Suzie the Foodie's Super Immunity Soup

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This weekend I was sick with the tummy flu and all by myself. I got tired of feeling sick and dragged my butt into the kitchen and made my favourite homemade recipe to cure the "feeling like crap" blues: my super immunity soup. I will admit, this recipe changes on a regular basis. It is flexible. Feel free to change it up. I also made my own chicken stock for it but it is not necessary. Just do what you gotta do to feel better!

Well look at all those veggies! Yes, there is a ton of chopping involved. If you are not feeling well enough to chop maybe a loved one will make this for you? Me, I have to do it all on my own but when I am not feeling well chopping can be quite meditative. I rough chopped two carrots, 2 stalks of celery, 1 cup of mushrooms and 1 onion.

I also finely chopped up 1/2 a big bunch of kale (I froze the rest), dandelion greens and Chinese cabbage. If you do not have any of these ingredients just chop up a bunch of whatever greens you have: spinach, bok choy...

On the side I finely chopped around 1-2 tbsp of ginger, 3 cloves of garlic and grated a nice wedge of ginger. I also diced up 1 cup of extra firm tofu. This recipe also requires some dried mushrooms, soy sauce, sesame oil and miso.

Saute the tofu in some olive oil with the grated ginger, 1 tbsp of soy sauce and a drizzle of sesame oil and some cracked black pepper. Saute until golden and then set aside.



In the same pot heat up some olive oil to medium heat and add the carrots, celery, mushrooms and onions. Saute for five minutes. Add ginger and garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Add greens, stir in and cover for 3 minutes.

While veggies are cooking pour hot water over dried mushrooms, I used shiitake for additional super food healing power. I also usually steep a piece of seaweed in the broth but it is a lot more expensive on the east coast than the west. Add the mushrooms with their liquid, 1-2 tbsp of soy sauce and add enough broth to cover all the veggies. Simmer for 15 minutes. Take 1/2 tbsp of miso per person and put it at the bottom of a large bowl. Ladle some of the broth on top of the miso and stir to dissolve (you never want to directly cook miso). Add a touch of sesame oil and then add the soup and some noodles if desired:

Does that not scream healthy AND yummy?

Miso is very salty so between the miso and the soy sauce, there is no real need to season the broth with salt, just black pepper. If there is not enough flavour, add more miso.

This makes a lot of soup! I will be eating it for days as I recover from the flu. Yes, it is a lot of chopping but when you really need to boost up your immunity and kick illness to the curb this will help. I do not know how many times I have made this soup and it has saved me and brought me back to health.

Isn't food amazing?!

How to make homemade chicken stock from scratch

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I am definitely going through a soup phase right now. Everything is cooling off, you can smell autumn in the air and to me that means it is soup time. I have made soup stocks before but never really followed proper "technique" and I wanted to give it a shot. Once again I took out my copy of La Varenne Pratique and started reading:

"A stock is the liquid left behind when water, bones, flavoring vegetables and seasonings have been slowly simmered...A hallmark of good stocks and broths is clarity, achieved by simmering rather than boiling the liquid. Never allow a stock or broth to boil for longer than a minute or two, otherwise the stock will cloud, and repeatedly skim off any scum that rises to the surface while it is simmering."

No boiling, just simmer. And skim off scum. No problem! I can do this!

So my version of chicken stock includes the carcass of a roasted chicken with most of the skin removed, 2 sliced carrots, 2 sliced celery stalks, 1/2 a large sliced onion, parsley stalks, thyme, (I forgot the bay leaf so add a bay leaf), 6 peppercorns, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 cup of white wine and enough water to cover the veggies and chicken.

The hardest part (other than taking a pictures of myself removing the scum off the broth with my left hand fiddling with my camera) was trying to figure out how to raise the temperature high enough for it to bubble but NOT boil. I wanted to do this right. So I gradually raised the temperature higher and higher until it started simmering. I let it simmer for 25 minutes. Patiently I used the ladle to remove these bubbles to get the clearest stock I personally have ever made:

If I had let the soup cool and then removed the the fat this stock would have been ever clearer and if I had remember the bay leaf it would have been even tastier. If I had used a fresh chicken there would have also been more flavour but considering I made this with just the bones I am pretty darn happy that I saved money by making my stock for next soup instead of buying it.

I love it, I cleared out my fridge of produce and bones and am left with this foodie gold.

Compound Butter & Foodie Magic

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Compound butters. That sounds complicated and intriguing doesn't it? At least it did to me when I was in high school working at a book store and came across the book The Herbal Pantry:

Back then food was a complete and utter mystery to me. It was food magic and I found that exciting. I would flip through the gorgeous illustrations of all the magnificent creations you could make with herbs and never believed in a million years I would know what to do with any of these creations. It is the first foodie book I ever bought and just hoped one day I would actually make something from. Today I know that food is simple and beautiful and accessible to everyone.

