Ham and Split Pea Soup

Hands up if you like shopping in foreign grocery stores when you go away on holiday?  Or even just a different store in your hometown on occasion?  I knew I liked you!  The best part of exploring is finding items that you love, but are not typical to your locale.  For me, poking about in food stores is like an adventure hunt and when I find treasure, I can generally buy because, unless we are talking truffles or caviar, most grocery items are quite affordable.  Take, for example, my stock cube collection.

You see here just a few of my purchases from Brazil, Malaysia, Spain, and the United Kingdom among other places.  I love to use stock cubes instead of salt because they add flavor as well as saltiness to dishes.  (And, yes, most contain MSG, but no one in my family is in the small percentage of the population that has an intolerance to this flavor enhancer.)  In this soup, I used a ham cube because I didn’t have a ham bone to boil to make my own broth, but I wanted to share this in case you have a bone-in Christmas ham.  Ham and split pea soup is delicious and a great use of leftover ham.  This will make two or three hearty bowls but is easily doubled to feed more. Just double the other ingredients and boil your ham bone for longer, with more water.

Ingredients
1 medium onion
1 medium carrot
Olive oil
1 1/2 cups or 300g dried green split peas
1 ham stock cube or 1 teaspoon salt and 1 ham bone
8 – 9 oz or 225-255g leftover ham
Black pepper

Method
If you don’t happen to have a ham stock cube, put your ham bone in a pot of water with the teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil.  Simmer covered for about one hour or until all the meat is falling off the bone.  Turn off the heat and remove the bone from the pot and allow to cool enough for you to take all the ham off the bone and discard (Read: feed to your helper dog.) the grizzly bits.  Set aside.

Peel and chop your onion and carrot.  Cut your ham (either from the simmered bone or from leftover boneless ham or both!) into pieces.

In another pot (or for those of you with a ham stock cube, the only pot) sauté the onion and carrot in a little olive oil until the onion is translucent.

Add in your dried split peas and the ham cube along with about six cups or 1 1/2 liters of water (or stock from your recently boiled ham bone, if using and skip the cube.)  Give the pot a good couple of grinds of black pepper from your pepper mill.

Bring to a low boil and skim the scum off of the top of the pot with a shallow spoon.

Cook over a low to medium heat until the split peas are cooked through and are turning soft.  This could take as few as 30 minutes or as much as an hour, depending on the freshness of your dried split peas.

At this point, if you would like a very smooth soup, you can puree it in a blender or with a hand blender straight in the pot but do be careful not to scald yourself.   I prefer a chunkier soup so I just use a whisk straight in the pot to break up the split peas somewhat, while leaving some relatively intact.

Add in the ham pieces and simmer for another 20-30 minutes.  Stir occasionally and watch for scorching because once the split peas have broken down, they tend to catch on the bottom of the pot.  Add some more water if your soup is getting thicker than you like.

Check for seasoning and add a little more salt if necessary.  Give the whole pot another good sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper.

Enjoy!

Cajun Courtbouillon or Shrimp and Fish Stew

Seafood stew or soup with a Louisiana pedigree, Cajun courtbouillon is what my grandmother always made with red fish. Delicious!

If you are an expat like I am, you vacillate between loving your time at home home (where you are from) and wishing it were longer, and appreciating some distance from family politics and dynamics when it’s time to go home (where you live.)  The happy medium here is when family comes to visit.  

First, they are on neutral turf, your turf specifically, so everyone is making nice like visitors should, and secondly, you are so busy doing touristy things and seeing sights and enjoying their company, that time passes quickly and you wish they could stay longer. And that is where I am this week. 

My mother and sister are here and we are riding camels at the pyramids at Giza and shopping at the Khan al Khalili and sipping coffee at Al Mokattam which is the highest point in Cairo and has a fabulous view of the city.  Yesterday we drove to the coast so they could dip their toes in the Red Sea. We have also been cooking deliciousness every night. (I am going to miss them when they are gone!)

One of our favorite meals is a traditional Cajun seafood soup called courtbouillon, pronounced coo-bee-yaw in southern Louisiana, made with a roux.

Ingredients
1/2 cup or 120ml canola or other light oil
1 cup flour
2 medium onions
1 large or 2 small bell peppers (Preferably green but yellow will do in a pinch.  Just don't tell my grandmother!)
4-5 stalks celery
1/4 cup or 60ml tomato paste
2 liters or 8 1/2 cups fish stock or water with stock cubes to create equivalent
Sea salt
Black pepper
Cayenne
Good handful of green onion tops
Good handful of flat-leaf parsley
3/4 lb or 350g shrimp, peeled and cleaned
1 1/3 lbs or 600g grouper or other white fish fillets
Cooked white rice or fresh baguette to serve.

Method
Peel and finely chop your onions, bell peppers and celery.  A food processor can be used but be sure just to pulse the vegetables and don’t puree them.  Set aside.

Put your oil and flour into a heavy bottomed pot and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon or other heat-resistant stirring implement, like a silicone spatula.

