Saturday, December 6, 2014

Cook it Up! Ultimate Soup Cookbook

For the Cook it Up! Challenge I am selecting a cookbook randomly from my collection each month and trying to use it as much as possible during the month. November's cookbook was Reader's Digest The Ultimate Soup Cookbook. It was a cold drizzle-filled month and we ended up eating quite a few soups. They were all good.

  • Mexican Pork Stew  -- this called for a dried ancho chile pepper which I couldn't find so I substituted some ancho chili powder instead. It used crushed tomatoes which I really liked the texture of in the stew. 
  • Spicy Carrot Soup -- this was quite spicy (a smaller jalepeno would have been better) but really delicious. I will definitely make this again.
  • Classic onion soup -- not as rich as I wanted it to be, I should have cooked the onions longer than the recipe called for until they got more caramelized,
  • Tortellini-bean soup -- very quick and easy, smaller dice tomatoes would be better than the regular dice ones called for.

December's book is The World Encyclopedia of Bread and Bread Making by Christine Ingram and Jennie Shapter. It may be overly ambitious to think I will make bread during a month as crazy as this one is going to be, but I am going to give it a shot anyway as it is the one that my random number pointed me to.  Also, it is a perfect book for the Cook it Up! Challenge as I have owned it for years and have never read it or made anything from it. 

This post is my December link for Cook it Up! and is also linked up with Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads

5 comments:

  1. The Mexican Pork Stew and the Tortellini Bean soup both sound really great. November is a great soup month. Good luck with the bread cookbook. I love making bread but don't do it as much as I'd like.

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  2. The soups look great. And I'd count it a win if you just read the cookbook in prep for making bread once we get past Christmas :)

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  3. We love soup and I'm always trying new recipes! The tortellini-bean soup sounds good to me.

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  4. I'm not a fan of soups though I do like a nice creamy tomato soup with toast 'fingers' . I want to learn more about baking bread though!

    Happy cooking!
    Shelleyrae @ Book'd Out

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  5. Spicy carrot--that sounds interesting! I love carrots--even pureed, but I've never thought to make them into a soup.

    Cook's Illustrated Soups and Stews that I cooked from last month has a french onion recipe. I haven't made it yet but seems that I remember it talking about the onions cooking for a LONG time. I'm too impatient! ;)

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

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