Okra Ham Soup

Okra Ham Soup is a summer recipe. I just squeaked under the line of what was possible with fresh produce. On Friday, my husband Bob and I went to the acupuncturist in Bethesda, and afterwards, took a turn through the Bethesda Women's Farm Market. This throwback to the 1940s is a small, shed-like building surrounded by Bethesda's nine or ten story office buildings. It contains relatively few actual farmers. I think there might be two or three. There is a woman who sells arsenal chocolate, a man who sells hand turned wooden bowls, a woman who sells Indian food, etc. You get the picture.
We stopped at the farmer, where I noticed okra. A week ago, I had bought a ham for this very recipe, which called for a ham bone. A person who shall remain nameless had gone all efficient and discarded the ham bone, but we won't talk about that. We still had the ham, and Mr. Farmer had the okra.
I bought the okra and Friday night, I went to work on the soup. It does not do to let okra lie around in  your refrigerator. I have done this, and I can tell you what happens. It becomes slimy. I sliced the okra, used salt pork instead of bacon because we didn't have any bacon, and a can of petite diced tomatoes. Then I got to the lima beans. I thought maybe we had limas lurking in the bowels of the freezer, but no such luck. I finished off the soup sans limas , using frozen corn, but fresh thyme from the garden.
Saturday morning, I set off with my shopping bag and Watson the corgi to run down lima beans at the farmers' market on Connecticut Avenue. For this late in the year, the farmers, who were mainly Latino, had quite an array of produce, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, kale, and a bunch of other stuff. as well as yummy looking and smelling El Salvadorian food, eggs and farm baked bread. One guy had beans in the shell that may have been limas. At least he said they were.  They might have been broad beans. He said his beans were the last for the season, so I bought all of them.
I got them home and settled down to shell beans and listen to the famous National Public Radio news quiz program, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. My calculations required a half cup of limas, but I ended up with less than a quarter of a cup. What the heck. They went in the soup.
The result was smoky and rich, excellent over rice, a great fall dinner. Southerners seem to like hot soup in hot weather, but I prefer it when the weather changes.

Okra Ham Soup

2 pounds okra, finely sliced. (frozen okra can be used)
1 tablespoon bacon drippings
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 ham bone (or a cup of diced ham)
6 tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or four cups canned
1 cup fresh butter or lima beans
1 small sprig thyme or one-half teaspoon dried thyme
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
water or chicken broth if necessary
1 1/2 corn kernels, cut from cob
3 cups hot cooked rice

1. Cook the okra quickly in a skillet with the bacon drippings and vinegar until okra loses its slimy consistency, stirring constantly.
2. Transfer to a kettle and add  the ham bone, tomatoes, beans and thyme. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer until meat on bone is very tender. Remove bone. Chop ham and return to kettle. Check consistency and, if too thick, add water or chicken broth.
3. Add corn kernels to soup. Cook three minutes. Serve over the rice.
Makes six servings.

Chestnut soup from Alain Ducasse (Gluten Free)

