Spicy Shrimp Stew

Shrimp stew on grits, with corn and mango relish. 

This recipe is fantastic--spicy and comforting, rich-tasting while actually being moderately healthy (what's a a little bacon when there are so many other vegetables?) It's like a less-creamy, more-tomato heavy, spicier etouffee. I made this on a Sunday--the stew needs to simmer a reduce for a couple hours, so it's the sort of thing to make on a day when you'll be putzing around the house anyway.
Also--I think serving this over grits results in a more-delicious shrimp and grits than the traditional recipe, which includes a lot of cheddar cheese and Worcestershire sauce.

Ingredients (in order of addition to the pot)
For the shrimp stock
the shells of the shrimp (2 or 3 lbs)
1 tablespoon butter
1 yellow onion, cut in half
the stems of the parsley (you'll use the leaves to finish the stew)
the root ends of the scallions
1 head of garlic, cut in half

3 slices of applewood smoked bacon
1 tablespoon salted butter
1 red onion, diced
8 big cloves of garlic, minced
2 cups of white wine
12 large tomatoes (buy the ripest you can find) diced
1 habanero pepper, minced (with seeds)
1 package grape tomatoes (fine to leave whole--you will mash them later)
Salt to taste
2 red peppers, diced into large pieces
2 or 3 lbs of shrimp, peeled (save the shells to make the stock)
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 package scallions, sliced

Habaneros have a sweet, slow-burning heat. They're so spicy you only need one for the whole pot of stew--if you want a REALLY spicy stew, use two. 

What to do 
Start by making the shrimp stock, as it needs to simmer for awhile to develop flavor. In a medium sized saucepan, melt a tablespoon of butter. Add the shrimp shells and a sprinle of salt and saute in the butter--you'll see the shells turn pink. Cover with about 4 cups of water and add the onion, garlic, parsley and scallion ends. Bring to a boil, then allow to simmer for at least an hour.
When it's time to use it, you'll pour it through a colander so the liquid enters the stew and the vegetables and shrimp stay out (just throw these away).

When the stock has been going for 45 min or so, you can start making the stew!
Dice the bacon and add it to your stew pot, along with the two tablespoons of butter. Allow to crisp up and render.
After the bacon's crispy, add the diced red onion and garlic and saute in the butter and bacon fat, stirring regularly, for about 5 minutes.
Add the white wine. Stir, getting up any bits burned onto the bottom of the pot. Boil until well reduced (there should be a thickened liquid on the bottom of the pot).
Add the tomatoes and habanero. Cover the pot until everything boils. Add the shrimp stock and stir. Use a potato masher to smash the tomatoes--you want them chunky and stew-y but not pureed.
Allow this pot to simmer for about two hours, uncovered. Stir occasionally to make sure nothing's burning to the bottom. It should thicken up and reduce while it simmers.
After two hours, add the red peppers and shrimp. Allow to simmer for ten more minutes--the shrimp should stay tender. Adding the red peppers late will allow them to keep their flavor. Taste for salt.
To finish, remove the pot from the heat and stir in the chopped parsley and scallions.
Serve over grits!

This stew takes some time--but it's fantastic. Enjoy!

Roasted Tomato, Pepper and Carrot Soup with Spicy Herb Yogurt

I distinctly remember the very first time I had tomato-garlic soup--it was back when my parents were still married, so I must have been somewhere around 3rd or 4th grade. We went out to dinner as a family to this restaurant in Chico called Basque Norte (just googled them--apparently they just sell marinade now), and I ordered the tomato-garlic soup and lamb chops and INSTANTLY REALIZED I LOVE TOMATO GARLIC SOUP.

Ultimately, the night went sour because my Dad was being a dick. (A few years hence we'd be unable to afford dinner out at a nice restaurant, but much happier because my Dad wasn't invited). 

Plus, who needs dinner out? In elementary school I developed my first tomato-garlic soup recipe. Here it is: 

Stir together:

2 cans of Campbell's tomato soup, diluted with water according to whatever the can says

A few vigorous shakes of garlic powder or garlic salt

Boil and serve in bowls or coffee mugs. Sprinkle with Cheez Its as croutons. 

That was great! And my first copy-of-a-restaurant meal recipe.

But in the years since, I've made a far more delicious, complex and wonderful tomato soup recipe. It's a lot more work, though. I start by roasting about 3 lbs of veggies with some balsamic, olive oil, garlic, and a sprinkle of salt. Then, I blend the roasted veggies and add some stock--that's it! This is more a template than a recipe--you could make any kind of vegetable soup by following this basic routine. 

Tonight I made a spicy, herb-y yogurt topping, too.

