Mediterranean Christmas Eve Pasta by Jim Thome - from "Recipes From the Roster: Favorite Recipes From the Phillies" (2004)

RECIPE

1 cup sliced black olives
1 cup sliced green olives
3 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
2 anchovies
6 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 qt. bottle extra virgin olive oil
1 fresh orange slice
a generous amount of coarse ground black pepper, to taste
1 lb. angel hair pasta

Garnish: freshly shaven Parmesan cheese and fresh parsley, if available.

In a large saucepan, brown garlic in small amount of olive oil. Once garlic is browned, add the remaining olive oil, olives, anchovies and black pepper. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes over medium/low heat. 

After 45 minutes, add sliced mushrooms and orange slice. Cover and continue for 10 minutes, or until mushrooms are soft. Remove remainder of orange slice.

Presentation: pour over cooked and drained "al dente" angel hair pasta and serve with freshly shaven Parmesan cheese. Garnish with sprig of fresh parsley.

One more post for 2016, courtesy of former White Sox slugger and Renaissance man Jim Thome.  

I don't know if this "Christmas Eve Pasta" is a Thome family tradition or something he passed along that already had this name on it, but I love the images conjured by this dish. Picture big Jim and his family gathered in their ugly Christmas sweaters, chowing down on pasta and olives while awaiting Saint Nick.

I stumbled across the recipe while preparing to make the Holiday Country Soup recipe out of the Philadelphia Phillies' 2004 cookbook. 

One's eye could not help but be drawn to this amazing image while flipping through the pages.

A couple of tweaks: instead of buying green and black olives separately, I bought a mixed olive salad (green, green with pimientos, black and kalamata) with hot peppers in oil.  In keeping with the Mediterranean theme, I also threw in some chopped capers. Oh how I love the capers.

Apart from that, the recipe was very straightforward and I finally found a use for the angel hair pasta that had been kicking around the cupboard for too long than one should admit on a food blog.

But the dish turned out great.

A tip of the cap to Jim Thome for seeing off this strange and bizarre year of 2016 with a bang.

La Russa Gastronomique will be back with more culinary curiosities in the new year.

Holiday Country Soup by Eric Milton - from "Recipes From the Roster: Favorite Recipes From the Phillies" (2004)

RECIPE

1 tbsp. salad oil
1 lb. sweet Italian sausage - remove casing and crumble
1 cup chopped onions
3 medium cloves of garlic, minced
1 27.5 oz. jar of spaghetti sauce, any variety
5 cups beef broth
1 cup burgundy or other dry red wine
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup long grain rice

In a 5-quart Dutch pot on medium heat, heat oil until hot. Add sausage, onions and garlic until sausage is brown and onions are tender. Stir frequently. Spoon off fat.

Add remaining ingredients. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat to low; cover. Simmer 40 minutes or until vegetables are tender and rice is cooked. 

Makes 3 quarts -- 12 servings. 

For the final entry of the 2016 project, I made a soup representative of the season (sort of).

Eric Milton pitched eleven seasons in the majors, starting for the Minnesota Twins, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and the Los Angeles Dodgers.  He pitched just one seaon in Philly, leading the team in wins and strikeouts in 2004.  He also hung around long enough to provide a recipe for the club's cookbook that season.

There isn't really anything holiday-specific to this "Holiday Country Soup."  It's something you could enjoy year-round.

In an effort to make the soup just a little more Chrissmassy, I substituted the rice with some multicoloured pasta.  It was all for nought as the colours cooked right out of the pasta as it simmered.  Oh well.

The resulting soup is dark and savoury -- practically a stew.  Definitely something to fill the stomach in the cold winter months.

And that wraps up my year of soups from different baseball cookbooks.  I'll be back in 2017 with a new project... once I figure out what it will be... 

Creamy Roasted Garlic Soup - from "The Harry Caray's Restaurant Cookbook" (2003)

RECIPE

6 bulbs garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Spanish onion, chopped
1/3 cup Marsala wine
4 cups homemade chicken stock or equivalent amount canned low-sodium chicken broth
1 large russet potato, peeled and diced
1 cup heavy whipping cream
salt
black pepper
1/4 cup chopped chives

Preheat the oven to 400F.  

Remove the top quarter inch of each garlic bulb. Place the bulbs in a baking dish and drizzle with the olive oil. Bake for 1 hour or until the garlic is soft. Remove the garlic bulbs from the oven and allow them to cool. Squeeze the garlic out of the bulbs and reserve the olive oil from the baking dish.

