can be found in the frozen food section.  We chose the fresh tortellini filled with chicken and cheese, and it worked deliciously here.

Now first a caveat.  I used the entire bag of fresh tortellini (I don't recall how many ounces it had now), which was too much for the amount of liquid.  By end of day two, there really wasn't much liquid left.  It was still tasty, of course, but I would have preferred more broth.  Next time I'll buy frozen tortellini, and reduce the amount I use, and save the remainder for soup for another day.  Bonus!  Secondly, this made a lot of soup.  It filled the slow cooker up to the brim (probably due in part to the generous amount of tortellinis, grins). I reheated it at work for lunch and was happy, happy.  Anyway, I think for the most part, this soup is quite forgiving and there is no real right or wrong, just whatever pleases your palate.  That's how good soups are made.

Tortellini and Spinach Soup

1 bag of frozen tortellini

1 small bag of frozen spinach

2 cans of Italian style diced tomatoes (I didn't drain the cans)

1 eight-ounce block of cream cheese, cut into chunks
4 cups of either chicken or vegetable stock

Put all ingredients together in a slow cooker.  Cook for 5 or 6 hours.  

I'd check this at 4 hours to see how this is going and check maybe every 30 minutes or so thereafter. Give it a nice stir to make sure that the cream cheese is melding with the broth.  I think 6 hours of time for pasta would turn this into mush, but then again I started with fresh tortellini.

 

Charros Frijoles and a Little Food Lore

Charros Frijoles

Did you know that beans were one of the Three Sisters—the sisters being corn (maize), beans, and squash?  Squash shaded the roots of the corn, cornstalks provided support for the climbing beans.  All rather endearing I think.  Together they provided a nutritional foundation.  I ran into that little kernel of knowledge while reading a romance novel of all things some while back and it stuck with me.  Apparently, Native Americans combined the three to provide a complete nutritional foundation.

Since moving across country from our beloved little New England Victorian home to our now beloved desert home in Arizona, we've learned about new foods and flavors, and among those are pinto beans.  It's taken a while to develop a taste for caliente and piquante foods, but we've now started to appreciate and crave the flavors of heat and spice.  By some measure I'm sure we're still on the mild side in comparison to true natives, but hot sauce is a stable in our pantry along with some chilies, grins.  It's all good.

So, let me share a nice hearty pinto bean soup.  It's spicy good, though you can make it more or less spicy depending on your taste, it's inexpensive, and pretty much hands off once you get it in the slow cooker.  These are not refried beans, though similar in make up, as they have the addition of tomatoes and meat.  Also charros frijoles is soupier, served with a spoon.  Nice thick squares of cornbread is a tasty side to this.  Mmm mmm!  This reheats like a dream and freezes very well.  And if possible, it's even better on the following day when the flavors have had a chance to get acquainted with each other and develop a companionable flavorship.  It makes a potful, so unless you're feeding a small community or have a crowd of hungry eaters, you're probably going to have leftovers.

I put together several recipes, choosing those ingredients that were the most appealing to me, so the soup is quite versatile and forgiving.  This is how I made mine.

Charros Frijoles (a/k/a Cowboy Beans, and who doesn't love cowboys?)

1 one-pound package of dried pinto beans, picked, soaked overnight, rinsed, drained

1 small onion, roughly chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 1/2 ounces bacon, chopped, cooked and crumbled (I used the bacon grease to cook the onions in—only until translucent)

1 can Rotel tomatoes, undrained

2-4 cups of chicken broth or make broth using chicken bouillon

Enough water to bring liquid a coupe of inches over the beans

1 teaspoon (or more) cumin

1 teaspoon (or more) chili powder

3 1/2 ounces cooked ham, chopped (or chorizo)

salt and pepper to taste (be careful of the salt if you're using bouillon)

a little chopped jalapeno is nice, added at the end

1 cup of cilantro chopped (added at the end, maybe 30 minutes before)

Cook the bacon, crumble, toss in the slow cooker.  Use the grease to cook the onions until translucent.  Toss everything in the slow cooker except the cilantro and the jalapeno, reserving those to add towards the end of cooking.  Set the slow cooker on low, and let it cook for about 6 hours.  I start testing the beans at 4 hours to see if they are soft enough to eat.  Keep an eye on the liquid level, adding water as needed to keep the beans covered by an inch or so.  Depending on the freshness of your beans it may take shorter or longer to cook them. Taste the broth for seasoning, adding whatever you think will make it perfect for you.  At the end I take a potato masher and give 'em a couple of good mashes to thicken the soup up a little. 

Cook's Note:  This can get too salty very easily, considering the bacon, chicken broth and/or bouillon.  I use low sodium bacon and don't add additional salt until I taste for seasoning.  When I've tasted it and the broth was too salty, I added additional water.  The other choice is to add a potato, cut in half, to absorb some of the salt. Just remove the potato before serving.