Soups with Apples, Leeks, Cabbage & Beets

Remember the Chicken with Foraged Apples post from last week?

Well, I have plenty of foraged apples still and though I'm a fan of stewed apples, apple butter, apple crumble, apple pie etc., these are all sweet variations and I love apples in savory dishes.

Do you also remember I talked about making stock from the chicken bones I froze with the intention of making soup?

Well, I didn't make chicken stock, but I did make several soups, and I used some of those foraged apples.

In the pic above you can see the ingredients I used in one of my soups. The apples, leeks, and cabbage also featured in the Chicken with Foraged Apples I link to at the top so in effect, soup could easily be made with leftovers from that casserole.

Simply add water to the leftovers and simmer the contents in a pot for about 30 mins and then run the lot through a blender.

I chose to add a large beetroot to the above mix. I love the combination of apple and beetroot, and the addition of leeks and cabbage make this quite a hearty soup that can be eaten chunky or blended to a smooth consistency.

Because it cooks into a lovely purplish-red color, a la Borscht, topping it with a spoon of sour cream or yogurt is a natural. The sourness of the cream or yogurt compliments the sweetness of the apple and beet. Adding a sprinkle of chopped dill is optional, but if you do have some dill it's a delicious compliment.

Using chicken stock as a base will certainly add richness to the soup, but you don't have to use stock, you can simply use water -- the flavor will still be full and delicious.

If you're not a big fan of beetroot and cabbage, you might like to try the combination of soup ingredients to the left: apples, leeks, celery and rutabaga, which is a cross between a turnip and cabbage.

Celery can be bitter, but add apples to celery and you have sweet plus slight bitterness -- a great combination.

Obviously a soup just of celery and apples is lacking so the addition of the leeks and rutabaga adds an earthiness to the sweet/bitter. I also added a sprig of rosemary to this combination which added a delicious fragrant note.

If you choose to blend the ingredients, take the rosemary sprig out. You may find you'll need to strain the blended liquid because of the copious celery fiber.

The resulting soup is thick, and it's a subtle green. Salt and pepper it to your liking, and finish it with a spoon of (real) whipped cream or a drizzle of half and half and some chopped parsley.

Perhaps you don't fancy the idea of apples in your soup. If not, the combination of green, purple, and red-root vegetables (pic to left) creates a spectacularly colorful and hearty, stew-like soup.

So that's purple cabbage, celery, leeks, beetroot and rutabaga. I cooked this combination of veggies with some leftover beef ribs which I'd bought home in a doggy bag from a recent dinner out.

It was more convenient for me to just pop the leftover beef ribs into the pot with the veggies and water than make a beef stock from scratch. And the meat from the leftover ribs came off the bone and became an additional ingredient in the soup, adding richness and flavor to the veggie combination.

I also added a couple dried bay leaves and a few whole peppercorns. Though don't dash out and buy these two ingredients; they're optional. You could add thyme if you have it. Fresh or dried herbs add a subtle flavor, however, salting and peppering before serving is often enough to enhance the natural flavors inherent in soup.

Serve this soup chunky rather than blended, since blended meat is often unappetizing in appearance. And because this one is sans apple, you may consider making apple and corn bread to serve as an accompaniment.

Wonderful Chicken Meals

You may have read my posts from last week with suggestions for creating meals with one whole chicken.

There were 2 stove-top skillet meals, baked stuffed chicken breast, and on Friday it was chicken with foraged apples.

This weekend I had a leftover chicken quarter from Friday's meal and though my palate was beginning to feel chicken-weary, I made a leftover meal with the cooked thigh (I'd eaten the drumstick for lunch.)

When you have leftovers, the challenge is to create a new meal with a different flavor so that you don't feel as though you're eating the same thing over and over.

The meal I made with the leftover chicken quarter (which had been previously cooked with apples, leeks and cabbage), was heavy on the eggplant, red pepper, squash (pic above), plus I cooked the dish with rosemary, and in red wine -- quite in contrast to the flavors of the previous meal.

