Cream of poblano soup

This is for commenter happyfeet, who mentioned somewhere in the comments at P.W. his attempt to find the Campbell's version of cream of poblano soup. It seemed like a wonderful idea.

The name suggests its solution. Any vegetable, any vegetable, can be featured in a cream soup prepared along with a stock of some sort, usually chicken but sometimes beef or vegetable, it's a matter of preference, and and other vegetable flavor elements, a mirepoix in French, sofrito in Spanish. The initial vegetable elements may vary widely but often include onion, celery, and carrot. Sofritos usually use green bell pepper, in this case, very heavy on poblano, which accounts for its green shade.

I have a problem roasting chiles at home, but yesterday I sautéed strips of red bell pepper in olive oil, and I must say, they were perfectly delicious at each stage all the way through all the way to burnt skin stage. They just. keep. getting. better.

So that's what is done here, poblano chiles en rodajas (strips) fried in oil until the skin blackens and blisters. Leave all that blackened and blistery bits in. It's all very flavorful. Again, roasted vegetables concentrate flavors, adds flavors in fact per Maillard reaction, boiling vegetables dilutes flavors. It is simple as that.

I prefer soup to have identifiable chunks so a portion of vegetable sofrito is reserved then returned after the bulk is processed.

This batch the seasoning is basic, salt/pepper, cumin, and coriander.

Here, uncooked tomato to garnish. (They sank)

Chicken broth. It could just as easily be vegetable broth or beef broth. Fish broth, eh, not so much.

Chiles poblanos en rodajas. These are charred separately from the rest of the sofrito because they seem to need extra attention. It's not possible for me to roast these outside over coals or else I would. Fresh poblanos, as you can see. They need not be. Poblanos en rodajas are available canned, and I must say, they are mighty convenient.

The rest of the sofrito. This is a careless cut, the young carrots not cut at all. They'll be softened further with cooking in the broth. Not shown, garlic added at the end. I really should have added a bay leaf here but I didn't think of it.

A porion of the sofrito is reserved along with a portion of the charred poblano chiles to add back to the final creamed soup, because that's the way I roll. I like chunky soup.

Vegetable sofrito cooking further with the chicken broth. Not shown: this, cooked vegetables and broth, processed to purée.

Puréed vegetables and broth returned to the pot.

Reserved vegetables returned to puréed soup

Cream added to soup. To taste. I started with Half-and-Half but that was insufficiently silky so I added an equal part of heavy cream, conscious that cream flattens the sharp chile and spice flavors. The result was closer to 1/4-3/4 and utterly delicious in a cautious delicate gringo sort of way.

Conclusion: This soup is fantastic. I'd be pleased to serve it for a dinner course, in that case I'd keep it simple and plain as this. It could be more interesting. I'd prefer it hotter, which is easy enough to do by adding additional chile types in any convenient form, but then it wouldn't be cream of poblano, would it? The flavor profile could be extended with the addition of fennel in the sofrito, bay, mace, nutmeg etc., and cilantro to finish. It'd go great with fresh homemade corn tortilla chips, or even regular corn tortillas.

Fish sandwich

With bacon and red bell pepper, and my own mustardy mayonnaise.

An entire red bell pepper was fried in olive oil. There was way more than I needed for two small sandwiches even though I kept nibbling it while I brought together the other elements. They were all cooked individually in the same pan; bread, bell pepper, bacon and fish. The bell pepper is my favorite part. From raw to all stages of being cooked even to its burned portions, it's wonderful. I intend to use it more.

This is the bread I made a few weeks ago. It's been in the refrigerator this whole time. I thought it was lost. It's made from commercial yeast and double the amount of whole wheat flour that bread bakers find reasonable. It's heavy and dense, closer to a brioche given its extra ingredients. It's also awesomely flavored with freshly milled wheat even though the bread is weeks old. Bread purists advise not to refrigerate bread, but in a climate arid as Denver there is little choice other than to consume it immediately. I pan fry it in olive oil /butter a bit heavily. (One of my sisters quietly graciously rejected it and with that I take no umbrage, rather what I feel is closer to pity. That her preference would be for commercialized ersatz foam-bread leaves me a little bit sad. )

Green salad with tuna and black beans

Fried catfish salad

The amazing catfish salad that I invented myself.

side view ↓

top view ↓

Man, my tummy must be shrinking or something. I can't pack it away anymore like I used to. Gone are the days of straight up grazing, or so it seems. I get all kinds of stop-eating-now signals way before I'm done pigging out. Wutupwidat? Doctor, is something wrong with me? Do I have a giant tapeworm inside of me?

I wondered if it is possible to make a salad with fish prepared à la meunière, so called because it is in the manner of the miller's wife. Why her? Because she had a lot of flour around presumably. Like us.

The answer to that question is yes. And why wouldn't it be possible, if it's possible make salad out of tuna from a tin, then anything is possible innit. Tuna in a tin. Whoever thought of that must have been insane. Or some kind of camper. Or hungry.

One my sisters gave me some smoked salmon from Oregon or maybe it was Washington. It was the grossest crap in the history of fish. Worse than tuna in a tin. When I opened the package, liquid poured out. Honestly, any of us could have done better on our back yard grill. Don't ever buy that commercial stuff, it'll kill you.

This started out to be simple, then before you know it, the whole thing got out of hand. First, the croutons. One thick slice of bread cubed. I read in a book never to cut the bread for croutons but I didn't catch the reason for that prejudice. I cut mine. It made 16 little cubes. I oiled them, stood over them, turned them individually, toasted four of their sides. Why not all six sides? What do you think I am over here, compulsive? In the same pan I seared the catfish pieces, then removed them to a kitchen towel. In the same pan I seared the sweet chubby little pea things. Meanwhile I made a dressing, cut a tomato and cored an apple. This time I added a teaspoon of fish sauce to the dressing, a sauce version of anchovy.

• Olive oil. 2 Tablespoons

• Lemon juice. 1/2 small lemon

• Dijon style mustard. 1 teaspoon

• Asian fish sauce. 1 teaspoon

• Honey. 1 tablespoon

• S/P

Apple, tomato, some kind of wrinkly lettuce, spinach, pecans warmed for 30 seconds in the microwave, sweet Asian peas, croutons, catfish chunks dusted with seasoned flour and fried briefly in 100% pure unadulterated unsalted hydrogen-saturated butter that came out of a cow.

Sausage and eggs breakfast

My sausage, my bread, and I laid those eggs. Okay, that last one is a lie, but how hard could it be? You poop out an egg through your multitasking cochleae, and go, "Hey! What happened to the egg I just laid?" Then the next day lay another egg and go, "Hey! What happened to the egg I just laid?" Then the next day lay another egg and go, "Hey! What happened to the egg I just laid?" And so on, until finally you stop laying eggs every day and then comes *whispers* your unhappy day.

This sausage is so good I can not stand it. I hereby resolve to never buy sausage again for as long as I shall live. Maybe.

The spinach is wilted in the same little pan the bread was toasted and the sausage was browned and in which the eggs would cook. One after the other, all within minutes. No need even to rinse the pan. A true bachelor's tool there, one that a Tibetan monk could admire if they were given to cook sausage and eggs.

A drizzle of rice vinegar over the spinach. That, plus surplus butter dripping from the eggs constitutes a simple fat/vinegar dressing. Do this some time for your husband or for your wife if you have one of those, and they will know again with a profound certainty that you do truly love them.