Garlic Potato Soup with Parsley oil, Frizzled Shallots & Bacon

Garlic Potato Soup with Parsley Oil, Frizzled Shallots and Bacon. That's a pretty long name isn't it? This is the second recipe that I tried out for the Autumn 2014 Edition of the Food & Drink magazine from the LCBO. Based of the name of this one, it seems like it would be pretty complicated but it really isn't. If you like creamy filling soups then you need to try this one.



Ingredients (Garnish):
6 - Slices of bacon
2 - Shallots, peeled and sliced
1 - Tbsp chopped parsley
2 - Tbsp olive oil

Ingredients (Soup):
4 - Medium potatoes
1 - Head of roasted garlic
1 - Tbsp butter
1 - Medium onion, chopped
4 - Cups of chicken broth
1/2 - Tsp salt
1/3 - Tsp cayenne
1/2 - Cup whipping cream

Directions:
The first thing you need to do is set the oven to 350 so you can start on the Garlic. Roasting the Garlic is going to take about 40 minutes.

I ended up roasting two cloves at once and I used one to have with an appetizer while waiting for the soup to simmer.

Take your garlic and remove the lose skin.





Cut the top off and drizzle with olive oil (an additional Tsp).





Cover in aluminum foil and put in the oven for 40 minutes at 350 degrees.



Because we need to wait for the garlic, we can start on the Garnish. Fry bacon in a medium sized frying pan over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes or until desired crispiness. Remove bacon to paper towel, leaving all fat in the pan.







Add shallots and fry for 6 - 8 minutes over low-medium heat. Remove shallots to paper towel. Combined Shallots and Bacon on a small paper and keep to the size for later. The bacon fat can be discarded.







Finely chop parsley, combined with olive oil and set aside.



For the soup, peel and cut potatoes into small pieces.





Heat butter over low-medium heat and add onion. Cook for 8 - 10 minutes or until golden brown.





At this point the Garlic should be ready to come out of the oven.



Add Chicken stock, potatoes, roasted garlic, salt and cayenne to the onions that you just finished frying.



Cover and simmer for 20 - 25 minutes or until potatoes are tender.



The next step is to puree in a blender until smooth. I blend half, poured it into a new large serving bowl, add the whipping cream and then added the second blended half and then mix together well.



Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish in center with heap of bacon and shallots. Drizzle a little of the parley oil around the sides.



Fun Fact: The LCBO recipe called for a "Generous pinch of cayenne" so that's what I did. Oh man was that a mistake... The soup tasted great but then my mouth was immediately over come with the heat from the cayenne. If you like heat then go a head and add some more but if you don't want to sweat while eating your soup, keep it to 1/2 Tsp or less ;)

Kale & Nut Soup with Wild Mushrooms

The Autumn 2014 Edition of the Food & Drink magazine is in the LCBO and it's full of recipes that I want to try! With it being a cold and rainy weekend, I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out one of the soups. The recipe in the magazine is called "Kale & Chestnut soup with wild mushrooms" but I wasn't able to find chestnuts anywhere! I did a search for Chestnut substitutes and that didn't really help me either so I ended up going with a mixture of nuts.

I found this soup to be a little bit nutty/grainy in texture but the sweetness of the apple and nuts came through to really take away the kale's bitterness. The fried shiitake mushrooms with thyme and garlic is just amazing as a garnish! Don't make this soup without the mushroom garnish.



Ingredients (Soup):
2 - Tbsp butter
1 - Onion, chopped
1 - Small McIntosh apple, peeled, cored and chopped
2 - Cups chopped mixture of Hazelnuts, Pecans and Brazil nuts
2 - Tbsp thyme
5 - Sage leaves, chopped
6 - Cups chicken stock
4 - Cups kale, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Ingredients (Garnish):
1 - Tbsp butter
8 - oz Shiitake mushrooms, torn
1 - Tbsp thyme
1 - Clove garlic, finely chopped

Directions:
Heat butter in large saucepan over medium heat; add onion and cook until lightly golden

Add apples, nuts, thyme, sage and chicken stock

Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes



In the meantime, chop up the Kale

Stir in the Kale and cook for another 4 - 6 minutes

Blend in blender, transfer to a larger serving bowl and season with Salt and Pepper