I sauteed all the veggies in olive oil and garlic, tossing in a couple sprigs of rosemary and then a glug of red wine, before placing the lid on the skillet and turning the heat down.

If I'd added tomatoes the dish would have been a version of ratatouille. But I decided to leave the tomatoes out and instead I added more eggplant, which because of its sponge-like quality, sopped up the red wine and the flavor of the rosemary.

I let the veggies stew for about 15 mins, and part way through, I added the leftover chicken thigh. Obviously if I'd added it at the point when I poured in the red wine, the chicken would have taken on more of the red wine flavor. However, I don't like to 'twice cook' meat, instead I generally heat it or just warm it through; that way it doesn't dry out.

I still have one remaining breast from the whole chicken I purchased last week. It's in the freezer, along with some of the chicken carcass which I'll use to make stock and then soup.

As I alluded to above, I've had my fill of chicken for a while now, so though I thought I'd defrost the breast yesterday and do something with it for last evening's meal and today's post, I couldn't face another chicken meal; it's time for something else.

Nevertheless, I'm going to wax on excitedly for one more paragraph on the number of meals one can create from a whole chicken.

Last week I posted 5 meal-ideas and I cooked 3 of those meals and ate them, plus I had some cold, leftover chicken from those meals at a couple of lunches.

So it's possible to stretch 3.5 pounds of whole chicken (and in this case the chicken was a one-day sale at Whole Foods for $3.50 or .99c lb) over many meals, especially if you consume about 3 ounces of chicken per meal.

And 3 ounces of meat protein at one sitting is actually enough, so long as you're serving plenty of fresh vegetables and a grain too.

Chicken with Foraged Apples

I made another meal from the whole natural chicken which I purchased at Whole Foods the other day.

From a $3.50 bird, I've created stuffed chicken breast, and last night I made chicken quarters baked with foraged apples, leeks and cabbage (pic to left).

I still have one breast and some of the chicken carcass, which I've frozen. Probably by Sunday, I'll unfreeze it and do something with that remaining breast, and I'll make soup with the bones.

From one chicken, so many varied meals! You'll note that the chicken dishes I've shared this week have been cooked using the following methods:

1. in a cast iron skillet on the stove top
   
2. on a baking tray in the oven
   
3. and the dish I'm sharing today was also cooked in the oven but in an Le Creuset casserole pot.

Le Creuset is actually fabulous cookware. Maybe you're familiar with it; it's everywhere nowadays. And as with my cast-iron birthday skillet, my mother also bought me my Le Creuset casserole pot, I think for Christmas one year, with a set of kitchen towels and matching pot holders -- my mother, forever practical.

In the pic to the left you can see the chicken quarters sitting upright in my Le Creuset casserole pot with a chopped leek, half a chopped red cabbage, and 4 foraged apples.

I love the foraging trend or picking fruit from overhanging trees. I saw a bloke on the footpath alongside a major road the other day picking apples from tree branches which hung over a private fence onto public property.

I've been tempted to forage pears from a tree in my neighborhood with a couple branches hanging over a public footpath, but I wasn't game enough.

The apples I foraged for today's dish are from a tree by my cottage in Chautauqua Park. There are at least half dozen trees in the park laden with apples ripe for picking, and residents of the park are permitted to help themselves.

I did just that yesterday. I helped myself to at least 4 pounds.

In addition to the above ingredients, to the pot I added coriander seeds, which I'd foraged from a friend's garden.

Coriander seeds form at the end of the growing season when cilantro plants no longer produce leaves.

Instead, small seeds appear on the stalks and these can be picked and used immediately or you can dry them and store them in glass jars.

The seeds have a spicy, citrus tone. You may be familiar with garam masala, an Indian dish, which relies on coriander in combination with cumin. Coriander seeds are also used in pickling.

I added about a teaspoon of coriander to the chicken and foraged apples; the zesty seeds enhanced the casserole no end. And before I put the pot into the oven--with lid on--I added about half a cup of water to keep the ingredients from drying out and sticking to the sides and base. At 350 degrees, it took about 45 mins for the casserole to cook.