Ingredients 

For soup

2 lbs Roma tomatoes 

1 package cherry tomatoes 

4 carrots

2 red bell peppers

1 head garlic

2 TB olive oil

2 TB balsamic vinegar

sprinkle salt 

2 white onions

2 cups white wine

2 TB butter

1 piece of bread (anything is fine--sourdough, wheat, white, etc)

6 cups of vegetable stock (I like to make my own--recipe below. But canned or boxed is fine. You could also use chicken stock)

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

Cut the veggies other than the onions. Quarter the Roma tomatoes, chop carrots and peppers into large chunks. Leave the cherry tomatoes whole. Peel a head of garlic. Toss everything together in a large roasting pan. Drizzle with the olive oil and balsamic, and sprinkle with a teaspoon or so of salt. 

Veggies before roasting. 

Place into the 400 degree oven and roast, uncovered, for an hour.

An hour later--the veggies are fragrant, concentrated and soft. 

Remove the vegetables from the oven and set aside to cool.

Melt the butter in a large soup pot. 

Put the two onions in a food processor and blend into a paste. Put them into the melted butter and saute for about five minutes.

Pour the wine into the pot and simmer for about five minutes. 

I used this classy vintage. 

Meanwhile, scoop the roasted veggies and slice of bread into the food processor and blend. You may need to work in batches. 

Roasted Vegetable Puree. 

Add the pureed vegetables to the onions /wine/ butter in your pot. Stir to mix. 

Add vegetable stock and stir--bring to a boil, then turn the heat off. Taste--does it need a teaspoon of sugar to temper the tomatoes? A dash of lemon or some more salt???

Serve with toast, grilled cheese, or anything! 

Spicy Herb Yogurt Sauce

Blend together:

1 large container (32 oz) of 2% Greek yogurt

2 jalapenos, with seeds (remove seeds if you want it less spicy)

1 bunch parsley

handful of basil 

1 bunch scallions 

juice and zest of 1 lemon 

Yogurt sauce--bubbly as a result of recent blending. 

How to Make Veggie Stock

Add--carrots (3?) 2 heads of garlic, 2 quartered onions, then stems of your parley and the ends of your scallions to the bottom of a pot. Sprinkle lightly with salt.  Cover with 8 cups of water and boil, covered, for an hour. The veggies will become tasteless mush while the broths becomes fragrant and delicious. 

(Look in the veggie drawer of your fridge--anything about to go bad? Throw it in the stock)

Veggie stock ingredients. 

I toasted some bread with cheddar to dunk in the soup--YUM.

This was a great winter dinner--warm, flavorful and delicious. It's a bit time consuming, but worth the effort--though, if you're in a hurry, my original tomato-garlic soup recipe is pretty great, too. 

Enjoy!

Thai Chicken Soup

This recipe is an attempted copy of my favorite take-out soup of all time, the chicken-lemongrass soup from Swing Thai. My first year in Denver I ordered this at least three times a week (I hadn't adjusted to the winter yet, and really didn't want to leave my apartment. Once I ran out of dog food and ordered Consuela a "side of sliced beef" from Swing Thai to avoid walking to the liquor store for kibble.)
Swing Thai's soup is seriously the best Tom Kha I've ever tasted. I ordered bowls of it all over Bangkok a few years ago, and theirs was way better. I took a cooking class in Chang Mai where you learned the recipe--but it was nothing like Swing Thai's perfect, transcendent Tom Kha.

Cooking class, summer of 2009. I successfully unwound after my first year of charter-school teaching--but didn't find the secret to coconut soup.

So this recipe is a delicious, doable version--it doesn't have the same magic, but it's still incredibly good. Spicy, sweet, tangy, and rich. Loaded with crunchy veggies, soft chunks of chicken, fresh herbs. A really perfect dinner. I mean, how could any recipe with ginger, garlic, coconut milk and veggies be anything but fantasic?
I made a big pot tonight--Sunday--for dinner this week. I recommend making a LOT--you will want leftover, and if you're tackling a recipe with this many ingredients, one night of eating isn't a big enough pay off.

Soup over rice. 

This recipe makes a LARGE pot of soup--Serves 10, or 2 people all week. Use a large pot ( I used my 7.5 quart French oven)

Ingredients (in order of addition to the pot)

2 tablespoons olive oil (or any oil)
a 3-inch piece of ginger
2 shallots
5 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon Thai green curry pasty
2 tablespoons lemongrass paste
3 large chicken breasts, cut into half-inch chunks
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 32oz boxes of chicken stock (or homemade, if you have it---I was out. Must roast a chicken sometime soon. I also prefer the low-sodium)
2 cans of coconut milk (do NOT use "light"--if you're worried about fat, use just one can of regular)
2 red peppers, diced
3 jalapenos, diced (I left the seeds in, for heat. Either de-seed or omit jalapenos for a mild soup)
1 red onion, sliced into strips
2 handfuls of white mushrooms, cut in half
2 handfuls of snow peas, whole
1 bunch of cilantro
1 package of basil (gah it felt so sad buying basil--I miss the garden!) pick off the leaves and leave them whole
2 tablespoons fish sauce
soy sauce to taste
juice of 3 limes