Now for the Garnish! Heat butter in another sauce pan, add Shiitake mushrooms and thyme. Saute for 5 - 6 minutes over a low-medium heat then add garlic and cook for another minute

Scoop the soup into bowls and top with mushrooms

Server with fresh bread

Green Potatoes and Ham

Green Potatoes and Ham? or would it sound better as Creamy Avocado flavored Potatoes and Ham? This is actually an Evan Edwards original (my 6 year old son). One night I had made garlic mashed potatoes as a side for dinner. The kids were having Avocado (since they don't like my garlic mashed potatoes) as their side, when Evan said "Wouldn't it be funny if you mixed the Avocado in your potatoes?". But I didn't think it was funny, I thought that the smooth creaminess of the Avocado would go great in mashed potatoes. It turns out that I was right and it makes for a funny looking, but great tasting side dish. I'm keeping this one of file for St. Patrick's day ;)

Ingredients:
4 - Medium Potatoes, peeled, chopped
1 - Avocado, chopped
3 - Cloves of Garlic
2 - Tbsp Butter
1/4 - Cup of Milk

Directions:
Boil Potatoes until Soft

Chop up Avocado

Chop up Garlic

Add the Avocado and Garlic to Potatoes

Mix with milk and butter (or whipping cream)

Serve with Ham and Corn

(Green Potatoes and Ham)

Sweet Tzatziki

Sweet Tzatziki? What the heck is that? This recipe is more of a failure than something new and amazing but I'll take more about that at the end.

It was a nice afternoon and while looking in the kitchen for a snack, I noticed that I still had a bunch of naan bread and I thought it would be nice to go with a dip. I could have went for a store bought dip but it was the Holiday Monday so I decided to try making a Tzatziki.



Ingredients:
3 - Cups Plain Greek Yogurt
3 - Tbsp Lemon Juice (or juice of one lemon)
2 - Garlic Clove, minced
1 - Large English Cucumber, diced (the long, skinny ones)
1 - Tbsp Salt (for salting cucumbers)
1.5 - Tbsp Fresh Dill

Directions:
Peel cucumbers, dice and sprinkle with the teaspoon of salt (draws water out). The first recipe I saw said to spin the cucumber in a Colander to get out some of the water. Tried it and it didn't work. It just added to my dish pile. (Read "Skip the Colander Step")

Spread the cucumber out on a baking sheet, covered between paper towels.

Paper towel on top.

Put another baking sheet on top and press down to squeeze out the juices. Another thing I though of just now is that you could try to squeeze out the juices in your hands over a strainer. I have to do that with spinach when making my spinach dip.

This is what it should look like after you've been pressing it for a bit.

Chop up the Dill.

And the Garlic.

Get out the Lemon Juice.

Add the Dill, Garlic, Lemon Juice, Salt and Pepper to a Food Processor.

Notice anything funny about that last picture? I didn't have the blade in so when I put the cucumber in next, I couldn't put the blade back in. I dumped the contents into another bowl (more dishes), put the blade back in the food processor and then poured everything back into the food processor.

Process until smooth.

This is where things started to go wrong. All the recipes I looked at before called for 3 cups of Greek Yogurt. In my efforts to balance price with fat percentage I ended up grabbing the "Vanilla" flavored Greek Yogurt instead of Plain.

And the second mistake was that I only bought one package, 2 Cups, instead of 3 Cups worth so now I was short Yogurt.

Put the Yogurt into a large bowl.

Mix the processed mixture and yogurt together to get a nice creamy thick consistency. Or in my cause, without enough yogurt, it's a runny mess :(

Then comes the fun part, Tasting! Because the Vanilla flavor was so strong in that yogurt, it completely over powered the dip with a sweet, almost treat like taste. I have to admit that the Tzatziki undertones were really good so I can tell that if I had made this properly, it would have been really good! I'm going to try making it again but this time I will use the right amount and right kind of yogurt and try to squeeze the cucumbers out a bit more.

They can't all be amazing recipes, I guess I'll add this one to the Cooking Fail pile but I will post an update once I try making it again to see if it's actually good when made properly. Or if anyone else gives it a shot and it works out, then please post about it in the comments.