To Serve: Because the vegetables and apple cook down, becoming quite soft and creating a delicious liquor, I served the meal in a bowl. I topped the chicken with a sprig of fresh dill as it has a flavor somewhat similar to caraway, and caraway is most often used to spice up cabbage and apple in eastern European dishes.

Rather than use another pot and the stove top to cook a side of rice or another starch for mopping up the juice, I economized on energy and dishes, drizzling a couple slices of crusty bread with olive oil and popping them in the oven on a baking tray.

Oven-fried bread was a good decision; there's nothing like dipping chunks of crispy browned-bread into a peasant-like casserole to make one feel as though eating dinner with your fingers and a spoon is perfectly acceptable.

Stuffed Chicken Breast

I picked up a whole natural chicken for .99c lb yesterday. It was hard not to make the effort to pop into Whole Foods for a deal like that.

There's the good look'n whole chicken in the pic to the left. It was a mere $3.40 for 3.5 lbs. And there's enough meat on that bird to last me for quite a few meals.

Last night I decided to put a bit more effort into my evening meal and make something that was a favorite for corporate lunches when I was catering: Stuffed Chicken Breast.

Preparing this dish brought to mind the numerous references to boning a duck made in the movie Julie Julia. Julie, the young blogger, who is cooking her way through Child's, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is determined to bone a duck just as Julia Child demonstrates in her book and on an old episode of her highly successful TV show The French Chef.

It also bought back memories of my catering days when a dish I'd created called Duck Roulade, which required boning a duck, was such a success that the company I worked for was hired to cater a kosher wedding for four hundred. And duck roulade was to be the main dish.

Tucked away in a kosher kitchen with my two kitchen hands, I spent several days boning my share of duck for four hundred. By the end of the week, with hands swollen and wrinkled and reeking of duck, I cursed the day I came up with Duck Roulade!


Stuffed chicken breast for one or two or several is much easier, obviously. To the left is a pic of the breast coming away as I sliced it off the breast bone. I used a very sharp boning knife to do this.

Never try this with a blunt knife; you're sure to cut yourself in the process.

Slice the breast off the breast bone, cutting it away from the bird at the lower leg joint. You may either remove the wing or leave it on. I leave on the lower part of the wing because it presents well, and the meat is succulent.

Here's the breast removed with skin still intact, which you want because the stuffing will go under the skin before the breast is baked.

Stuffing the Breast
1) Onto a plate grate one zucchini or squash (as pictured in the skillet from yesterday's post).
2) Add your choice of grated cheese. I used Asiago in equal portion to the amount of grated zucchini.
3) I also added some chopped fresh tarragon but you could use basil, sage, oregano, parsley, or you can leave out the herb.
4) Mix the stuffing ingredients together. I don't find that you need egg to bind the stuffing because when the cheese melts it binds the zucchini.
4) Now loosen the skin from the breast on the wing-bone side. Poke a couple fingers under the skin and create a pocket. Gently shove the stuffing into the pocket.

5) To the left is a pic of the breast stuffed. The breast tip is curled under to create a neat little round.
6) Place the breast on a baking tray and either drizzle with oil or dot with butter. Salt and pepper the top and pour a little white wine into the bottom of the baking dish.
7) Bake in a pre-heated, 350-degree oven for about 45 mins.

To Serve: Below is the cooked breast. You can serve each breast in a bowl with pan juices -- as in the photo -- with a sprig of tarragon or parsley to the side, or you can serve it on a plate. A side of buttery mashed potato is a great accompaniment, as is buttered rice.

I made myself a cucumber and black olive salad to go with the breast to the left. I sliced half a cucumber and doused it liberally with rice wine vinegar, and then I added black, kalamata olives.

The crisp texture of the cucumber, the slight oiliness of the olives, and the palate-cleansing vinegar were great in combination with the juicy chicken and melted cheese stuffing.

Good luck boning your chicken breast; it really is worth the effort.