Tortilla Soup

This may sound ridiculous to all you adventurous eaters out there, but I credit the beginning of my love for cooking and food to the California Pizza Kitchen.  That's right...  Not a semester with a family in the hills of France.  Not a backpacking trip through Asia.  Not a jovial Paula Deen-esque grandmother who cooked all the classics.  Nope, for me it was my three year stint as a waitress at CPK.  Corporate, chain-ey, California Pizza Kitchen.  You see, when you're waiting tables, you don't stop for meal breaks (at least we didn't).  You pilfer ends of loaves of bread from the slicer, grab a few gulps of water out of conical paper cups (having a water bottle in the kitchen was a health code violation), and if the kitchen makes a mistake, like chicken on a pizza when the guest said, "no chicken", you eat that mistake as fast as you possibly can.  So I discovered lots of deliciousness like balsamic vinaigrette, pesto sauce, and the insanely delicious wonder known as peanut sauce.

 

 

Oh.  And this soup.  At CPK, cups of soup were one of the few items that didn't have to be entered into a computer (and paid for).  So we'd all fill up on tortilla soup before a shift started, loading it up with crispy tortilla strips and lots of Cholula.  It's one of those food memories that instantly takes me back to those superhuman nights when I could work a 9 hour shift on my feet, and then close the bar next door with my cute coworker.

Carrot Soup with Dungeness Crab

While I was growing up, having cracked crab for dinner was always a special meal. My family and I would sit around the table, silent at times while we concentrated on getting the precious meat out of its shell, dipping our treasures in melted butter. And yes, maybe it has something to do with the melted butter, but that's still my favorite way to enjoy crab. In fact, it's kind of difficult for me to eat it any other way. I'm so used to eating it straight from the shell that making a pile of it and waiting to consume it just goes against my very nature.

So to go against my typical crab eating style, it would have to be for a darn good reason. And this soup just happened to be it. I absolutely adore creamy vegetable soups, and the idea of topping one with a pile of freshly cracked crab seemed too delicious to pass up. And I was right. The combination of the warm and creamy carrot soup with the coolness of the fresh crab is a wonderful combination. The addition of lemon juice adds a wonderful acidity that cuts through the sweetness of the carrots, and there's never anything wrong with a sprinkling of fresh chives.

Broccoli "Cream" Soup

Los Angeles friends, I need you to close your eyes and pretend with me. Let's pretend that it's not 70 degrees and sunny in January. Instead, let's pretend that it's cold and windy and drizzly out, and that you're about to hunker down with a cable-knit throw and a good book. If you're like me, after a season of chocolate and eggnog and glazed meats, your body wants something green to balance it all out, and I think this broccoli soup is just the thing.

The recipe comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, Martha Stewart's Cooking School.
Doesn't Martha look cute on the cover? Anyway, I love this book because while many cookbooks present a collection of recipes, this one is designed like a textbook, and teaches cooking methods behind each of the recipes. I've made cauliflower, potato, spinach, and butternut squash soup all under this same method. In fact, last winter, the pureed soup was my favorite way to eat vegetables.