All compound butter is butter with yummies in it. You decide what delicious accents you want to add. I wanted to make a sweet compound butter for my no-knead wheat bread so I left the butter out for a while to become nice and soft. Then I added some honey and cinnamon and mixed it up with a spoon. That's it!

Delicious! Compound butters are so easy to create and make fantastic presents. Just put them in a decorate small jar with ribbon and some homemade muffins and people will be blown away by your creative foodie spirit and personal touch.

Food is magic but it is magic that is available to everyone. The magic is not in the technique, it is in the desire to make something special, pretty and yummy. It took me years to realize that I could be a foodie magician. And so can you!

Recipe: Cheese Biscuits

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I made Jamie Oliver's Butternut Squash and Chorizo Soup the other day and really wanted to bake but I was hungry so I wanted something super easy and fast. I came up with these cheese biscuits! This recipe makes a small batch of nine biscuits and can easily be doubled. If you do not have buttermilk (I never do) just sour some milk with a little lemon juice. Add the lemon and let it sit for a while, a great and simple substitution.

1 cup self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tbsp + 1 tsp cup cold butter cut up
1/3 cup grated cheese, I used a combination of left over gruyere and mozzarella
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp of melted butter

Preheat the oven to 350F. Combine dry ingredients. Cut in the cold butter pieces until it looks like cornmeal. Add cheese. Gradually stir in the buttermilk until the batter just comes together. I used an ice cream scoop to make the biscuits and put them on a parchment-lined baking tray. Brush melted butter on the top. You can add a little more cheese if desired. Bake for 13-15 minutes.

These reminded me of Red Lobster's cheese biscuits and were absolutely delicious! They went perfectly with my soup and were also delicious on their own. What a simple recipe with such a huge payoff!

Jamie Oliver's Butternut and Chorizo Soup

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I am reading Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's Ministry of Food which is apparently the same book as Jamie's Food Revolution. I truly admire Jamie's dedication to inspire people to make their own food. He really believes in eating real food and not getting complicated about it. I like him and his food approach so much, yet I had never tackled any of his recipes. I was scared his simple approach to food would let my picky foodie palette down and I just like him so much I did not want that to happen. I braved possible disappointment yesterday and took on his Sweet Potato and Chorizo Soup. I did not have sweet potatoes so he suggested using butternut squash which I had on hand and gave it a shot.

Jamie's approach is so basic I immediately questioned it. That giant pile of chopped veggies and chorizo sausage were supposed to be dumped into a hot pot with some hot oil altogether. I have never done that before. Normally you start out sautéing the onions, add the garlic and then the mirepoix (aromatics like carrots, onions, leeks...). You don't just dump it all in there! Good grief. OK, I can do this. I am a rebel right? I dumped everything in the pot and added some curry powder and let it sit with the lid askew for 10 minutes. My carrots were not softened at this time so I had to let it cook for five minutes longer. I did have to turn my heat down from the recommended "hot" to medium high because my veggies came close to burning, thankfully I caught it in time.

Then you add some chicken broth which sounds simple, right? The only problem is the recipe called for 1.8 litres of broth and I had absolutely zero idea how many cups that was. I tried to look up the measurement conversion chart in my Joy of Cooking but it just told me how many quarts it was and I was just as lost. I ended up adding the broth until it just covered the veggies. Apparently 1.8 litres is 10 cups. There is no way I added that much broth but it worked out fine.

The part of this recipe I was most dubious about was putting the chorizo in at the beginning and then mixing with a hand blender at the end with the rest of the vegetables. Really?! That just seems so weird, to blend meat like that. I got out my hand dandy immersion blender and it took a while to get a nice consistency, it still seemed a little chunky no matter how much I attacked the soup. I prefer the smooth texture you get from using a food mill but sadly I do not have one.

The soup was lovely! Stunning in fact. I was shocked at how well the flavours worked together and the texture did not bother me at all. He suggests topping it with chopped chilies but I found there was enough heat from the chorizo sausage to add that additional kick I was looking for. The curry powder melded everything together beautifully and wow, when you eat this soup not only do you feel healthy you feel satiated. It is delicious and hardy! The perfect soup for our future autumn evenings.

When it comes to Jamie's book, I have to say it is visually gorgeous. There are lots of illustrations and you can even recognize that it is Jamie doing the cooking and not some hand model filling in for him. You can also recognized his voice and friendly disposition we all like so much within each recipe. His recipes are not complicated, the approach is simple and the book is lovely to gaze through. I can not wait to tackle more of his food this weekend!

What to do with a flavourless watermelon?

