soup & 1/2 sandwich

Another quick lunch.

tomato soup & grilled cheese & salami sandwich

[soup:canned tomatoes, chicken stock, salt, cayenne pepper, basil; sandwich: rye bread, mozzarella cheese, salami, basil]

exotics

My mom came over with a whole, fresh, steamed abalone chunk. This is how we ended up eating it.

abalone and kabocha squash corn soup
I sliced the abalone thin, and put it in the bottom of the bowl with the cooked squash. The corn soup was essentially onions, garlic, saffron and corn cooked in shrimp broth and then pureed and strained. The whole thing was rather sweet as a whole, but I think the flavors actually worked well together.
[abalone, kabocha squash, corn, onions, garlic, shrimp stock, salt, pepper, saffron]

soup

I have a great fondness for potato leek soup - I used to make it all the time when I lived in Boston.

potato-leek soup with sausage and cilantro oil
This was sort of experimental, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I needed to do something will all my leftover cilantro, so I decided to puree it with some olive oil and drizzle it onto my soup. It added a nice flavor dimension, and the crispy sausage I fried up, added just that extra bit of salty, porky flavor that it needed.
[potatoes, leeks, chicken broth, cream, butter, salt, pepper, sausage, cilantro, olive oil]

broccoli and cheese

We mysteriously started receiving food & wine magazine, so i thought i'd try some of the recipes. What sold me on this was the cheddar crisps.

broccoli soup and cheddar crisps
The color is pretty gross on this. The truth is, the soup is a few days old at this point, so the vibrant green of the broccoli has faded into this dull gray-green. For a soup without cream, this had a very creamy texture. The cheddar crisps were just great and extremely easy. Just grate some cheese onto some parchment and bake until bubbly and crisp.
[soup: broccoli, onions, garlic, water, salt, pepper; crisps: cheddar cheese]

shrimp & corn

I found a stray bag of shrimp in the freezer, so decided to make a soup.

corn soup with shrimp
This turned out better than I expected. Half of the shrimp was pretty badly freezer-burned, so I salvaged what I could. It's a simple corn bisque - the secret to nice soups is straining them well. It was creamy and sweet, a nice foil to the brininess of the shrimp.
[corn, fish stock, onions, garlic, shrimp, cilantro, salt, cayenne]