Recipe Review from 11/17/08

As the weather outside grows frightful, the meals inside are delightful! Temperatures dipped down into the single digits last week. I don’t remember which morning it was, but when I dashed across the yard to the garage it was a measly 5*. Happily, it warmed back up into the 30's by the weekend.

But what a great excuse to make some soups and stews!

Picture from Eatingwell.com

Cream of Turkey and Wild Rice Soup (Eating Well, Dec 08, pg 28) 4.5
I really liked the simplicity and ease of this soup. I planned ahead and bought a rotisserie chicken and divided it up for the two recipes this week (do you know how HARD it is NOT to eat a fresh rotisserie chicken?!) I had some portobelo caps on hand that needed to be used up so they were my mushrooms, and I used Swiss card for the celery and added some of the tops in for extra vitamins. Actually, I need to add here that the Husband did final assembly, I just prepped. I also cut back on the chicken and doubled the wild rice. I also used regular wild rice that I had pre-cooked and froze for just this purpose.

The onion, Swiss chard, mushrooms, and carrots were all briefly sauteed. The flour was added and warmed, and finally the broth poured in and thickened. Last, the chicken and rice. This was the perfect consistency, made about 4 or 5 servings, and had a nice creamy flavor. I would definitely make this again.

Sweet and Spicy Chicken and White Bean Stew (Ckng Lght Nov 08, pg 186) 3.0
In theory, this should have been spectacular. In reality, it came out tasty like Lemon Pledge. I place the blame firmly on the lemon grass. This used up the remainder of the rotisserie chicken, and was combined with potato and white beans (from our garden!). This was more stew-like than the previous soup, with flavors from cardamom, cloves, turmeric and lemon grass to name a few. I must give credit where credit is due, the Husband assembled this one for our lunches for the week, but I picked out the recipe. .

Again, I think the would have been really good if we had just skipped the lemon grass. As it is, we are picking out the lemon grass bits or eating around them. Some flavors just aren’t meant to be in a soup.