Maryland Crab Soup

As many of your know, I am a Baltimore transplant to the Midwest. And while there are lots of regional specialties here that have stolen my heart (Garret’s Popcorn, anyone?) nothing can compare to the true summer glory that is the crab feast. There is nothing like picking crab meat, eating corn and potatoes and drinking a cold beer on a hot summer day. Another couple around here shares our love for crab feasts, and we decided we would order a half bushel of crabs from a retailer in Baltimore and have them shipped to us in Illinois. While we did a fair amount of damage to our half bushel (approximately 3 1/2 dozen crabs), we still had a fair amount of leftovers. Crab meat spoils fairly quickly, so I wanted to make the best of the leftovers by making some other Baltimore favorites I usually wouldn’t get otherwise. I guess, if I’m being honest, I could buy crab meat from Whole Foods or something, but I have a hard time paying 30 bucks for jumbo lump meat (which I believe it imperative to creating an outstanding crab dish). So while this is not a thrifty meal if you have to go out and buy the crab meat, I was lucky enough to be ‘forced’ to make these meals with my leftovers. What a pity ;)


The first step for me, because I wasn’t buying my crabmeat, was picking all the leftover crabs. I stood over my sink for over two hours picking nearly two dozen crabs clean. I ended up with almost two full pounds of crab meat by the time I was finished and a ton of cuts on my hands and fingers from the shells. If you’ve ever picked a crab, you know what I’m talking about. As tedious as picking crab meat can be, I still find it amazingly relaxing.

Maybe it’s a Baltimore thing.

If I had to rank crab dishes in an order of favorites, I’d have to say number one is steamed crabs, number two is a a *good* crabcake (which I am super picky about), and then you have Maryland Crab Soup. I am willing to admit I’m a snob when it comes to crabcakes. The good ones are going to almost always be expensive in comparison to the other foods on the menus because they will be made with jumbo lump crab meat. And I refuse to order a crab cake at a restaurant unless I know what I’m getting. Anytime we go to a seafood restaurant in Baltimore, someone will almost always order a crabcake. If it comes out and I find myself envious of their meal and jealous that I didn’t order it instead of my meal, then I know that my next trip there I will be ordering a crabcake. Few places make crabcakes that good. Almost all crab meat, with minimal fillers and breadcrumbs mixed in. And heaven forbid I get one little bit of shell in my crabcake. Something about biting into something smooth and luxe like crabmeat, only to be greeted with a chalky crunch of shell or cartilege between my teeth all but kills my appetite for the rest of the crabcake. Some places are a lot more careful than others about picking through their crabmeat before using it.


The first recipe I want to share is one of Maryland’s staples. Regardless of my snobbiness towards crabcakes, one thing I always order, pretty much regarless of location, is a cup of Maryland Crab Soup. It’s light and delicious and the soup highlights the sweet flavor of the crabmeat without overpowering it. I found this recipe off of the website of one of my favorite restaurants back home, Cantlers. The recipe seemed almost too easy to be true, but the taste was spot-on. I felt like I was dockside on the Chesapeake Bay. Crab soup is also the perfect vehicle for your less expensive crab meats – claw meat and lump crab. If you’re willing to splurge on the crabmeat, or happen to have leftover crabs from your last feast, give this a try, you won’t be sorry. But please, please, do not use the imitation crab meat. This is one of the few times that only the real deal will do.

Maryland Crab Soup

From Cantler's Website  (if you are ever near this restaurant, go there!)

 Makes 8 servings.

Ingredients

4 c low sodium chicken broth

3 pounds canned tomatoes, quartered (I used a 28 oz can and a 14.5 oz can)

1 cup frozen corn, thawed

1 cup frozen peas, thawed

1 large baking potato, diced

1 cup celery, chopped

1 cup onion, diced

1 tablespoon seafood seasoning (I used more like 3 Tbsp – and my seasoning of choice was, of course, Old Bay)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon lemon pepper

1 pound Maryland crabmeat, fresh or pasteurized, cartilage removed (regular or claw)

Directions

Place broth in a 6 quart soup pot and bring to simmer.