Chestnuts are another food that has deep childhood associations. My family lived on a dairy farm in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, but we were odd dairy farmers. My father had grown up in Europe, going to a series of Swiss boarding schools, before his mother brought him back to the US where he went to high school at Pomphret, a boarding school dedicated to the education of the sons of the lesser known Boston elite. Then he went to Harvard, and contrived to get thrown out in his senior year for not doing any work in a history seminar. You have to admit, it's a strange background for a dairy farmer.
My mother went to one of the upper class New York day schools, and then to boarding school at Foxcroft, in Middleburg, Va. , where, along with getting a pretty decent education (my mother never failed to blow me away by the depth of her knowledge) she fox hunted on a horse named Nonchelant which belonged to her aunt. Again, a pretty weird background for the wife of a dairy farmer.
World War II had something to do with my father's lifestyle choice, and my mother came along for the ride. So it was that on vacations, we would end up staying with our New York cousins, not exactly country mice, but nonetheless, dazzled by the big city. I have a vivid memory of being somewhere on the West Side, maybe near Lincoln Center, where we used to go to see the Nutcracker, and buying chestnuts from a vendor for the first time. The vendor had a charcoal brazier on a cart. with chestnuts spread across a piece of sheet metal. If people were buying, the chestnuts had time to cook but not burn. They were handed over in a small paper bag which kept our hands warm while we ate the chestnuts. The nuts themselves were creamy, warm and comforting, something like a miniature baked potato.
When I got back to New York as a graduate student, I barely had time to hang out in any of the places that would attract chestnut vendors. When I did run across them, their chestnuts were disappointingly charred. It was like eating a baked potato that had frizzled in a campfire.
But I have always had a soft spot for chestnuts. One November, my husband and I went to Paris, and frequented a bunch of little neighborhood bistros. In one, I ordered a soup whose name I did not recognize, but didn't have the nerve to ask the waiter about. When the soup came, I did ask. It turned out to be chestnut soup. It was delicious.
At Christmas, I looked for some sort of cream soup to start Christmas dinner. All the soup recipes in the NYTH cookbook had either been served or contained the dreaded shellfish. On the Food Republic website, I ran across this recipe and thought "yes" "aha." It was French, it was chestnuts, and hey, the recipe said only 20 minutes prep time. So I bought some chestnuts, which were surprisingly available in DC, ( I think I bought my chestnuts at Whole Foods, but it might have been Magruders.)
Actually I bought quite a few chestnuts. The recipe said 2 1/2 pounds to make soup for four people. We were expecting eight people, so I bought five pounds. On the night of the 23rd, I sat down to start peeling the chestnuts. It was an excruciating task. I had to pierce the annoyingly tough and slippery skin, and then pry the meat out. It wasn't easy and resulted in many nicks and cuts to my hands. After an hour and a half, I had peeled maybe half the chestnuts. As I slumped over my measly collection of peeled chestnuts, Laura blew in. She is a friend of my daughter's now living in our basement, and sort of ministers to us old people , as well as working 55 to 60 hours a week. Laura made me a fresh cup of tea, and looked at what I was doing. "Boil them first," she advised, as she disappeared out the door with the puppy.
So the next day, I threw the rest of the chestnuts into a stewpot and boiled them for an hour. This resulted in rendering the tough, slippery skin somewhat more flexible, so it was actually possible to peel the shell off the nuts, instead of having to pry them off. It did not mean the operation went a lot faster, however. After another hour and a half, I had peeled the last of the chestnuts into the big china bowl and was ready to totter off to bed.
It was clear to me that Alain Ducasse, although he was a world famous chef, or because he was a world famous chef, had not factored peeling the chestnuts into the prep time. He was too busy creating a world image and opening restaurants around the globe, after all.
As far as the cooking went, our friend Tim stepped in and did most of that. I do know that everything had to cook for far longer than 45 minutes. One little throw away line startled me. I could see from the photo, the soup had been run through a blender. However, blenders were not mentioned. It did say, at the beginning to step 7, "Blend the soup thoroughly." It didn't mean mix it up. It meant, run it through the Cuisineart.
According to my husband, the soup was not all that great. Our guests had a wonderful time however. Nothing damped the Christmas spirit.  
My advice is to use frozen chestnuts if you can get them, and to be prepared to doctor the soup with herbs and spices.

Chestnut Soup

2 shallots
3 stalks celery
3 cloves garlic
2 slices bacon
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon peppercorns
2 quarts chicken stock
12 ounces porcini mushrooms
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon black pepper, ground
2 1/2 pounds chestnuts, peeled
1 tablespoon olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.
2. Peel and cut the shallots and celery into  large chunks. Peel the three garlic cloves.
3. Heat a flameproof casserole dish and put in two slices of bacon, 1/8 inch thick. Color well (this means brown deeply) on both sides and then take the slices out and keep them warm.
4. Add the chunks of shallot and celery and the whole garlic cloves to the bacon fast. Stir for 1 to 2 minutes. Add 2 1/2 pounds of peeled chestnuts to the casserole dish. Sweat for three minutes, stirring. (this means saute for three minutes.)
5. Take out about 20 chestnuts and set aside. Then add a bay leaf and the peppercorns. Add the chicken stock and put the casserole dish in the oven for 45 minutes. (I would turn the heat up to at least 300 degrees, 350 if you have to, or allot 90 minutes for the chestnuts to cook.)
6. In the meantime, clean the mushrooms. Slice the caps of 2 firm mushrooms into thin slices and keep cold on a plate covered with plastic wrap.  Chop the rest into small dice.
7. Once the chestnuts are soft, run the contents of the casserole dish through a blender or Cuisineart. Taste and adjust the seasoning, adding salt and freshly ground black pepper. Keep hot. Cut the two slices of bacon into fine lardons and cut the 20 reserved chestnuts into quarters.
8. Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a saute pan and brown the chestnuts for two minutes. Add the diced mushrooms, salt lightly and cook for an additional two minutes.
9. Add the small lardons, stir and adjust the seasoning. Sprinkle with mushroom slices and serve nice and hot.