Heat the reserved oil in a large stockpot and sauté the onion until clear. Add the Marsala wine and reduce by one-third, then add the chicken stock and bring the mixture to a boil.  

Add the potato and roasted garlic and reduce the heat to a simmer for approximately 1/2 hour or until the potato is soft.

Purée the soup in a blender or food processor and return the soup to the pot. Add the cream 1/4 cup at a time, stirring slowly. Season with the salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until the soup thickens. Garnish the soup with the chives.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Well, the unthinkable happened and the Chicago Cubs won the World Series earlier this month.

I have a couple of Cubs cookbooks, but I also have The Harry Caray's Restaurant Cookbook by Jane and Michael Stern. The Sterns have been food and travel writers for decades and this volume was part of a series of regional cookbooks that they published back in the 00s.

The Cubs' victory gave me a reason to finally crack this one open. Harry's has a bunch of restaurants spread out all over Chicagoland and this cookbook presents about 150 recipes for seemingly everything on the menu. It's a pretty decent cookbook. I'm actually curious to check out the other volumes in this series.

Let's get to this month's soup selection. There's a strong Italian flavour to this cookbook, keeping with the theme of the restaurants. The soup recipes include minestrone, tuscan bean and sausage, potato and pancetta, tomato and basil and a few others. The creamy garlic soup jumped out and I gave it a try.

This recipe is very simple (something I seem to say every month haha). You basically make a cream of potato soup and add the roasted garlic bulbs. It takes no time at all, and your home will be filled with fantastic aromas.

The result is a fragrant, mellow soup that goes down easy. Quoting from the cookbook: "When roasted, even ferocious garlic develops a pussycat personality," and I couldn't put it any better.

Turkey Soup by Carl Everett - from "Crowding the Plate: Favorite Recipes of the Boston Red Sox" (2001)

RECIPE

turkey carcass
1 onion, quartered
3/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1 bay leaf
1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 1/2 cups fresh carrots, diced
1 1/2 cups fresh celery, diced
3 chicken bouillon cubes
1 tsp. basil
1 tbsp. parsley
cooked rice or noodles

In a large pot place turkey carcass, onion, garlic salt and bay leaf; simmer for 2-2 1/2 hours.

Strain through cheesecloth and reserve broth; chill broth to remove fat.

Once the turkey is cool enough, break into bite size pieces.

Add can of diced tomatoes, vegetables, bouillon cubes, basil, parsley and turkey pieces; simmer.

Add cooked rice or noodles. [I went with rice.]

It's Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, and here's a thematic soup from Carl Everett -- member of the World Series-winning 2005 Chicago White Sox.

When Frank Thomas went down with injury for most of the 2005 season, Everett stepped up as the club's starting DH.

Everett is also known for holding some peculiar beliefs and turning them into memorable quotes, like this one:

"God created the sun, the stars, the heavens and the earth, and
 then made Adam and Eve. The Bible never says anything
 about dinosaurs. You can't say there were dinosaurs when you
 never saw them. Someone actually saw Adam and Eve. No one ever
 saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex."

Anyway... Everett played for a slew of different teams over his career including a stop in Boston, where he submitted this recipe for the 2001 Red Sox cookbook.

I made a couple of tweaks to this recipe. Since I didn't have a turkey carcass kicking around the kitchen, I picked up a smoked turkey leg from the local market. This infused the broth with an amazing smokey aroma. Turkey legs are huge, so there was the added visual amusement of imagining a pterodactyl leg simmering on the stovetop -- just for you Crazy Carl!

The second tweak was to replace the can of diced tomatoes (of which I am not a fan) with half a jar of spicy salsa. This gave the soup more flavour and a bit of kick as well.

One turkey leg plus the above ingredients produced a lot of soup for a Thanksgiving meal, or for freezing and enjoying during the winter. This is one that I will definitely make again.

Clam Chowder by Vance Law - from "Home Plate: The White Sox Favorite Recipes" (1983)

RECIPE

2 6-oz. cans minced clams
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
2 cups chipped potatoes
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup flour
2 cups milk
1 1/2 tsp. salt
dash pepper
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. thyme

Drain juice from clams.  Pour over chopped vegetables.  Add enough water to cover.  Simmer 20 minutes or until tender.  Melt butter, stir in flour, slowly add milk until mixture thickens.  Add salt, pepper, sugar and thyme.  Pour into the juice and vegetables.  Heat slowly and stir often.  Can sprinkle with crisp cooked bacon.

