I also remembered to get a picture of the bone broth I made, before tucking it into the fridge.
I started off by roasting the meaty bones, lightly drizzled with avocado oil (it was handy) and sprinkled with salt. Those went into the slow cooker with chunks of onion, celery, carrots and ginger, plus salt and pepper. The slow cooker was set on high for 1 hour, then on low for 8 hours.
Then it sat on “warm” for quite a while, as I wasn’t able to get to it right away. Once that was shut off, I allowed it to cool before trying to take the big pieces out. I have a large slow cooker, so it took quite a long time to cool down to a temperature that wasn’t dangerously hot. I am losing my grip strength as I get older, and I didn’t want to risk burning myself if I dropped something.
I took out as much as I could with tongs, first. The meat had fallen off the bones, and that got separated out (and became a snack, later on). Then I set up a stock pot on the stove and strained the liquid through a fine mesh sieve into the pot. All the strained out solids got tossed.
At this point, I would estimate there was a little over a gallon – maybe 5 litres – of broth. I then started reducing it, which took a few hours.
I considered reducing it to the point where I could set it in the oven for a final dehydration, which would have given me “portable soup”.
In the end, I decided against it, because I had the other ingredients added with the bones. Though, according to the video, the “keep warm” setting on my oven can’t go low enough to dehydrate it properly.
By the time I decided it was reduced enough, what was left fit into two 750ml jars. These were meant to go into the fridge to use right away, rather than being canned, so I just used regular lids, not canning lids, loosely added until they cooled down completely.
I’d say there’s roughly 5 cups of broth and maybe 3/4 cup of fat on the top between the two jars. The fat can be used for any high heat cooking. Since the broth was reduced so much, we now have a concentrated broth where just a little will go a long way.
Now I’m trying to think of what I want to make with it, first!
There’s another one under it that bloomed and was done before I ever saw that it was a female flower.
There were no male flowers open at the time, so I grabbed a couple of older ones and tore off the petals so I could access the pollen and hand pollinate. The first one had water pour out when the petals were torn off, so I used a second one, too, just in case the first one didn’t have any viable pollen. At this point, it’s too early to tell if the one I missed had a chance to be pollinated before it was done blooming.
This afternoon, I decided to use up a whole bunch of odds and ends vegetables in the fridge, along with some fresh stuff, in the slow cooker. I’ve been leaving the potato bed for the past while but decided to dig some up for today’s use.
I had dug some up before under the potato plants that had died back the most, which was at the north end of the bed, closer to that row of self seeded trees my mother left to grow. The entire potato bed died back early, without ever developing flowers, but the north end of the bed had them dying back the fastest.
The potatoes in that basket are from under four potato plants that were at the end of that bed. That mass beside the basket is capillary roots from the elm trees nearby that came up while I was digging around for the potatoes. I was hitting more, larger roots as well. I’ve de-rooted these beds several times, and they come back so fast!!
Those trees have GOT to go! They’re killing our garden!
I dug up more potatoes closer to the middle of the bed, and was still getting a lot of capillary roots like that, but found more potatoes under two plants, than under the four I’d dug up first.
Since I finally had a container on hand, I harvested Spoon tomatoes. It’s been a while since I picked any, so there were plenty to gather. Thankfully, the mesh on this basket is fine enough to hold the tomatoes! Some of them were so small, they would have fallen through if they weren’t being held in place by the larger ones. I had to be careful to keep the potatoes from rolling over and squishing them.
Then I grabbed a few more carrots to add to what we already had inside, and the only ripe bush beans I could find.
In the last photo of the slide show above, it shows all the vegetables I prepared for the slow cooker, seasoned and tossed with avocado oil. All from our garden!
There are the potatoes, carrots and Spoon tomatoes, of course. Plus I finally used that one big turnip that I’d left to get big and go to seed, but the deer ate most of the greens. There’s kohlrabi in there, and more beans that we had in the fridge. It took three “harvests” of bush beans to have enough to make it worth using them in anything! Oh, and there is Swiss Chard and a whole bulb of fresh garlic in there, too.
