Daily Archives: 11/01/2012

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Sausage and potato soup

Autumn and winter are my favorite seasons, in part because of one word.

Soup.

I adore soup.  A few simple ingredients can be turned into something warm and nourishing and comforting on those dark, cold evenings.  The cooking process is muss-free — depending on the recipe, you might have to saute an item or two (onions, meat) before tossing in the rest of the ingredients, adding water and settling back to bask in the scent.  30 minutes, maybe a bit longer and you have a wonderful meal served with a nice crusty bread.

Our weather in Philadelphia has been all over the map — 40 one day, 20 the next and 60 over the weekend.  Tonight, after hearing about snow flurries in the forecast, I decided, spur of the moment, that I wanted some soup.  Checked out the pantry, and the fridge, and voila!   

Recipe number one in Eating Out the Pantry:  Sausage and potato soup. 

I bought this wonderful sausage mix from Whole Foods around the holidays — pork-base with basil and garlic.  Ingredibly fragrant — even through the freezer bag, you could catch hints of the garlic.  I was going to use it as the base for a bean soup, but the sausage seemed like it could carry a recipe on its own. 

And it did.  I had to remind myself of my eating healthy resolution to keep from pouring out a second bowl.

Sausage and potato soup:

1 & 1/4 pounds pork sausage (garlic and herb)

1 medium onion, chopped fine

2 carrots, peeled, halved and sliced thin

4 cups chicken broth

1-2 cups water

8 small potatoes, washed, quartered and sliced (peeled if you want)

2-3 peppercorns, crushed on a teaspoon

Cook the sausage over a low heat (to prevent burning); drain off any excess renderings from the pot.  Add onion and carrots, saute for a couple of minutes until the onions are translucent.  Pour in the broth and 1 cup of water, lower heat to simmer and then add the potatoes. 

When the potatoes are half-cooked, toss in the peppercorns and continue simmering until the potatoes are done to your desired state of mushiness (some people like the potatoes in their soup to be falling apart; I prefer them more solid).  Since potatoes suck up moisture (broth and water), you may need to add another 1/2 cup or so if you want your soup to have enough broth.  Or you could let the mixture alone and have a stew!

If you had to substitute for the sausage, you could probably use a regular pork sausage, then add in at least 4 minced large cloves of garlic, and probably 2-3 tablespoons of basil. 

No need to add salt; the sausage had enough.  Nicely spicy.  Use a good crusty French or Italian bread to soak up the broth from the bowl. 

 

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Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is definitely not bare!

As you see, Mother Hubbard does not have a bare cupboard.

Which holds a lot more than you'd think

A tiny pantry can hold a lot of food!

Im one of those people who pops into Whole Foods or Target to grab milk or apples and sees something else, like a new type of sausage or a vegetable I’ve never tried, and thinks, “Hey, that looks good.  I don’t have anything at home for dinner, I’ll pick this up.”

The truth is, though, I do have things at home for dinner.  A lot of things.

I have a pantry closet which, at first, looks small.  But the shelves are deep and tall.   You can cram a lot in those shelves.  Same with my freezer.  I could survive for months on this food.  What I haven’t been doing is actually cooking anything!

I have beans (lima, cranberry, kidney, navy, red, turtle, soldier) and rice (arborio, black, red, wild, long-grain brown).  Grains (amaranth, quinoa, oatmeal).  Pasta (orzo, spaghetti, egg and rice noodles).  Chickpeas, dried peas, lentils (French blue, black and common red).   Flour (white, wheat, blue corn, polenta and red corn, rye).   Various vinegars, spices, and lots of olive and sesame oil.  Canned tuna, salmon, chicken and shrimp.  The freezer is packed with steaks, roasts, stewing and ground meats, whole chickens, a wide variety of fish and shellfish and frozen vegies and pierogies.   

Mother Hubbard would probably kill for my pantry. 

So I’m going to use this food.  Starting today, Ive made a vow to only buy 1) staples — milk, eggs, butter; and 2) something unusual ONLY if it’s on sale and ONLY if I use it that day. 

I have a massive collection of recipes, love to cook and can’t wait to start.

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A Week without the Cable — Days 2 and 3

I’m now on Day 3 of no cable, and it’s oddly relaxing.  I didn’t miss the BCS game Monday (from what I understand, it was such a boring game that most people turned it off mid-way through the second quarter).  I definitely didn’t miss the New Hampshire primary coverage — I got just as much info on it from NPR and online tweets without having to listen to the endless speculation of news anchors with airtime to fill. 

Tonight is Wednesday, and usually there’s nothing on that I watch, so the effect of the TV being on would have been for background noise.  And without that noise, I’ve discovered something interesting.  Well, two things.

1.  I get a lot more done.  So far I’ve inventoried my yarn stash, written 10,000 words for a book and braved the first of three boxes of old photos (no one in my family seems to have put actual names on photos; I’m trying to ID some of these people and places). 

2.  I have some noisy neighbors.  The doors keep slamming down the hall when one set of neighbors get into an argument (every hour).  And the — shrieking — that’s the only word I can use to describe it, coming from the unit underneath me is amazing.  Were these people raised in the wild?

Still, it’s both comfortable having the silence — and unnerving.  You can hear every creak of the ceiling (my building is old, old, old and I”m on the top floor).   Every car that passes outside. 

And every scritch as a squirrel runs across the ceiling in the crawl space.