This turns out pretty thick.  I like to add milk to thin it down to where we like it.

Vance Law is remembered on the south side of Chicago for being a member of the 1983 White Sox team that made it to the ALCS.

A second generation major leaguer, Law also played for the Pirates, Expos, Cubs and Athletics, with a one season spell in Japan near the end of his career.

Here we have a made-from-scratch recipe for homemade clam chowder.  It didn't turn out as thick as the recipe implied.  It was also a lot less thick than the clam chowders that come out of a can ready made.

This one was definitely more "soupy" than "chowdery".  I guess if you want a thicker result, you can cook it longer or add more flour.

Either way, this is authentic tasty goodness.  Thank you Vance!

Spicy Black and Red Bean Soup by Bartolo Colón - from "Dine With the Tribe" (2001)

RECIPE

cooking spray
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 1/4 cups sliced carrots
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 cups chicken broth
2 tsp. sugar
1 16-oz. package frozen shoepeg white corn
1 15-oz can red kidney beans, drained
1 15-oz can black beans, drained
1 14 1/2-oz can Mexican-style stewed tomatoes with peppers and spices, undrained
1 14 1/2-oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 4 1/2-oz can green chilies

Spray inside of a large Dutch oven with cooking spray; place over medium-high heat until heated. Add onion, carrot and garlic. Saute five minutes.  

Stir in broth, sugar, corn, red and black beans, both cans of tomatoes, and chilies (adjust chili amount to desired spiciness).

Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat. Simmer two hours. To make preparation even easier, use frozen, chopped onions and small baby carrots (do not slice).

Bartolo Colón has become one of my favourite major leaguers in recent years.  

He was a member of the Chicago White Sox in 2003 and again in 2009, and he's the last former Montreal Expo still playing in the majors. He's also one of the few remaining major leaguers still older than me.

Colón broke into the majors with the Cleveland Indians in 1998. He won the Cy Young Award with the LA Angels in 2005. He made his first trip to the World Series as a member of the New York Mets in 2015.

For someone who gets stockier and paunchier with each new season, his expanding size betrays a still lively athleticism. This year, he hit the first home run of his career.  

Twitter was hijacked with Bartolo-inspired merriment for an entire night. It was glorious.

This recipe for spicy bean soup comes from the Cleveland Indians' 2001 cookbook. It is pure comfort food. 

I made a few tweaks to the recipe, using oil instead of cooking spray, and omitting the second can of tomatoes. Instead, I poured in one third of a jar of Mrs. Renfro's hot habanero salsa -- I like it hot!

This is a simple "chop some veggies and open some cans" recipe which will not tax your skills in the least. You do get rewarded for your undemanding efforts with a huge pot of soup that can feed an entire family or freeze well to enjoy later. As with everything (everything, except sushi), it's always better the day after.

You go, Big Sexy!

Strawberry Soup by Floyd Sageser - from "Royals' Recipes: World Series Style" (1980)

RECIPE

3 cups ripe strawberries, washed and hulled
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup dry sherry
1 cup cake crumbs or diced pound cake
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
pinch of cloves
1 cup white cream

Place cleaned fruit and lemon juice in saucepan.  Add wine and sherry.  Bring to boil.  Simmer on low heat until fruit is soft; cool.

Pour fruit and liquid into blender (may need to make two batches).  Add cake crumbs and spice.  Puree on low speed until smooth.

Pour into a serving bowl.  Stir in cream.  Chill well.  Serve in chilled bowl with strawberry as garnish.  

It's strawberry season, which makes this the perfect time to try this cold soup as a starter or even as a dessert.

This recipe was submitted for the Kansas City Royals' 1980 cookbook by season ticket holder Floyd Sageser, one of the club's super-fans.  The book contains an entire chapter of recipes submitted by Royals boosters.

Hulling strawberries is not as daunting as it sounds.  A paring knife and five minutes, and you're ready to go.  You end up blitzing this soup with a blender anyway, so you might be able to cheat on the hulling.

The cooking segment of the recipe takes only a few minutes once the strawberries are in a boil.  They softened pretty quickly, allowing the rest of the process to follow quickly.

Once the soup was fully chilled (after a few hours or overnight), I served it up in ramekins.  The result was tart, not sweet.  I even added some white sugar before the blender step, and the soup still turned out more tart than sweet.  If you need to sweeten it further, you could set a little pillow of whipped cream on top before finishing with a whole strawberry or two.