We have a large Crockpot, and the vegetables almost filled it completely. They will shrink as they cook down, though. After I left for my mother’s, my daughter browned some ground turkey, along with some of the yellow onions we still have left from last year’s garden (they have lasted a really long time!!!) and mixed that in later on.
The slow cooker was set to high for 3 hours. Since I’ve come back from my mother’s, I’ve checked on it a few times and added more time. All those potatoes need extra time to cook through, as I deliberately left them in big chunks. For I still don’t know how it turned out!
The house is smelling amazing, though, and I’m getting hungry! 😄
1 large shallot, chopped (I would have used onion, but I didn’t feel like going to the root cellar to get one) 2 stalks of celery, sliced lengthwise and chopped into small pieces 2 medium sized potatoes, peeled and chopped into small cubes 1 ripe avocado, smashed into mush cream cheese; roughly 2 oz (basically, I cut what was left of the piece in the fridge in half) whipping cream; about half a cup 3 cups water and enough bouillon powder to make chicken stock (because that’s what I had available) 1 can chicken (a Costco can, so about a cup of chicken chunks) enough ghee for sauteing (I normally would have used butter, but remembered we had ghee)
Preparation:
Melt the ghee in a saucepan until hot, then add the chopped shallots and celery pieces. Sauté until they start to be translucent. Add the potatoes and stir into the shallots and celery. Add the water and bring to a boil, adding the bouillon powder when it’s hot enough to dissolve quickly. Keep stirring occasionally.
After the water has boiled for about 5 minutes, stir in the smashed avocado. Return to boil and simmer for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the chunk of cream cheese. Return to boil and continue to simmer for a few more minutes, stirring continually until the cheese is completely melted.
Add cooked chicken chunks and return to a simmer for a few more minutes, or until the potato chunks are fully cooked, stirring frequently.
Stir in whipping cream and return to a simmer to heat it through.
We have quite a lot of fresh onions, on top of the ones we dehydrated (half of which I powdered) and froze. Mostly the Red of Florence onions.
Which have started to grow! Not all of them, but enough that we had to do something about it.
So I made a version of this historical onion soup using all red onions, to use up the ones that were sprouting.
I made a few other changes, too, of course.
This is how it turned out.
I sliced all the onions that were starting to sprout, saving the greens to use fresh, some of which I used to garnish my bowl. We’d done a pork roast yesterday, and there was just a bit left, along with the pot juices and rendered fat from the roast. I used the fat from the roast, as well as bacon drippings, to caramelize the onions, instead of butter. Part way through the caramelization process, I added the leftover bits of pork, finely chopped – there is no meat in the version in the video.
For the liquid, I use the juices from the pork roast, which had jelled quite nicely overnight, plus water. They used just water in the video. A vinegar I had on hand I chose to add to the beaten egg yolks was a fancy, barrel aged apple cider vinegar.
My daughters had made a loaf in the bread machine yesterday, and that was used for the bread portion. The video specifically stated to use the outside of a crusty loaf, not the soft insides (which would just turn to mush in the soup!), so I sliced off the crust on the bread machine bread. The bread machine makes a relatively dense bread, particularly around the edges, so I was able to cut quite thick slices off all sides for this, and cut them into fairly even cubes. They stood up well to being cooked in all that liquid!
The only other thing I did a differently was to add a splash of vinegar to the soup stock, even though there was vinegar in the beaten egg yolks. After tasting it, I just felt it needed that extra bit of bite.
The only down side to making this soup was the length of time it took to slice the onions, then caramelize them. By the time the soup was simmering and the cubed bread added, my back was giving out and I had to sit down in between doing the other stuff. Not an issue for people who aren’t broken, like me! 😁
As for the soup, it was quite tasty. Even my husband went for seconds, and he’s not a soup person! I think it would have tasted even better with yellow onions, but that’s just me. If all goes well, we’ll have a lot more of those in our garden next year!
This is definitely a soup I’d make again, with any type of onion.
I might be getting my daughters to do the chopping or caramelizing next time, though! 😄
One of the odd things about our garden plans not panning out this year is that, while we are harvesting more of some things faster than we can conveniently eat, it’s not enough to make it worth canning or freezing.
