Foodgeek Blog

The other night I made a cold avocado soup at a friend’s house. It was different, and came out really well. Here’s the rough recipe:

     2 avocados, mashed

     1 Pint sour cream

     1 Tbs Worcester sauce (although, in retrospect, I’d have used a teaspoon)

     2 Tbs lime juice (but I ended up adding more)

     1 Can cream of mushroom soup (If I make it again, I’ll be leaving this out)

     Salt and Pepper to taste

     The recipe didn’t call for it, but fresh cilantro to taste (Limes, avocados, cilantro, it seemed right.)

     Milk to thin soup

Now for the complicated preparation instructions: Mix it all up.

If you use the canned soup, watch how much salt you add. Make sure to taste it. Before you add the milk, the mixture will be very thick, more like guacamole than soup. The recipe said “add just enough milk to achieve the proper texture.” That’s extremely vague. Make it as thin as you like your soup. Chill.

This one, as most cold recipes (be it a cold soup or a salsa) are, is better the second day. The flavors have some time to get all happy and acquainted and intermixed and balanced. I found the Worcester to be a little overpowering, but it had backed off and homogenized the second day.

Warning: It doesn’t keep very long.  Less than a week in the fridge.  I don’t know how well it freezes.

A very nice summer soup. Tasty, but I like the watermelon better.

I set a goal, and I kept it. Last night I made two salsas for today’s Father’s Day Cookout Extravaganza. Ok, I’m the only one who calls it that.

For the first I made the mango, jicama, onion, cilantro that I mentioned in Salsa Dance. I think it came out well.

For the second, I just riffed. Here goes:

     1 vidalia onion

     1 large poblano

     1 green bell pepper

     1 red bell pepper

     1 orange bell pepper

     fresh cilantro, finely minced

     the juice of a lime or two

     2 or 3 cerrano chilis (I had never used these before. These little guys pack a punch.)

     Several small tomatoes (not necessary, but I like tomatoey salsas)

     3 or 4 cloves of garlic, smashed, minced

     Salt to taste

Chop it up. Mix it up. Chill it up. I’ll know for sure tomorrow, but preliminary taste tests are promising. As for the choice of bell pepper, I had two things in mind: One; green, orange, and red make for a very pretty salsa. Two; I think that red peppers are sweeter. Following that logic, orange will be sweeter than yellow. I wanted a nice blend of sweet and spicy. Poblanos are great because they have the flavor of a green bell, but with just a little bit of heat. Very nice.

In the spirit of cookouts and appropriate things to put on a tortilla chip, I also made some guac:

     2 avocados, mashed

     the juice of two limes

     5 cloves of garlic, smashed, minced

     about a third of a vidalia onion, finely minced

     1 tomato, finely chopped

     fresh cilantro, finely minced

     3 cerrano peppers, finely chopped

     Salt and pepper to taste

Mix it up. Chill it up. Initially the lime seemed a little overpowering, but once I had added the garlic, salt, and cilantro, it made more sense in the grand flavor scheme. It’s still a very lime intensive guac, but it seems to make sense. I’m thinking about calling it Margarita Guacamole.

I tried a new beer today, as well. It’s called Land Shark. It’s labeled as an “Island Style Lager.” I don’t know what “Island Style” is, but I like it a lot. It’s got the lightness of Corona, but with a little more depth to the flavor. “More robust” might be a good way to describe it.

On a side note: I had some cilantro on my hand when I took a sip of the beer. There’s something very nice about that smell/flavor combination. It seems right.

I was thinking the other day that I’d do restaurant reviews on here, but I don’t go to restaurants all that often. (At least not ones that I’d necessarily want to review. I go to Friday’s, or Applebee’s, or Panera, big chains. I only have a few unique restaurants where I eat.)

This review is not about one of those restaurants. It’s about a chain. Sorry. And it’s not so much a review as a paragraph or two of gratuitous praise.

I’m speaking, of course, of Chipotle.

Love.

Most of the people I know could eat Chipotle absolutely any time. I have to be in the mood for it if I’m going to suggest going there or go out of my way to go there. On the other hand, even if I end up there when it wasn’t my first choice, I always leave happy.

I’ve grown attached to their burrito bols (no, that’s not a misspelling.) I usually get the chicken fajita (I like beans, but not in extreme quantity) bol. Medium salsa, the corn, not the green chili. Sour cream, lettuce, cheese, and a little guac. *Yes, I know it costs extra. No, I don’t care.

I didn’t realize until today just how much I loved that corn salsa. First of all, corn makes an excellent additive to Mexican food. I think it’s one of Mexican cuisine’s undersung flavors. I was surprised to find out that a lot of people don’t associate the two. I had someone give me a funny look because I put corn in my chilli. Don’t knock it. Corn brings a lot to the dish in terms of flavor and texture.

The salsa on the whole has a sweet, spicy flavor, and a very nice crunchy texture. To be honest, I don’t know what else goes in to it, but I intend to find out.

*Anyone who’s eaten there and ordered guac knows what I’m talking about.

To stick with the pepper theme of this entry, I was at Baker’s Square the other night and I tried their green chilli. It was excellent. More of a soup than a chilli, really, but delicious all the same. One unexpected ingredient: potatoes. Caught me totally off guard, but really good in the soup.

I’ve never been big on soups. I like soup a lot, but I don’t love it. Maybe I should add some sort of soup to my summer experiment list.