Once all the flour lumps have been dissolved, turn the fire on medium and cook, stirring frequently at first and then constantly as the roux begins to dark.

  Cook and stir until your roux is about the color of an old copper penny.

Add in the chopped vegetable all at once and stir well to mix.  The mixture will be quite stiff.

Cook the vegetables for about five minutes, stirring all the time, and then add in the tomato paste.

Stir to incorporate the tomato paste and then add in the fish stock or water and stock cubes.  Stir or whisk to combine.

Bring to the boil and then simmer, covered, for at least one hour or until you are about 20 minutes from serving your courtbouillon.  Check the level periodically, and add more water if it is getting too thick for your liking.  You do want it to reduce but some people prefer courtbouillon thinner like soup or very thick like stew.  In our family we make it like a thick soup.

Meanwhile cut your fish into good-sized pieces and season with salt, black pepper and cayenne.  If your shrimp are not peeled and cleaned yet, do that now and season them with the same.  Refrigerate until needed.

Chop your onion tops and parsley.   Set aside.

Plant the white onion bottoms in some soil in your garden.  They will sprout all over again.  

When you are about 20 minutes from serving, turn up the heat on your courtbouillon until it is gently boiling again and slip the fish pieces and the shrimp into the pot.  Turn the heat down right away and stir ever so gently to distribute the fish and shrimp around the pot.  You do not want to the fish to break all apart.

Stir in the chopped parsley and green onion tops, reserving just a little for garnishing each bowl.

Check the seasoning and add more salt and cayenne as needed.  Serve over white rice, with French bread on the side for dipping.  We also add extra hot sauce to each bowl at the table.

Enjoy!

Sopa de Albóndigas or Mexican Meatball Soup

When we were preparing to move to Cairo, I found a website that gives all kinds of personal advice, written by people who have been posted worldwide by the US State Department.  They clearly had a questionnaire they were following and I am sure this information was supposed to be for the benefit of other State Department folks but I came to it through a link from a friend (Thanks, Sabine!) and I wasted time researched, for many hours.  (Hey, you never know where we will go next!  Reading other country reports is still research.  Check it out!)  The questionnaire respondents were full of vital information about their postings in Cairo (and elsewhere) and I got a good laugh from many of the answers.  My favorite question though, because it was so unexpected, was “What would you leave behind?”  Some respondents didn’t answer this one.  But what I thought was the best answer, based on the annual Cairene weather forecast was ”An umbrella.”  And then, I moved to Cairo. 

The wind was howling last Friday and then the rain came on.  Yes, the rain came on.  Which, as you know, means – say it with me – a soup day.  And while a soup day in KL was JUST rainy, a Cairene soup day in February is also chilly.  Hallelujah!

LOOK! The aftermath:  It's all wet and our one piece of outdoor furniture
was blown clear into the yard by the strong winds.  Yeah, our shipment hasn't been delivered yet.
   Forty-four days and counting.  Thanks for caring.

I made a lovely soup adapted from a recipe in my Christmas cookbook, which you have all heard about before, Fried Chicken and Champagne.  This is not fancy but it has a lovely flavor that puts me in mind of tortilla soup.  I think it must be the cilantro (fresh coriander) and ground cumin.  I can highly recommend it.

Ingredients

For the soup:

1 tablespoon butter

Olive oil

1 small onion

1 medium carrot

2-3 cloves of garlic

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 tomatoes

1 tablespoon Mexican oregano (I didn’t have any so I substituted regular oregano.)

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3/4 cup chopped celery

1 bunch of cilantro or fresh coriander

1 1/2 quarts chicken stock  (Water and stock cubes are fine.)

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1/2 teaspoon sugar

Sea salt

Black pepper

For the meatballs:

1 lb or 500g of ground beef

1 small bunch of cilantro or fresh coriander

1/4 cup of uncooked long-grain rice

2 eggs

Sea salt

Black pepper

Method

Chop your onion and carrots and slice the garlic finely in the melted butter with a little drizzle of olive oil.   Cook until they are tender.

Meanwhile, chop your tomatoes, celery and cilantro.

When your sautéed vegetables are ready, add the tomatoes, cilantro, celery, then the cumin, oregano and cayenne. 

Add in the chicken stock and the tomato paste and the half-teaspoon of sugar.

Bring to the boil and then let this simmer while you make your meatballs. 

For the meatballs, chop the cilantro finely and mix it in well with the ground beef, rice, eggs and a good sprinkle of the salt and pepper.

Using a couple of teaspoons, drop small amounts of the mixture onto a flat surface and then roll them into little balls.  As you can see, I got 30+ meatballs out of my mixture.

Drop the meatballs gently into the simmering soup and stir very carefully to separate them.  You do not want to break them up.  

Simmer for another 20-30 minutes or until you are sure the meat and rice in the meatballs are cooked.  

You can garnish with some additional cilantro to serve, but I completely forgot that step. 

Enjoy!