Today, I decided to take most of what’s been slowly building up to make a large soup. We roasted a couple of chickens yesterday, so that was my main protein.
Since I was using whatever was on hand, I measured nothing. I just chopped everything so that they would finish cooking at about the same time.
So here’s my not-a-recipe.
First, a couple of shallots and a small onion that got accidentally harvested while weeding, were sautéed in butter along with some Uzbek golden carrots and a few Gold Ball turnips, and the one tiny Honeyboat Delicata squash that got accidentally harvested when the stem broke off while in was checking on it. All of those needed the longest time to cook. A small handful of Spoon tomatoes went in, then green and yellow beans, and finally some green and yellow patty pan squash. A whole bulb of garlic went in, too – all 2 cloves that were so big, I was able to dice them. After those sautéed for a while, I took the pan juices from the chicken roasting pan and ran them through a sieve into the pot, along with just enough water to barely cover all the vegetables, bringing it to a boil, adding a big spoon full of chicken stock powder as well. I didn’t need to add any other seasoning. Last of all went some Irish Cobbler potatoes. These were the small ones I’d brought in, leaving the larger ones to continue curing, that had gotten a thorough scrubbing last night. I picked out the smallest ones, most of which didn’t need any chopping at all. More water was added until it seemed like enough, and it was brought to a boil.
At that point, my daughter too over for me so I could make a quick run to get more kibble. With the running around I have to do over the next while, I wanted to get more while I had the time.
My daughter simmered the soup until the potatoes were soft, then added some diced roasted chicken. For the final creamy touch, she also added an 8oz block of cream cheese and took the immersion blender to the whole thing!
It definitely went over well. By the time I got home, there was just over a bowl of soup left for me to try!
It was delicious.
Even the parsley I sprinkled on top was dehydrated from our own parsley we grew a few years ago. We dehydrated so much, we still have some!
I had it with a couple of slices of bread. The girls have been making at least a loaf every day, then sometimes starting another one during the night. I’m really glad we picked up that bread machine!
Meanwhile, on a less cheerful note…
I got an email from my sister letting me know she wasn’t going to be able to visit my mother tomorrow as planned, asking me to go over instead, as her car is in the shop. Turns out that knocking noise in the back was a loose wheel! TTT is getting her staples out tomorrow, but not until 3, so I would be able to go, but earlier than I normally do. I called my mother and the first thing I asked was if she’d talked to the pharmacist about the T3s she’s refusing to take. She said no; my sister was coming over tomorrow, and she was going to get her to drive her to the pharmacy so she could talk to the pharmacist in person. Not just any pharmacist, though, but the new store manager. I told her about my sister’s email about her car, and said I could come in to drive her around, but since I had an appointment, it had to be earlier. I suggested 11. In reality, 10 would have been better, but I didn’t think my mother would accept that. Well, she didn’t like 11, either, and asked if we could make it 12. I said no, I wouldn’t have time for that. Oh, so I’m always in a hurry…
???
Long story short…
I’m always in a rush and never spend time with her. My sister’s car troubles were just an excuse she made up, and now my mother’s entire day’s plans have to change (as if ours didn’t change as well!) Also, my brother is dropping the responsibility of taking care of her on me and my sister. None of us call her or spend enough time with her, we’re all terrible people who don’t go to church and don’t know right from wrong, my brother should practically be her slave because she “gave” the farm to him, and she paid for “everything”, so we should all be doing whatever she wants us to do, no matter how badly she treats us, because she needs our help. Oh, and I don’t allow her on the farm anymore, but when I do, I don’t serve her tea.
When I finally said, if I’m so bad, maybe I should stop coming over to help her completely. Did she still want me to come over tomorrow? Of course, she twisted that around and said that, if I didn’t want to come over, she would just find a way to walk over.
To the bank, the pharmacy and the grocery store?
I called her on the manipulation and guilt tripping, then simply told her I’d be there for 11, while she kept insisting she would walk. Her knees are so bad, she is starting to have trouble navigating her tiny apartment, never mind the half block to the grocery store. The pharmacy is something like 6 blocks away.
