Polling For January Cooking Competition !!!

[Pukhtana_4_Lyfe]

Salam to all sweet friendz. Kaise hain aap sab ? Hopefully everyone is feeling well. Jaise ke aap sab jaante hain ke hamare iss month ( January ) ke competition ka topic tha SOUP. Everyone who participated, entered a delicious, mouth watering soup recipe. Decision is going to be very tough. Ab baari hai aap sab ki. Aap ko winner (s) choose karna hai. Those who entered recipes CANNOT vote for themselves. Let the polling begin. take care everyone and Allah Hafiz.


Recipe # 1 - Naz
Chicken Mushroom n macroni Soup...!

Ingredients:

6 cups water
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 1/2 cups sliced celery
1 cup diced peeled carrots
3/4 cup chopped onion
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
3/4 cup uncooked macaroni
1 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms
1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Directions:

Heat water in a large stockpot, add chicken breasts, celery, onions, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil over high heat; reduce heat and simmer, covered, about 30 minutes.
Remove chicken and discard bay leaves; skim broth. Add carrots and macaroni.
Simmer about 10 minutes or until the macaroni is tender. Return the chicken to the stockpot adding mushrooms and parsley; cook until the mushrooms are tender, about 5 minutes. Serve hot.

Makes 8 servings.

Recipe # 2 - Sahira
cream of peanut soup


Preparation Time: 30 minutes - 1 hour Cooking Time: 30 minutes or less Serves: 8
Category: Lunch Sub-Category: Soup Cuisine: American


Ingredients:

Cream of Peanut Soup (Thanks Kings Arms Tavern of Williamsburg Virginia for many a happy culinary moment in my youth!)

Ok so this sounds a little odd. It is not. It is tasty!

You will need;

an onion
couple ribs of celery
1/4 cup butter
3 Tbsp flour
2 quarts chicken stock
2 cups smooooth peanut butter (or not, like I did, it just adds a step)
1 3/4 cup of light cream (or heavy whipping cream if you hate your arteries.)
1/4 cup of so of chopped peanuts (not salted)

Get the raw ingrediants all in one place

Step 1:
Chop up the celery.


Step 2:
Chop up the onion.

Step 3:

Chuck the butter in a pretty big soup pot - it's going to get 2 qts of chicken broth added in a few minutes.


Saute up the onions and celery together till they are nice and soft. Not brown, just soft so keep it to 6 or 7 on the electric range and use more time rather than more heat.

Step 4:
Chop up the peanuts while sauteing.

Step 5:
This is what two cups of peanut butter looks like. I used the organic, feel good, hippy type though the recipe calls for smoooooth. We shall see the correction for this discrepancy in a minute.


Step 6:
OK, vegies are lookin' good:

Step 7:
Where's the flour? Ahh there it is, in the biggest flour container in the WORLD:

Step 8:
Add the 3 Tbsp of flour and cook for a minute or so:

Step 9:
Dump in super hippidippy, grain fed, farm raised, cute chicken juice and bring JUST to a boil. When the bubbles start, stop the cooking.

Step 10:
Now I use my expensive sieve. You could go with a strainer if you don't have one but the soup will be a tad less creamy. Pour in the whole bubbly chicken juice and veggie mass.

Step 11:
Squash out all the juice into another bowl.

Step 12:
Pour the sieved out soup stuff back into your pot and add the cream:

Step 13:
Add the peanut butter:

Here's where smooth is better than chunky - if you go with fresh ground peanut butter you'll have to squash it out spoonfull by spoonfull until it's not chunky anymore. As the soup heats, the peanut butter will disipate and thicken the stock. In my case I had to go back and sieve it out again to get the right consistancy (see next step).

Now on LOW heat bring that mess up to just under a boil. Don't boil it.

Step 14:
Beacuse soup was too chuncky I had to sieve the peanut butter / stalk / cream mixture again. Use smooth peanut butter and you won't have to do this step, the creamy kind will fully dissipate in the previous step.

Step 15:
Here is chunky mess that was left in the sieve:

Put the sieved soup back on the stove to warm up again once you sieved to your liking.

