I might have thought that I could eat carrot-coconut soup with garam masala croutons for a week straight without getting tired of it. As it turns out, I was wrong. But I definitely managed it three days in a row. A few prawns in there didn’t hurt, and neither did a spoonful of sambal oelek on the third day, to liven it up. This was a leftover from a cooking class, it was awesome, and now I’ve had enough. Those croutons were really addictive, though.
Despite the fact that my husband adores gumbo and orders it frequently in restaurants, I had never made it myself until yesterday. I can’t imagine what I was waiting for.
I followed three different recipes simultaneously, all from James Villas’ Glory of Southern Cooking
First of all, I fried chopped bacon and sliced raw andouille sausage together, then scooped them out into a bowl, leaving the spicy fat behind. Then I fried pieces of boneless chicken thigh meat in the pork fat, taking it out when just cooked through. When the chicken was cooled enough, I shredded it and put it aside with the bacon and sausage. Then I added a quarter cup of white flour to the fat to make a roux, and cooked that for a while on low heat. Chopped onion, celery and bell pepper were mixed into the roux, then a bag of frozen okra. After all that had cooked for a bit, I put in chopped parsley (and a few celery leaves, since I had them), dried thyme, a bay leaf, a quart of chicken stock, and two cans of tomatoes. I let that simmer for about an hour, then put the meaty bits back into the pot. After another 30-45 minutes, we put on rice to cook, then added a pound of raw peeled shrimp to the gumbo and let it simmer quietly until the rice was done. I served the gumbo ladled over heaps of hot rice.
It tasted exactly like gumbo, and a really, really good one, too. This may have just taken up permanent residence in our cooking repertoire.
A week or two ago I was looking for something simple to do with fresh local clams, and found this beautiful, very easy Galician soup. The secret seems to be the broth of sauteed and simmered shrimp shells, which gives a wonderful depth and flavor to the soup. There are all sorts of variations that could be made with this (greens? potatoes! fish of all sorts!), but it really was nice with the clams and shrimp, seasoned with sweet onions, fennel, bay and paprika. It’s a great excuse to eat fresh bread. With, say, green olive butter smeared all over it. For example.
Caldo de Pescado (Galician seafood soup)
Adapted from Casa Moro
Shell the shrimp and put the meat back in the fridge, reserving the shells. Heat 4 Tbsp of olive oil in a saucepan and add the shrimp shells, frying until they turn pink and begin to smell good. Add the tomato, thyme, fennel seed and water and simmer 20 minutes. Set aside (I might mash the tomato up a little at this point, for extra flavor).
In a soup pot, heat another 4 Tbsp of olive oil and add the onion. Cook on medium with a pinch of salt until the onions are soft and golden, about 15 minutes. Add the garlic and bay and cook a minute more, then add the paprikas, saffron infusion, rice, and half of the parsley, then strain the reserved prawn stock into the pot. Bring to a boil and simmer 10-15 minutes, until the rice is cooked. Add the clams and cook just until they all open (discard any that refuse to open), then stir in the shrimp and the rest of the parsley. Simmer just long enough for the shrimp to cook through, and serve.
Last weekend at the farmer’s market I was seduced by a pile of gorgeous cauliflower at one of the booths. I wasn’t at all sure what I wanted to do with it, so when I got it home I opened the first book I think of when looking for interesting and unusual uses for fresh produce: Moro East
I seldom make pureed soups, but really like them when I do. I simplified the recipe a bit as I went, and liked it so much I wouldn’t make it any differently next time, although it might be even better if you followed the cookbook exactly – especially the caramelised chile butter with pine nuts drizzled on at the end. As it was, I loved the smooth texture, the quiet spices, and the hint of coconut peeking out from the cauliflower. I ate a bowl of it, sprinkled with smoked paprika, while waiting for the rest of dinner to cook, then ended up pouring spoonfuls of it over a pita stuffed with beef kebabs and spiced eggplant, as if it were tzatziki sauce. Fabulous.
Cauliflower Soup with Cumin and Coconut Milk
adapted from Moro East
optional garnish: brown butter with smoked paprika, and pine nuts browned in olive oil (I just added paprika, minus the butter)
Saute the onion slowly in olive oil or butter (or a mix) in a soup pot until soft and golden, 20-30 minutes. Add cumin seed, cinnamon and garlic and cook a minute more, then add the cauliflower and stir it up well. Add a splash of water, cover and steam for 15-20 minutes, until the cauliflower has softened. Take the cover off and mash the cauliflower with a spoon or potato masher, continuing to cook if it’s not quite soft (add more water if it dries out). Pour in the broth and coconut milk, bring to a simmer and cook ten minutes or so. Salt to taste. Turn off the heat, then use an immersion blender to puree the soup smooth (I would recommend not trying this in a countertop blender, unless you want scalding cauliflower soup all over your kitchen). Check for seasoning, then serve.
Directions: in August (approximately six months before serving), barbecue some pork ribs. Make sure they’re good and charred and salty. Eat them, then make stock out of the bones and freeze it. In April, take the stock out and thaw it. Cook some beans. Blanch collard greens and chop them. Sear chunks of country-style boneless pork ribs in oil and remove them from the pan. Saute a lot of garlic in the remaining oil, then add back the pork and pour in the smoky, salty stock. Simmer, covered, until the meat is tender, maybe an hour. Add the beans and greens. Eat voraciously, and wish you had thought to make cornbread.