Of course, she’d have an easier time of it if she would take the T3s, but she sure as heck wouldn’t want that!
Do I sound a bit frustrated?
Yes. I’m frustrated.
I’m especially ticked off over how she is about my brother. No one has bent over backwards for her more than he has. Now he has the burden of this property on his shoulders – we are helping him by being here, but the place has problems well beyond either of our abilities or finances to fix, plus he still has the headache of dealing with property taxes and insurance for a place companies don’t even want to insure! She has no understanding that she didn’t do him a massive favour in signing the property over to home now, rather than in her will, but saddled him with a white elephant. Then she turned around and stabbed him in the back, and still can’t understand how badly she hurt him. He has pulled her butt out of the fire so many times over the decades, with zero gratitude or appreciation, it’s mind boggling he hasn’t cut her off completely.
He’s a much better man than I am, that’s for sure!
Well, we’ll see how it goes. She may act as if nothing happened at all. Or she may decide to be vindictive. Either way, she’s going to be ticked off that I will have to leave early enough to drive back home, pick up TTT and take her to the vet in time for her appointment to get her staples removed. I certainly didn’t tell my mother is was an appointment for a cat. She would have completely lost it, if I did. She’s always hated having pets in the house (my father loved them), and cats in particular. Dogs were accepted only because they helped with the cattle. They never took a dog to a vet. Not even when one of them got kicked in the heat by a horse and lost its eye. That dog lived to a grand old age, with a very messy, untreated eye. As a child, I had no understanding that this was not a good thing. Heck, I didn’t even understand that there was such a thing as a vet when it happened. So you can probably imagine that she would not be happy that we took a cat to a vet at all, even if it meant the cat living outdoors with a dangling broken leg. For us to be taking a cat to a vet on a day when she wanted me to devote my time entirely and slavishly to her would be just that much worse.
*sigh*
We’ll see how it turns out.
I’ll go back to thinking about how good that soup turned out!
With all the heavy stuff going on around, I wanted to bring things back to what this blog is supposed to be about for a while. So here is a food post for you to enjoy!
There’s nothing quite like a hearty bowl of thicksome soup on a cold winter’s day! Most of our cooking falls half way between “this is how you make a thing” and, “let’s use whatever’s in the fridge or cupboards at right now and wing it.” So here is the approximate recipe for this soup. Quantities are pretty flexible. This is one of those soups that taste better the next day, so I made a huge pot of it this time.
Bacon, cut into small pieces – I used half a package of sliced bacon Onions, 2 medium, finely diced Garlic, several cloves, chopped fine. I like to use lots of garlic, but use however much you fancy carrots, peeled and finely diced. Three largish carrots was what was used this time. Feel free to include other vegetables, like celery, broccoli, etc. For a large quantity of soup like this one, shoot for a total of 2 – 2 1/2 cups of finely chopped or diced vegetables. (In this soup, I also added about half a cup of our frozen tiny tomatoes. It is not something we normally use in this soup, because tomatoes and I don’t get along. :-D ) potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/4 – 1/2 inch cubes. For this soup, I like to include different sizes of potato cubes, because I want the smaller cubes to overcook and basically dissolve into the soup, to make it thicker. For this batch, I used about 6 large-ish yellow potatoes. egg noodles, or other pasta in shapes of a similar size cooked chicken; we used canned chicken, drained, but this would be a good way to use any leftover roasted chicken or turkey. cream, about 2 cups. We use whipping cream, because that’s pretty much the only cream we buy, but a lighter cream would work, too shredded cheese – sharp cheddar is always good, but any strong flavoured, shred-able cheese will be wonderful bay leaf dry mustard powder, about half a teaspoon, or to taste. A prepared Dijon type mustard can be used, too. herbs of choice, to taste (we almost always use a combination of ground thyme, sage, paprika and parsley. If we aren’t using fresh garlic, we’ll use garlic granules with the herbs) salt and pepper to taste chicken stock, water, or water with bouillon cubes/powder. I usually use bouillon cubes, and less than recommended for the amount of water used, because herbs, salt and pepper are also used. You can always add more seasoning, but you can’t take it out! optional garnish: sour cream and shredded cheese
Start by cooking the bacon pieces in a large stock pot. If they seemed to be cooking unevenly, add a bit of water, which will help render out the fat more evenly, and deglaze the bottom so it doesn’t burn. Cook to desired doneness. I like it on the crispier side.
