Mulligatawny Soup Recipe

Onions are the foundation of many
Indian dishes.  Love em!

Merideth's mom's vegetable soup. Always delicious and filling - now you can make it too! :)

Dill, potatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, celery,
sweet peas - soon, you will be delicious soup!

Red Lentil Soup - Quick, spicy, and filling!

Lentils and other legumes are nutritional powerhouses!  They are high in fiber and low in calories, plus they fill you up and taste oh so good :)  When you combine them with rice, they also give you a complete amino acid profile i.e. they help you get a complete protein.  While I love meat, I like to remind people that you can get all your nutrition that you need from vegetables.  Just be sure to pick up some B-12 supplements, not a bad idea for veggies and meat eaters alike!

A pile of red lentils. 

This recipe calls for red lentils, which are a smaller version of your standard brown lentil.  The advantages are are a slightly different nutritional profile, a beautiful color - and cooking time.  Red lentils cook very quickly and do not need to be soaked like other lentils.  You can just chuck em in the pot and cook as is :)

It should take about 20 minutes to prepare this soup and about 35-40 minutes to cook it.  After you know how to make it, you can probably do the whole shebang in about 50 minutes.

For the yogurt you dollop on at the end, I recommend FAGE Greek yogurt.  This, IMHO, is the superior brand of supermarket-available Greek yogurt.  You can usually get a nice tub of it on sale for between $1 and $1.75.

Tom Kha Gai - a delicious, creamy, citrus-y and spicy Thai soup!

Kaffir lime leaves

My lady loves when I make this soup for her, and indeed, it's very tasty.  It does require a number of semi-exotic ingredients, so hopefully you have access to a nice local Asian market or some place similar.  Most will have all the ingredients listed.

This soup uses Kaffir lime leaves - these are leaves from a type of lime, and when used it cooking, they add a delicious lime taste to whatever it is you put them in.  These are most common in Thai cooking, and I can't really remember having them in other cuisine's dishes - which isn't to say that it didn't happen, just that I can't remember it.

Lemongrass - Courtesy of foodsubs.com

Another somewhat exotic ingredient used is Lemongrass.  When you get a bunch of this, you'll need to peel off the hard woody outside to expose the tender soft inside.  As you might might imagine, this tastes of lemons :)

Galanga root.
Image courtesy of eujacksonville.com

Galanga root is an Asian root that.. most closely resembles ginger.  It is spicy in the way that ginger is but has a rather different taste.  It is likely that you will be unable to find the fresh root at many Asian markets.  If this is the case, then you can add a little bit more of the dry one.  Be sure to re-hydrate it in hot water for about 20-30 minutes before adding it into the recipe, and add the water it hydrated in into the recipe as well - mustn't waste that delicious flavor after all :)

Stilton and apple soup - Rich, delicious, and an easy way to impress your friends!

Now, I haven't mention this before, but I LOVE a good soup.  Maybe it's that I chew my food so many times before I swallow it, and I like to be able to just scarf stuff down.  Or maybe because there's nothing on a cold day like a nice hot, hearty bowl of soup.  Either way, soup is delicious as an appetizer or even in this case, as a main course!

A chunk of Blue Stilton cheese.

Now, the main ingredient in this recipe is a cheese called Stilton.  If you've ever bought or had generic "blue cheese", this is probably Stilton that just wasn't good enough to be given that name.  Stilton is a blue cheese with an incredible taste and wonderful, creamy, crumbly texture.  It is arguably more mild than Roquefort or Gorgonzola, which are both similar blue cheeses - but of course, like any blue cheese, it's a little pungent :)

This recipe is delicious, straightforward, and is sure to impress your friends and guests.  It's also VERY filling - not surprising once you realize how much cheese in each bowl! :)

You will need a food processor for this recipe.  You CAN use a blender, but it will be a little more difficult and harder to get the smooth texture perfected.

The Best Chicken Soup recipe ever - with or without matzoh balls!

An eastern European delicacy - Chicken Soup!

Oh yes, it doesn't seem like anything fancy.  But a good chicken soup is absolutely delicious, it has health benefits that go beyond what you'd expect - it helps with congestion, it's antibacterial and antiviral, and very useful for healing yourself when you're under the weather.  But most importantly - it tastes marvelous!

If you've only ever had the canned stuff or whatever it is they serve in diners, you're missing out.
This recipe will make enough soup to feed 10 people 2 or 3 nice sized bowls each.  You can vary the amount of water you use; don't go too thin with it.  We make this a few times a year, around the new year, holidays, etc. - It's a big, and not inexpensive undertaking, but the best things in life aren't cheap - remember that :)  We make 4 big pots, it takes up the whole stove.

This recipe is at least a hundred years old, as it goes back 4 generations.