Jenn Cuisine » Soups

Creamy Cauliflower Soup

Jenn — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:04:54 +0000

Cauliflower – a vegetable I grew up with, and wasn’t often thrilled about. Mom you know I love you, but I do not love the way you like most of your veggies cooked.

However, on my quest to enjoy more fresh produce this Winter season, I’m giving it a try again. Cauliflower seems to abound in the markets right now and as fortune would have it, my friend Simone chose a lovely cauliflower recipe for this month’s Donna Hay Styling and Photography Challenge (DHSPC). I enjoy participating in these challenges because they always make me reach and do something new that I might not otherwise try. In this case, that meant not only the photo but also the recipe featuring heads of cauliflower! In fact, in the near four years that this blog has been on the interwebs, today marks the first time cauliflower has ever even appeared on Jenn Cuisine, let alone received a spotlight feature.

This month, Simone challenged us all to make a creamy cauliflower soup, which appeared in Donna Hay issue #51 (June/July 2010) and was photographed by Ben Dearnley. The soup was wonderful – cauliflower and potatoes cooked together in broth and milk and puréed until velvety smooth. A perfect Winter bowl, better than plain boiled veggies. And even naturally gluten free!

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Butternut & Red Pepper Soup

Jenn — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:40:51 +0000

Today I am empty.

I am completely empty of words for you today. So, instead of my usual ramblings I present to you images. Little details, big details, things that have made me happy and filled with joy lately.

Like this soup. This omg amazing flavorful rich bright colorful well you just have to make it and taste it for yourself soup.

Sometimes it’s the little experiences in life that bring so much pleasure.

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Creamy Zucchini Soup

Jenn — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 20:23:21 +0000

I’ve always dreamed of having a garden. When I was very little, my mom used to have a vegetable garden in the backyard – I remember sunkissed days with tomatoes coming out our ears, along with peas, lots of peppers, even once we tried growing corn (that didn’t work so well)… But one of the sacrifices of apartment life is giving up the chance for a garden. A meager balcony with all the wrong sunshine is not an ideal setup for an urban oasis of greenery.

So instead of being outside amongst the bounty of nature taking care of the plants and growing our own dinner, we venture up to the trails, to see the mountains and landscapes before us. We eagerly set off to get away from all the concrete.

And ironically, there is my husband, admiring the beauty of nature standing next to a large wall, ha!

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Daring Cooks Make Gumbo

Jenn — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:02:18 +0000

Today marks exactly two years since we Daring Cooks intrepidly revealed our first cooking challenge to the world, and every month since has been an eventful, educational (and sometimes stressful) trip across various techniques and cuisines. I am sad to say this shrimp & sausage gumbo will be my 20th and last Daring Cooks challenge that I present to you – the past 24 months have been wonderful, but I have to move on – Daring Cooks was an amazing experience, and did wonders to help me grow with my skills in the kitchen, new techniques, and above all creativity (especially when it came to making some of the challenges gluten free!).

This month for my last challenge of Daring Cooks, I made gumbo. I made mine with shrimp and sausage, and about twice as many veggies as were called for. Our May hostess, Denise, of There’s a Newf in My Soup!, challenged The Daring Cooks to make Gumbo! She provided us with all the recipes we’d need, from creole spices, homemade stock, and Louisiana white rice, to Drew’s Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo and Seafood Gumbo from My New Orleans: The Cookbook, by John Besh.

Out of 25 total challenges so far, today marks my 20th. Twenty new experiences, trials, recipes, fails, photos and successes. Rather than reminisce about each one, I thought it might be more fun to show the dishes in picture form (each photo links to its post) – it’s funny to think about how scary making those gnocchi were that first time, and how far along I’ve come, even to host a challenge and help others. Thanks Daring Kitchen, for some great memories and helping me to become an overall better cook. So here they are, starting from the beginning:

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Sweet Potato Coconut Thai Curried Soup: Gluten Free and Vegan

Jenn — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:31:04 +0000

I love sweet potatoes. Maybe it comes from growing up in New England, where sweet potato and squash dishes of all kinds are peppered throughout my childhood and my memories. I’ll eat them mashed and baked into a sweet casserole, just roasted plain in the oven, made into chips, fries; pretty much any way you can serve them, I’m fairly sure I will enjoy them. I know sweet potato isn’t a squash, but I often place it in the same category as squashes when it comes to flavors – the warm almost sweetness that caramelizes ever so slightly upon cooking lends it to working so well in many dishes where squash would normally be the star.

Living en Suisse, I had long since resigned myself to just having to accept the fact that I probably would not be able to enjoy sweet potatoes while I was here – I’ve never seen any in the markets, nor even my neighborhood grocery store. Well, until last weekend, when lo and behold there appeared out of thin air a wonderful box of U.S.A.-grown sweet potatoes just begging for me to pick them up and put them into my basket; I was absolutely giddy with myself for being able to eat one of my favorite vegetables again.

