Cabbage Soup

Photo of cabbage soup with Sriracha hot sauce in it.

1 head cabbage, cut up
1 Tablespoon butter
1 large onion
2 carrots, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
3 tomatoes, skinned and chopped - or a small can of tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 large potatoes, cut into cubes
1 box chicken broth
1 box beef broth
1 small can V8
pepper
soup spice mix, I get this at ethnic store or when I go to Serbia
water, however much to make the soup as soupy as you would like

caramelize the onions in the butter, add in the garlic, carrots, and celery.  cook the veggies for a little while to add some caramelization.  Add the rest of the ingredients and good until done.

Cabbage is high in vitamin K and contains vitamin C, folate, and fiber.  These are all great when trying to fight a head cold.

2nd Annual Michigan Lady Food Bloggers Soup Swap

Yesterday a few of us Michigan lady Bloggers got together to swap some soup. The soup swap was started last year and I was not able to go because I was in Mexico at the time so when the question came out a few months ago as to who was going to host this year I jumped at the chance.

Winter and very cold weather just screams soup and on the day of the swap it was all of that here in Michigan. Despite the very cold temperatures Sarah, Mary, Margot, Bee and Yvonne made it out with their crock pots full of soup.

Potato Dill with Sausage

Galician Winter Stew

Creamy Potato and Canadian Bacon

Vegetable Chowder

Spicy Peanut Ginger Stew

Indian Spiced Red Lentil

Thank you ladies for a nice afternoon of great company and soup.

Faux Gumbo

This Dish was a bit of an experiment. I like paella and gumbos and dished similar to that so I thought I would try a faux copy with chicken, plus I found a packet of paella spice I was dieing to try. it turned out very flavorful and the chicken was tender and yummy and the family loved it, that is always a big bonus with a meal.

a package of chicken legs and thighs (how ever many it takes to feed your family)
flour
salt and pepper
oil for browning
1 poblano pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
5 to 10 mushrooms, sliced or chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 to 2 large cans stewed tomatoes with juice
paella packet of seasoning
1 bay leaf
salt & pepper
1.5 cups rice


Wash and dry the chicken. Add flour salt and pepper to a shallow bowl. Heat a large cast iron pan over medium high heat. Once pan is hot add oil. dredge the chicken in the flour and place the chicken in the hot oil (laying away from you). brown the chicken on all sides and remove from pan and set on a plate and set aside. keep the pan on the fire but turn it down to a medium to medium low heat. remove all but 2 tablespoons of the oil.


add into the hot pan the chopped vegetable and cook them covered until they are soft, uncover, turn up the heat a little and saute until there is a little browning on the veggies and add the paste, cook for a few more seconds so that the paste darkens a little.

Return the chicken and all it's juices to the pan and add the tomatoes and seasoning and rice, cover and cook until the rice is done, stirring occasionally. If there is not enough liquid from the tomatoes feel free to add a cup or two of chicken stock, water or even a little white wine.

North African Lamb Stew

A few years ago I tried my first North African dish when I met my fellow food blogger and now good friend Warda over at 64 sq ft Kitchen. She served several wonderful spiced salads (vegetable dished) and a lamb soup called Harira. The Harira was wonderful so wonderful my then 3 year old daughter took the soup from me and ate it up. I have had a few lamb dished at Warda's home and now that I am living in Mexico and I am so far from her I have to try to make these dishes on my own. While mine are not nearly as tasty as Warda's I do think that my ability to cook her Algerian dished are coming along and are in their own right tasty.

For Christmas Eve I wanted to make a lamb dish, I wanted something hardy but flavorful like Warda would make so I followed two of her recipes to come up with a lamb (mutton) stew where I combined her Harira recipe and her Lamb and Vegetable Stew recipe and came up with a great and flavorful dish of my own.


2 pounds boned lamb leg or shoulder
4 onions, halved and each stuck with a clove
5 carrots, quartered
4 potatoes, quartered
4 zucchini, quartered
3 stalks celery, cut into 4 sections each
2 large tomatoes, quartered
2 cups chickpeas
5 to 8 cups water or stock
Cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cumin
one bunch cilantro, tied
2 tablespoons tomato paste
a pinch saffron
salt and pepper
oil

Cut the lamb into large chunks and brown in a hot pan with some oil. once the meat is brown add in the tomato paste and stir. Add in the vegetables and spices and stir then add in the the water then the rest of the ingredients except the chickpeas. cook stirring occasionally until the carrots are tender, about an hour, adding the chickpeas and removing the cilantro bunch in the last 15 minutes of cooking. I served this with couscous that I made following Warda's directions but with a makeshift couscous steaming pot and pita bread.

How to Make Parihuela - Peruvian Seafood Soup

Last week I talked about my attempt to make a wonderful Peruvian seafood soup that we discovered at a restaurant near by called La Mar. While the soup that I attempted was delicious it was nothing like the parihuela that we at La Mar.

The night of my post my husband and I returned to taste that soup again, I was determined to figure out how to make it. As before the soup was WONDERFUL, delivered to our table in a sizzling hot ceramic bowl, the broth bubbling and boiling right in front of us. That first taste, mmmmmmm flavorful and spicy...well that and I burned my mouth and had to grab a quick sip of beer.

I ate that wonderful soup and was not any closer to knowing how to make it then I was before. Stumped and puzzled I ate my meal pondering the possible ingredients of the soup. To tell the truth the second trip to La Mar was a far better experience then the first, this time we knew what to order. We got the soup but we also got a Plancha, the marinara plancha to be precise. it is cooked on a hot cast iron pan with seafood and a garlic butter sauce, so great.

The meal was heaven but I still had no idea how to make that soup so I asked and guess what neither do they. The restaurant makes a tomato based seafood broth and adds a chili sauce that they buy from Peru and I was informed that I would not find the Peruvian chili needed to make the soup. I think maybe next time go I will ask if I can buy the chili sauce they use.