Soup's On! Zucchini Chicken with Blue Cheese

It is the season of zucchini...tons of it. Lucky us! What more versatile vegetable? Good in cake, good in bread, good in soup. Here's a recipe that we sampled tonight...good and filling. 


Take 1 medium onion and chop into rough dice. Melt 2T butter in a pan and add the onion with 1t. olive oil. Cook until soft. Cut one large zucchini lengthwise, remove seeds, and roughly dice. Add 2t. of dried oregano and the zucchini to the onion and cook. After about 2 minutes, add 6 c. chicken broth. Let simmer until the zucchini is very soft. Add salt and pepper to taste. 


Carefully put the soup, a bit at a time, into a blender to make it smooth. Put the soup back into a pan and add 3 chicken breasts (already cooked) roughly diced, to the soup. Heat the soup to the desired temperature for serving.


After putting into a soup bowl, add a couple of teaspoons of blue cheese crumbles. The cheese will melt into the hot soup and make the flavor even richer.


Enjoy!

Buttered Bluegill in Parchment with Summer Squash

What a fantastic time of year--fresh vegetables arriving in the kitchen daily, fresh fish being caught. The Friday Night Challenge ingredients:

fish--bacon--asparagus--butter--lemon--summer squash

started me thinking about a process I recently saw in a Julia Child cookbook that uses parchment paper and high heat to assure that the fish cooks through without drying--a major downfall of fish, especially more delicate whitefish-types.

What follows is a relatively simple process for the meal:

Cook about 3 ounces of bacon cut into small pieces. Once it is about half finished, add fresh asparagus and a pat of butter. Add some small diced pieces of summer squash and let everything cook slowly. Add just a bit of lemon juice (about 1/4 t.).

Set the oven to 425 degrees. Prepare a piece of parchment paper with butter and lay the fish on  it along with some of the summer squash that is peeled with a vegetable peeler. Give it a pinch of salt and a squirt of lemon juice. Wrap tightly in the parchment and put on a shallow baking pan. Cook for around 15 minutes and check. The squash won't be overly tender; it will have texture.

While everything else is cooking and baking, peel and cut a cucumber into small bite-sized pieces. Give it a bit of salt and about 1/4t. dried dill. Let it set for a bit. Once the asparagus has cooked to doneness, remove it and the squash as well as about 1/2 of the bacon. Put the remainder of the bacon with the cucumber. Take the remaining bacon fat, add a touch of olive oil, a shake of salt, and a squirt of lemon juice and heat through. Pour over the cucumbers and coat.

Enjoy!