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.

Tunch the soup queen

Just wanted to let everybody know that we have a new contributor who has signed on to the Salted Cod. "Tunch the soup queen!"

Tunch will be contributing from beautiful western Massachusetts. Tunch has been dubbed "the soup queen" because of her obsessive love for inventive homemade soups.

She is also known to occasionally hit the road and go on tour across the USA. If we're lucky we might be able to get mobile posts from some great American holes in the wall while she is on the road.

Welcome aboard soup queen!