Garlic Soup at Home

For dinner, I had homemade garlic soup, with a roasted acorn squash half.



I had leftover garlic, olive oil, and anchovy pasta for lunch, so I figured my breath was already shot for the day (Jon confirmed this. Rapidly.) Then, while we were grocery shopping, I remembered reading this and this awhile back, and decided to give the concept a try. Did I actually bother to call up the recipe on my new iPhone while at the grocery store? No. I laugh in the face of recipes.

So, of course I come home and realize I don't have the baguette I need. Nor sherry, sadly. I actually like fino sherry and usually do have it on hand.

Forget recipes, I decided to read a few different ones for context and then improvise. I ended up cooking perhaps ten cloves in olive oil, then adding chicken broth (half from a leftover box, half homemade!), and simmering it for awhile.




I decided it needed body, so, with much trepidation, I tried a technique I've never tried before- adding an egg to the hot soup. Embarrassing blogger confession, but eggs make me really nervous. My mayonnaise always sucks. Custards are even worse. And poaching? I can do it, but I usually don't want to eat the result.

The technique is to add the hot liquid to the egg in very small increments while stirring furiously. To my surprise, it actually worked, and I got a nicely emulsified soup without any egg chunks.

The result was very Japanese to me, and not at all garlicky. The flavors were incredibly subtle, with a silky, chickeny creaminess that makes it seem like dairy was involved, without any heaviness. I did not cook the garlic long enough to render it mushy, so the cloves remained whole in the soup. They had been thoroughly cooked, so added only a very mild, mellow flavor. I added some leftover arugula to the soup, and a bit of lemon juice and salt to balance it all.

Lunch at Home

Today for lunch, I had some mac n' cheese and half of a squash.

The mac n' cheese was pretty foul, despite being Annie's. I prefer her white cheddar and shells, but they take forever to make, so I settled for the nasty microwaveable version. I see Annie's makes a whole-wheat version, so in the future I'll eat that instead. I have no guilt about eating anything, regardless of how bad it is for me, as long as it's real food. But white flour is gross.

The squash was much better. I prefer roasting, but opted to microwave today because I was starving. I've recently discovered sweet dumpling squashes, and they are my new favorite. Very substantial, almost meaty, with buttery flavors between pumpkin and acorn squash. They're also adorable!

Mon Poulet Roti avec Soupe a L'oignon

For dinner, I had roast chicken, French onion soup, and spaghetti squash. I was in the mood to cook, so everything was made from scratch except the soup stock.

The chicken was easy and surprisingly quick to cook- one hour for a five-pound roaster. I based it on Keller's perfect roast chicken recipe- high temp and completely dry skin to develop crispiness. I modified it by using fresh thyme (left over from making the soup) and garlic under the skin, and by cooking it in my cast iron skillet, for convenience. Despite its near-impossibility to clean, I love using my cast iron skillet in non-traditional ways. The chicken turned out flavorful but slightly tough- I assumed the chicken had been pre-brined because it was a typical supermarket non-organic bird, but I think I was wrong. Sanderson Farms needs to define "minimal processing" on their packaging. I've also cooked a whole chicken in my dutch oven to great effect in the past, but it results in nice meat at the expense of a crispy crust. Moreover, my dutch oven was busy making soup.

The soup was a recipe from Cook's Illustrated I've been wanting to make for the better part of a year. I'd been putting it off because of the time commitment and the lack of winter weather; today I caved, figuring it was better than writing papers. The first hard part was slicing the onions- I am hugely sensitive to onions, and generally either wear ski goggles (seriously), or make my loving husband do it. The LH was away, and my ski goggles have disappeared since we moved. I struggled through SEVEN onions, taking several wash-hands-cry-blow-nose-wash-hands breaks. The dog looked on with amusement. The next two hours required minimal involvement, but I continued to have trouble with onion sensitivity- the whole house reeked, and my eyes wouldn't stop tearing. Then another hour reducing the onions further on the stovetop, toasting bread, and adding stock, and it was done. I felt like the result lacked depth of flavor, and the sweet-salty balance was off. The recipe encouraged caramelization for "depth", but the result was very sweet, not deep. It may have had something to do with the onions. I went to Randall's over Whole Foods because it was on my way home, and they carried only "Texas Sweet" yellow onions, and some unlabeled yellow onions. The recipe called for yellow, stating that white onions were too sweet, so I chose the unlabeled ones and hoped for the best. Maybe it will taste better tomorrow.

Boring Chicken at Home

For dinner, I had parmesan-crusted chicken and roasted kabocha squash from Whole Foods, with a glass of Cotes du Rhone.

The chicken was awful! I wish I'd chosen the pecan chicken instead. The crust was crumby rather than cheesy, and got progressively mushier as the baking time went on. Most of the bottom crust became irreversibly stuck to my baking sheet, and the rest remained a pallid, spongy white. The flavor was of mush, not parmesan, with little clusters of parsley and maybe some onion powder.

The kabocha was interesting. I'd never had japanese pumpkin before, so I selected it over the acorn squash, mostly for the novelty and its adorably ugly shape and color. It's similar to sweet potato, with a slight pumpkin flavor. I also roasted the seeds while the squash was baking, and then snacked on these while the chicken was finishing in the oven. Freshly toasted seeds are tasty! Everything I read suggested scraping off all the pulp and leaving them to dry for a day, but I threw them in a well-oiled pan with some pulp remanants, and they turned out fine.

The Cotes du Rhone was pretty good, it was Les Violettes. Just a typical, nondescript
wine that was a little too light. It would be nice with a salad.