Add vegetables and seasonings and simmer, covered, over medium-low heat for about 45 minutes, or until vegetables are almost done.

Add crabmeat, cover, and simmer for 15 more minutes or until hot. (If a milder soup is desired, decrease amount of seafood seasoning to 1/4 -1/2 teaspoons.)

Sicilian Sausage Soup

Soups are a great way for me to stay warm through the winter without packing on the pounds but, a lot of times, the soups that are the healthiest seem to lack a heartiness that I crave when the thermometer dips below 30 degrees (or 0 degrees, depending on the day). I want something that feels like stick-to-your-ribs comfort food without actually sticking-to-my-ribs (or worse yet, my hips).


This soup is the best of both worlds. The combination of orzo pasta and vegetables, including super-healthy kale, swimming around happily in a light chicken broth, leaves you satisfied without feeling guilty. The touch of light sausage and parmesan cheese really wakes up the flavor of this recipe. If you wanted to make this a vegetarian-friendly meal, all you would have to do is omit the sausage and sub out the chicken broth for veggie broth.


If at all possible, I would let this soup sit for a day after making it, as the flavors really seem to come together best after 24 hours but, if you simply can’t wait (like me, typically), it still tastes wonderful fresh out of the pot!


I always have saltines on hand to dip in the soup, though oyster crackers would be equally as delicious!

Sicilian Sausage Soup

Family Recipe

Ingredients 

1 lb. bulk sausage (we use low-fat)

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, diced

1 green pepper, chopped

3 stalks of celery, chopped

1 tsp. pepper, 1 tsp. basil

1 small can condensed tomato soup

1 16 oz can diced tomatoes with liquid

6-8 c. chicken broth (up to 12 c. is fine) (or use 2, 49 ½ oz can)

up to 1 cup of kale (chopped, cooked, drained)

½ cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

1 cup orzo pasta

Directions

Brown sausage in large stock pot. (if making a vegetarian option, use about a tablespoon of olive oil or another oil of your choice instead of the sausage fat).

Add onion, celery and garlic to pan and sauté a until slightly transparent, but it doesn’t have to be cooked all the way through. (The sausage, if low-fat, will not render a lot of fat, but it’ll be enough to give your veggies good flavor)

Add tomato soup, stir in spices, tomatoes, and broth.

Add cooked kale.

Cover and reduce heat and simmer for 1 hr.

Stir in orzo and cook for 45 mins more.

Garnish with cheese to serve.

Enjoy!

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Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup

Bob Evans used to be one of my favorite places to get chicken noodle soup, mainly because their soup had ‘dumpling noodles’ that I love so much. Imagine my utter disappointment when I went to Bob Evans with my family and there was no chicken noodle soup on the menu! Oh, the horror!

I have no idea why, but that soup has always been the standard by which I compare all other chicken noodle soups. Sure, the Lipton brand chicken soup with noodles was fun to suck up with a straw, but nothing can compare to delicious, dense, hearty noodles, which are apparently difficult to find in canned soup nowadays.

I saw this noodle recipe on Dine and Dish recently, and knew I had to try it. The soup base was a basic chicken stock with some veggies thrown in for good measure, but the star of this soup was the noodles. It was so much fun to make these, and I was absolutely delighted when I took my first bite. The noodles reminded me of a fat piece of pasta, which provided a nice substance to this soup. Because of the noodles, this soup was easily a meal, not a side dish.