A nice cooling treat for the summer.  Try this out while fresh strawberries are still out there in abundance.

Mulligatawny by Whitey Herzog - from "Cooking with the Cardinals, Vol II" (1988)

RECIPE

4 tbsp. cooking oil
3 cups chopped carrots
3 cups chopped green pepper
3 cups chopped onions
4 tart apples, peeled, cored and chopped
15 cups hot water
15 chicken bouillon cubes
8 large whole chicken breasts
8 whole cloves
1/2 tsp. mace
6-8 sprigs fresh parsley
2 tbsp. salt
6-8 drops Tabasco sauce
3 tbsp. paprika
3 cups peeled tomatoes
5 tsp. Accent
4 tsp. sugar
2 tsp. curry powder

Heat oil in soup pot.  Add carrots, green pepper, onion and apples.  Saute over low heat until carrots are tender (15-20 minutes).

Add hot water, bouillon cubes and remaining ingredients.  Cover and simmer for at least 1 hour.  

Remove chicken; bone and cut into small pieces.  Return to pot; simmer 35-45 minutes over very low heat.  Serves 24.

It is easier to cook chicken first, cool and cut it up.  Save broth and add to 15 cups of water when finishing soup.  May substitute wild game such as rabbit, squirrel, pheasant or quail for chicken.  These require more meat.  

"This seems like a lot of work, but it is delicious.  I make it to freeze for after skiing.  We can't wait to get off the slopes!  A nice soup for friends who are ill." -- Mary Lou Herzog

I dont think Hall of Famer Whitey Herzog needs much of an introduction, so we can cut straight to this recipe provided by the former St. Louis Cardinals manager's wife Mary Lou.

Mulligatawny is one of those soups that never has the same two recipes.  The name is a mashup of two Tamil words: milagu and tunni, meaning "pepper water."  Originating in India during the British Empire, it is essentially a curried soup -- but even that description is open to myriad interpretations.

Perhaps the most amusing description of what mulligatawny is comes from novelist Rupert Croft-Cooke (quoted in The Raj at Table: A Culinary History of the British in India by David Burton): 

"Mulligatawny is a soup invented by lazy Indian cooks in the days of British rule and given this Tamil name to impress the memsahib with the fact that she was getting something truly of the country.  In fact she was getting, as the customers in some Indian restaurants get still, the remains of yesterday's curry and rice stewed and put through a sieve."

So this well-named soup travelled from India to the United Kingdom, and from there to all points around the world as a tasty, spicy soup. 

Mulligatawny can be vegetarian or with meat.  Chicken is the most common, but lamb is also popular.  The seasonings can vary from a sweet curry (with apples, raisins and sugar) to a fiery curry (heavy on the hot peppers and spices).

The version that landed in Cooking with the Cardinals, Volume II is an Americanized version, medium-sweet.  The ingredients are easy to find and the hardest part of the recipe is plowing through its many steps.  The end result is delicious.  This was a happy discovery in the baseball cookbooks library.

Gary's Peanut Soup by Gary Saunders - from "Home Plate Cookbook" (1998)

RECIPE

1 medium onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1/3 cup butter
3 tbsp. flour
2 quarts chicken stock or canned chicken broth
1/2 cup peanuts
1 tbsp. oil
1 1/2 cups smooth peanut butter
1 3/4 cups light cream
chopped peanuts

Saute onion and celery in butter until soft.  Add flour, stirring until well blended.  Gradually add chicken stock, stirring until smooth.

Bring mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and strain.

Place 1/2 cup peanuts and oil in a food processor, and process until smooth.  Add ground peanut mixture, peanut butter, and cream to strained mixture, stirring until well blended and smooth.  Cook over low heat until warm (do not boil).

Garnish each serving with chopped peanuts.

I love peanut soup.  Friggin love it.

Peanut soup is a west African thing, and a southern U.S. thing.  I have prepared versions from both regions, and this one here is one of the simplest, especially if you have most of these ingredients on hand already.

The end result of this recipe from the Home Plate Cookbook is a salty-peanutty broth that I fought hard not to guzzle right out of the bowl like a maniac.  The addition of chopped peanuts gives a crunchy surprise as you mow through your serving.

If peanut soup is foreign to you, go ahead and give it a try.  It's thinner and more savoury than a peanut butter smoothie, but just as delish if not more.

And if you really wanted to make this into a thematic baseball soup, top it with some cracker jacks right before serving.

