Posts filed under ‘Soup’
Week of Soup: Sweet Heat
Let’s ponder the humble parsnip for a moment, shall we? For starters, I’ve always been a little disturbed by its phallic appearance. Still, if that were enough to stop me, I’d have quite the limited vegetable repertoire without carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, slender eggplant, and even some radishes and potatoes. I guess it’s the color of parsnips that makes them just a tad bit more disturbing than the others… Okay, enough pondering on that aspect of the humble parsnip.
Parsnips, to me at least, are highly underrated. They’re the unsung hero of the root vegetable world with their uniquely sweet flavor. Add just a chunk of parsnip to any dish, and it transforms something like a run-of-the-mill Thanksgiving side dish into a Bon Appetite recipe worthy of clipping. Parsnip in soup has been a long-standing affair in my kitchen, especially in winter squash or potato based varieties.
But honestly, I’ve always hesitated to make soup, or any dish for that matter, with parsnips flying solo. As much as I liked their flavor, I labored under the presumption that, on their own, they’d just be too sweet for a savory dish. That’s not to say I haven’t on occasion pondered putting them in a dessert and just might still with the few locally harvested ones I have left. Anyone have any clever ideas to share?
As you might have realized by now, here in the SFTF kitchen, we (and by “we”, I mean “me” since D most definitely does not abide by this) have a creed. It’s not ground-breaking, but it certainly steers the creative cooking juices in the right direction: Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained. A recipe for parsnip soup in one of my cookbooks caught my eye, and, while parsnip soup recipes are a dime-a-dozen, I decided it was time to give it a shot since this particular recipe seemed to waylay any concerns about overwhelming sweetness by piling on the spicy heat.
Nary a doubt will I have about letting parsnips take center stage in future dishes. Served with a rustic grilled cheese sandwich on the side, this soup was sublime. The fried garlic and mustard seed garnish was just the thing to add a little punch and really must be included when you serve it. What a great combination – I wish I’d thought of it myself!
What I did think up myself was a second ingenious (parsnips may be humble, but I am not) and delicious use for this soup. After eating it for both lunch and dinner the day before, I was interested in something a little different to make it more of a complete meal. I sautéed some soy chicken strips in a large skillet, added some frozen shelled peas, and simmered it all with enough soup to make a nice thick sauce. I added a pinch of my newly acquired garam masala spice mix (thank you, Santa) and served it all over some Israeli couscous. Lip smacking, I assure you. In fact, I have altered the recipe below to include a pinch of the Indian spice mix. It’s not necessary by any means, but it did add a greater depth of flavor that shouldn’t be missed if you have garam masala on hand.
What’s your favorite recipe for parsnips?
Week of Soup: Sassy Salsa
In my quest to find some distinctive soup recipes for SFTF’s Week of Soup, I flipped through just about all my cookbooks. I got a good workout lifting them up and down from the high shelf in my kitchen that they call home. I have big books, little books, soft cover books, hard backed books, spiral bound and saddle-stitched, all-text types, pictures- on-every-page types, black and white graphics, vivid color graphics, thick books and thin books… In short, while I might not have every cookbook in the world (an achievement I have to admit contemplating tackling on occasion), I do have quite the variety of them.
As I’ve talked about before though, A Good Day for Soup seems to stand above the others, at least when I’m looking for portage inspiration of course. To look at it, you might not be quick to pick this book up at the store. It’s paperback and not terribly pretty. By that I mean, the cover is nice and graphic but not scrumptious as so many cookbooks’ are. The recipes are copious but there’s nary a picture to be seen, something that’s almost guaranteed to have me putting a cookbook back on the store’s shelf instead of the cashier’s counter. But, for whatever reason, I did buy this picture-less book, and I’ve always been glad I did. The recipes are written with such passion and interest that I just know, deep down in my soup-making bones, the authors are kindred spirits of mine.
