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An exotic bowl of sweet, sour and spice

Indonesia is made up of over 6,000 populated islands, and was once known as The Spice Islands. It’s central location made it convenient for trading spices between India, the Middle East, China and Europe. It’s no wonder this country's blending of diverse cultures has created a cuisine that’s rich, fresh, aromatic and flavorful — and considered to be one of the most delicious in the world.

A very popular Indonesian dish is Sayur Asem, a vegetable sweet and sour tamarind soup that can be made a variety of different ways. We always start off with a bowl of this soup at Borobudur, a tasty San Francisco Indonesian restaurant. After eating there last week and craving for more, we thought we’d satisfy our tastebuds by making it for dinner.

Prepping for this dish turned out to be quite adventurous, as we explored markets in different neighborhoods in search of unfamiliar ingredients, some of which we couldn't find. This forced us to modify our dish, and using this recipe as our guide, here's how we tweaked it:

- We used zucchini instead of chayote squash

- Bay leaves instead of salam leaves

- Skipped the peanuts

- Approx. 3 tablespoons of galangal, muddled up in small pieces (this was work!)

- Added about a half a cup of tamarind juice (and learned how to make it by watching this video)

- Left out the tamarind pulp (by simply forgetting to add it!)

- Added a can of baby corn, a half cup of thinly sliced baby carrots, and aprox. 4 cups chopped cabbage

- Added 1 tablespoon of white sugar

- Skipped the candlenuts (candle-who?)

- Approx. 1 1/2 teaspoon of fish sauce in place of terasi

- 4 cups chicken broth and 6 cups water (instead of 10 cups water)

- We served our soup over rice

This recipe wasn't the easiest to make, but when it was ready, the lovely blend of exotic flavors glided over our tongues like a bright red silk scarf through the air. Loaded with sweet, sour, and spice, and a mountain of diverse texture in every bite, we really loved this dish.

We look forward to making it again with some of the actual ingredients on hand, such as terasi and chayote, remembering to add the pulp and skip muddling the galangal.

If you’d like to spice up your culinary life with something that’s refreshing, savory, distinctive and lush, you’ve gotta try this dish.

Spicy Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

Last weekend we practically froze our butts off while shopping at the markets in Chinatown, picking up ingredients needed for dinner. Luckily this didn’t take long, because the more our shivering selves we’re being elbowed and pushed around, the more we couldn’t wait to get home, get cozy and get cookin'.

On the menu: Spicy Thai Coconut Chicken Soup from Cooking Light magazine. This recipe calls for lemongrass, something we love but have never cooked with before, and we were excited to finally be using it.

It was pretty easy to make, and when it was done, we were rewarded with a heaping bowl of velvety, citrusy, spicy, coconuty goodness. The broth definitely was the star of this dish, with it's textured sidekicks complimenting it perfectly. And even though it was spicy, it wasn't overpowering to us.

On a chilly night (or any night for that matter) a pot of this soup will definitely warm your soul.

Fish, fennel and saffron stew with lemon aioli

We just love spending a weekend afternoon exploring different markets in search of ingredients for dinner. This weekend our first stop was the San Francisco Herb Company, a small little shop in the Mission that sells all sorts of herbs at wholesale prices. Our basket was stuffed with a variety of 8-16 oz bags plus a small tube of saffron, and the best part was we only spent 30 bucks!

Next, we headed to the mexican markets for veggies, the seafood market for fresh fish, and finally the liquor store for Pernod, all of which was needed for our dish. Pernod is an anise-favored liqueur from France, often sipped mixed with water as an aperitif. With all of our ingredients on hand, we couldn't wait to make this Adam Ried recipe, from our Williams-Sonoma New Flavors for Soups cookbook.

For our fish we used sea bass, and for the aioli, we cut the oil down to a tablespoon, and used approx. 2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast as a thickener, and pureed the ingredients together.

With tender chunks of succulent fish swimming in a wonderful blend of slightly sweet, citrusy and aromatic flavors – this dish was absolutely exquisite, and tasted like it came from a fine dining restaurant. And the aioli-topped croutons were the perfect compliment for sopping up that oh so tasty broth. If you are craving a light and robust seafood stew, you'll love this dish!

Kale and Butternut Squash Soup with Sausage

Tis the season to get your soup on, and that’s just what we did last night with this tasty Adam Reid recipe, right out of our William Sonoma New Flavors for Soups book. We used butternut squash instead of sweet potatoes, 3 links of smoked andouille sausage instead of lamb, and spiced it up with Trader Joe’s South African Smoke Seasoning Blend. We love that stuff and add it to just about everything!

Wow – with the perfect blend of smoky, spicy, savory and sweet harmonizing with all that lovely texture and complexity, our taste buds were singing with joy as we happily slurped away on this tasty bowl of hearty goodness.

Make yourself a pot of this wonderful winter weather warmer tonight.

A horrorty bowl of swampy-licsousness!

Every halloween we just love to get our spook on while watching all kinds of scary movies. Cult horror, campy, creepy, slasher, zombie, vampire, supernatural  — you name it we love them all! And what better way to enhance the eeriness with a big bowl of swampy-looking soup!

Using this Swamp Chile recipe from Food & Wine magazine as our base, we left out the meatballs and pork, and grilled two boneless chicken breasts in our cast iron skillet, then cut into strips. For a mexican flavor boost, we added our own morbid mix of 12 roasted and quartered tomatillos, a tablespoon of chipotle chile powder, a teaspoon achiote powder, and the juice from two limes.

