My husband, Scott, is a big French onion soup fan, ordering it whenever possible when we’re eating out. For me, though, the traditional French version is just a little too rich, too heavy for my tastes. All this time, I thought what Scott liked about the soup was its full-bodied, sweet beefy stock and the heady cognac. Because, that’s a foodie or a chef would say.

But, nope. I should have known better. “It’s all about the cheese, baby,” he revealed. That’s exactly why I love him. Scott’s a simple guy with simple tastes (man eat meat. grunt.) and always brings me back down from gourmet la-la land.

Read the rest + step-by-step recipe at Steamy Kitchen on TLC (it’s a ridiculously simple soup!)

Here’s my latest video from Good Bite – a roundtable with friends Matt Armendariz and Julie Van Rosendaal and we talk about S-S-S-SOUP!

I’m a lazy souper.

Well, let me rephrase that. I’m a forgetful and highly distractable gal and anything that sits on the stovetop for more than 30 minutes tends to be forgotten about, and that means long simmering soups.

So I have to use shortcuts like the pressure cooker or longcuts like the slow cooker (but at least there’s an auto shut-off) or better yet, I make soups that only take 10 minutes from start to finish….like my 10-minute miso soup recipe!

But watch and find out what Matt and Julie love about soup!

And here we have lovely Aarti showing you how to make the miso soup:

The recipe for 10-Minute Miso Soup is on Good Bite

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I’m a bad, bad blogger. One who eats crumbly chocolate chip cookies while editing photos on a very expensive laptop with nose 2 inches from screen, thinking out loud “is this shade of green more greener than that shade of green?” I never take the time to back up even now I’m a subscriber of multiple backup websites. And I read your very funny blog posts while drinking wine which sometimes results in a spontaneous spew of red, staining liquid that lands on my keyboard.

I’m a bad blogger because Chef Robert Danhi it took the time to chat with me on the phone a couple of weeks ago and I have yet to post the podcast. In fact, I don’t even know where the damn audio file is. It could be because of my upload-then-delete-on-harddrive-without-checking-upload habit that I accidentally slingshot (slingshotted? slingshoot? slungshot?) our recorded phone convo into a gazillion cyber-bytes, each zipping in separate directions.

I’m praying that Google will somehow come across the files, scoop it up and just stick it in his shirt pocket, at least just until I can figure a way to harness that “beam me up” technology to come claim my podcast.

-Jaden

p.s. I have some winners to announce! The winners of the Club Med vacation and the $50 Sur La Table Gift Card will be announced as soon as my jet lag decides it’s had enough (hopefully tomorrow)

But I still have one more giveaway going on – Dr. BBQ Cookbook Giveaway (ends June 21st 12pm EST)

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Southeast Asian Flavors Cookbook

This morning we returned from a week in California, and all I wanted to eat was Chef Danhi’s Malaysian Chicken Noodle Soup. Warm, rich broth with silky-juicy chicken. Slippery fresh rice noodles and snappy shrimp. So I thought I might as well post this recipe without the podcast, before I lose this recipe and the photos too.

While the recipe is from Robert’s new book Southeast Asian Flavors Cookbook, the photos above are mine when I had made his recipe two weeks prior. It’s a stellar recipe that I know you will absolutely enjoy. The James Beard Foundation nominated Southeast Asian Flavors among the finalists for a 2009 Book Award in the international category and it contains over 100 authentic recipes from Southeast Asia and over 700 color photographs that Robert Danhi took himself.

Southeast Asian Flavors Cookbook is a must-have in your Asian cookbook collection, because not only are the recipes authentic (Danhi has been traveling and studying Southeast Asian cooking for over 20 years) but the book also incudes anecdotes about the culture and history of Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore. Also make sure to visit Danhi’s website for this book – tons more photos.