Having thumbed through its pages many a time before, I was surprised to see a recipe I hadn’t noticed before this time – a chilled soup made from tomatillos. This recipe was perfect…if it were August! But in January I’d be hard pressed to 1) find local tomatillos and 2) work up the will to eat cold soup. Rarely daunted by such problematic points, I thought to myself that I might have luck adapting this recipe to use up some of my frozen stores of salsa verde…hmmmm… You see, the farm had absolute GOBS of tomatillos this summer, and I had no choice but to make GOBS of salsa verde to freeze. I have since regretted this non-choice on the occasions when my big toe has gotten an unhappy reception when I open the freezer door and a container falls out. Too much frozen salsa verde can indeed be a bad thing.
So really, I had nothing to loose. As for the temperature thing, I figured if a soup can be cooked, why can’t it be eaten warm? Indeed! For the sake of experiment, I tried it both ways, and I really did prefer it warm. In fact, I was pleased as punch with its flavor overall. If you don’t have your own frozen stash of salsa verde on hand at the moment, this soup is still feasible using a jar of salsa verde from the grocery store. Just give the stuff you buy a taste prior to putting it in the soup. If it’s got a lot of hot pepper heat to it already, cut back on the minced jalapeno called for in the salsa topping. I had made my frozen salsa verde relatively mild so that it might prove more adaptable for just such occasions as this when I’m trying out a new recipe.
Week of Soup: Peanuts with a Bite
I realize I wasn’t much of a lean mean posting machine last week. I have a very good excuse for the lag. I was busy preparing for this week. See, this week is one I’ve been anticipating/planning for almost a month and required a little advanced cooking. Now it’s finally time to kick off SFTF’s Week of Soup! And, boy, do I ever have some wing-dinger recipes for you!
My mom got me started (of course) on homemade soup when we used to can our own vegetable soup mix during the summer that then sustained us through the winter. She didn’t have any hard-and-fast recipe. Instead, whatever the garden was producing the most of that year is what inevitably led the chorus of flavors in the soup mix. Surprisingly enough though, my mom rarely made other soups once she had a full larder of the vegetable mix and her other stand-by, chicken corn/noodle. I didn’t care. I never got tired of that vegetable soup!
Once I left home for college and started working in the Allentown Fairgrounds Farmers Market, I took advantage of the “one hour until closing time so everything must go!” frenzy by collecting ever-changing assortments of fresh vegetables and fruits to take back to my roommates and our tiny kitchen. Since many of these vegetables where not the pick of the litter, having sat in the market stalls for three days, I often found myself with a sack of veggies that were in a “do or die” state. I had to do something with them right then and there or toss them in the trash. Since a poor college student never throws food in the trash, I got creative. Soup, my friends, was the answer almost every single time (except for the occasional salsa).
Thus ends the tale of how soup became my “thing”. I quickly learned that just about anything can go into soup once you get the basic concept down. In fact, after I’ve shown you a few tried-and-true recipes, I’m going to take you step-by-step through a challenge I’m issuing to myself. Without going shopping and with no recipe to follow, I plan on making soup at the end of this week with whatever’s left in my kitchen prior to my weekly Friday night grocery run. Should be interesting, right?
For now, I wanted to kick things off with my favorite soup of all time, Georgia Peanut Soup. Coincidentally, I ran into this soup for the first time also during college. There was a great vegetarian café, the Green Café, across the river in Bethlehem that stood in as my dinner spot when I went to listen to the bands at the Fun House. Their peanut soup was amazing. I dutifully asked for the recipe but was told it wasn’t really up for grabs since the cook just made it as she went along. Well, that was cool and all, but didn’t really help me out.
Honestly, I forgot about the peanut soup once I graduated and moved to Philly. That is, until I bought my copy of The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Soups and saw what could only be a great starting recipe for my beloved peanut soup. After dabbling with it over the years, I think it’s just about a perfect replica of the Green Café’s version. It packs quite the punch of spicy heat with the rich creamy peanut flavor acting as a nice counterbalance. And of course all that peanut butter makes the soup stick to your ribs.
As with almost all soups, the vegetables in this recipe can be traded out for something similar that you might have on hand. Turnips could work in place of the potatoes, and peas could easily stand in for the corn. Just be sure to use the chunkiest peanut butter you can find and add the chopped roasted peanuts to garnish; there’s just something special about getting those nutty crunchy bites!