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Four Hour French Onion Soup, Vegetarian and Gluten Free

Jenn — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:19:10 +0000

My mother taught me to make French onion soup. Now that I have seen the light, I’m sorry Mom but you got it all wrong. Your onions don’t caramelize for four hours. It’s your recipe’s one fatal flaw. I love your soup and making it the way you taught me, really I do. But now I know better, and next time I come home I’ll make this for you, and you’ll understand

I was greeted with onion soup as the beginning of our four-course of dinner on our first night in Spiez (canton Bern), Switzerland after our Christmas holiday in Venezia, Italia. After four days straight of rain, two of which included flooding, it was nice to dry off a bit and warm up with a fresh onion soup.

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Roasted Tomato Soup and/or Sauce from Scratch

Jenn — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 23:42:29 +0000

After our first course of Christmas dinner, the picture above was exactly what I had in mind. Fresh, thick, bright red roasted tomato soup, with strong hints of garlic, garnished with basil and parmesan. The kind that warms the soul when the rain is batting against the windows, and each step outside is a slop! slop! in the slushy puddles splattering all over your new jeans – it’s easy to catch a chill then, and a warm soup was just the cure to take away some of the grumpies of the long Wintery week.

In a desperate attempt to call back the gods of Summer to return upon us with sunshine and warm temperatures, I enthusiastically purchased just about every bio (organic) fresh vegetable I could find in the store that weekend. I found myself with a couple dozen tomatoes and thought, even if it isn’t Summer outside, maybe we can direct a few of those last rays of sunshine hidden from us by the ever threatening clouds, and have them warm our stomachs if nothing else by preparing a fresh soup. Sorry Winter Solstice, as cool as you were with an eclipse and all, I still miss my sunshine.

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Clam Chowder, Gluten Free

Jenn — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 17:48:52 +0000

Growing up in New England, clam chowder is total comfort food for me. There was this place on the shore that served New England style chowder in sourdough bread bowls… oh sweet heaven. The first time I took my husband to New England to see my old “stomping grounds”, I showed him my favorite things growing up, many of which involved food. What can I say, foods are strongly linked to memories. I had already decided at that point (and so had he) in our dating that we were meant to be. Aww, we were grad students, young and in love….

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Daring Cooks #18: Rolled & Stuffed (Canh Bap Cai Cuon Thit)

Jenn — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 21:35:10 +0000

Wow can you believe Daring Cooks is on to their 18th challenge already?? It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were all attempting ricotta gnocchi for the first time… Well here we are, one and a half years in. So far I’ve had a lot of fun with this group. Some challenges have been better than others, but you’ll have that with just about any blogging group. My favorite challenges so far up to this point have been the paella and sushi challenges.

This one though, might have to win the spot of #3 on my list! Even though I went in a totally different direction from the main challenge (because when do I not?), both my husband and I loved this recipe. So are you curious what the challenge was?? Sure you are!

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

If you can’t tell from the photo above, I didn’t stuff grape leaves. In fact, neither grape leaves nor Middle Eastern cuisine were anywhere related to what I chose to do. But I did stuff and roll leaves. Instead I made Vietnamese cabbage roll soup, also known as Canh Bap Cai Cuon Thit.

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Gazpacho Blanco

Jenn — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:38:04 +0000

Gazpacho has always been one of my summer loves. Just take ripe summer produce, throw in the processor, purée and enjoy. I committed the ultimate gazpacho sin when I first made it on my own, using *gasp!* canned tomatoes, but I was a poor grad student and it wasn’t summertime – I will say now never do that, ever. Wait for beautiful fresh tomatoes, it’s worth it. Gazpacho is often my choice when I go out to eat as well – there is just something so refreshing about the blend of cucumbers and tomatoes together, that even when it’s so hot out that you feel like you’re going to start melting like that ice cream cone the kid walking down the street is enjoying, you can take a few loud slurps with the spoon and instantly cool off a few degrees (and when it’s that icky out no one minds a few loud slurps anyways).

When I heard about the existence of white gazpacho from Green Kitchen Stories (GKS), I was immediately intrigued – I mean, where would gazpacho be without all of those fresh summer tomatoes?? I wasn’t really that skeptical though, because it looked mouthwatering – go check out their pictures, and you’ll understand. I immediately knew that I wanted to make this, and so I did what anyone does nowadays – I googled blogs for “white gazpacho”, and picked one on the first page that looked yummy. I still am pretty lacking in the cookbook department, and so the vast interwebs are basically my very large cookbook. It’s really not such a bad way to be. I love my cookbooks, but they are all in the U.S., an ocean away, and I just cannot bring myself to either A) pay to ship a bunch of books over the ocean or B) buy them all over again. Besides, the interwebs can be a great resource if you are able to recognize a good recipe out there. And the one I came across looked amazing.

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