teacher by day - chef by night
Quick and Easy – the hardest part of this recipe is peeling & chopping the squash up before cooking it (I didn’t want the roasted flavor of precooking today). AND the hardest part I got out of doing this time since while making breakfast I …
I have really had a craving for French Onion Soup – and in all honesty, I figured since I have become a better chef over the past few months (years) – why not just create it myself! I was amazed when I found this recipe …
A few weeks ago we had a “quiet” day planned for Rich to study for his GMAT exam (he ended up scoring in the 75% percentile – more on that later) and my parents were going to join us to see the High School production of Robin Hood for which I did the props. I wanted to cook something yummy while Rich studied and wanted to start with potato & bacon…. settled on inventing my own “beer cheese soup”.
As the day went on I kept tasting & adding and inventing (also deciding we needed to have biscuits to go along with it). Well, in the long run – we had a large pot of soup, called my folks to come over, and decided that I had made what ended up being one of the most amazing “Loaded Baked Potato Soups” ever!
I started off my cutting up a whole package of bacon into about 1″ pieces & throwing the whole thing into the pot (high sided pan – whatever) & cooking that down 90% of the way. Then I drained off all the fat & put the bacon aside. I then added 2 chopped onions & 4 chopped potatoes. To that pan went (5??) cloves of garlic, a bottle of beer (Sam Adams dark something) and some chicken stock. (I don’t make my own chicken stock – but hate storing so many cans since I use it all the time – so I am a big fan of the dry bullion powder & then just pouring water right from my tea pot & having the stock make itself in the pot.) Pepper and spices went as the day went on, at some point I chopped 2 chicken breasts into small bite-sized pieces and cooking that in a separate pan (with some bacon for flavor) before throwing that in the soup. About 15 minutes before serving I added some milk & about 8 oz of cheddar/monterey jack cheeses. Top the whole thing off with some scallions & a little more cheese & perfect!
(Sorry for the really “cruddy” directions – I spent way to just time cooking the way I often do with “a little of this” and “a little of that” that I did not really pay that close of attention. The above directions/recipe should get you close if you want to give it a shot. This is one of those things that you just have to taste & play it by ear.)
My Soup Theory…
You can’t go wrong when making soup! And if you think you went wrong, it just means that you are changing directions!