This was a fabulous recipe, so will include the recipe. A very manly soup, with the BBQ sauce and liquid smoke. It is chock full of flavor and hard to put your spoon down till you have eaten the entire bowl of soup. I, yet again, failed to do the recipe 'by the book'. And paid for it this time, because the milk curdled. But if you just ate the soup without looking, it was perfect.
Problems: I don't think Rosie QC'd these recipes like Julia Child did for her cookbooks. You really need to cook the broccoli florets at a higher temperature or longer than the recipe says - so don't add the milk till after the broccoli florets and carrots are cooked. I put my recommendations in red ink parentheses.
Black Bean and Smoked Chicken Soup p. 9
1/2 C dried black beans (or 1 can black beans, well-rinsed)
2 C water
1 bay leaf
Light vegetable oil cooking spray (me, olive oil)
1/2 C peeled and chopped broccoli stems
1/2 C peeled and cubed carrot
1 C cubed celery (well, the recipe says scraped and cubed celery, but who scrapes their celery?)
1 C chopped onion (1 medium onion)
1 T dried thyme (I used 2 T fresh)
1 T dried basil (I used 2 T fresh)
1/2 C dry white wine
8 ounces boneless chicken breast
4 T barbecue sauce
1 C chicken stock, fat-skimmed off (Surely we can handle this little bit of fat)
12 ounces evaporated skim milk (I used evaporated WHOLE milk)
2 C broccoli florets
1 T cornstarch dissolved in 2 T cold water (cornstarch is supposed to keep it from curdling. I skipped the cornstarch and my soup curdled. But I didn't want a thick soup).
1 T liquid smoke (I used 1/2 T )
1 T Worcestershire sauce (I used 1/2 T)
1/2 to 1 tsp. Tabasco sauce
1/4 C chopped fresh cilantro
Beans: (I used canned black beans, rinsed and thoroughly drained) If you wish to use dry beans; rinse, put in large bowl and cover completely with cold water. Let soak overnight, or for at least 8 hours. Drain beans and transfer them to medium saucepan. Add the 2 C water and the bay leaf. Bring to boil over medium heat and cook for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, until the beans are tender. Drain the beans and discard the bay leaf.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Place a heavy stockpot over medium heat for about 1 minute, then spray it twice with vegetable oil. Add the broccoli stems, carrot, celery, and onion. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring once or twice. Stir in the thyme, basil, and wine. Simmer, uncovered, for about 15 minutes, until the wine has been reduced by half.
In the meantime, coat the chicken throughly with the barbecue sauce and bake for 10 minutes in overn. Remove the chicken from the oven (keeping that good BBQ sauce on it) and allow it to cool just long enough to handle. Shred or cut the chicken into small cubes.
Add the chicken, chicken stock, and beans to the stockpot. Cook over low heat for about 3 minutes, until thoroughly heated.
Now pick Debbie's version or Rosie's version for the next part....
Debbie's version: Stir in the broccloi florets and cook for 5 - 10 minutes, till broccoli is tender-crisp. Stir in
the evaporated milk, liquid smoke, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco
sauce. Cook just until heated.
OR Rosie's version, and let me know how it worked: Stir in the evaporated milk and the broccloi florets. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring if needed to keep the soup from coming to a boil. Add the dissolved cornstarch and cook for 2 minutes more, stirring constantly. Cook for 2 minutes more, stirring constantly. Stir in the liquid smoke, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco sauce.
Garnish with the chopped cilantro.
Looks like an excellent recipe, and I so enjoy your comments in red. Who does scrape their celery?
ReplyDeleteHere is the saga of last night, when I attempted to make this recipe:
ReplyDeleteI purchased the necessary ingredients from Albertson's, full of hope and ambition. I arranged everything in the kitchen and realized I had forgotten to buy cornstarch. A bit of wisdom from my sous-chef and some internet research to confirm revealed that flour could be used as a substitute, preventing the need for a return to the store. Then I realized I had forgotten to buy evaporated milk. Chris drove back to the store while I furiously chopped carrots.
I did not cube the celery or the carrots. (Or scrape the celery, of course.) Thank goodness, because such labor would have been made all the more tragic later.
I proceeded to follow all of Rosie's directions TO A TEE, but I have come to a similar conclusion about her QC process. I think this must have been delicious when you made it, Mum, because of your improvisations. The beans did boil and simmer nicely. I cooked the vegetables on low for 7 minutes, thinking that I should give them an extra head start since I hadn't cubed them and low seemed like not much heat to help them cook. I let them simmer for extra long because I was still suspicious of their ability to cook through. Meanwhile, I baked the chicken in barbeque sauce.
When I pulled the chicken out of the oven, the barbeque sauce had gone all watery because of the chicken juice. I added everything into the soup, let it warm for a little while, then added cauliflower and evaporated milk.
Cauliflower may have been a mistake.
I simmered that soup for half an hour, as opposed to Rosie's five minutes, constantly stirring to prevent the milk from curdling. The cauliflower remained stubbornly raw. I turned up the heat a little bit, trying to coax it into cooking. Naturally, the milk curdled. I mournfully stirred, comforted by the thought that it would still be good although less pretty. Ten more minutes of stirring passed.
I forlornly called over to Chris (who was occupied with wireless routers at the time), "I don't think the cauliflower is ever going to cook."
"Can you take it out?"
"There's too much..." But I thought maybe it would be worth the effort if the rest of it was edible. I had started cooking at 6:30, but because of the long cauliflower delay, it was now 9:00. I was very hungry. I fished out a carrot, bit into it, and realized that it too was still raw.
"Chris? I don't think we should eat this."
Cue tears of hunger, Chris proposing we go get takeout, more tears of hunger because I didn't think I could wait for takeout, and seven slices of toast for the two of us. Chris fished out all the chicken, but all of its barbeque flavor has washed out in the soup, so he slathered it in barbeque sauce and ate it that way. Luckily we had purchased maple doughnuts for dessert and those were delicious.
My personal conclusions: Use barbequed chicken (as you did, Mum), because baking it in barbeque sauce imparts about zero flavor. Cook the vegetables on higher heat to begin with. Don't use cauliflower. Be better at grocery shopping.
Thank you for channeling my future breakdown into your present life; now I don't have to have a breakdown. I am sorry to have so much fun at your expense; reading your narrative was great entertainment. Chris gets 4 stars for support.
ReplyDeleteAnd I loved reading where you kept cooking the vegetables because they weren't done yet because that was EXACTLY my experience. Like you, I also turned up the heat and kept cooking, and lo and behold the milk curdled.
And, by the way, I didn't cube my vegetables either. I have no idea how one would cube a carrot or celery. Excellent move on your part to ignore that bit of direction in the recipe.
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ReplyDeleteI am SO enjoying this!
ReplyDeleteI don't know how I found this blog.....ohhhh yeah looking for a printable chicken curry salad...anyhooo - If I was making this (and it sounds like it could be kinda tolerable as anything with beans, other than chili, might be. But I think steaming the broccoli stems in the bottom of the steamer and the florets on the top of the steamer might just solve the problem. Ooooor even better I usually roast broc and cauliflower in the oven first. Why did you stop the blog. Surely you muuuuust have other cookbooks. Don't you have a library....go...get another book.
ReplyDelete