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Considering most of the time I bring my groceries home on my back and in my sore hands, it is very rare that I get to indulge in purchasing watermelon. There is nothing more refreshing than attacking a juicy piece of watermelon on a hot summer's day. Sadly, this watermelon had zero flavour! Instead of just dumping it into my compost bin I hacked away at it with my knife and put it in the food processor:

See how full my food processor is? Yeah, well, don't do this, LOL. This is WAY too full! Chopping up the watermelon was messy enough, this took the word "mess" to a whole new level. Do it in small batches.

I strained the pulp and was left with watermelon juice which was quite lovely! I had a lot of it so I froze some of the juice in ice cube containers. If you are going to drink this juice, make sure to do it very soon because the liquid will separate. It still was not a strong flavour but was a happy and refreshing addition to my smoothie:

This is a strawberry, pineapple and watermelon smoothie. I just put in about a quarter cup of each of those ingredients (watermelon juice, not solids) and added some yogurt, vanilla and honey. Lovely!

So the watermelon did not go to waste after all!

If you have any other ideas on what to do with a flavourless watermelon, I would love to hear them!

New Foodie Memories

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Last year when I went to Toronto to spend time with my family Mom introduced me, Jamie and Shannon to Ontario concord grapes. Look at that colour! You know they must be filled with beautiful healing antioxidants and I can tell you, they are bursting with stunning flavour.

I love that even after a lifetime together we are still discovering new foods together!

Recently here in Nova Scotia Ontario concord grapes showed up and I knew it was that time of year again. Fall is definitely approaching! I picked up a large container and was so excited to discover that these grapes were seedless. Perfection.



I wonder what food memories we will create when I visit in less than a month! I can hardly wait!

Cooking Lesson #4: Chicken & Mushroom Crêpes

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Make this recipe vegetarian by omitting the chicken and add even more beautiful mushrooms to the filling

Crêpes are one of my favourites things in the world. I loved them so much that at 16 I taught myself how to make them for my sweet 16 birthday party. I filled them with strawberry jam and topped them with whipped cream. I think I may have been the only girl who catered her own sweet 16 birthday party!

The thing about making crêpes is it requires time. First, you have to make the batter. Once again I turned to my handy dandy copy of La Varenne Pratique for the basics. I put 1 cup of all-purpose flour into a bowl with a pinch of salt. I made a well in the middle and added 3 eggs and drizzled in 1 cup of milk (I used evaporated skim milk), slowly.

I like to start off with a wooden spoon and then move to a whisk

The recipe called for 2 tbsp spoons of butter but did not say when to add it so I just added 1 tbsp of canola oil and a little extra water until the batter became like a loose and thin pancake batter. I forgot to sift the flour at the beginning so I got lumps so I strained the batter after putting it all together which worked out just fine.

Let the batter sit for at least half an hour. It will thicken a little which is fine but if it seems too thick add a little more milk. I do not have a crêpe pan (yet!) so I used my T-Fal Nonstick Frying Pan. I heated heated the pan over a medium heat and added the butter with sputtered a bit. Using a ladle I slowly poured the batter in the middle of the pan and then swirled the batter around to make the shape of a circle. In just a couple of minutes they were ready to flip.

If the pan gets dry and they start to stick, add more butter. According to my book they recommended flipping with your fingers (yeah right) or tossing it in the air (um...I'm not quite there yet). I used a spatula! I decided to make only four crêpes so I could save the rest of the batter to make some sweet crêpes later. I will have to remember to add a little sugar to the batter!

I filled the crêpes up with some cooked diced chicken and mushrooms that are seasoned with salt and pepper and a spritz of fresh lemon juice. I tucked in the ends and folded them up, this is called a pannequet. I put them in a small buttered casserole dish and covered them with a clean towel, you do not want the crêpes to dry out.

Next came the sauce. The book recommended a Velouté sauce which sounds fancy but it means it is a sauce based on soup stock. I ended up making a roux which is a thickener for sauces. You start off with 1 1/2 tbsp of melted butter and then you add 1 1/2 tbsp of flour and cook them together for a couple of minutes over medium heat. Then I gradually and slowly added approximately 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock, first taking the pot off the heat and slowly whisking together. Then put it back on medium to medium high heat to thicken.

I think I might have added too much stock, I was worried I was not going to have enough sauce (which I didn't) and so it was runnier than I would have liked but it still tasted amazing. I finished the sauce off with a little bit of fresh lemon juice.

I slathered the crepes with the sauce and topped it with one ounce of shredded Gruyère cheese. I put the crêpes in a 350F oven for 20 minutes and they were gorgeous! Yes, I screwed up a few elements of the dish but what I love about French food is, it still tasted amazing. I had never made a dish with Gruyère cheese before and I loved it so much that I may have to put it in the sauce next time. And perhaps inside the crêpes!

I hope you enjoyed this very long cooking lesson! You know, these crêpes are not something I will make once a week but I would love to make them once a month. I think next time I will make seafood crêpes! And for dessert this week? Chocolate strawberry crêpes...

I love food, the possibilities are endless.