This particular recipe for Malaysian Chicken Noodle Soup is virtually fool proof and one of the best recipes I’ve seen for an Asian noodle soup. The reason is because the chicken is slowly poached, resulting in meat that is tender and never overcooked. This is also the same technique that I use for Hainanese Chicken (recipe is in my upcoming cookbook)

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A few notes for Malaysian Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

A few notes on the ingredients and techniques:

• This method of poaching involves bringing the pot to a boil and then turning off the heat (keep the lid on!) and let the chicken slowly, gently poach in the very hot water until cooked through. It’s almost impossible to overcook the chicken this way, and you’ll get a very silky texture. Once the chicken is cooked through, immediately plunge it in ice-water to stop the cooking process and firm up the skin. Once the chicken is cool enough to handle, you’ll use your hands to shred/pull the meat. Whether you keep or discard the skin is up to you (I personally love the skin.) You won’t be using the entire chicken for this Malaysian Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe – reserve the rest for another meal.
• Try to get a small chicken, if your chicken is larger than 3.5 pounds, you will have to increase your poaching time. If your chicken is over 4 pounds – once you’ve finished your 45 gentle poach, return the pot to a boil and immediately turn off the heat. Let the pot sit for another 5 minutes, then check for doneness.
• If you don’t have white peppercorns, just use whole black peppercorns
• I love using fresh rice noodles that you can find in the Asian markets (refrigerated section). If they are super-fresh they don’t need to be boiled…just soak them in warm water until softened. If they are still a bit hard, try soaking them in hot water for a few seconds. If you don’t have access to fresh rice noodles, then use dried, wide rice noodles and follow the instructions on the package for soaking/cooking times.

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It’s no secret that good Pho broth requires a gazillion hours of simmering time. Time that I just don’t have. Tony, a boyfriend from a lifetime ago, told me his Dad used to simmer giant vats of pho broth overnight for his little pho restaurant in Houston. So, one day, I thought it would be really genius to do the same. Dump a bunch of beefy, tendony, knuckley, marrowey bones into the largest stockpot that I have and let it simmer away while I slept.

It didn’t quite work out as I had intended:

11:30pm Initial hard boil of the bones to get all the yuck, guck and scum off. Char ginger and onion.

11:38pm Dumped out water, added clean water, the clean bones, spices, ginger and onion. Let the dance begin.

11:45pm Nighty-night

12:35am Is the flame low enough? Maybe I need to check to see.

1:23am Hmmm…I smell something funny. Go check.

2:41am What if it boiled over? Go check.

3:24am What if there’s a gas bubble in the pipe and the the stove spontaneously bursts out in big flames? Maybe I should sleep on the couch closer to the kitchen.

4:45am Gosh I’m hungry. Sneak a big spoonful of Ben & Jerry’s Pistachio Ice Cream.

4:51am Did I forget to put ice cream back in freezer? What if the gas bubble really does happen and stove spontaneously bursts out in flames? Then sleeping on couch is a dumbass idea. Crawl back to bed.

6:00am Kids wake up. Jumps up and down on my belly trying to wake me up.

6:15am PHO-KING TIRED

Enter the Slow Cooker

A few weeks later, I was contacted by the peeps at Crock-Pot® The Original Slow Cooker <- yes, they are insanely paranoid about me using their correct trademarked name, so much that they’ve given me very specific instructions 4 separate times on how to properly spell/mark their product names.) They sent me their new eLume Crock-Pot® Programmable Slow Cooker with Touch Screen Technology to test.

<- shiny, pretty and fancy. Oh crap, I forgot the ™ after eLume™.

It’s the perfect size (6.5 quarts) for a big mean mama pot of PHO!!!

Oh yeah, baby! It solves my problem of paranoia when leaving stove on all night.

What I love about the eLume™ Crock Pot® is© its™ lighted™© touchscreen®™©. Just a light tap is all that you need and it’s totally programmable from 30 minutes to 20 hours of cooking time. You can also set it to start cooking at a certain time, but when making my Crock Pot Pho Recipe, I don’t recommend a delayed start time since we are working with raw meat bones.

How to make Crock Pot Pho

Whether you use the Crock Pot Pho method or the traditional stove top method, there are a couple of steps that you’ll need to do before throwing it all in the Crock Pot or slow cooker. Namely, toasting the spices, grilling the onion/ginger and pre-boiling the bones. These aren’t absolutely necessary steps…you’ll still make great pho…BUT these extra steps will make the difference between good pho and pho-bulous pho.

