It's that time of year, at least in the desert, when I wonder how long I can put off calling the handyman and having him disassemble the swamp cooler and power up my terribly inefficient wall-hugging gas heater. I think I can put it off for a couple more days, maybe a week.
In the meantime, I'm cranking back through my soup recipes, tinkering with old faves and playing with some hopeful new ones. Tonight's slurpiness is easy enough, based on Heidi Swanson's Ten Minute Couscous Soup. Heidi, if you're not familiar, writes a fabulous blog that I've been following for a couple years now, 101 Cookbooks. She also wrote her first (second?) cookbook last year. She's cool and groovy in the best possible ways.
So using her recipe as a template, but halving it being the single fabulous girl that I am, I am halfway through a pot of what is easily my fastest and tastiest soup yet this season. My version goes something like this:
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup whole wheat couscous
1/2 leek, sliced thinly on the diagonal
handful of shredded carrots
6 or so frozen artichoke hearts
generous tablespoon of shrimp-slosh spices (below)
scant tablespoon butter, softened
Smoosh together spices and butter into a beautiful ruddy paste. Bring broth, leek, carrots & arty hearts to boil. Turn off heat, stir in spicy butter, add couscous and cover for 4 minutes. Enjoy with a few oyster crackers or a drizzle of olive oil or a few pieces oil-soaked sun-dried tomato.
** Shrimp-slosh spices: A couple decades ago, a family who is very close to mine first served us this lovely New Orleansesque shrimpy dish. The actual recipe card they gave my mom long since evaporated into the ether, but about a decade ago I sort of figured out my own version of the spices. Since there's no clear guideline, use the herbs and spices you like. Here's how mine looks mostly:
3 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon dried thyme
2+ teaspoons cumin
generous pinch or two dried red pepper flakes
3-4 grinds black pepper
pinch of cayenne
pinch of sea salt
Mix all spices & herbs in a glass jar. You could also include a few bay leaves in the jar, keeping in mind that if they make their way into the pot, you'll need to dredge them out before serving it.
It's slurpilicious!