Soup's Up

My kids love soup, that and tacos.  Both are almost guaranteed to be eaten, which is always a bonus.  I am a big fan of quick and easy soup recipes and this one is really easy.  With only a few ingredients that cook rather quickly, this makes an ideal throw it together and let it cook kind of meal.  

On those occasions where you will be cooking outside of your regular kitchen with all you herbs, spices, sauces and extras that make cooking really tasty and sometimes cumbersome to do outside your own kitchen.  I have picked up the ingredients at the store, and made this in other cities in a kitchen that only contained pots, and instant oatmeal.  I also make this at the cottage since only one ingredient really needs refrigeration.

Kale, Sweet Potato and Turkey Sausage Soup
Adapted from Cooking light
This recipe is easy to change up, want more onion or you only have small onions then use them.  It is really forgiving.

1-2 tbsp Olive Oil or Butter
2 large Onions, around 4 cups
1 tsp Salt
1 package Italian Turkey Sausages, mild or spicy, about 6 links, casings removed
1/2 tsp Chili Flakes, (optional)
6 cloves Garlic, minced or thinly sliced
2 large sweet potato, about 8 cups (the yellow, not orange kind)
4 cups chicken stock
5 cups water
1 bunch of Kale, about 1 lb, chopped fairly small
1 can White beans, such as Navy beans, drained and rinced


In a large pot of enamel pot over medium add oil, onion, sausage meat, garlic, 1/2tsp salt and chili flakes if using.  Cut until meat is cooked all the way through.

Add diced sweet potato, saute for 2-3 minutes and then add water and chicken stock. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer for 8 minutes.

Add kale, simmer 10 more minutes.

Add beans and remaining salt if needed.  Simmer 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

1908

Keeping on my theme of Cocktails, I will post one of my favourite cocktails...A 1908.  This cocktail is made at The Empress and is named after the year it was built.  This cocktail is quite easy to make at home.

Empress Tea Vodka

1 Tea at the Empress tea bag for every 160ml of vodka

Steep for 4 hours.  Remove and squeeze tea bags to extract all the vodka tea goodness.

1908 Cocktail

2 parts Empress Tea Vodka

1 part Egg White

1 part Lemon Juice

1 part Simple Syrup

Shake over a lot of ice, strain and serve.

Just add the tea bags to the vodka, cover and wait 4 hours.  No need even to stir.  Then you are left with tea loveliness which is so tasty you will have to make some more soon :)

Cherry Pie Spice Cocktails

This is the recipe that I created when I entered (and won) the Home Bartender Competition at the Art of the Cocktail 2014.  The tea I used is not currently in production from David's Tea but it might come back, I ended up buying a large bag of it since I really liked the cocktail.  This is based on a classic sour recipe: 
2 part alcohol
1 part lemon/lime juice
1 part simple syrup.  

The egg white makes it creamy and adds an almost milky quality to the cocktail and is also quite common in a sour.

Note:You can always create or find something similar if you can't find it.  David's Tea Cherry Snowcone contains(ingredients straight from the box): Hibiscus, rose hip peel, apple, currants, elderberry, sugar crystals(I don't use these), sour cherries, acerola cherries, natural cherry flavouring.

Cherry Pie Spice Vodka

6 dried cherries
300 ml Vodka
-steep for 6 hours, then add

1 1/2" Vanilla bean, scraped.  Add both inside and outsides of the vanilla bean to vodka
5 almonds, Blanched and chopped
3 tbsp Cherry Snowcone (David's tea), removed sweet snow flakes
4 pinches (around 2 tsp) Hybiscus
3" piece of cinnamon stick

-add these to the cherries and vodka, steep another 3 hours.  Then strain, keeping the vodka :)

Orange Pekoe Vodka

2 Orange Pekoe tea bags
320 ml vodka

-steep 3 hours, removed tea bags squeezing the vodka out of the bags.

Simple Syrup

1 part sugar
1 part water

Using volume measurements (so 1/3 cup sugar and 1/3 cup water, for example)

-in a small/medium sauce pan add both ingredients and heat until sugar has just dissolved and you can't see any sugar granuals, then remove from heat.  

You can use it right away without cooling it just add more ice to the shaker and only add the ice just before shaking.

Store in fridge.



Now what do I do?.....

Cherry Pie Sour Cocktail
1 part Cherry Pie Spice Vodka
1 part Orange Pekoe Vodka
1 part Egg White (I use the pasteurized egg whites, easier to measure and pasteurized, so YEAH :-)
1 part Lemon Juice, Fresh is best
1 part simple syrup

 -Add all the ingredient in to your shaker, add lots of

ice, shake and strain.  Serve in a Martini glass or French champagne glass.

Note: the volume that you use will depend on your glass size.  I usually make 1 part to be between 20mls and 30mls, for example if I made 1 part to be 25mls the recipe would look like this

25ml Cherry vodka
25ml Orange pekoe vodka
25ml egg white
25ml lemon juice
25ml simple syrup

Shake with lots of ice, strain and serve



This may seem like a lot of steps, but Orange Pekoe tea also makes a nice sour, or even making an Earl Grey Tea vodka.  Experiment and have fun :-)
Enjoy!