Step 16:
The end result. Pour yourself a bowl and garnish with the peanuts you choped up - just a few for crunchy cruchy goodness. This soup can be served hot or cold - it's a TAD less heavy when hot. When it's chilled it's almost a desert soup. This isn't a whole meal all by itself though - more of a small bowl served before a heavy meal like meat.

The end result is VERY tasty and is not like eating peanut butter at all. It's heavy and definitly peanut based, but surprisingly tasty.

One thing to resist, for authenticity sake is spices. While Williamsburg would have had spices to work with, they wouldn't have had anything like the variety that we have now. If you add hot pepper you will find yourself in Thai cooking land. Not authentic but tasty none the less. If you add salt and pepper, you lose some of the interesting tastes that just cooking with vegies and peanuts gets you.

All in all a FINE recipe, pretty cheap and pretty fast, that I would suggest as a contribution to, say, a thanksgiving meal that you're invited too. Nobody else will bring it and everyone will be surprised by that taste!

If I'd been on Hells' Kitchen, I would have served this as my initial dish to impress chef Gordon Ramsay.


Recipe # 3 - Sahira
chicken vagetable soup


Preparation Time: 30 minutes - 1 hour Cooking Time: 1 - 2 hours Serves: 10
Category: Dinner Sub-Category: Soup Cuisine: American
Ingredients:
My family wanted some soup for Thanksgiving, so I decided to give it a try. I made a vegetable soup with chicken in it. It was suggested that I just get frozen veggies, however, I opted for everything fresh, which I think made a huge difference. This soup was unbelievably good!

Everything in the picture is what I used except for the Rosemary. I decided at the last minute not to use that.


Step 1:
So here it is: I cut up one sweet yellow onion, one orange bell pepper, and two nice size cloves of garlic. I put these into a bowl, and set aside.

Then into another bowl, I cut up a bunch of carrots a bag of red potatoes, another clove of garlic, and a nice handful of finely chopped cilantro. Set aside.

Step 2:
Finally, into another bowl, I cut up a bunch of celery, two heads of broccoli, and a thing of mushrooms. Set aside.


Step 3:
I cut up two skinless/boneless chicken breasts into thin strips so they would cook quicker. I cooked the chicken in a skillet with a couple turns of olive oil and a chopped clove of garlic. Once the chicken was cooked, I cut it into smaller pieces and set it aside. To the skillet, I added a 1/2 cup of chardonnay to deglaze the skillet, and let reduce until the alcohol was gone (about 5 minutes or so). This will go into the soup pot.

I began the soup by putting the first bowl (onions, bell pepper, garlic) into a nice size "dutch-oven" pot with olive oil. Once the garlic and onions started to brown, I added the reduced wine from the skillet, the can of chicken stock, two cans of stewed tomatoes, one can of black-eyed beans, and the bowl with the carrots, potatoes, and cilantro, pepper, and about 4 or 5 pinches of sea salt. This I let simmer just below a boil for about 35 minutes.


Step 4:
Once the potatoes and carrots were almost done, I added the last bowl (broccoli, celery, and mushrooms). I also added the chicken that I had cooked and cut up. All of this I let simmer for about another 20 minutes (no boiling here).



Recipe # 4 - Sheem
Chicken Corn Soup


Ingredients

-1litre chicken stock
-1/4 cup corn flour
-1\2 cup cream of corn
- 1\2 cup minced chicken
- 1\4 cup soy sauce
- 1\4 cup vinegar
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tsp. Ajinomoto (Mono sodium glutamate)
- 1 egg white, beaten


Directions

1. Bring the stock to boil. Stirring constantly, add minced chicken and cream of corn. Cook for few minutes. Add salt, pepper, ajinomoto and vinegar and cook for few more minutes.

2. Dissolve corn flour in enough water to make thick paste. Stirring constantly, add corn flour paste into the soup. Cook for 3-5 minutes.This will thicken the soup.

