Apple Celery Tomato Soup!

Hello there lovely, loyal TSC fanatics.

I am currently on tour right now, and I am writing the bulk of this blog from our van driving across Ohio.I made this soup before I left, and I really wish I hada bowl of it right now (but most of it is in my freezer waiting for me to get home).


This Apple Celery Tomato soup has a light, refreshing taste that makes it a killer side dish or first course. Its notsubstantial enough to satisfy on its own, if you're hungry like a Lumberjack. Like most of my soups, it's pureed which automatically makes it soup-erior.


Ingredients

4 Tbs butter

4 ribs chopped celery

2 chopped granny smith apples with skins

2 large plum tomatoes

1 medium white onion

4 c water

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 large piece of parchment paper, cut to fit just inside the pot

Heat butter over medium heat, and sweat out the onion. Then add chopped celery, apple and tomato and nutmeg. Allow these to cook for a few minutes and get a nice coat of butter. Add water, and turn heat down. Place parchment over simmering soup and leave on low heat for about an hour.

Blend soup in small batches. Now comes time to strain out all the bullshit: those celery stringsand apple seeds really can ruin your day.

Note: You want a sieve with the smallest holes imaginable, a regular wire sieve didn't do the trick for me on the first pass through. I used my yogurt strainer and it worked perfectly. I suppose lining your wire sieve with some cheese cloth or somethingwould be cool too.


I hope you enjoy this one, I love the light flavor, and I seemingly always have these three ingredients in my house...

-T, T.S.Q

Soup's On! Wild mushroom & walnut

For my first post as a member of The Salted Cod, I wanted to start by sharing my favorite and most impressive soup.

Mushrooms and walnuts are two of my favorite foods. In this soup, they get to slow dance together all night long.

ingredients:
1 c. chopped carrots
1 c. chopped celery
1 c. chopped onion
1 c. chopped leek
2 c. chopped crimini mushrooms
3 tbs. butter
salt
black pepper
2 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
1 pinch dried thyme
1 pinch dried sage
1 c. dried porcini mushrooms (1 package)
1 c. chopped walnuts (I always add more)

First step: soak a cup of dried porcini mushrooms in 2 cups hot water for 30 minutes to re-hydrate them.

Then saute a chopped cup of each of the following in some butter, salt and pepper: crimini mushrooms, celery, leek, carrot and onion. add 2 bay leaves, couple garlic cloves, a pinch of sage and a pinch of thyme (dried is fine) After the veggies have just started cooking add 8 cups hot water, the porcinis and their soaking liquid. simmer that for about an hour.
Remove bay leaves.

Then, in small batches, transfer soup to blender, and puree. Make sure you use really small batches. note: when blending hot foods, steam builds up in the blender and the pressure can cause the lid to pop off. To avoid burns, I wrap my hand in a dish towel and hold the lid on that way.

After all the soup is pureed, transfer back to the large saucepan. slowly reheat the soup, and add the cup of chopped crimini mushrooms and the cup of chopped walnuts. If you really dislike walnuts, this soup is probably fine without them. I happen to love them and think they bring a great flavor and texture to this soup.

Enjoy, my new friends!
I hope you don't hate it.

Lunch routine?

We just wanted to take a minute to share our lunch with you. It’s rare that The Salted Cod gets stuck in a lunchtime routine but we seem to be handling this okay.





We have been making a small salad with arugula, cherry tomatoes, and shaved carrots (everything but the tomatoes came from our CSA) and topped with a quick lemon vinaigrette.


We also purchased three year barley miso from South River Miso here in Massachusetts. Just plop an over sized table spoon of miso into a coffee mug with a lid and add some furikake for extra flavor. This is a Japanese seasoning which consists of a mixture of sesame seeds, bonito flakes and seaweed. To finish, we add fresh tofu and chopped scallions. This has worked out to be a quick and easy lunch at work. When ready to eat, just go to the water cooler and add hot water. Talk about instant soup, take that ramen noodles!

We're not one to eat at our desk or be chained indoors at lunch so we usually take it to the streets.