Minnie's Cuban Paella by Minnie Miñoso - from "Home Plate Cookbook" (1998)

RECIPE

12 clams in the shell
6 cups water
2 1/2 lbs. fresh shrimp
1/4 tsp. ground red pepper
4 tbsp. olive oil, divided
1 tbsp. butter
1 cup white rice
1 tsp. salt
1 bay leaf
1 cube chicken bouillon
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 onions, finely chopped
2 green bell peppers, finely chopped
2 tomatoes, peeled
1/4 cup sliced black olives
1 1/2 cups cheddar cheese, finely grated

Place clams in 6 cups water and bring to a boil.  Add shrimp and red pepper; boil five minutes.  Drain, reserving 2 1/2 cups stock.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a 3-quart saucepan.  Add rice and reserved stock; stir well.  Add salt, bay leaf and bouillon cube; simmer 25 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Pour remaining 2 tablespoons oil into a 6-quart Dutch oven.  Add garlic, onion and green pepper; sauté 10 minutes.

Add cooked shrimp, clams and rice mixture along with tomatoes and olives; stir to blend.  Pour all ingredients into a Paella pan or oven-safe serving dish.  Sprinkle with grated cheese and bake 10-15 minutes.

Let cool 10 minutes before serving.

Makes 6-8 servings.

Legendary White Sox outfielder Minnie Miñoso -- the Cuban Jackie Robinson -- was held in such esteem that the better part of the city of Chicago went into mourning when he passed away in 2015.

Miñoso's MLB career began way back in 1949 with Cleveland.  He spent most of his prime with the Indians and especially the White Sox, for whom he played for most of the 1950s.  He went on to attain unequalled status as the only man to play in the majors in five different decades.

The nine-time All Star had his number 9 retired by Chicago, where he is affectionately known as Mr. White Sox.  After his final MLB appearance in 1980, he worked as a coach and ambassador for the Sox organization for the rest of his life. 

You can imagine my excitement at discovering one of Minnie's very own recipes in the Home Plate Cookbook.  At first glance, "Minnie's Cuban Paella" looks like it might even be a personal, hand-drawn recipe from the old country.  Right until you get to the cheddar cheese.

Cheddar cheese on top of a paella?  That seemed an unlikely ingredient, so I asked my good friend Iron Chef Español for his opinion.  He immediately declared that putting cheddar on a paella is something only a heathen would do.

So out of curiosity I started googling around for "Cuban Paella" and "Cheddar Paella".  One of the search results uncovered this old McCall's Great American Recipe card from 1973, with the exact same recipe.

So the truth comes out!  Alas, "Minnie's Cuban Paella" was just a copy of an Americanized recipe for homemakers of the 70s.  

I guess one can still imagine Minnie enjoying this dish, perhaps as an easy-step paella to make at home, which it is.  Don't get me wrong, paella is still a multi-step process, but the end result of this one was decent enough.  After 10 minutes in the oven, the cheddar melted in between the grains of rice for a pleasantly gooey result, even if not authentically Cuban or even Spanish.

Ahh, it was fine, no need to be so critical.  If I had to do it again, I'd ditch the clams and throw in some spicy chorizo instead.  

Viva Miñoso!

French Silk Chocolate Pie by Bobby Thigpen - from "Home Plate Cookbook" (1998)

RECIPE

1 (8-ounce) stick butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1 baked pie shell
heavy cream, whipped
slivered almonds

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Blend in chocolate and vanilla, add eggs one at a time, beating for 2 minutes after each addition.

Pour mixture into pie shell and chill for at least 3 hours.  Top with whipped cream and almonds.

In 1990, Bobby Thigpen came out of nowhere to shatter the MLB single season saves record with 57.  The previous record was held by Dave Righetti, who saved 46 games for the New York Yankees in 1986.

The 1990 season would prove to be a career year for Thigpen, who went into decline after that due to an offseason injury.  He was traded to Philadelphia in 1993, signed with Seattle in 1994, and ended his professional career in Japan.  Currently, he is back with the White Sox as bullpen coach.

This is one of two recipes that Thigpen submitted for the Home Plate Cookbook, the other one being for a shrimp spread.

French silk chocolate pie is unique in that it is a no-bake pie (aside from the crust), and it contains raw eggs.  That may freak some people out, but if you have the stomach for it, this makes for a nice, chocolately pie.  Silky too, as the name implies.

I got shy on the almonds when it came time to take some photos.  Later on I poured slivers all over the whipped cream for a nicer look and better contrast of textures.  The chocolate filling is very smooth, and this is an easy pie to make.