Our version tasted like a combination of our mexican chicken and pozole soups, loaded with great texture and robust flavors. Each bite was terrorifically tasty, and just what we needed to help ward off our Netflix evil spirits and muffle our screams!

A sweet bowl of summertime bliss

It’s nice to know we’re almost through the month of July and we haven’t had to break out our winter wear much. The weather has been pleasantly mild for San Francisco, so to celebrate the warmth we decided to make a summertime classic — gazpacho soup. We found this Melon Gazpacho with Prosciutto recipe in Cooking Light magazine that sounded so unique and different, we just had to try it.

The recipe calls for melons and peaches instead of vegetables, with grilled prosciutto crumbled on top, and it was super easy to make. Each bite was packed with a refreshing burst of sweet, crispy, minty goodness, and a perfect blend of texture and flavors. Even though it was light, it was very filling to us. We served it as a starter dish along with a pork and fig sauce. Even though the meal was a bit heavy on the sweet side for us, it was very delicious indeed. Next time we’ll enjoy this tasty soup with a salad or not so sweet entree.

Hearty Chicken Verde Stew with Hominy

While flipping through our stack of Cooking Light magazine’s wondering what to make for dinner, we came across this Chicken Verde Stew with Hominy recipe — and since we absolutely love tomatillos and can’t seem to get enough of them — this is what we were gonna make.

While our tamatillos and anaheim chiles were beautifully blackening in the broiler, we got everything else ready so we could start cooking pronto. When it was done we topped each bowl with a squeeze of fresh lime, a sprinkle of chipotle pepper and chopped cilantro. Each hearty bite was loaded with wonderful texture, tangy, smoky flavors with a hint of sweetness and spice. A dynamite dish that left our tastebuds dancing in perfect 'hominy' over this heaping delight!

Beef and Mushroom Soup

Recently we bought the book New Flavors for Soups at Williams Sonoma, which features all sorts of interesting and delicious looking recipes using fresh, local and seasonal ingredients while combining global flavors. The book is categorized by seasons, with many dishes we can't wait to make and post on this blog.

So we decided to kick-off our 2011 tastebud adventures to the country shaped like a boot, aka Italy. We selected a Beef and Mushroom Soup with Farro recipe, and in place of farro we used arborio rice to make it gluten free. 

We began by making our own beef stock, which took over 2 1/2 hours of careful nurturing in creating the backbone for this earthly wonder. This was the first time we've made our own stock and it was definitely well worth the wait.

This soup was a kick in the palette pants chock-full of woodsy, earthy flavors, plump texture and meaty richness. It was a memorable hearty party indeed — one that we look forward to savoring again.

For the soup recipe, click here: Beef & Mushroom Soup with Farro

For the beef stock recipe, click here: Rich Beef Stock

Saffron-Ginger Rice With Thai Red Curry Soup

Things have been cooking on the computer instead of in the kitchen lately, and our dinners have become a bit boring to say the least. Besides prepping for my upcoming shows for my textile business, I’ve been designing new patterns as well as invites for pingg and photocards for snapfish which I absolutely love, but by the time dinner comes around I’m pooped! For the last few months our tastebuds have befriended stir-frys, pastas, salads, chicken and burgers, so for this weeks dinner we decided to break our dinner doldrums by making something different.

We chose this Saffron-Ginger Rice with Thai Red Curry Soup from Southern Living Food for Today, with a few of our own modifications:

- For the rice we reduced the veggie broth to 1 ½ cups and added ½ cup of water

- New England Wild Jumbo Scallops instead of shrimp (only because Trader Joe’s didn’t have any!)

- Reduced the light coconut milk to 1 ½ cans, and added ½  cup of fat free milk

- 1/2 tablespoon of Roasted Red Chile Paste

- Snow peas instead of snap peas

This dish was easy to make, ready in no time, and very tasty! The soup was wonderfully creamy and velvety sweet, with a subtle kiss of ginger, saffron and curry flavors. The scallops were perfectly tender and tasted like plump bites of heaven, while the snow peas and mushrooms added nice crunch, earthiness and lovely texture. And for extra kick, we added a squirt of Sriracha Hot Chile Sauce to each bowl. A hearty, comforting bowl of exotic goodness that we look forward to eating again!

Roaster Bell Pepper and Chicken Soup

At the end of the week, one day before our typical Monday grocery shopping odyssey we behave like other primates, searching the cabinets, refrigerator and countertops for something to whip up, when suddenly we find waving at us our orange, red and yellow friends The Bell Peppers. With that in mind, we searched and blended a recipe by adding our own flair that changed The Bell Peppers to The Pimiento's as they relocated to the Southwestern Side of the Culinary Globe.

We started with this Roasted Red Bell Pepper Soup on allrecipes.com, and modified it like so:

- 2 red peppers, 2 yellow peppers, and 1 orange pepper (instead of 3 red)

- Northern white beans (instead of cannellini beans)

- 1 teaspoon chipotle chile powder

- 1/8 teaspoon ancho chile powder

- 1 teaspoon cumin

- 1 teaspoon oregano

- juice of 2 limes

- cilantro for garnish

We grilled two boneless, chicken breasts in our cast iron skillet, then thinly sliced and hand shredded them before adding to the soup.

This easy to make soup was loaded with smoky, zesty and sweet flavor with just the right amount of heat. The beans added a nice thick, creaminess, the pepper added a wonderfully roasted crunchiness, and the chicken was the perfect add for making this a filling meal. A heaping, hearty, healthy bowl of happiness that we can't wait to eat tomorrow again for lunch. We're sad to see The Pimiento's go, but we're certain they'll be visiting again soon!