Chicken Stock and Beyond

I am remembering to take food pictures far more often than I'm finding time to post. When I took this photo of gallons of chicken stock, I intended to divide it and freeze in the amounts called for in the recipes for Carrot Soup, Risotto Bianco, Curly Kale and Potato Soup, White Bean and Butternut Squash Soup, Spicy Cauliflower Soup, and Red Pepper Soup from The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution (which was also the source of the stock recipe. I'm not a fan of Alice Waters and last year resold the few Chez Panisse cookbooks I'd acquired over the years. But then the Tipsy Baker blogger, who is also not a Waters fan, tested and wrote about this book and called it a shelf essential and a fabulous primer (also saying it has the charisma of a turnip:-). Somehow Tipsy Baker's opinions compel me to order brand-new cookbooks, something I normally don't do. I've only tried a couple of recipes so far, and while they have been fine, they've tasted very much like the kinds of things I throw together without a recipe on an average weeknight.

I made all this stock because one of the things I bought on a trip to the West Side Market with my mom to use Entertainment Book coupons before they expired was six lbs. of chicken backs (buy three, get three free!). I like the idea of making a lot of stock to have on hand, but probably won't do it again unless I buy a freezer (in addition to my top-of-the-fridge one). I couldn't fit all the stock in my freezer and didn't have the exact ingredients for any of the recipes, so the first thing I tried with it was a perfectly acceptable and completely unexciting soup onions, potatoes, and carrots cooked in the stock and pureed.

When it reached a point that I had to use or throw out the remaining non-frozen stock, I didn't feel up to any actual cooking but was craving vegetables. (Most of the coupons were for meat so I'd been seriously overdoing protein-heavy meals). I bought fresh spinach, planning to cook pasta in the stock, stir in spinach and garlic, and top it with Parmesan cheese. I'd like to try it again sometime with less stock; I'd been hoping that the stock with the starch from cooking the pasta would thicken into a light sauce, but it ended up pretty soupy. Part of the problem was that I washed the spinach and used it wet, diluting the stock/sauce.

I made this the day storms swept the Midwest and left an amazing sunset in their wake. A nice thing about keeping my camera in the kitchen for impromptu food photos is that I now take impromptu photographs of other things as well. The picture at the top of the post is what the autumn leaves looked like in the sunset light; I decided that vats of yellow liquid made an unpleasant larger picture so used this instead. Here's the sunset itself: 

I finally made it to the grocery store with a shopping list and bought the ingredients for Spicy Cauliflower Soup. I enjoyed it, especially with the suggested toppings of yogurt, cilantro, and lime juice. Next, taking advantage of what I already have, I will probably make a cross between a couple of the recipes listed above, using kale with butternut squash and skipping the potatoes and white beans. Watch this space to see if/when I get around to this; with kale wilting in the fridge, I hope it's soon!