Next, add the chopped onions and cook until the onions are softening and starting to become translucent.
Add the carrots and garlic. Stir and cook until the carrots are about half done. If using other vegetables as well, add the longer cooking vegetables in first.
Next, add the potatoes, bay leaf, herbs, salt and pepper.
Add enough water or stock to cover everything. Since I was using bouillon cubes, I added them at this point, too. I like to chop them up a bit, so that they dissolve faster.
Stir well, then bring to a boil.
Once the liquid has been brought to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for the time needed to cook the potatoes, minus the time needed to cook the egg noodles or pasta. So if the size of potato cubes you cut need 20 minutes, and you’re using pasta that needs 8 minutes to cook, simmer for 12 minutes.
Because I wanted to deliberately overcook the potatoes, I simmered mine for 15 minutes.
Stir in the egg noodles. This was an entire small package of egg noodles. I don’t remember the weight on it.
Add more water as needed. To keep it from cooling down too much, boil some water in advance and use that while it’s still hot.
Stir in the canned or cooked chicken.
The tiny frozen tomatoes were added at this point, then the soup was brought to a boil again.
These are the super tiny Spoon tomatoes, and some cherry tomatoes, we grew last year. Their tiny size allowed them to be added at this stage, but if we were to use regular sized tomatoes, they would have been added with the carrots, much earlier on.
Bring to a boil, then simmer until the noodles are done. Remove the bay leaf.
Stir in the cream and mustard powder. Bring the heat back up and simmer just long enough to heat the cream through, stirring continually. Turn off the heat.
Taste and adjust seasonings.
This is the soup after the cream and mustard powder has been incorporated. You could skip the next step, if you like a thinner, chunkier soup.
Or, you can partially blend it. I have an immersion blender, which makes easy work of it, but if you have a countertop blender or food processor, use it to blend about half of the soup, then return the blended soup to the rest in the pot. Stir and, if necessary, reheat until it’s hot enough to melt cheese, then remove from heat.
Add in a good handful or two of shredded cheese and stir until thoroughly melted and incorporated.
Serve topped with a dollop of sour cream and a bit of shredded cheese, if desired.
This soup always goes over really well, even with my lactose intolerant family! It’s thick and hearty enough to be the main course, with maybe some buttered bread to go with it. If you like an even thicker soup, use more potatoes, and blend it more at the end.
While I was outside, using the wood chipper, my daughter was busy dealing with our last summer squash!
She made four 750ml jars of refrigerator pickles with most of them.
The rest went into a summer squash and tomato soup. I think she actually used canned soup as a base, with the summer squash and the teeny tomatoes we’d harvested recently, plus our own onions and garlic, added in, then whizzed with the immersion blender when they were cooked.
The weather forecast said that we would be cooler today.
They lied.
When I did my morning rounds, it was already above 20C/68F, and we easily hit 28C/82F this afternoon, with a humidex above 30C/86F. Which meant that we spent as much of the day indoors, out of the heat, as we could. Thankfully, the way things are oriented, we can keep certain windows open to allow a cross breeze without heating the house up.
The cats appreciate that.
Yes, we leave the little step ladder at the door, just so they can look out the window! It was so funny to watch these to, with their matching positions, heads turning and tail tips twitching, in unison! Hard to believe that little Layendecker is now just as big as Cheddar! With the smaller cats, three of them can fit up there, but these big boys fill up the whole stop step! :-D
I did have to make a run into town, as we ran out of kibble for the outside cats. While I was there, I picked up some ingredients for my daughters. Yesterday, they finished off one of the giant bowls of spinach to make a spinach soup.
We’d already finished off one giant bowl, mostly through dehydrating (using the screens in the sun room didn’t work, so we did batches in the oven). When making the soup, that huge bowl cooked down to a remarkable small amount in the stock pot! :-D With my trip into town, the girls have enough to make a huge batch of baked spinach dip, which we plan to enjoy while watching watching Sherlock Holmes, with Jeremy Brett and David Burke.
