Coconut milk dovetails with Italian seasonings in shrimp, spinach soup
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Loading... - Mira Farago
- 07 Oct 2022
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Unless you're a diaper-clad toddler in a high chair celebrating a first birthday cake, playing with your food generally is frowned upon.
However, I say play with recipes.
My favorite kitchen toy is the soup pot, where I often mix and match ingredients much like kids mix Legos from different kits.
Soups and stews are easy to manipulate, based on available ingredients and imagination. A one-pot dinner is where mistakes can become masterpieces − and with less dishes to clean than a traditional meat-and-two-sides meal.
I suggest, however, that as you play you keep notes in case you want to recreate that dish or pass it on. Otherwise, you may have regrets.
Years after the fact, I still cannot repeat exactly a creamy soup with potatoes, bacon, cheese and steak I threw together inspired by a shuttered Lubbock restaurant's first course soup featuring leftover baked potatoes.
My subsequent attempts at the hearty soup are close, but I keep searching for that elusive ingredient that made a one-time showing in the soup pot and then vanished into the recesses of my foggy memory.
As I crafted the following recipe for Italian-Inspired Shrimp and Coconut Soup with Bacon and Spinach, I penciled ingredients and steps on a 3-by 5-inch index card. That is my usually way to document, unless I'm working off a cookbook or printed online recipe. I then jot adjustments in the margins.
Credit for the original recipe is convoluted. It first goes to my sister-in-law, who made a copycat version of Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana for last year's family Christmas gathering. Several of us made a soup or stew, served with freshly baked bread from my mother-in-law. Read More...