Toasting the Vietnamese Pho Spices

You can buy Pho spices at most Asian supermarkets – you can buy the spices separately (coriander seeds, cloves, cinnamon, star anise, fennel and cardamom pod) or purchase them already mixed up in a package (which also includes a small mesh bag). The quality of these pre-mixed spices are just okay – but sometimes it’s just convenient to pick up a bag, not to mention much cheaper if you don’t already have many of these spices. A Pho spice pack will typically sell for $1-$3.

This day that I made the Crock Pot Pho, I used individual spices. I didn’t have cardamom pod. So yes, if you are missing one of couple of the spices, it’s okay. To get the best flavor from these spices, you’ll toast them in a dry skillet.

Grilling Ginger and Onion

This is a totally optional step, but it really gives the ginger and the onion a deep, sweet, mellow flavor. When I’m making Pho the traditional stovetop way, I’ll char them in the broiler. But with the crock pot method, I didn’t want to use the oven at all. After toasting the spices (above) in a frying pan, I add a bit of oil and grilled the onion half and thick ginger slices.

Pre-Boiling the Bones

Knuckles, leg bones with lots of marrow are the best for making soup. The marrow will also make the soup rich and thick. The bones are pre-boiled for a few minutes on high heat to clean the bones and get rid of the nasty scum.

You’ll bring a big stockpot of water to a boil on high heat. Add the bones and boil hard for 10 minutes. You’ll see brownish scum rise to the surface. If you hadn’t taken the time to pre-boil the bones, all that scummy stuff ends up in your soup.

<– nasty pho-reaky scum

Drain, discard the scummy water and briefly rinse the bones.

Now you’ll add the spices, ginger, onion and bones to the slow cooker.

Fill with fresh, clean, cool water about 1-1/2 inches below the surface. Set your slow cooker on low for 8 hours. I haven’t tried this method on high, but I’m sure it would be just fine.

So let this cook during all day while you’re at work or at night while you sleep and you’ll be rewarded with the cleanest, best tasting pho soups ever. Because the slow cooker doesn’t let the stock boil hard, it’s safe, easy and convenient.

Here’s what the stock looks like when it’s been cooking for 8 hours on low. Notice that the level of the liquid is still pretty high. The low, even setting doesn’t evaporate the precious liquid as much as a stove top can. The stock is strained before serving.

Other Pho Ingredients

I used different ingredients than my previous version of traditional Vietnamese Pho and I wanted to highlight them. Instead of using dried rice noodles, I used fresh rice noodles found at Asian markets, in the refrigerated section because all these need is a quick dip in boiling water. Very fast!

I also bought a package of Vietnamese Beef Balls (called Bo Vien Dan). There are all sorts of balls – beef, pork, chicken, fish, crab, and my favorite – beef tendon. They come frozen in a package and they are pre-cooked, so all you need to do is throw the frozen balls into the same pot of boiling water as you cooked your noodles in. Just boil for a couple of minutes until the beef balls are heated through. I like cutting these beef balls in half, so make them easier to eat. It’s not so pretty trying to stick an entire beef ball in your mouth. Unless…you’re like really into that.

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Vietnamese Pho Recipe (cooked the traditional, long, slow, stovetop method)

Vietnamese Chicken Pho Recipe (Pho Ga)

So a couple of weeks ago I was chatting online with one of my friends who has a food blog but doesn’t go by her real name so that she can hide her real identity. Because you know, food blogging is so much sexier when you’re STEALTH blogging. She said some people, herself included is freaked out about their names being revealed for fear that their real names show up in Google search engines.

Which makes me wonder what kind of horrible recipes are these people publishing?

I’ve never been shy about talking about my life or my family…and I really don’t care to blur out my face nor do I put a black bar over my eyes like they do in back of magazines to show fashion DON’Ts. My kids get no cutesy, clever nicknames. Who knows if one day this whole blog will blow up in my face! I’m sure some of the things I’ve posted about my kids that are cute-ha-ha-funny will someday be cha-ching! for the therapist. Better set aside some money now. Seriously. But that’s just who I am. Loud, brash and confessional.