The noodles are so easy, you won’t believe it. Mix, knead, roll, cut, boil. I can’t wait to make these again!
Homestyle Chicken Noodle Soup
From my kitchen
Serves 4-6

Ingredients
1 approximately 6 lb whole chicken
Enough water to cover chicken in pot
Carrots, chopped (use your judgement, but I believe we used about 4 carrots)
Celery, chopped (see above, I think we used about 3 stalks of celery)
Five cloves of garlic, finely minced
~1 c Corn (you can use fresh, but I used frozen because that’s what we had on hand)
2 Bay leaves
2 tsp Poultry seasoning
Dash Salt
Dash pepper

Rinse your chicken and put in large stew pot. Put just enough water in the pot to cover chicken with about one-quarter to one-half inch of water. Add bay leaves. Bring water to simmer (not boiling!), and let simmer, covered, for two to three hours, or until chicken is cooked through. Begin testing the chicken at two hours by trying to break the meat apart with a fork. If it shreds easily, it’s done. If you get some resistance, put the lid back on and let sit another 30 minutes before trying again.

Removed chicken from pot and let cool slightly. Get the meat off the chicken and chop up whatever you want to end up in the soup. For mine, I ended up reserving an entire breast off the chicken for later use, and the rest of the meat went into the soup, light and dark. Set aside.

Strain any fat that has floated up to the surface of the stock. We ended up getting approximately a half-cup off, but were surprised how little fat was in ours. You may have more or less depending on your chicken. Remove bay leaves.

Add poultry seasoning, carrots, garlic and celery to stock. Let simmer for 30 minutes, or until veggies are soft. Taste and season as necessary with salt and pepper. While veggies are simmering, begin making your noodles.
For the Noodles
Noodle recipe from Dine and Dish

Ingredients
Eggs
1 Tsp Salt
Flour

This is where you can customize the recipe for how large or small of a group you are serving. For every 1/2 cup of flour you will need 1 egg. So, to serve my family of 6, I use 4 eggs and 2 cups of flour. (I used 3 eggs and 1.5 cups of flour for 4 people, and it seemed like a lot! Next time I’ll probably use 2 eggs and 1 cup of flour)

In a medium sized bowl, whisk your eggs. Add the salt and whisk again. Next, add the flour. Stir the mixture with a fork until flour is completely incorporated and the dough is stiff.

Flour a large bread board / cutting board heavily. Dump your dough mixture out onto the floured board. Knead additional flour into the dough. Unlike pie crust (you don’t want to work pie crust too much) you want to continue to add flour to the dough until it is thick and smooth in texture. Just work with it and use your instincts.

Roll out the dough (again… make sure your board is well floured so your noodles won’t stick) until very thin. Once your dough is rolled out, using a pizza cutter, slice your dough into thin vertical strips. Make a couple of slices horizontally until your noodles are a desired size.

Return your pot of broth and water to a boil. Once boiling, add your noodles to the pot, one at a time, stirring so they don’t stick together(I pretty much dumped all mine in at once). Once all of your noodles are in the pot, reduce the heat, add your chicken pieces back to the pot and simmer for 30 minutes. Add in corn, simmer 5 more minutes.

Serve and enjoy! Garnish with a little parsley if desired.

Butternut-Chickpea Soup with Thyme Croutons

Every year, thanks to Thanksgiving and Christmas, I always get it in my head that food is a free-for-all. What little self-control I had around sweets completely vanishes when I spy Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge at midnight, or plate of Christmas cookies magically appears on the table in front of me. Even the normally healthier foods in my diet get in on the trend. Sweet potatoes, typically eaten plain the rest of the year, now must absolutely have marshmallows and brown sugar to be considered appropriate for my plate.

These seasonal foods make such a short appearance every year that I feel the need to stuff myself to the brim in hopes that it will tide me over until next year. And by the looks of the scale, it works.

Thankfully, with all of the sweets, cookies, stuffings, gravies, and treats, I have one respite – butternut squash. I love that I can get all the flavors of the season in a healthy yet satisfying dish (and I can eat as much as I want without feeling too guilty – ok, we’re still working on the self-control part, I guess).

I still had one butternut squash lying around from a few weeks ago when they were on sale. With my other squash, I made butternut squash and shrimp risotto and toasted the seeds as a little snack. This time I was craving soup. A feel-good-warms-you-from-the-inside-out-without-making-me-feel-guilty-about-eating-the-whole-pot kind of soup.