Velvety Potage
So I’m a little behind the times. I’m going to talk about Thanksgiving today. The truth is that I forgot all about this here soup I’m about to deliver and so you’re just hearing about it now. But this velvety potage is worth the wait.
I’m not much of a fan of Thanksgiving. Even though I have more than my fair share of zest for cooking and eating, the borderline gluttony of this holiday disturbs me. Before I left for college, it was also a markedly uncomfortable day of visiting with that side of the family. So it is that I haven’t attended official Thanksgiving feasts in over a decade. This particular Thanksgiving last week found me as usual, puttering around the house in my PJs.
The day was gusty and just warm enough here in the city that I had my front door open. The cats appeared to be watching a tennis match as they snapped their heads back and forth to mentally catch the leaves that were zipping around the yard. When I finally left them outside, they sprang and leaped all over the place, failing more often that not to secure the leaf they were after. Amused by my feline family, I got an itch to make something reminiscent of Thanksgiving for D and me to eat for dinner. None for the cats though, although they certainly tried to get a lick or two.
For me, creamy soups are the epitome of fall and harvest and, yes, Thanksgiving fare. Sunchokes, as those of you playing along will know, are a starchy root vegetable I’m really enjoying right now. I’d once looked at this recipe, entitled “Jerusalem Artichoke Soup”, in my dog-eared soup book but at the time had no idea what the heck a Jerusalem Artichoke was. Delighted at now being “in the know,” I was sure this soup would be just the thing for my I-dislike-this-holiday-but-I-kinda-want-to-embrace-its-flavors-anyway mood. And so it was.
While it pains me to say anything bad about the “fugly” sunchoke, in the interest of full disclosure I should issue a word to the wise about eating large quantities of them. Now, I have a stomach of steel so this didn’t happen to me, but I’ve been told that this soup may cause flatulence. Something to do with the inulin they contain, I suppose. In any case, if you haven’t tested your tolerance, you might want to start with just a small serving of this soup. But be prepared to call upon all your will power reserves. It’s hard to refrain from consuming the whole pot of this luscious stuff!
Sunchoke Soup with Saffron Crème
Adapted from The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Soup
4 T. butter
1 onion, chopped
5 or 6 sunchokes to equal 3 c. chopped
3 ¾ c. vegetable broth
2/3 c. milk
2/3 c. crème fraiche
pinch of saffron
salt and pepper
Chopped fresh chives to garnish
Thoroughly wash sunchokes and roughly peel. Don’t worry about getting every nook and crany. Roughly chop sunchokes into 1-2 inch pieces.
Melt the butter in a large heavy saucepan. Add the onion and sauté for 5-6 minutes until soft but not brown, stirring occasionally. Add the sunchokes to the pan and stir to coate with butter. Cover and cook over low heat for 15 minutes, being sure to stir them every once in awhile to keep them from burning.
While sunchokes sauté, mix crème fraiche and saffron together in a small bowl. Chill until ready serve.
When sunchokes have sautéed, pour in the vegetable stock and milk. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until the sunchokes are soft. Remove from heat and cool for a few minutes before processing with a stick blender or regular blender until smooth. Taste and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper as desired.
Serve immediately, topped with a dollop of saffron crème, fresh chives and a few strands of saffron.
(serves 3-4)
Consuming the Details
It was the perfect storm on Sunday afternoon. The weather was cooperative, the kitchen was sparkling from a fresh cleaning, the fridge was full of amazing farm produce and HillAcres Pride cheese, there was a loaf of bread from Wild Flour Bakery in the cupboard, and the fruit bowl was laden with North Star Orchard pears. I couldn’t resist making an entire meal of it all. There would be soup and salad and the best grilled cheese ever!
And so there was a meal to make your heart pump stronger for all the healthfulness it created, both in nutrients and in beauty. But not before I laid spread eagle on my kitchen floor. Don’t worry – I didn’t have a bad accident with a stray peel of butternut squash on the linoleum. I just somehow awoke to the intricate details of my kitchen and felt an uncontrollable urge to take pictures of everything, many of which required unbecoming positions on the newly mopped floor. Fortunately there was only D and the cats to witness this display. You’re only getting the pleasing end results here.