This is why I love blogs and books that aren’t bashful about opening their front door and welcoming us in with open arms. When I was in Los Angeles last year, I stopped by the soon-to-be-closed (sniff sniff) The Cook’s Library Bookstore where I picked up a copy of Tessa Kiros’ Apples For Jam, A Colorful Cookbook fully intending it to be a gift for a friend, but after an afternoon alone with the cookbook, I decided to keep it for myself and bought her a bag of donuts instead. What a good friend I am. (WHAAAT? Hey, at least I didn’t arrive empty-handed!)

Tessa’s publisher, Andrew McMeel sent me a copy of her latest book, Falling Cloudberries, A World of Family Recipes which is part of Gourmet’s Cookbook Club. Tessa Kiro was born in London to a Finnish mother and Greek father, has lived in South Africa and worked as chef in Sydney, Athens, Mexico and London. Her life of global travels inspired this book with nearly 400 pages of recipes, stories and stunning color photographs (170 recipes, 185 color photos).

I wanted to share a recipe with you from her Falling Cloudberries book – Tom Ka Gai Soup, or Thai Chicken Coconut Soup. I’m sure you’ve had this soup before if you’re a fan of Thai food. The Tom Ka Gai soup is warm, tingly and creamy.

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About Kaffir Limes Leaves (or Makrut)

Thai Chicken Coconut Soup (Tom Ka Gai) uses fresh kaffir lime leaves to give it that unmistakable Thai flavor and aroma. It’s citrusy, bright and its aroma is as exuberant as its taste.

And I’m lucky enough that in Florida the Kaffir Lime Tree grows like crazy. Even neglected, it looks like this:

While my tree doesn’t bear any fruit (I think something called “neglect” might have something to do with it) the leaves are plentiful. And the leaves are the valuable part of the tree anyways. Another name for Kaffir Lime Leaves is “Makrut,” as I just found out that the word “Kaffir” is a deragatory term (I’m off to research and find out the details on that to confirm).

How to use Kaffir Lime Leaves

The Kaffir Lime Leaves come in doubles. It’s a pretty thick leaf with a tough spine in the middle. The Kaffir Lime Leaf is used whole and discarded after cooking, unless you cut into very thin slivers.

For Thai Chicken Coconut Soup (Tom Ka Gai), fold the Kaffir Lime Leaf in half along the spine and then tear, stopping at the tough spine.

So that when you open it, the Kaffir Lime Leaves stays whole. This makes it easy to pick out and discard after cooking. Tearing the Kaffir Lime Leaves opens the aroma and flavors. Now scratch the screen and a whiff…WOW!

Just throw the leaves, torn and whole into your soup, cook, then pick out and discard. Well, I guess you don’t have to. You can leave the Kaffir Lime Leaves in the soup and make your guests pick it out.

Substitutions for Kaffir Lime Leaves

If you don’t have access to fresh Kaffir Lime Leaves, you can find them at the Asian markets frozen or dried whole. You can also substitute Kaffir Lime Leaves with thick strips of lime peel. Take a whole lime and a vegetable peeler. Peel thick strips. Use your hands to tear a few places along the strip or just crush/fold the strip to bruise it a bit to release its flavor and aroma. Discard after cooking. Use one 2-inch x 1-inch strip of lime peel for every Kaffir Lime Leaf the recipe calls for.

— Recipe courtesy of Falling Cloudberries, A World of Family Recipes by Tessa Kiros/Andrews McMeel Publishing

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This Week’s Steamy Kitchen Giveaway

Two weeks ago, I gave away a rice cooker, this week, the winner of The Art and Soul of Baking is lakotakat@_.com!

And now I’m giving away a copy of Falling Cloudberries, A World of Family Recipes by Tessa Kiros. To enter, just sign up for the Steamy Kitchen email newsletter (form is below). Each week, I give away cool prizes to my loyal readers as a thank you.