(Whew! Lots of ingredients! But you won't have to cook again all week, and a delicious healthy-ish dinner will be ready to go. This could easily be made vegetarian by subbing tofu of a couple cans of chickpeas for the chicken--but I don't think you can omit the fish sauce--so this might only work for slacker / cheater vegetarians)

What to do
1. Start by making your flavor base. Put the shallots, ginger, garlic, curry paste, and lemongrass paste into a food processor. Blitz them into a smooth paste.

Before

After

I used my trusty tub of Mae Ploy. 2 lbs! Doubt I'll need to buy curry paste again in my 30's. 

Lemongrass paste.

2. Heat a few tablespoons of oil in the bottom of your pot. Fry the flavor base paste in the oil for a few minutes--this really brings out the flavors and fragrances. 

3. While the base is frying, cut up the chicken. Drizzle it with a few tablespoons of soy sauce (it just seems wrong to cook unsalted chicken). 

Raw chicken looks weird. 

3. Add the chicken to the pot and cook it with the flavor-paste, stirring regularly. 

4. Add both boxes of stock. Bring to a boil, then cover and turn the heat down. Leave for 15 minutes or so at a simmer. This will allow the chicken to cook through and for the garlic, ginger, shallot, and lemongrass to infuse the stock. 

5. While that's simmering, cut up your veggies--dice the peppers and jalapenos, slice the onions, halve the mushrooms. 

6. Open the pot. Add both cans of coconut milk and the veggies. You want the veggies to cook gently-poach--in the broth, so they retain flavor and crunch. Let the veggies bob around in the simmering broth for about 5 minutes, stirring. 

7. Turn the heat off. Add the fish sauce and lime juice. Taste--does it need more soy, lime, fish sauce? Season to taste.

8. Add the chopped cilantro and leaves of basil. 

9. Mix everything up. Serve over rice! I like mine with some extra chili-garlic paste, but that's because I love far more heat than the regular person. 

Finished!

This is a wonderful, perfect dinner.
Enjoy!

Chorizo Black Bean Soup

Perfect dinner for a snowy night.

This has been a go-to recipe in my life for years (ever since I moved back to the US and lived somewhere with temperatures low enough to permit the consumption of hot soup). This is essentially a bean and vegetable soup or stew, with chorizo functioning as a seasoning. It is rich, spicy, complex and totally delicious. You would never guess from tasting that the vast majority of the soup is vegetables.

Ingredients

For this recipe, I prefer the dirtiest kind of chorizo: the mushy Mexican brand in a plastic tube, not the fresh kind from the butchers or the classy cured Spanish kind. This one tastes the best and blends smoothly into the broth, rather than forming chunks. I know it's made if nitrates and pig bungholes, but whatever. Buy one of the kinds with an offensive racial stereotype as the logo.

Recipe

Ingredients
1 package of pork chorizo
3 cans of black beans, drained
2 red onions, diced
4 carrots, split lengthwise and chopped
4 red bell peppers, seeded and diced
6 Roma tomatoes, chopped
2 jalapenos, chopped (leave seeds in if you want spicy, omit seeds for more mild)
1 cup chicken stock (or water)
3 TB cumin powder
1 TB chile powder
1 TB paprika
1 cup orange juice
juice of 2 limes
2 tsp salt
1 bunch of cilantro, chopped

Optional garnishes: avocado slices, cheddar cheese, sour cream, hot salsa

What to do:
1. Add a small amount of oil the bottom of a large pot. Add the onion, carrots, and chorizo. Saute, stirring occasionally, for about ten minutes, until greasy and fragrant and the chorizo oil has coated everything.

That chorizo looks like a turd....

2. Then, add the spices: cumin, chile, and paprika. Let the spices fry a bit in the chorizo fat for a few minutes to release fragrances and enhance the flavor.

3. Then, add the peppers (both red and jalapeno) and tomatoes to the pot. Cover and let cook for about ten minutes, stirring every few minutes.
4. Add the stock (or water), black beans, and orange juice to the pot. Cover and simmer on low for about 20 minutes.
5. Then, use a slotted spoon and scoop about half the solids into a blender. Blend up, then add back to the pot.

6. Simmer for about ten more minutes.
7. Taste. Does it need salt?
8. Turn off the heat and stir in chopped cilantro and lime juice.

9. Serve with garnishes!

This is a delicious everyday recipe. Enjoy!