Potage d'Haricots Rouges (Louisiana Red Bean Soup) (Gluten Free)

Initially, when I considered this recipe, I thought it was a soup made from red beans from Louisiana. I checked on the Internet for Louisiana red beans and did not find anything specific. On further consideration, I believe the soup is actually a soup that originated in Louisiana that is made from small red beans. So don't drive yourself crazy trying to buy something called Louisiana red beans, because I'm not sure they exist. Happily, small red beans are available at Safeway or you can use kidney beans, available everywhere.
I planned to make this ahead of time for Thanksgiving, and got as far as boiling the beans with two ham hocks on Monday. When you look at the recipe, you will not find ham hocks. but I couldn't remember what the meat element was when I was at the grocery store, so I bought ham hocks.
This time two years ago, I had never eaten a ham hock.  As I move into the southern chapters of the cookbook I have been  introduced  to these smoked pigs' ankles and have become a fan. Ham hocks are particularly good in soup. They add a rich, meaty, smoked flavor to the beans.
I had the ham hocks, so I used the ham hocks. Feeling virtuous because I was getting a start on Thanksgiving dinner, I instructed Bob to take the soup  off the heat in an hour and a half and went off to do something else. Bob dutifully turned off the beans, and they sat on the stove for two days because I was always doing something other than moving on to the next step.
Thursday afternoon, I got down to the soup. I had skipped a step by boiling the beans and not adding the onions, bacon and garlic. So I sauteed the onions and garlic with the bacon, scraped them and the spices into the beans, added a tad (maybe a cup) more water and recommenced boiling. After half an hour, the beans were ready to be run through the blender.
"Time to get soup all over the wall," I announced to Tim and my brother, who were watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and taste testing stuffing. In the past, I have painted the wall of the kitchen with a rainbow of different soups. I remember hot pumpkin soup going up like a perfect Vesuvius all over me and the wall under the horrified gazes of my children as I struggled not to spout a corresponding volcano of curses.
Years of doing this have taught me a few things. I don't fill the blender as full, and I don't get soup on the wall. Soup went from blender back into saucepan without adding to the decor. I took the ham hocks out and disposed of them. When I am making split pea soup, I cut the meat off the hocks, but not this time.
The soup was an enormous hit. Tim, an old Alabama boy, was fulsome in his praise. "This is superb," he said. Just for the record, Tim is always polite about what he eats, but he doesn't go nuts unless he really likes something.
This is a great soup for winter. Bean soup may not sound terribly elegant, but you could certainly serve this, dressed up with the chopped parsley and hard cooked egg, at a dinner party.

Louisiana Red Bean Soup

4 cups dried Louisiana red beans or kidney beans
1/2 pound lean slab bacon, without rind, cut into cubes
2 large onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon celery seeds
1 teaspoon sage
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
tabasco sauce to taste
chopped parsley
chopped hard cooked egg

1. Soak the beans overnight in water that extends one inch above their level. (I did not skip this step, although I often do. It probably shortened the cooking time.)
2. Next day, drain the beans and put them in a heavy kettle. Add three quarts of water and bring to a boil.
3. Cook the bacon in a skillet until most of the fast is rendered. Add the onions and garlic and cook until onions are translucent. Add the celery seeds and sage. Season with salt, pepper and Tabasco and pour the mixture into the beans. Simmer the beans until they are very tender, two to two and one-half hours.
4. Let the beans cool and put them through a food mill or sieve or puree them, a little at a time, in an electric blender. If necessar, they may be thinned with a little broth or water. This soup will keep well in the refrigerator.
5. Heat the soup thoroughly and serve sprinkled with chopped parsley and hard-cooked egg and if desired, garlic croutons. Makes three and one-half quarts, about one dozen servings.

