No Some soup for you!

I'm freezing my tail off these days, which puts me in the mood for soup. I found a copycat recipe online last year for California Pizza Kitchen's Sedona White Corn Tortilla Soup. I've made a couple minor modifications, and now it is one of my most favorite soups as well as a great excuse for buying an immersion blender. Here's how I make it:

Chop some garlic (I like a lot of garlic), some onion (maybe 1/2 cup?), and a couple slices of jalapeno (some like it hot, but not me!), and fry this up in a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Toss in a couple handfuls of Tostitos or other corn chips. Add 1/2 of a package of frozen corn, a couple big cans of tomatoes, 1/3 cup tomato paste, 1 and 1/2 cups water, and a quart of vegetable stock. Add the spices: 2 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin, a half tablespoon or so of salt (the original recipe called for a whole tablespoon, but it also called for frying your own tortillas, and I figure the corn chips bring some salt with them), 1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper, and 1/2 teaspoon chili powder. Bring this to a low boil and allow it to boil for 5 minutes.

Remove the soup from the heat for 20 minutes or so to allow it to cool a bit. Use your immersion blender (or do batches in a regular blender, but be careful not to burn yourself!) to smoothe it out some. Add the rest of the frozen corn, and bring the soup back to a boil.

Garnish with shredded cheddar cheese and more crushed up corn chips if you like.

How easy is that?! Serve with some sort of bread--we like biscuits or corn muffins--and salad, and you've got supper. (And yeah, that is the Bayeux Tapestry that I've got my biscuits wrapped in. Please don't tell France.)

Cuppa tea?

My friend Amy asked me for the recipe for Russian tea, so I thought I would also share it here. I got this recipe from Fred's mom years ago, and I love it. I use decaf tea though so I can drink it at night, which is when I think it tastes best!

Russian Tea

Boil 8 cups of water and 2 family-size or 6 regular tea bags for 10 minutes. Boil 5 cups of water, 1 and 1/2 cups sugar, and 20 cloves for 10 minutes. Combine into larger pot and add 12 ounces frozen orange juice, 2 and 1/2 cups pineapple juice, and 4 tablespoons lemon juice. Makes 1 gallon--keeps 6 weeks.

Go on, try some. You know you want it.

Let me eat cake

When we lived in Germany, one of my favorite places to go was the Hotel Morgenstern in the Odenwald. They had a cafe there that made the most amazing cakes. One that I remember with particular fondness was called a Käsesahnetorte (literally, cheese-cream cake--flavored like cheesecake but a totally different texture). When Annabelle and I went to visit her friend Katherine last month, Katherine's mom Elke taught me how to make a very similar cake using Greek yogurt. We translated the recipe's ingredients to English and the measurements to American measurements. It goes something like this:

For the bottom, cake layer:

• 1 stick plus 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 and 1/8 cup sifted flour
• 1 teaspoon (slightly less) baking powder

Beat butter until fluffy. Beat in sugar. Beat in eggs, one by one. Stir in the flour. Line a springform pan with parchment paper and brush with butter. Pour batter into pan. Bake at 340 degrees for 15 minutes. Cool. Remove parchment paper, and return cake to springform.

For the top, cream layer:

• 1 and 3/4 cup cream
• 450 grams Greek yogurt (Sorry, not sure what this equates to in American measurements. This is a large yogurt container. If you don't have Greek yogurt, strain the yogurt through cheesecloth for several hours to drain out excess liquid.)
• 1 packet of gelatin
• large can of mandarin oranges, drained
• 3/4 cup sugar (maybe a little less.)

Dissolve gelatin in slightly less than one cup boiling water and set it aside to cool. Mix the yogurt and the sugar together. In a separate bowl, whip cream with a little sugar and add to the yogurt mixture. Stir in the gelatin. Add orange pieces. Pour on cake. Chill 3 hours.

Here is Katherine's little sister Annika with our cake:



When I made the cake at home on my own, I chilled it overnight to make sure it was good and firm. I also reserved a couple cups of the cream mixture before adding the orange sections. First I poured the part of the mixture with the oranges on top of the cake layer. Then I topped it off with the plain cream mixture so that the top would be smooth.

I wish I had some cake right now. It would be the perfect way to celebrate the successful end of NaBloPoMo!