the drew ™ appears in this week's CinWeekly paper! He is featured sharing a recipe, along with a short interview, and full color picture! I was skimming through the paper yesterday, and his face jumped out at me. I said, "Heyyyyyyy, I know that guy!"

Very cool, Drew! Way to go!

Same thing happened here!

I said, "heeeyyy that's my friend(lover) drew!!"

congrats drew.

His mug is online, too...
http://cinweekly.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article...0314/1047/rss02

It doesn't like the picture link... crafty webmasters at CinWeekly and their dynamic tags...

But, Drew... you totally should'a had your picture with your hand on your forehead looking into the soup... a la...


~fff

Hey! Was he calling us Apples weird in this article?

Unusual Apples
Treat your guests to a creamy soup

KATIE KELLEY | CIN WEEKLY

CIN COOK: Drew Vogel

Thanks everyone!

Try the soup, too. It's really good!

I'm plannin' on trying it soon... veggie broth being the only substitution...

Q... What's the major benefit to an immersion or stick blender over a regular blender? I imagine there's a wikipedia about it... eh... I'm lazy

~fff - np: bobby previte - the coalition of the willing

How cool is that?!! Congrats and all that, Drew.

How about sharing the recipe here?

Cher

The Recipe

APPLE AND CHESTNUT SOUP

SPICED CREAM
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• pinch allspice
• pinch ginger, ground
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• pinch salt

SOUP:
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter; cut into small pieces
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and chopped
• 14.8 oz container prepared French chestnuts
• 4 cups low sodium chicken broth or stock
• 2 tablespoons marsala
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• Salt and pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. For spiced cream, in a small bowl, combine the cream, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, sugar and salt and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

2. For soup, melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.

3. Add the apple, onion and celery and cook until tender and translucent, 3 to 5 minutes.

4. Add the chestnuts and stock, increase the heat to high and bring to a boil.

5. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the chestnuts are very soft, about 20 minutes.

6. Process the soup with a stick blender until very smooth.

7. Alternatively, remove the apples, onions, celery and chestnuts and put them into a blender and puree until very smooth. Return puree to the saucepan.

8. Add the marsala and cream, season with salt and pepper and stir to combine. Set the pan over medium heat and gently reheat the soup.

9. Whisk the spiced cream until lightly foamy. Ladle the soup into individual bowls and garnish with the spiced cream.

SERVES 8.


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This sounds fantastic!!!!!

Yes, it does. Sounds like something I'll put away for a nice Fall soup. Yum!'

Thanks, Joyce.

Cher

An immersion (also called a stick blender) goes into the pot of ingredients instead of having you move the contents of the pot to another vessel. It's cleaner, less likely to splash up, and safer. Here is some info, and here is a darned good (expensive) one (complete with a picture).

We just got a KitchenAid 12-cup Food Processor on sale! Woohoo, time to make salsa!

We tried this Apple and Chestnut soup recipe yesterday for company. We ended up getting an immersion blender yesterday morning at BB&B (it worked fantastically).

The hardest part of this recipe was trying to find French Chestnuts (or any chestnuts for that matter). Margarita finally found some at Jungle Jim's... she got the pureed style... which wasn't what the recipe called for, but they worked out great anyway. They were merely pureed with water (no other outside ingredients). Drew, where do you get the French chestnuts?

Wow, anyway, this recipe was fantastic. We substituted veggie broth for the chicken stock, but other than that and the form of pureed chestnuts, we made no other modifications.

We'll definitely be making this again, and it's great to have such a wonderful soup in our repertoire.

~fff