100th Post: Green Tomato Gazpacho for The Secret Recipe Club

Green Tomato Gazpacho

For today's post, I'm focusing on the positive. Happy 100^th post Fabulously Fun Food! Bender and I have now been back in the USA for two weeks and will be moving to our new home next week. We've spent the last two weeks visiting with family, which has been wonderful after two years of being so far away. As such, I've spent most of my time away from the kitchen, but I snuck in to my mom's kitchen last night and whipped up a batch of Green Tomato Gazpacho. Perhaps snuck is the wrong word considering my mom put more effort into making the gazpacho than I did. Halfway through the process I realized that I could not find the avocado I purchased, so I had to get Bender to drive me to the store to get another one. Luckily, Publix accepted my story without any questions, so I didn't have to buy a second one. So Momma did all the chopping; I did the blending.

Double Take: Julia Child’s Garlic Soup

Garlic soup with gruyere toast. 

We all know that Tabitha likes garlic, but I’ll be honest, I like it just as much as she does. The thought of garlic oozing out my pores does not scare me. Luckily, Bender likes garlic too; otherwise I’d probably up the creek without a paddle. When Tabitha found this recipe listed over on Hey, What’s for Dinner Mom? I was excited to make it. Despite Bender’s love of garlic, he doesn’t have a love of soup (well, minus my chicken soup when he’s sick). I knew I’d be making this one just for me, but decided that was okay. I opted to serve it with a roast chicken so I would have plenty of time to make the soup while the chicken was roasting away in the oven. My original plan had been to make it while he was out of town, but a cold threw me on my bum for over a week while he was gone. Talk about a bummer. (Luckily, I had plenty of Gilmore Girls to keep me company.)

Daring Cooks February Challenge: Cold Soba Salad and Tempura

This challenge made me very happy. I finally had an excuse to use purple potatoes!

Today is February 22, not February 14. Oops. I’m a little late posting this challenge, but it just seemed easier to make this one when Bender was out of town. I tried making it twice when he was in town, but my tasters kept bailing on me at the last minute (for very good reasons, not because they were averse to tasting it) and I wasn’t about to make this one for me and Bender only. So I decided to wait an extra week and make it for myself only when Bender was away at a conference. And boy, am I glad I did.

The February 2011 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl.  She challenged

Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com.

Double Take: Baked Potato Soup

Potatoes in milk. Blah.

This week we bid farewell to the all-new ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. Tabitha and I have both been having trouble finding tasters. Some of Tabitha’s tasters have flat-out said no more SLC. So, we have decided that it is time to shake things up a bit. It is quite possible that we will pull out this, er, not-so-trusty
book every once and a while, but for now we are going to move onto other sources for our recipes. The majority will come from the blogs we love, but we will also turn to cookbooks and TV shows for inspiration. If you have a recipe you’d love to see us feature, please let us know!

Double Take: Creamy Southwestern Pumpkin Soup

Tabitha started getting excited about fall soups long before fall actually arrived in North Carolina. So I started looking at our “To Make” list that takes us into January and realized our mistake: we didn’t have a single soup on the list! I had already gone through the list, so I asked Tabitha to do the same. Would you believe that I had rated 28 recipes, but her two top choices I hadn’t rated at all? I didn’t rate them for a simple reason: there was no way Bender would even try them. She’d picked out two pumpkin recipes and Bender just doesn’t eat pumpkin. And I can’t buy canned pumpkin here. I couldn’t imagine that prepping the pumpkin for soup would be difficult, but it just wasn’t something I was terribly interested in trying if I were the only one eating it. So I picked one of Tabitha’s two recipes to make for our Double Take series and gave her my blessing to make the other one without me.

 I've been learning a lot about pumpkins since I moved to Germany. For instance, the rest of the world calls all winter squash “pumpkins.” I only thought something could be called a pumpkin if I could turn it into a jack-o-lantern. Boy was I wrong. And then I learned that Libby’s agrees with the rest of the world and that their canned pumpkin is generally butternut squash. Huh. I’ve never enjoyed pumpkin pie and my mom certainly did not cook with pumpkin, so it was never something I really thought about. So readers, what is your definition of a pumpkin?

Roasted pumpkin sure is pretty. 

