William Penn Life, 2007 (42. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2007-11-01 / 11. szám
íhe tfunprlm Kitehet PEPPERCORNS grow in clusters and come from a pepper plant which is a climbing vine native to India and Indonesia. It’s the worlds most popular spice and was once so valuable it was used as currency. Pepper is used to enhance the flavor of savory and sweet dishes and stimulates digestive juices, making it an added bonus to a healthy diet BLACK peppercorns are picked when they are not so ripe then dried so they shrivel and get a strong pungent flavor. WHITE peppercorns are ripened, the skin removed then dried for their not so pungent flavor. GREEN peppercorns are very soft, under ripe and the least pungent They are usually preserved in brine. Chowder. If a chowder has a "New England" tag in its name, that means the chowder usually has a white base. "Manhattan" chowder has a tomato base. The word Chowder comes from the French word "chaudiere" which describe the pot it's cooked in. We'll get more into chowder making in another column as that is a great category of food. A soup can be thin liquid based or thick like a chowder...or anything in between. Once you know what makes a soup thick or thin, you can make adjustments to get the best consistency your family will enjoy. When we mention hearty soups, we usually mean a soup with more contents. A hearty vegetable soup would contain much more than broth. It would almost be a stew, but because the base broth is thin, it's not. Soups and stews are very close in nature, but do have separate characteristics making them each a unique culinary delight. You can combine different broths to get a different flavor to your soup. FRENCH ONION soup combines onion, beef and sometimes chicken broths to get its unique taste. This particular soup was created by King Louis XV of France when he combined butter, onions and champagne for a meal. This soup today also contains cheese and croutons, and I'm sure we have all enjoyed it in our favorite restaurant. Now that we have a little more background, let me give you some tips on how to make hearty soups you can enjoy this fall season. The recipes on the next page are the ones I enjoy the most and have made countless times at school and for my friends and family. Use these recipes as a base to make your own creations as well. You're only limited by your imagination and certain culinary rules that apply when making the perfect soup. FLAVOR is the name of the game and comes from wherever you can get it. If your ingredients are not the best, your soup won't be either. Add cream or butter to your soup base to give extra flavor to soup. FRESH ingredients are always better than frozen or canned. Sometimes we are limited in choices to fresh produce but make those substitutions to give yourself the culinary edge. Remember, if you can't get fresh, get frozen. Your last option should be using any canned products, with the exception of tomatoes. Tomato products from a can are better to use during the months when you can't get garden fresh product as most of them are very consistent in flavor. FROZEN ingredients, like mixed vegetables, add bulk to soup and minimal flavor. Frozen seafood also needs a boost in any chowder or bisque. To punch up the taste, use a good SOUP BASE. I tend not to use bouillon cubes as they add too much salt. I like soup bases that are in a paste form, and my favorite is "Better Than Bouillon." Save your LEFTOVERS from meals in the freezer and use them as filling in your soups. Meatloaf makes a good substitution for soup beef when making beef barley soup. A few baked potatoes not eaten at dinner will thicken up your next chowder or cream of potato soup. HERBS & SPICES will give extra flavor to your soups, and, again, try to use fresh rather than dried. Most soup recipes will tell you what is best and, by your own experience, you'll know what works for you. SIMMER, don't boil, your soups. A good soup needs time to cook and meld all the flavors together. Boiling is a violent reaction of liquid and ingredients in a pot. It usually destroys the solid contents and makes the broth cloudy, which requires extensive repair. Last, but not least, the most important part of making a good soup is TASTE, TASTE, TASTE! You should be tasting ingredients before you add them to your soup, tasting the soup at various stages of cooking and tasting the final product before you serve it. There is nothing worse than following a recipe only to find out at the end you needed more of a certain item to make it taste better. I tip my hat to you all, now go into the kitchen and make soup to your hearts content. TRIVIA ANSWER: Campbell's Soup. In 1898 Herberton Williams was an executive for Campbell's Soup Company and attended the football game between Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. Williams found the Cornell team colors of brilliant red and white made a striking image. He convinced Campbell's board of directors to change the label on their soup cans so they would stand out in any market or grocery store. Today, more than 100 years later, the same brilliant red and white colors still adorn Campbell's Condensed soups. Have a great month. Jé "TheHungarian Kitchen” is a trademark of William S. Vasvary. William Penn Life, November 2007 7
