Most of you probably think that New England Clam Chowder is the be all and end all of chowders and blah blah blah there’s no other way to do it but GUESS WHAT I DON’T LIKE CREAM BASED SOUPS so without further ado I present to yall one of the greatest most amazing recipes for Manhattan Clam Chowder, presented by one of the most greatest most amazing grocery stores on Earth, Stew Leonard’s. It is delicious.

INGREDIENTS : 6 slices chopped bacon 2 cups diced onions (about 2 large onions) 1 cup diced celery (about 2 stalks) 1 cup diced carrots (about 2 large carrots) 1 cup clam juice 2 cups diced tomatoes 2 cups tomato juice 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1 bay leaf 1 cup diced potatoes (about 2 medium potatoes) 28-ounce can of chopped clams Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

COOKING INSTRUCTIONS :

1. In a pan over medium-high heat, cook the bacon until it is crisp. Remove the bacon and drain the majority of the grease. Leave more or less, depending on how much you’re comfortable with (I usually leave a tablespoon or two at most).

2. Add the onions to the remaining grease and cook until golden. Add all of the
other ingredients except the clams and the potatoes and cook for
15 minutes, stirring frequently.

3. Add the potatoes and clams and simmer until the potatoes are tender. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper and taste.

(photo not by me coz my camera is horrible)

Last year, I spent entirely too much time during the month of December making delicious soups and eating soup and thinking about soup and loving soup, and well lookee here folks, it’s December again. Which means IT’S SOUP MONTH AGAIN!!!!

For the record, here are some of last year’s recipes:

Italian Wedding Soup

Minestrone Twofer – the second one is to die for.

I’ll be posting new ones soon and shortly, so keep your eyes peeled folks.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!

Send us your soup recipes! Take a picture of your soup! Tell us how great it is! The best one will win a $25 gift certificate to an area restaurant (Alternatively if we don’t get enough submissions I’ll just cry. Prevent that from happening.). The contest begins …..NOW and ends December 21st. START MAKING SOUPS PEOPLE!!!

To be perfectly honest, for as long as I’ve been eating the stuff I really had no idea what made “minestrone” “minestrone.” So like any other annoying person with an iPhone trying to settle an argument at a bar, I consulted Wikipedia on the matter. As it turns out and in summary, minestrone is basically soup consisting of a bunch of stuff thrown into a pot and cooked, typically featuring pasta, beans and vegetables. And so without further ado, I present two variations of minestrone – one with seashell pasta, the other with chicken and artichokes.

Mega Vegetable Minestrone

Ingredients and Instructions (formatted for easy printing)

Nutrition Information

This is a pretty great soup. So much veggie goodness that it’s actually filling, and the seasoning is really well balanced. Not too watery but for my taste, needs more tomato. Pretty much perfect for lunch or on a cold day.

Next up is another variation of minestrone featuring chicken, corn, and artichokes. I was a little weirded out by the combination at first, but this stuff is insanely awesome and borderline addictive. If you try no other recipe I’ve posted thus far, I highly recommend this one.

Artisan Chartichoke Bistro Bonanza in Awesome Broth

Ingredients and Instructions

Nutrition Information

It’s gooooooood soup. That’s pretty much all I can say about it.

Welp, that’s it for now, I’ve got at least two more soups in store for yall, and then soup month is pretty much over. Now I just have to come up with a food theme for next month….

Winter is most definitely the time for soups. While cold and boring outside, most humans basically just want to stay warm and stuff their faces with something at least similarly warm, whether it be food or otherwise. So in honor of this concept I am dedicating December to soup. Eating soup, making soup, and providing you, the four readers of this blogozine, recipes for soup that I have tested out and hopefully enjoyed. And so without further ado, this month’s first soup recipe:

Italian Wedding Soup (with lemon!)

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 to 1 pound extra-lean ground beef
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 tablespoons Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs
• 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 tablespoons shredded fresh basil leaves
• 1 tablespoon chopped Italian flat leaf parsley
• 2 green onions
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 2 cups sliced spinach
• 1 lemon zest
• 1/2 cup orzo pasta, uncooked (actually I just used rice)
• shredded Parmesan cheese for topping

DIRECTIONS

Mix together the meat, egg, bread crumbs, cheese, basil, parsley, and green onions in a bowl. Unless you are a masochist and love chopping things up forever and ever, I recommend using a small food processor to chop up the parsley, basil and green onion.

Pour the chicken broth into a large saucepan over high heat. When the broth begins boiling, drop in the meatballs a few at a time and let them cook for a minute or two. Then stir in the spinach, lemon zest and orzo (or rice). Allow the mix to return to a boil, then reduce heat to medium. Cook at a very low boil for 10 minutes or until orzo is tender (If you use rice, this will take longer. Sample the rice as it cooks until it’s done to your liking), stirring frequently. Serve sprinkled with shredded Parmesan cheese.

The finished product should look remarkably similar to this:

It should also taste really great.
Serves 4, 30 minute prep time tops.
(nutrition information forthcoming)

Stay tuned for more recipes!

See sometimes, inside jokes between your friends can produce something potentially amaZING. In years past, several of my friends and I would joke around about the ridiculously horrible dipping sauces and coatings that seem to be slathered onto foods served in chain restaurants like Fridays, Ruby Tuesday, that sort of thing. The game would usually be to come up with the most elaborate and ridiculous sounding mixture, which almost always ended being something along the lines of “Sun-dried-tomato-mayo-lucky-charms-jack-bourbon-bistro sauce.” This process repeated itself until one such point in time that we ended up coming up with “Honey Maple-peño dipping sauce.” No sooner had we done this than a favorite show of ours, Sealab 2021, came up with a virtually identical premise in a commercial for their very own chain restaurant, Grizzlebee’s (link to said commercial pending).

Five years later, following the success of Bacon Vodka, I have decided to create Honey Maple-peño Vodka.

Fortunately for most, the combination of sweet and hot/spicy is one that is easily tolerated, moreso than a meat-based vodka, so the process is pretty simple and should be relatively open/shut. I started with the following ingredients:

1 bottle (5th) of Absolut Vodka (left over from a party)
2 jalapeños, medium
1 tbsp. Pure Honey
A few drops of Maple Syrup (just so I can add ‘Maple’ to the title), to taste

Mixed all of these things in a Mason jar on Sunday, placed it in the fridge, and let it sit. Took a little sampling of the stuff last night (Wednesday) and it seems to be faring pretty well. Although the jalapeños were floating at the top of the jar, so I made slits in the sides of them to sink them to the bottom. The flavor is just spicy enough, but at this point it tastes mostly like a green pepper with a very vague sweetness to it. I will more than likely add another tablespoon of honey to the batch and let it sit an additional week to two weeks before trying it again (pictures to come as well).

In the meantime, I will be attempting to brainstorm drink ideas for use with this concoction. Some seem to think this would make a good bloody mixer, but I think aside from the spicy jalapeño flavor the honey/maple sweetness probably wouldn’t be very complimentary. BUT I for some reason in my head think it would go fairly well with tonic? Perhaps with a bit of lime and garnish?

DISCUSS