For the
Prof and
Brian, who can actually cook.
Okay, so here's the recipe I used for the
cream of artichoke soup. I'm not really much of a cook, so I'd appreciate any improvements you might make to the recipe. And before you give me any crap about it, yes I used some canned stuff, mostly from Costco. Like I said, I'm not much of a cook, I just muddle along. So mock me (gently) if you must, but it turned out pretty good. And yes, it's a huge amount of soup, but I kind of scaled it to the amounts I had on hand.
One large can (approx. 6 cups) Swanson's Chicken Broth
1/2 jar (approx. 32 oz.) Kirkland Signature marinated artichoke hearts (with marinade)
One medium onion, diced
Four tablespoons unsalted butter (Yes, Brian, I finally started using real butter)
Garlic (avert your eyes, cooks! I use Costco's bottled, chopped garlic, about a tablespoon, roughly equivalent to two wedges, I think)
One medium potato, peeled and sliced or chopped
Two cups whipping cream
White pepper
Oddly, no salt. I say oddly because I tend to overuse it but the marinade really made it unnecessary to add.
I put the broth and artichokes on early to simmer (not all of the broth, I reserved about 1/3 of it to refrigerate for later), then diced the onion and cooked it in butter until soft but not browned. Then I added the garlic and cooked briefly, then dumped it into the broth and let it simmer for a few hours.
About 1/2 hour before I wanted to pull it off the stove, I added the sliced potato. This probably could have gone in earlier without bad effect but I didn't think to add it earlier. You could actually make this without potato but it helps thicken the soup.
After the potato was cooked, I pulled the soup off the stove to cool for about 1/2 hour or so, then added the reserved,
refrigerated broth. If you've ever tried to puree stuff just off the stove, you understand why I try to make it a habit to hold back some of the broth in the fridge to cool the soup before pureeing.
I pureed the soup and put it through a strainer. In the old days I'd have used the
Osterizer but we got
one of these a while back and it's really handy. As a side note, it's only been in the last year or two that I've learned to appreciate the value of pureeing soup. I used to just chop stuff very fine to avoid it, but it really makes a difference and it's worth the trouble.
I've made this basic recipe before but didn't strain it. Please do. No matter how well prepared, artichoke hearts always seem to have part of the choke hanging around and it's better to strain it out. Also, there always seems to be some potato or onion that doesn't get completely pureed the first time through the blender, so this time I put whatever didn't get well-pureed back into the blender. The soup was definitely smoother this time.
Soup went back on the stove to heat to just a bare simmer. Then I sprinkled it with white pepper and mixed it in, then added the cream. Two cups is probably much more cream than necessary but it's what I had on hand, and being a cheap bastard I used it all.
After heating for just a few more minutes I dished it up, and it was good.
If any of you, especially you people who can actually cook, can improve on the basic recipe, I'm all ears.