It’s going to be a late one, though. We didn’t get back from working on the garden until past 10pm. I had tried going out a bit earlier to start prepping the spinach beds to plant in again, but those beds are in full sun. I wasn’t interested in getting heat stroke! It didn’t get cool enough to head out again until past 8:30pm.
The girls did the evening watering while I worked on the beds.
The logs were added after we’d started making the beds, so once I’d cleared away the remains of the spinach plants and the weeds, I took advantage of the situation to level the beds out, and create a bit of a ridge around the edges, to help keep the water from draining down the sides – and taking the soil with it. I used a garden fork to loosen the soil, to more easily pull the roots out. I was most pleased with how keep the tines could go, without any sort of resistance. This bed would handle root vegetables very well!
I had “help” while I was working.
Nutmeg could not get enough attention! :-) While I was pulling out roots and weeds, he kept getting under me, demanding pets, and rolling around in the freshly turned soil, sometimes rolling right off the edge of the garden bed – just like his brother does on our beds, indoors! Unfortunately, when I was using the garden fork, he had a terrible habit of suddenly lunging at the fork to “catch” it, even as I was stabbing it into the soil.
This bed was surprisingly different from the first one. When pushing the fork into the soil, I would quickly go through the raised part of the bed – about 8 inches – then hit solid. I wasn’t hitting rocks. Just rock hard soil! The last bed was much the same, though not as bad as this one. There is a difference between them. The first bed I worked on had been a squash bed, mulched with straw, last year. These two beds were a last minute change. When I’d prepped the area last fall, I’d made three smaller beds oriented East-West, where three pumpkin hills had been. This spring, I decided to make these two larger beds, oriented North-South. The soil beneath would be a mix of soil that had been turned in the fall, and walking paths. It’s remarkable what a difference that one season of use the previous year has made in the soil of that first bed.
All three beds are now prepared and ready for planting! We will be planting lettuces in succession along one side of each bed.
Since the radishes we interplanted with the corn all disappeared, and I ended up picking up more. Three different varieties to try, though I couldn’t find a daikon type that my daughter likes. They are fast maturing, so we should be able to grow some radishes, and still be able to grow more spinach in these beds for a fall crop.
We’re not actually fans of radishes in general, so we won’t be planting many. I do want to leave some to fully mature. I’ve read that radish pods are very tasty, but it’s not something available in stores, and I’d like to try them. From what I’ve read in the past, radishes used to be grown for their pods, not their roots, and the pods can be canned as well. It should be an interesting experiment. I’m still disappointed that none of the ones we planted earlier survived, even though they did germinate so quickly. I had specially ordered those varieties for my daughter. :-(
We’ll just have to try them again, next year!
Well my other daughter had just swung by to inform me that the baked spinach dip is ready! I am really looking forward to it! :-)
One of my Recommended posts was for the Historical Italian Cooking YouTube channel. Recently, they put out a new video for a super simple dish made with ingredients we typically have on hand. Today, I was able to give it a try!
Here is the video.
You can also visit this link for the written recipe.
This is an ancient Roman dish; chickpea and leek soup, with a fried flatbread called lagana.
About the only thing we had to go out of our way to get for this recipe was the white wine.
There was one ingredient we couldn’t find, though. Durum wheat flour. Any type of flour is just now becoming easier to find, but there’s no chance of finding any out of the ordinary flours. All Purpose flour, which is what we have, is made with a blend of hard and soft red wheat. Here in North America, durum wheat tends to be used in pastas. It’s the sort of thing we’d have to go to specialty stores to find. I’m sure I could find it in the city, but certainly not locally.
So I substituted AP, since that’s what I had.
First, the soup ingredients.
Another substitute I made was to use canned chickpeas instead of soaking dried chickpeas overnight. The recipe called for 2 leeks, but has almost no other quantities given. I had 2 leeks, but they were pretty massive, so I used 2 cans of chickpeas to balance out the quantities. There’s also the white wine, some olive oil, and caraway seeds ground with a mortar and pestle. I eyeballed most of the quantities based on watching the video. :-)
The soup was started by boiling everything but the leeks in salted water for 10 minutes. Then, the leeks are added and cooking continues for another half hour.
