Faux Pho

I crave pho all winter long.  I've probably never had truly authentic pho, but I just love a nice big bowl of broth with rice noodles and the exploding flavors of cilantro, jalapeno, lime and ginger...whatever you wanna call that.  I call it "faux pho".  Top that off with the crunch of bean sprouts and the heat from a squirt of sriracha and I’m in love.  I tried this soup using some boxed chicken stock but many of them are bitter tasting.  My parents turned me on to Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base many years ago and it never fails me, so I decided to use it for this soup and I got a nice clean, sea-salty broth.  I highly suggest you go grab some at your local grocery store, or order some online.  I stock up on it in the colder months.  However, don’t go for the organic or the kosher variety because they’re just not as tasty in my opinion.

Simple Chicken Soup

When you're sick, canned soup just won't do the trick like homemade soup does.  I know that cooking is the last thing you want to do when you're infected with the office bug, but if you make a big pot of soup, you'll have homemade soup for days and you can go right back to the couch for your Breaking Bad marathon…no, I've never seen the show…yes, I'm serious.  You don't have to add in both parsnips and turnips, you can pick one.  You can also choose between parsley and dill, although I recommend choosing dill for that classic chicken soup flavor.  Make your soup as easy or as complex as you want to.  I made mine recently with no parsley and no parsnips and it was soup-er dooper.  You can also chop the vegetables any way you like.  I always leave my vegetables in large pieces that I cut through with a spoon as I eat my soup; it’s the way my mom makes chicken soup, so naturally I do it the same way.

Chilled Cucumber Soup

I never used to like the idea of cold soups until I actually gave them a try.  The complimentary cucumber soup shooter I had at Colicchio and Sons back in May was in a petite white porcelain cup and was perfectly creamy and balanced.  Weeks later I had a spicy cucumber soup shooter at The Stanton Social.  When I got a pile of cucumbers from work last week, chilled cucumber soup came to mind immediately.  

Beef Stew

Every year around this time, when the air is as sharp and cold as a chef’s knife against my cheeks, I extract a wrinkled and worn beef stew recipe from my fat manilla recipe folder.  Friends come from as far as Bushwick and even Grammercy to get a taste of hot stew and to share in my love of beef...beef that falls apart like a contestant on The Bachelor.  Last Saturday, I chopped, peeled, stirred and cursed all day in preparation for the night’s shindig, my 4th Annual Beef Stew Dinner, which also included homemade pickles in three colors of the rainbow, an asparagus salad that will make you Tweet, a batch of homemade baked ricotta cheese and a stack of shiny, cracked brownie cookies. 

Potato Soup with Smothered Onions

Last week I caught that cold virus that has been ploughing through the city.  But being sick is not so bad when you get to watch hours of Downton Abbey, eat mountains of tubetti in chicken broth and get tons of extra sleep each night.  I didn’t think I’d find the energy to cook for Brooklyn Salt this past weekend but was inspired by a heavenly potato, leek and cheddar soup garnished with bits of crispy bacon and fried sage that my dude and I shared a few weeks ago at one of our favorite restaurants.  Marcella Hazan’s recipe for Potato Soup with Smothered Onions looked simple enough and cutting a pound and a half of onions is great for the sinuses.

Escarole, Poached Egg and Siracha Soup

There was a blister on my finger from an hour of brunoise-ing vegetables with a dull knife for my mom’s dressing on Wednesday.  But Thursday’s Thanksgiving feast was a tasty reward for the hard work, complete with jalapeno cranberry sauce, sugary yams, juicy turkey, bitter greens and Prosecco.  By the end of the gorge-fest, I only had room for one “Dead Bone” (or “Bone of the Dead”), an Italian clove-spiced cookie that is virtually as hard as bone.  If you heard thunder that night, it was probably just the sound of a bunch of Sicilians in Long Island crunching on Dead Bones in unison.  By some miracle, I still have all my teeth.

Ricotta Dumplings in Chicken Broth

The  Middle Name Halloween party was a success although I made the mistake of applying my fake nails way too early which made every task that much harder, from getting the Devils out of the oven to putting on my wig and my Spanx.  Nevertheless, the party got started and the devils were quickly gobbled up (mostly by me) .  My boyfriend’s irresistibly cheesy kugel was attacked as if it fell out of a pinata.  I was hunched over the kugel with a fork by the end of the night.  All of our guests did a great job dressing up as their middle names, and some even stayed in character throughout the party.   The night ended with my boyfriend’s cousin and me soaking off our fake nails in a trash pail full of soapy water while the rest of the gang watched Jaws.  I'm surprised I didn't explode my Spanx after all the party food I ate.

Escarole and Cannelini Bean Soup

This is my version of my Nonna’s escarole soup.  It’s a wonderfully easy soup for a cold day and there are so many variations you can try.  It’s best to use the darker outer leaves of a head of escarole for this soup and you can use the lighter inner leaves for a great salad (see Escarole and Nut Salad).