As I mentioned a little bit ago, I was adopted by a veteran blogger, who runs Hopie’s Kitchen. There I found a recipe for a butternut chickpea soup with thyme croutons that I just had to try. I adjusted the recipe only slightly, and that was simply because I had a whole butternut squash to use versus the half of one called for in the recipe. I also used homemade turkey stock we had in our freezer so that I can finally say we used it up! It turned the soup a beautiful auburn color, too, because the homemade stock is so much darker than chicken stock. A bowl of this just screams autumn to me.

This soup was like a warm hug, or wearing a snuggie. It is very filling, more than I’d expect, and the croutons with a hint of thyme provides a perfect crunch to the silky smooth soup.

After all the cookie, candy and cake recipes I posted these past two weeks, I figured I owed it to myself - and to you - to provide at least one recipe for something that is good, and good for you! Here's the way to start your New Year off, right!



Butternut-Chickpea Soup with Thyme Croutons
Adapted From Hopie's Kitchen

The following recipe is the original, my notes are in italics.

Ingredients
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped used a small sweet onion
3 garlic cloves, chopped used five because I was making a little more soup with a whole squash instead of half
1 tsp ground cumin omitted because apparently I haven’t restocked my pantry recently, I should get on that
1 tsp ground coriander
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of cayenne
1/2 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed used one medium butternut squash
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock (more or less depending on how thick you want it) I probably used a little more, I didn’t measure exactly because the stock was previously frozen and I just dumped it all in the pot, but the ratio was perfect, not too thick, not too lose
1 (425ml) can of chickpeas, drained I think my can was 16 ounces
Heavy cream I used sour cream

For the croutons:
1 cup bread cut into cubes (a little stale is perfect) I used ciabbata
1 Tbsp shortening (Butter or olive oil is good too.)
1 tsp fresh thyme, minced

Heat the olive oil in a large pot and soften the onions for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another few minutes. Add the cumin, coriander, nutmeg and cayenne and stir well for 1 minute. Add the cubes of butternut squash and pour in the stock. Bring to a boil, cover, lower the heat and simmer until the squash is tender (about 20 minutes).

In the meantime, heat the shortening for the croutons in a frying pan. When hot, sprinkle in the thyme and then the bread. Stir well and cook on medium-high, stirring occasionally, until the pieces of bread start to brown. Remove from heat and set aside.

When the squash is tender, add the chickpeas to the soup and heat through. Blend the soup. Serve with a dollop of heavy cream in each bowl and a sprinkling of croutons.

Hobgoblin Stew and Broomsticks

Every year around this time it is the same thing; the closer it gets to Halloween, the greater portion of my relatively healthy, balanced diet is replaced by Snickers, Milky Way, Reese Cups, Starburst, or any baked good containing cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice or pumpkin. And while I do make sure to get an apple a day, if I had my way, each one would be liberally coated with caramel and nuts.

Most of this change is simply due to the fact that the get togethers, parties and potlucks around this time are Halloween or autumn themed, and aside from Thanksgiving Dinner, most people relate autumn and Halloween to spice cakes, apple or pumpkin pies or candy out of the bag. I must say that I fall into this category as well, save for one thing – squash. It is one of the few healthy autumn indulgences that I have, so I get really excited when I see it go on sale.

After making butternut squash and shrimp risotto, butternut squash soup and just eating it plain, I wanted to try something different for an office potluck. Chili is always a great chilly-weather comfort food, and this recipe allowed me to incorporate leftover butternut squash. Because it uses ground turkey and has tomatoes, hominy, kidney beans and the squash, this is a comfort food that you can feel good about eating.