 

Black-eyed Pea Soup (Gluten Free)

Black-eyed Pea Soup, from the great state of Louisiana, was executed by a guest cook on the blog, notably my husband Bob. I planned to have the soup for Wednesday night supper. Lately, Bob has been cooking on Wednesday nights because I have been hauling up to the Democratic National Committee on Capitol Hill to make calls for Terry McAuliffe, who as of today is the new Governor elect of Virginia. (The Berkshire Farmer buffs her fingernails.) I suddenly remembered around lunchtime Wednesday afternoon that I had not started the black-eyed pea soup in the crock pot, and told Bob about it as I flew out the door.
To combat blandness, and , he confessed because he didn't read the recipe all the way through, Bob put the four slices of lemon that were supposed to be a garnish into the soup. The result was a piquant, lemon infused soup where the smokiness of the ham hock blended with the lemon flavor to produce something very nice indeed.
The recipe as written is supposed to be cooked on top of the stove, but 4 hours on high in the slow cooker produces the same result. He also did not soak the beans. I suspect that Monsanto or some other agribiz company has fiddled with the genetic make up of dried beans so we no longer have to soak them. Please note that this is only an opinion, not an accusation. I have no direct information about what Monsanto does or does not do.
So when I got home from a hard night of dialing the telephone numbers of Marylanders who were not home, or not answering their phones, we ate hot soup. (In case you are wondering why I would be calling residents of Maryland during a campaign to elect the governor of Virginia, we were combing the Obama lists for people to volunteer to knock on doors on Election Day.
By the way, black-eyed peas are actually beans, like kidney beans, and are eaten all over the world. 

Black Eyed Pea Soup

2 cups dried black-eyed peas
cold water
1 small ham hock (Ham hocks from Safeway are huge. As far as I am concerned, bigger is better here.)
4 cups boiling water
1 bay leaf
2 ribs celery, coarsely chopped
1 onion, studded with two whole cloves
salt to taste
4 peppercorns
4 thin slices lemon
paprika
1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley

1. Soak the black-eyed peas over night in cold water to cover. Next day, drain and place in a two-quart kettle. Add the ham hock, boiling water, bay leaf, celery, onion, salt and peppercorns (and lemon slices )and bring to a boil. Cook until peas are tender, two and one half hours to three hours. As the soup cooks, skim the surface as necessary.
2. Remove the ham hock and bay leaf and puree the soup either through a sieve or in an electric blender.  Spoon into four hot soup plates and top each with a slice of lemon. Dot the center of each lemon slice with a little paprika and one-quarter teaspoon chopped parsley.

Cape Cod Lobster Soup

With Cape Cod Lobster Soup, I am officially finished with the lobster recipes. Unless someone in my dear family requests lobster for a birthday dinner or other celebration, I won't be cooking them again anytime soon. I like lobster well enough. We don't tend to go to places where they serve it, but I would eat it. What I don't like is killing the things. Lobsters are slow diers. In terms of drama and flailing about, they could give  Richard Burton int the role of Hamlet a run for his money.  In this recipe, the cook is supposed to leave the lobster in a shell and let the diners dig it out. So, if you followed those directions, you would have pieces of lobster shell floating around in hot milk.  I used poultry shears and dug out the lobster meat. Doing that made it seem unnecessary to buy a third lobster to get the cup of cubed lobster meat.
Lobsters, although they are supposedly in plentiful supply in the bays of Maine, are expensive. My local purveyor of what Bertie Wooster would call the finny denizens had not lowered the prices any. I just hope some of this money is going to the lobster man.
Another ingredient in the soup is pilot crackers. These are not sold in stores. If you want them, you can order them on the Internet from survivalist stores like. www.pioneerliving.net . Survivalists like them because they have a shelf life of 25 years. One could also use oyster crackers. I would say two cups of oyster crackers equals three large ships' biscuits or pilot crackers. I used Kebler crackers. They worked fine.
I served the soup at a dinner party on Saturday night, where four old friends and shellfish lovers came to talk about what people our age talk about, our trips, our kids, how messed up our past employers are, and the fact that NPR seems to have fired all their editors. The lobster soup was a hit. If you decide to serve it, take the lobster out of the shell. It's unfair to make the diners work so hard for soup. I discarded the tomalley and coral, aka lobster guts.

Cape Cod Lobster Soup

2 one-pound to one-and-one-half-pound live lobsters
5 tablespoons butter
3 large ships biscuits or pilot crackers
4 cups milk, scalded
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 cup diced cooked lobster meat

1. Plunge a knife into the thorax of the lobsters where body and head join, to kill them. Discard head and thorax, but retain tomalley and coral. With a cleaver or large chef's knife, cut tail and claws into small sections.
2. Heat two tablespoons of the butter in a heavy saute pan. Add lobster sections and cook, stirring, until pieces turn pink.
3. Crush the biscuits or crackers and mix to a paste with remaining butter. Mix in the milk and pour over the lobsters in the pan. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, stirring. Grate in the coral and add tomalley.
4. Add the cooked lobster meat and serve. Makes four servings.