Vegetable soup and dumplings (chicken and dumplings for the vegetarian)

I stopped in the store desperately searching for something to serve for dinner. I wanted something seasonal and something that feels like fall. Although the sky is blue and sunny, there is a fall chill in the air that makes me seek warm and comforting food. In the organic section were these beautiful carrots in a rainbow of colors with rich green tops. That was it! I was going to cook with those carrots tonight! I decided on vegetable soup with dumplings.

Making soup in only a few hours is hard because it doesn’t typically build the depth of flavor that I would like. Making vegetarian soup is even harder because meat adds a lot of flavor to soups. Here are a few tricks I've come up with to help solve this problem.

1)      Brown your butter
2)      Add nutritional yeast
3)      Add booze
4)      Add condensed soup

All of these things develop flavor in the soup that otherwise you wouldn't get to experience. Nutritional yeast is exceptionally helpful with "chicken" dishes because it adds a chickeniness that otherwise you'll be missing.

Soup Stock:

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 white onion

2 organic carrots

2 stalks celery

1 1/2 cups vegetable stock (or chicken free chicken stock)

1 tablespoon poultry seasoning

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

8oz hard cider (4 for the soup, 4 for the chef)

8oz cream of mushroom soup

1 cup frozen peas

In a large dutch oven melt butter on low until pan is preheated and butter is golden brown. Add onions, carrots and celery and cook until they are slightly soft and browned. Add 1 1/2 cups of vegetable stock, poultry seasoning, nutritional yeast and hard cider. Allow to cook until vegetables are tender and alcohol is cooked out.

 

(this is a really good time to enjoy that cider!)

Add cream of mushroom soup, and frozen peas and allow to reach a boil again.
 

While soup is cooking prepare dumpling dough. In Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything he says "You can make dumplings with almost anything even flour and water. But I strongly believe they out to taste like something." I took that to heart when making dumplings adding soup stock and an extra punch of flavor with cream of mushroom soup.

When it comes to cream of mushroom soup I'm also pretty brand loyal to Pacific Natural Foods Organic Condensed Cream of Mushroom soup. This soup is so good that I will eat it on its own! If a condensed soup is so bad you can't eat it straight why put it into food?

 

Dumplings:

4 tablespoons softened butter

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon cream of mushroom soup concentrate

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon poultry seasoning

Stock  (about 3 tablespoons)

Cream softened butter, add eggs and cream of mushroom soup until just combined.

Sift together flour, baking powder and poultry seasoning. Add gradually to egg mixture. Add stock from soup one tablespoon at a time until dough looks like a thick pancake batter.

Add to boiling soup stock by dropping with a spoon and allow to cook covered for about 10 minutes. Flip dumplings and cook uncovered for another 5 minutes until dough is cooked through.

 

There you have it! A house that smells like fall, and a warm tummy from your apple cider consumption. :)

 

 

Enchilada sauce adventures!

Let’s face it, life is busy! And because of it I’ve been spending a lot of time and money on convenience food and take-out meals recently to feed my family. It’s not only expensive, but it’s also a lot of frankenfood I am not exactly proud to put on my table. So to combat this issue I’ve turned to freezer meals as a simple solution to get real food on the table on nights that are too busy to cook. Recently I’ve made 10 pans of lasagna, and today made 10 pans of cheese enchiladas with brown rice. I was surprised by the sheer mass of food it takes to fill 10 pans of food! Huge portions of onions, 4 of cheese and an entire bag of Costco tortillas, but what amazed me the most was how inexpensive it was to make my own enchilada sauce. While calculating the cost of each unit of enchiladas I decided it was not economical to buy pre-made sauce. It would raise my cost per pan by more then I was willing to pay, and included more artificial ingredients then I was willing to eat. Instead I made this simple enchilada sauce below that I ended up very pleased with. Keep in mind this makes a lot of sauce! It will make about 6qts of sauce, but this sauce freezes well, or you can make 10 pans of enchiladas and still have about 16 oz. of sauce left over for another meal as you can see below.

It starts with a puree of chilies. The pepper used here is Chili Negro and can be found in most supermarkets, or Hispanic markets.  

1 table spoon olive oil
2 large white onion
4 gloves garlic
2 bags chili negro
2 cups water

In a large Dutch oven add olive oil and onions; cook until onions are slightly translucent. Add garlic and continue to cook. Seed chilies and put into pot. Add hot water and cook until chilies are soft and re hydrated.

After chilies are cooled pour into blender and blend until smooth.

To make the rest of the sauce:

Chile paste above
2 large cans tomato sauce
1 large tomato can filled with water
1 cup vinegar
1 tsp Mexican oregano
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp California chili powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Simmer until flavors are well combined.

This sauce was rich and dark. The pepper adds an almost raisin flavor with a slight sweetness and a mild heat. The seasoning adds earthiness and the tomato and vinegar add bright slightly tart vibrancy. I’m really pleased with this sauce and will use it again and again. The best part of it is though is the price! My sauce works out to be about 0.02 cents an ounce, whereas this Old El Paso sauce is .13 cents an ounce if purchased at amazon. It might not seem like a lot of savings when looking at it oz by oz but when you make 192oz of sauce this is $24.96 vs $4.41 (not including shipping of 12.57) and this is where our savings are! We are talking just a hair shy of 25.00 on savings just by making our own sauce- and the best part is, it tastes better!

I hope you enjoy. If you end up making your own sauce I would love to hear about it. Drop me a line and let me know.