My friend Joyce, who is quite the cook, has a wonderful thick recipe binder that she calls her "tried and trues". On one girl trip I was lucky enough to look inside the pages of this gastronomical journal - one great recipe after another - with her notes saying so! I was very impressed...I never thought about keeping my tried and trues in a binder - altogether - instead of scattered about the kitchen in drawers, on shelfs, or stuck on the inside of cupboards!! That was definitely a "light bulb" moment for me - and I have since come to learn that ALL of my friends have their recipes in binders....where was I when this handy little tip was passed out?!? I now have a binder - a huge one - with the tried and trues and those yet to be tried - which keeps growing and growing - I'm just now realizing that I need a separate binder for the ones waiting to be tried....
A few months back Joyce sent me a recipe for Sweet Potato and Sausage Soup....I made it and really liked it - put it straight away into my binder for safe keeping. About 3 weeks later I sat down with my copy of Bon Appetit, October 2007, and there was the same recipe. Well, I don't know how Bon Appetit got Joyce's recipe but in MY BINDER it says JOYCE'S SWEET POTATO AND SAUSAGE SOUP across the top - that way I KNOW it's good! I made this for my quilting friends yesterday - they all loved Joyce's soup, too! The recipe says Sweet Potatoes but it calls for "red-skinned sweet potatoes" which are really yams....potato, potauto....
When I'm going to be doing a lot of cooking, preparing different dishes for a special meal, I always try to do as much prep work as I can the night before. I chop everything and put it in Ziploc bags, then when I'm ready to cook, I just open the bags and Waaaa-La...I'm in business! For my quilt group I made Joyce's Soup, a fall salad with a maple dressing (courtesy of Tyler Florence) and a Mushroom and Caramelized Onion Galette - followed by the Caramel Nut Shells for dessert. I'll post the Galette and Salad recipe soon, dessert recipe in the following post.
Back to the soup....it's really a four step process....you brown the sausage and then remove it from the pan - leaving all those great little bits behind.
Step two is cooking the onions until they are caramelized and soft.
Step three is the addition of the potatoes to the onions - this recipe also calls for white-skinned potatoes AND yams...but I was fresh out of potatoes so I just used yams - I never even missed the others.
The final step is mashing some of the potatoes or I used my immersion blender - another handy tip I learned from Joyce - except that when she was singing the praises of the immersion blender she forgot to mention one thing....so I'll mention it here....it is VERY important NOT to lift the immersion blender to the top of the soup - or else you will be wearing the soup - just another kitchen-life lesson learned the hard way. You can also put some of the soup into a regular blender - just don't fill too full as hot liquids and blenders don't mix....another kitchen-life lesson....or you can use the plain old, simple masher. You just want to make the soup a little thicker by mashing some of the potatoes. Then you add the sausage back in and throw in some spinach and you're ready for a bib and a spoon.
Joyce's Sweet Potato and Sausage Soup - coincidently, this same recipe is found in Bon Appetit's October 2007 issue and they left out Joyce's name! By the way, thanks Joyce!
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 10 to 11 ounce fully cooked smoked sausage, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices
2 medium onions, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 pounds yams - about 2 large, peeled, quartered lengthwise and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices
1 pound white skinned potatoes, peeled, halved lengthwise, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices
6 cups chicken broth
1 9-oz. bag fresh spinach
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add sausage; cook until brown, stirring often, about 8 minutes. Transfer sausage to paper towels to drain. (Pour off some of the oil if needed.) Add onions and garlic to pot and cook until translucent, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Add all potatoes and cook until beginning to soften, stirring often, about 12 minutes. Add broth; bring to boil, scraping up browned bits. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until potatoes are soft, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes. Using a potato masher, mash some of the potatoes in the pot (or use an immersion blender or regular blender is you want a creamier texture - but just blend up a little bit of the soup - you still want some chunks.) Add browned sausage to soup. Stir in spinach and simmer just until wilted, about 5 minutes. Stir in remaining 1 tablespoon oil (I omitted this - thought it was unnecessary.) Season with salt and pepper. This makes a lot of soup - enough to feed 10 hungry quilters!