As the chili cooks, it smells a little like tacos because of the cumin. It has been a long time since I’ve had hominy, and never in chili, but this seemed like the perfect chance to use it, and I didn’t regret it. If you can’t find it, you can always substitute corn, but I love how the soft, almost al-dente texture of the hominy mirrors that of the roasted squash, and that won’t be exactly the same if you substitute corn kernels for it. The squash lends a delicate sweetness to the chili, which also has quite the kick, thanks to the jalapenos, cayenne and chili powder.
As an added ‘cute’ factor, I made broomsticks out of breadsticks. I thought it would be fitting for the occasion. These were made simply by purchasing the pre-packaged breadstick dough in the refrigerated section. I cut a small section off of the end for the band around the broom, and then I cut 4 inch-long slits in the bottom of each breadstick. After cutting the bristles, I pinched right above there and wrapped it with the small piece I cut off earlier for the band. Move them onto your baking sheet, then twist the handles like you would normal breadsticks. Bake them as directed on the packaging.

Hobgoblin Stew and Broomsticks
Adapted From AllRecipes.com

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound ground turkey breast
1 pound roasted butternut squash
1 cup chicken broth
1 (4.5 ounce) can chopped jalapenos
2 (14.5 ounce) cans petite diced tomatoes (you can use plain, but I used the ones with celery and onion)
1 (15 ounce) can kidney beans with liquid (I used dark red, but you can use light red or even just black beans)
1 (15.5 ounce) can white hominy, drained
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 tsp Cayenne Pepper
3 Tbsp Brown Sugar
2 tsp Allspice
Salt
Pepper

Directions

1.To roast the butternut squash: heat the oven to 425 degrees. Peel the squash, remove the seeds and cut into 3/4-inch to 1-inch dice. Season with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast in a baking pan for 25-35 minutes, or until soft. Set aside.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the onion and garlic; cook and stir for 3 minutes, then add the turkey, and stir until crumbly and no longer pink.
2.Add the butternut squash, chicken broth, green chilies, tomatoes, kidney beans, hominy, and tomato sauce; season with chili powder, cumin, and garlic salt. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the squash is tender, about 20 minutes.

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New Comfort Foods

I’ve been feeling sick the past few days. Just a head cold, but it has been really can really taking a toll. These are the days when I want to curl up on the couch, watch some TV and hopefully fall asleep for a couple of hours. I also feel bad because when I am under the weather, my appetite is the first thing to go, which means cooking a meal is not high on my priority list (though baking is another story). My list of comfort foods is the typical chicken soup, grilled cheese and tomato soup, and anything with chocolate (hey, there are antioxidants in chocolate, so it’s not all bad!) Thanks to my husband, who so graciously made dinner last night, I have a new one to add to the list: Napa soup.

This soup features a chicken bouillon based broth with cilantro and soy sauce pork balls, mung bean threads and chopped napa cabbage. He was able to whip up the whole meal in just over 20 minutes and was exactly what the doctor ordered. It’s comforting in the way chicken noodle soup is, but with a decidedly asian flair. And it’s light enough that you can eat a decent sized bowl without feeling overstuffed.

I’m feeling better already.

My husband doesn’t follow a recipe, he goes by taste. The preparation is simple enough. The following recipe is just a guide, as this recipe is mostly determined by taste.

Napa Soup
To make the Pork Balls:
6 oz Ground Pork
Cilantro
1 Tbsp Sugar
Pepper
1 tsp Fish Sauce
1 tsp Maggi
2 tsp White Soy Sauce
2 tsp Regular Soy Sauce

Take ground pork, a small handful of chopped cilantro, sugar soy sauces, fish sauce and maggi and mix until combined. Divide into small balls.

To make the soup:
Small Handful Mung Bean threads
1 cube Chicken Boullion
Pork Balls (see above)
5 leaves of Napa
3-4 c boiling water
pepper
Fish Sauce
Soy Sauce

Stir chicken bouillon into water and wait until dissolved. Add pork balls and bring back to boil. One pork balls float, add noodles, then napa. Season to taste using pepper, fish sauce and regular soy sauce.

Come join Soup-a-Palooza at TidyMom and Dine and Dish sponsored by Bush’s Beans, Hip Hostess, Pillsbury and Westminster Crackers