Hurricane Isabel Soup

It's ironic that I made this soup this week, what with Hurricane Bonnie and Hurricane Charley dumping rain on us, but I first made this soup during the storm last year.

It's adapted from a recipe in Deborah Madison's fabulous book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which is truly worth buying--I really use my copy. But this is NOT a vegetarian soup.

JR had a friend over the day of the hurricane, and  I made the girls pancakes and turkey bacon for lunch. I cooked more than I needed, so I just crumbled the leftover bacon into the soup and found that the smokey flavor goes perfectly with this soup.

I also omitted a number of ingredients from Madison's recipe and sped up the cooking in a few spots. But it's wonderful soup, and the perfect thing to do during corn season.

If you have sweet corn and eat it on the cob, save and freeze the cobs! Then you can make this in winter--just use frozen corn.

Anyway, try this and enjoy it!

HURRICANE ISABELLE  CORN CHOWDER 

These foods will be used both in the stock and the soup:

 6 ears of CORN: Husk and hull. Set the corn aside for the soup—cobs are for the stock

1 lb of POTATOES (red or white)  Peel, but save the peels for the stock. Cut in small pieces and set aside

Whole BASIL: If you can get whole basil with stems, remove most of the leaves and save the stems for the stock.

1 large ONION: Peel and chop. Save the peels for the stock.

MAKING THE STOCK:

 Saute the chopped onion in a small amount of olive oil until soft.

Add the corn cobs, potato and onion peels and basil stems.

Add 2 BAY LEAVES, Sprigs of THYME (or about 1t dried) 4 peeled, smashed cloves of GARLIC (or a big spoonful of the chopped kind), Sprigs of PARSLEY (a big spoonful of the dried) and freshly ground black pepper.

Stir and cook for 5-10 minutes.

Add 2 quarts of CHICKEN STOCK (any will do—I use prepared base that you add water to)

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 25-30 minutes. Strain.

MAKING THE SOUP

 Saute  1 chopped onion, 1 bay leaf and ¼ t thyme in a small amount of olive oil until the onion is soft.

Add 1 quart of strained SOUP STOCK, and the peeled, chopped POTATOES.

Bring to a boil, simmer for 20 minutes.

Add CORN, 2 cups of MILK and  3-4 strips of TURKEY BACON (cooked and crumbled)

Simmer 5-10 minutes until everything is heated.

 Garnish with basil and black pepper to taste and serve!

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