While that’s being done, the flat bread is made.
The flour was the other thing with a quantity given: 300 grams.
Unfortunately, my kitchen scale disappeared. So we had to use a converter. I used a little under 2 1/2 cups of flour. Salt is added, then a dough is formed with some warm water. That’s it, that’s all!
After the dough is kneaded until smooth, the recipe said to divide it into 10 pieces. There are 4 of us in this household, so I divided it into 12 pieces, instead.
The pieces of dough are then rolled out into rough circles.
The recipe calls for olive oil to be used to fry the bread. Olive oil has a low smoke point, so I modified the recipe a bit more. I added a bit of vegetable oil to increase the smoke point a bit. I was just frying in a pot on the stove, so this was more of a safety issue.
Once the oil was hot, the rolled out dough was fried, one at a time.
The dough bubbled up a bit in the video, but not into big dough pillows like this! :-D This could be because of the different type of flour, or even because of the oil blend.
Not that I’m complaining! :-D
These fried up very quickly. Maybe half a minute on each side, to get them to a golden brown, before placing them on paper towel to drain. The bubbles cracked on a couple of them, allowing oil to get into the pockets. That took a fair bit of draining! The bread was finished well before the soup itself was.
They look absolutely amazing!
Taste test time!
The soup itself was very mild tasting. Possibly because I used more water than in the recipe. I couldn’t distinguish individual flavours of the caraway or the wine, for example. No one ingredient overpowered the other.
The lagana bread had a surprising amount of flavour for something that is just flour, salt and water! The outside was crispy, while the inside was chewy. It went incredibly well in the soup. A real balance of flavours. Making one without the other would not be as good as the two together.
This is a remarkably easy soup to make. The lack of quantities in the recipe made it a bit more interesting to work out, but that just gives room to adjust to one’s one preferences!
Well, I’ve gone from having an irritating cough to a full blown spring cold.
Ugh.
As I was sitting with my lemon tea, feeling awful, it occurred to me that I had all the ingredients to make garlic soup.
This is a recipe that my late mother-in-law shared with me, many years ago. She told me that it was an old pioneer recipe that was especially made in the late winter/early spring, when everyone was getting low on energy. This was a time of year when people’s stores of preserved food was probably starting to get low, too, so between the long winters, lack of sunlight, lack of vitamins, and nary a fresh vegetable to be seen, people were getting worn down. This soup would be made and apparently resulted in a big boost of health and energy.
Oh, how blessed we are to be able to get fresh fruits and vegetables, any time of year!
I don’t know about it being a boost to energy, but garlic has long been known to help fight off colds and boost the immune system.
Plus, it’s easy and tasty. What more can you ask?
Quantities are pretty loosey-goosey, so this is more general instructions than a recipe. You will need:
garlic cloves; about 5 per person (I used a whole head, just for myself) butter (enough to brown the garlic) milk (about a cup or two per person; I used 2 cups this time) bread (1 slice per person – I used a thick slice of sourdough bread) shredded cheese (cheddar or whatever kind you like; about 1/2 – 3/4 cup per person) seasoning to taste (this time around, I used onion salt, pepper and a dash of paprika)
Peel and prep the garlic. It can be whole, crushed, chopped, minced or whatever you wish. I like to pass it through a garlic press. Then scrap all the bits stuck to the press into the pot, too. Big pieces are not a problem, here! :-D
Melt the butter on the bottom of a saucepan on medium heat. Add the garlic and cook gently until transparent.
Add the milk and heat until scalding. Do not boil!
Season as desired.
Place a slice of bread on the bottom of a bowl. Top with shredded cheese.
Pour the hot soup over the bread and cheese.
Eat while as hot as you can handle it.
You can also give the bread time to soak up some soup, then break it apart and add more shredded cheese to the top. I had to do that, just to be able to fit all the soup into the bowl. :-D
Now that I’ve had my bowl of soup, I think I’m going to go back to bed.
The Re-Farmer 