Broccoli Cheese Soup in Bread Bowl

Blogging Marathon# 38: Week 1/ Day 3
Theme: Soup or Salad with Sides 
Dish: Broccoli Cheese Soup in Bread Bowl

Today I have a very hearty and creamy broccoli soup served in a bread bowl for Blogging marathon. Soup is another dish I would not order when we eat outside. I consider it more of an appetizer and not real food :-)
I do order broccoli-cheese soup once in a while just because I like it. I have tried it at a few places and except for a couple of restaurants, the soup is usually overpowered by the cheese or the cream. Usually broccoli is the last flavor that you taste.

Recently I got America's Test Kitchen newsletter with the recipe for Broccoli-cheese soup. The experts at ATK say overcooking the broccoli brings out all the flavor out of it and adding baking soda to the cooking water speeds up the cooking process. They also add some spinach which brightens the soup's bright-green color and enhances its vegetable flavor. Finally adding the cheddar and parmesan gave the soup the cheesy flavor without making it heavy.

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Salad with Black beans & Corn and Citrus Blasamic Vinaigrette

Blogging Marathon# 38: Week 1/ Day 2
Theme: Soup or Salad with Sides 
Dish: Salad with Black beans & Corn with Cheese Quesadilla

For Day 2 of BM# 38, I have a simple salad served with cheese quesadilla. This salad is inspired from a dish that is on Chili's menu -- Quesadilla explosion Salad. We were at Chili's couple of weeks ago and saw it on the menu, though I didn't order it. Not sure if I already told you, I don't order salads when we go out. I feel like I have to eat actual food and not salads at restaurants. In my mind, I think I can make salads at home and don't want to spend money on a salad at a sit down restaurant.

Well anyway, coming back to the Quesadilla explosion salad; I googled for the recipe and found that it is one of the unhealthiest salads served at a restaurant. It has a full day worth of salt and ¾of the day's worth calories. It made me feel even better because you would think ordering salad is a good thing -- but apparently it's not such a good thing afterall.

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Refrigerator Soup

Blogging Marathon# 38: Week 1/ Day 1 
Theme: Soup or Salad with Sides 
Dish: Refrigerator Soup with Zucchini Tortilla/ Omelette 

It's time for another blogging marathon, BM# 38 and my theme for this week is 'Soup or Salad with Sides'. Valli wants us to pair soups or salads with a side dish. So for the first day I made a very simple soup. 'Very simple' is the key word here, you might actually feel cheated when you read the recipe, it is THAT simple.
March is already here, but winter with bitter cold decided to stick around for a little too long this year in our neck of woods. This season's 13th storm is on its way as I type this post -- but thankfully it's only going to 1~2" of snow instead of the 8~12" as predicted.

With that weather report, you know why I have a soup recipe today. That too a super simple one. I was watching the Rachael Ray show the other day and saw Jacques Pepin make his refrigerator soup. It sounded so comforting and perfect to eat in this weather, so I made it the very next day with whatever veggies I had in the fridge.

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Dal Kootu (Poritha Kootu)

Dal is something that is made almost every other day in my household. Not just my home, but that is the case in almost every Indian households. Lentils form one of the main source of protein to vegetarians. I am always looking for new ways of making the same old pappu/ dal.

My everyday dals are usually very simple like this tomato pappu or this palakura pappu. But occasionally I do make kootu where dal is cooked with vegetables and coconut-peppercorn masala paste. My mom learned it from a Tamil neighbor.

Today's recipe is from the cookbook, Dakshin by Chandra Padmanabhan. Masala pasta is almost similar to what my mom makes, but the addition of mixed vegetables was interesting to me. This is a perfect recipe to make when you have those odds and ends of veggies in the fridge that need to be used up. Any combination of veggies can be used here -- apart from the ones I have used potato, zucchini, cauliflower can also be added to the kootu.

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