Double Take: Smothered Enchiladas

I love fake enchiladas. And when I say fake, I mean I use flour tortillas instead of corn tortillas. I don’t know what it is, but I just don’t like corn tortillas. I’ve even had homemade tortillas made by someone who learned how to make them by watching his mother in Mexico. But I just don’t like them. So I always cheat and use flour tortillas. I assumed I’d have to do that with these enchiladas as well, but for some reason the recipe writers at Southern Living agree with me and both of their enchilada recipes call for flour tortillas. Yay!

Enchilada deliciousness! 

Double Take: Yukon Gold Mash with Morel Sauce

Ew! I'm not making that! 

This week's Double Take challenge with feature a different recipe on each blog. Tabitha and I have a list of many of the recipes from the all-new ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, and we've rated them: Yes or No. (It actually even gets a bit more complicated than that b/c I also rate what Hubby will eat.) All items marked Yes by both people have to be made at the same time, but all items marked No can be made by the other person at any time. We will feature these recipes every-so-often, and here is the first one! (Do you like the title?)

Winter Vegetables: Curried Cauliflower Soup

I'm glad 2009 has come to a close.  It was a big year for us, and a trying year at that.  I do not think 2010 will be easy... and I'm not certain it will be easier than last year, but we will be one step closer to settling down.  In 2009 we watched several of our friends buy homes and plant roots in their towns, but we were uprooted and moved to a different continent.  The most direct route to see my parents in Georgia takes 15 hours, to Hubby's parents, an additional 3 (if we are lucky).  In October, Hubby found out about a conference in Canada in June that would be great for him.  The prospect of having a definite timeline to see North America excited me to no end.  Up until a few days before we moved, I seriously thought we'd be back in the States for Christmas, but funds were nonexistent and I came to realize that would not be.  Unfortunately, Hubby will not be able to attend the conference due to grant reviews, which take place at the same time as the conference.  And again I'm floundering around, wondering when I'll get to see the South (and Texas) again (cuz, you know, Texas is not part of the South... neither is Florida).  But the blogosphere seems to keep me grounded and gets my mind off the homesickness.

Starting work has definitely had an effect on my blogging.  Despite my cushy 9-5, I still find myself wanting more time during each day and bedtime comes way too quickly.  However, I have goals, and I want to reach them!

In my last blog, I discussed my goals for 2010.  And I'm happy to say that I am already on my way to meeting some of those goals.  Namely, a vegetable every month and entering Meeta's Monthly Mingle.  I used kohlrabi for the first time this weekend!  Additionally, tonight is the last night to submit a recipe for the monthly mingle, and I'm happy to say I have just enough time to get it done!

When I discovered this month's theme, Winter Vegetables and Fruits, I got excited.  I've been wanting to make a cauliflower soup since we arrived in Germany (don't ask why, I don't know the answer).  However, I was lacking an immersion blender (or blender of any kind for that matter) and Hubby doesn't like cauliflower.  But when I saw the theme, I knew Hubby's preferences would have to take a backseat for a weekend lunch.  Especially since I got my immersion blender for Christmas!  :)

I looked around at many curried cauliflower soup recipes, but didn't follow a particular one.  Here's my version.

Curried Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients

1/2 head of cauliflower, chopped

Olive oil

3 cloves garlic

1 shallot, finely chopped

1c. chicken or vegetable stock

1T. curry powder

1t. coriander powder

1/2t. ginger powder

Salt and pepper, to taste

Quark, to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 375F.  Arrange unpeeled garlic and cauliflower on baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil.  Roast cauliflower until lightly browned, about 30 minutes.

Five minutes before cauliflower comes out of the oven, warm a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat in a small pot, and sauté shallot and spices until the shallot becomes translucent.  Peel the garlic, and add cauliflower and garlic to shallots.  Add stock and warm through.  With an immersion blender, CAREFULLY purée the cauliflower soup.  Add a dollop of quark to each bowl, ladle in the soup, and serve hot.

This simple soup will warm you through on a nice cold evening (or lunch!).  The tangy quark is a nice offset to the heat of the curry, without adding all the fat from heavy cream or sour cream.  Feel free to adjust the heat of the dish with chili powder or cayenne.  You can also go vegetarian by switching to vegetable broth, or go an additional step and make it vegan by subbing coconut milk for the quark.  Keep warm!

This month's Monthly Mingle is being held by Sudeshna over at Cook Like a Bong.   Thank you for helping me achieve one of my unnamed goals: use my immersion blender as much as possible!