Most yogurt soups I’ve seen have been summer concoctions, raw and chilled. But I really liked this yogurt-spinach soup, spiced with green chile and ginger, thickened with chickpea flour and served hot. It was bright, tart, fresh, and very warming. We found it in Meena Pathak’s book Flavors of India, where she explains that this is what her mother made for her to eat every day after school in the winter, and it really is comfort food, especially if you have fried potatoes or warm flatbreads (or even better, samosas) to dip in it. When we made it, we served it as a side dish with an aromatic chicken-tomato curry and a side of spiced okra, and it made a beautifully balanced meal. It’s a great way of getting some extra greens on the table, and very quick to make.
This was a pretty spicy soup, mostly because I like to microplane hot chiles to get a smooth texture – but that means all the seeds and membranes go in. If you want it milder, you could deseed the chile and mince it finely, but I don’t think I would leave it out altogether.
Yogurt Spinach Soup
Adapted from Flavors of India: Authentic Indian Recipes
Combine the chickpea flour and the 2 Tbsp water in a small bowl and set aside.
In a saucepan, combine the yogurt, ginger, chiles, sugar, salt, and 1 cup water. Stir in the chickpea flour mixture and place the pan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, whisking frequently, until the liquid thickens slightly. Add the spinach, stir until wilted, then serve. Garnish each bowl with fresh cilantro.
We recently made hot and sour soup for the first time, and I can’t imagine why I waited this long. It was prompted by the annual advent of scallion-chive flatbreads, since the chives are shooting up in the garden and we happened to have a bag of cilantro in the fridge, and nothing goes better with these breads than soup. We just picked up a used copy of The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen
I followed it pretty closely, while leaving out the lily buds, adding a bit of extra pork, and using the pre-shredded black fungus that we’ve become addicted to instead of whole cloud ears. The soup is heated with white pepper and soured with cider vinegar, and the main complaints we had were the lack of salt (fixed with a dab of soy sauce after serving) and the dullness of the vinegar flavor, apparently due to adding it early in the cooking process. When we ate the leftovers I added a bit of fresh vinegar and it was much peppier. But other than that it was really good – soothing and very textural, and the breads (which I made with hot chile oil and plenty of salt) were fantastic dipped into it.
I think we’ll try a variation on the recipe soon – maybe Barbara Tropp’s version which uses rice vinegar and soy. Does anyone have a recipe for hot and sour soup they really like? I think this could become part of our regular rotation.
This Portuguese-style soup has been one of our go-to dinners for years, and was one of the first soups I ever made that really worked. The original recipe was from the dearly departed magazine Kitchen Gardener, and while I occasionally muck around with different ingredients (white beans are particularly good), I always come back to the basic formula: kale, sausage, tomatoes, and garlic. And it’s not just delicious – it’s stuffed full of vitamins, and low-carb to boot. Whenever I make it we wonder why we don’t have it more often.
Kale-Sausage Soup (an approximate recipe)
Heat the olive oil in a soup pot and saute the carrots and garlic until sizzling and beginning to turn golden. Add the kale and a good pinch of salt and stir well until it wilts. Add the stock and tomatoes, bring it to simmer, cover and cook about 20 minutes on low heat, or until the kale is limp but still green.
In the meantime, cook the sausages in a covered pan with a little water, then fry them in their own fat until they brown nicely. Slice them into rounds.
When the kale is tender, slip the sausage into the pot, stir it up, and taste the broth for salt. Grind in plenty of fresh black pepper and turn off the heat.
I tend to make pretty chunky borsch – I like the smooth kind served cold with a bit of vinegar stirred in, but I also like a big hearty soup with pieces of beet and potato and beef and plenty of cabbage, and that’s the sort we usually have at home. I usually use beef or lamb broth for the base, if I have any, and dill as the main seasoning. And sour cream on top, of course.
This particular batch had a slightly different flavor than usual, as I braised the beef in beer before assembling the rest of the soup, instead of using broth. A friend brought a growler of excellent locally-brewed stout to our holiday party this weekend, and I wanted to use some of it up. I seared the beef stew meat with onions, added a cup of stout, and let it simmer covered for an hour and a half while I roasted the beets and sliced the cabbage. I topped up the soup pot with a little water and added everything else, then let it cook another half hour or so. It was a really good borsch, and the beer made it less sweet and a bit earthier. A slice of buttered rye bread would have been the only thing to make it better.
I often make soup on Mondays, a holdover from when I worked late shift and we needed a quick re-heat sort of dinner. I like the tradition, though – if I make the soup in the morning it gives me a chance to putter around the house doing laundry and paying bills and the like, occasionally wandering through the kitchen to give things a stir. And most soups, especially bean soups, are better if they’re made ahead and given a chance to sit and meld in the fridge.
This soup, a variation of my favorite pasta fazool, was intended to celebrate the very last of the season’s fresh cannellini beans from Dunbar Gardens. I love fresh shelling beans with a passion, and never get to eat quite as many as I’d like before the season is past, so I was glad to get one final bag. And while we were at the farmstand I also picked up a bunch of curly endive – I thought it was escarole but I was wrong – to toss into the soup.