I know we all rush around every day. Let’s face it, in this modern age, only humans two years of age or less aren’t strapped for time due to overbooking commitments while juggling family and personal needs. I’ve been cooking in the same kitchen for three years now, and I had never really stopped to contemplate the appeal of the sun shining in through the ruby glass of an antique decanter I have in my window. Nor had I noticed the pleasing lines of my table’s legs. I guess it took the perfect storm of ingredients and a lapse in obligations to heighten my senses – to really put me in the moment of being in this little crimson kitchen that I love full of the eclectic items I’ve collected over the years, about to use some of the highest quality fresh produce, cheese and bread I could possibly imagine.
I’ve been cooking since I can remember. In fact, if I can find it sometime, I’ll have to share with you this funny photo of me, about four years old, standing on a chair so I could reach the counter, covered from head to toe in flour as I helped knead bread dough. Cooking has by times been a burden, a distraction, a form of therapy, an experiment, an obligation, and most often a necessity. It wasn’t until this past year or so though that it became a luxury and an artistic expression for me.
By luxury, I don’t mean it’s scarce or an extravagance. I’ve cooked more the past year than I’ve ever cooked before. Rather, I mean that it’s a comfort, something that brings me great pleasure and energy. It’s a real treat for me. Due in large part to this blog, cooking is also art for me as I attempt to capture the beauty of fresh produce with my camera and my recipes. But the “art” of it is more than that. It permeates beyond blogging and beyond me, I think. Reading some of your comments and talking to folks at market, I’ve come to realize that fresh produce can really touch everyone’s sense of beauty and inner energy. It really inspires people. And it seeps into so much of what a person does, even beyond the kitchen.
This post isn’t meant to sound like a New Age sermon. I merely mean to express how I’ve become convinced that cooking with this fresh local produce creates healthfulness beyond the basic science of nourishment – minerals and vitamins and all the rest. Once you’ve seen the vivid color of butternut squash soup, you’ll want to paint an entire room rustic orange so you can have that bright happy hue surround you. After you’ve felt the texture of a glossy mustard leaf, you’ll want to capture it in textiles or paper. And after you’ve stared at the bulbous stem of a kohlrabi, you might just be inspired to sculpt or take up furniture making. Studying the details of beautiful produce so closely has helped me look at all the beautiful details that surround me. Cooking takes on a whole new meaning under these circumstances. You can consume the world and its artistic details with your eyes! And it’s all so very YUMMY!
BUTTERNUT SQUASH AND PEAR SOUP
Adapted from New Vegetarian Epicure
1 medium large butternut squash (about 1 lb)
1 large yam or equivalent
2 c. vegetable broth
1.5 c. water
1 stick of cinnamon
1 stem of rosemary
3/4 t. salt
2 T. butter
2 medium onions
3 large firm pears (Asian or Anjou varieties work well)
1/3 c. white wine
1/4 c. milk or half & half
a large pinch of white pepper to taste
Peel, seed and dice squash (see here for instructions). Partially peel and dice yam. Put both squash and yam cubes into a large soup pot along with vegetable broth, water, cinnamon stick, whole rosemary stem, and salt. Simmer over medium heat until tender, about 35 minutes. Discard cinnamon and rosemary.
While the soup pot simmers, thinly slice onions. Melt butter in a large heavy skillet and add onion slices. Lower heat to medium low and sprinkle with a tablespoon of raw sugar. Stir and let cook very gently until onions are caramelized – about 25 minutes. Peel, core and thinly slice the pears before adding them to the caramelized onions. Cook for about five minutes, stirring often, and then add the wine. Cover and simmer for another 10 minute s until the pears are very tender.
Add pear mixture to soup in pot and stir to combine. Puree with an immersion blender or stand blender. Add milk and the white pepper. Reheat at a simmer but do not boil. Garnish with a sprig of rosemary.
(Serves 6-8)
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