3. Add egg white slowly, stirring all the time, until the egg white is cooked through.

4. Transfer to a serving bowl and serve with soy sauce, vinegar and hot sauce.

Recipe # 5 - Pukhtana_4_Lyfe
Delicious Chicken Soup





Ingredients


- 4 cups of homemade chicken stock ( check the stock recipe on the bottom )
- Fat from the homemade chicken stock
- 1 yellow onion, peeled and roughly diced
- 2 carrots, sliced in half-inch slices (about the same amount as onion)
- 2 celery stalks, sliced in 1/4 inch slices (about the same amount as the onion)
- 1 Tbsp fresh parsley leaves
- 1 Tbsp of chopped greens from a green onion (green part of the green onion).
- 1/4 teaspoon poultry seasoning
- 1/8 teaspoon (a pinch) of crushed red pepper flakes (or a small pinch of cayenne)
- Salt and pepper to taste

Method


In a 4 qt saucepan, heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil on medium high heat. ( you can also use olive oil. ) Sauté the vegetables in the oil until the carrots are almost done. While you are sautéing the vegetables, add the seasoning - the poultry seasoning, the crushed red pepper flakes, a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper. Seasoning like this during the cooking of the vegetables brings out their flavor. According to my mother, crushed red pepper flakes or cayenne is very helpful for a cold, which is why it is part of this recipe. Add the 4 cups of stock. Bring to a low simmer. Add the fresh parsley and green onion greens. Check seasoning and adjust to taste.




Method 1. Leftover Chicken Bones
1 Put the leftover bones and skin from a chicken carcass into a large stock pot and cover with cold water. Add veggies like celery, onion, carrots, parsley.
2 Add salt and pepper, about 1/2 tsp of salt, 1/4 tsp of pepper.
3 Bring to a boil and reduce heat to bring the stock to a low simmer.
4 Simmer uncovered at least 4 hours, occassionally skimming off the foam that comes to the surface.
5 Remove the bones and strain the stock.
6 If making stock for future use in soup you may want to reduce the stock by simmering a few hours longer to make it more concentrated and easier to store.

Method 2. Chicken backs, wings, and legs.
4 lbs of chicken backs, wings, and or legs that have been hacked with a cleaver into 2-inch pieces. You can ask your butcher to prepare the chicken pieces this way.
1 large yellow onion, chopped.
Olive oil
2 quarts of boiling water
2 teaspoons of salt
2 bay leaves
1 Heat 1 Tbsp of olive oil in a large stock pot. Add one chopped onion. Sauté until softened and slightly colored - 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl.
2 Add half of the chicken pieces to the pot. Sauté until no longer pink, about 4 to 5 minutes. Transfer cooked chicken to bowl with onions. Sauté the rest of the chicken the same way. Return onion and chicken pieces to the pot. Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook until chicken releases its juices, about 20 minutes.
3 While the chicken pieces are cooking, fill a large tea kettle with 2 quarts of water, bring to a boil.
4 After the chicken pieces have been cooking for 20 minutes, raise the heat level to high, add the 2 quarts of boiling water, 2 teaspoons of salt, 2 bay leaves. Return to simmer, then cover and barely simmer for about 20 minutes.
5 Strain broth and discard solids. Broth can be covered and refrigerated for up to 2 days or frozen for several months.

Recipe # 6 - Dania
TOMATO SOUP

Ingredients :
1 kg ripe tomatoes
4 cloves garlic
3/4 litre chicken stock
2 onions
Salt & pepper
8 leaves mint
Fresh chopped parsley
Recipe :
57 calories per person
Wash, peel and seed tomtoes, then cut into quarters.
Peel and slice onions and garlic.
Brown the onion with a couple of chunks of tomato instead of butter or oil.
Add stock and rest of tomatoes.
Cook for 25 minutes, then blend.
Add parsely and mint leaves, as well as garlic.
Serve.

Recipe # 7 - Dania
FISH SOUPPP

Ingredients :
500g gutted and prepared fish
1 bouquet garni
3 tomatoes
2 onions, sliced
1 clove garlic
2 leeks, sliced
1 pinch cayenne pepper
500ml dry white wine + same quantity water
2 table spoons olive oil
Recipe :
Peel and chop tomatoes.
Slice leeks and onons, chop garlic.
Sauté leeks, onions and garlic in a large pan in a little oil.
Add tomatoes.
Pour in wine and water, add bouquet garni and cayenne pepper, then bring to boil.
Add fish, salt and leave to cook over a low heat for at least 30 minutes.
Take out the fish and bouquet garni.
Sieve soup and serve with croutons and a dollop of rouille sauce.

[naz]

voted ................

[Princess Gato]

voted! .. Good luck everybody