Weekly Dish

I started this blog because I wanted a place to write about what I love, a place to record what happens in my kitchen, and a place to share recipes with friends and family and anyone else who might find them useful. Since Josie, it isn’t just that it’s difficult to take the time to write (which it is). It’s that the whole way I cook has changed with a little person around, and I haven’t figured out how to share that process. It’s not necessarily that I cook different kinds of foods; for the most part, Josie eats what we eat, and is happy to do so. It is more about what actually happens during the cooking, a juggling act which involves very little measuring and a good deal of haste; hungry toddlers are grouchy creatures. What that means is that when it’s over each night, I generally have no idea what happened, much less recipe notes or photographs to show for it. If I tried to give you a peek into our kitchen window, most days you’d have to stand on your tiptoes to see over the piles of vegetables, a trail of plastic bowls and cups “washed” by Josie, and the tangle of books, paper, and markers that follow us from room to room. But amidst the mess, cooking is happening every day, which seems like a tiny miracle all by itself.

Corn and tomatoes are farmer’s market staples for our family during the summer months, as I imagine they are for many of you who try to eat seasonally and locally. Sometimes I find myself staring at yet another heaping pile of shiny red globes or tripping over the bag of yet-to-be-shucked corn in the corner of the kitchen wondering how on earth I will ever find a way to use them creatively. To help solve that existential crisis, I’ve been assembling a collection of recipes: a dozen ears of corn and a box of tomatoes (somewhere between 3 and 5 pounds) come home with us every Saturday, and sometimes one or both ingredients will form the center for a whole week’s worth of meals. So I thought I’d share a bit about what some of those meals look like while I remember. With a little extra prep the night before, these dinners are not terribly fancy, but they are economical, fairly easy to make, and the one, unfailing qualification in my kitchen: delicious enough to enjoy for dinner and lunch the next day.

Day One: usually, I try to cook and use the corn as quickly as possible; the farmer I buy it from has picked it the day before, but once harvested, the sugars start to break down, and the corn starts to lose its flavor. (It’s still good after day 3, but best before that). If I want to make a dinner where the main event is the flavor of the corn, that usually happens on Monday. One such recipe that’s all about sweet, fresh corn is a very simple soup.

This recipe is based on Sara Foster’s Summer White Corn Soup. The genius of the recipe is the broth: while you’re preparing everything else, you put a big pot of water on to boil, add the stripped corn cobs, basil stems, onion trimmings, and a palmful of salt. The boiling water leeches out all of the vegetable’s goodness, so that the finished soup tastes of little else but sweet summer corn. I make twice as much as I need for the soup and reserve it for corn and tomato risotto later in the week.

I serve the soup with crusty bread, rubbed with butter and garlic, and a big salad. For company or a special occasion, I like to top the soup with boiled shrimp.

Sweet Summer Corn Soup
–adapted from Sara Foster, Fresh Everyday

6 ears sweet corn, shucked and stripped from the cobs, cobs reserved
1/2 cup milk
1 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
1 sweet onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 small new potatoes, scrubbed and chopped
4 cups corn broth (see method below)
coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced

First, start the broth: in a large stock pot, cover the stripped corn cobs, basil stems, and onion and garlic trimmings with 4 quarts of water. Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper. Bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to a simmer. It will reduce quickly, so keep an eye on it; if it reduces by more than half, add more water. You should end up with about 2 quarts of broth.
Meanwhile, put the corn kernels in a small saucepan with the milk. Heat gently over medium heat, just until the milk bubbles and foams. Reduce the heat and simmer for another 5-7 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a larger saucepan, heat the oil and butter over medium, and add the onion. Cook until very soft and beginning to turn golden, about 15 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for another minute or two. Add the chopped potato, 4 cups of broth, and half of the basil. Turn the heat up to medium-high. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and taste. Add more if it needs it. When it begins to boil, turn it down to a simmer and cook for another 20 or 30 minutes, until the potato is soft enough to mash with a fork.

Next, puree half of the corn-milk mixture in a food processor or blender. Stir the puree into the soup, and add the remaining corn and milk. Salt as needed, and serve with the remaining basil leaves sprinkled on top. The leftover corn broth will keep in the fridge for a week or so, and indefinitely in the freezer.

In an attempt to create some meaningful patterns and routines in what might otherwise be characterized as a chaotic existence, I maintain rigidly to a few, basic rules: 1. no work on Sunday; 2. buy most of my produce from the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, and 3. read for fun before I fall asleep at night and on Sundays when I’m not working. I know, I’m quite the rebel. But when one’s job is to read, for class, for the dissertation, for a conference paper, to reclaim the act of reading for pleasure feels strangely exhilarating. Sometimes, I only make it a few pages in before I’m out cold, but other times, I find myself buried into my pillow until very late, captivated and fighting off sleep to keep reading.

I’ve been an avid reader for most of my life, but contrary to what most people assume about a person getting her Ph.D. in English, I’ve never been one to love the “right” books. I couldn’t get into many of the assigned novels in high school–besides the ones for Mrs. Reynolds, the best English teacher ever–and I’ve always been drawn to a genre that finds little acclaim in the world of high literary theory: the life story, either told as a biography, by someone else, or as a memoir, by the person herself. I think it might have started with Pete Maravich, that famous basketball player whose biography I found on my dad’s bookshelf and who inspired me to spend the better part of a summer trying to learn to dribble everywhere I went (I was spectacularly unsuccessful and took up tennis instead).

However it started, a genre I’ve enjoyed recently has been the food memoir, people who retell part of their life according to what they ate or cooked. Over the holidays, I read Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte, a lovely (and often self-deprecatingly funny) collection of stories about her relationship with a man first known to the reader as Mr. Latte, and later as Tad. In it, one of the things Hesser learns about herself (and she’s a food writer by trade, so this comes as no shock to the reader) is that she tends to cook new things often, but that she lacks what she refers to as a “repertoire,” a passel of recipes that she cooks really well and is known for. Here, according to Hesser, are the qualifications for a repertoire: “I wanted it to contain recipes that represent who I am, what I find pleasurable, how I live. It should express my true sensibilities as a cook, not my ambition. And all of the dishes should be simple enough that I could make them at a moment’s notice” (190-91).

I’ve never thought of myself as a particular kind of cook before, but after reading that description, I decided that I am one who tends to cook the same dishes again and again until I’ve perfected them, out of habit, yes, but also because I find that I am more intuitive than rule-following in the kitchen, and so the more I make pound cake by feel and by memory, the better the pound cake tastes. It’s one of the reasons I started this site, in fact, to record and share the recipes I know and do best. Not all of the recipes posted here are time-tested, many are records of experiments, but a good many of them are things you might find on our dinner table on any random weeknight.

Because I tend to cook seasonally, with whatever I find the farmers at my market have grown, my repertoire tends to change as one season gives way to the next. A hallmark of any season, however, is soup: in summer, I love to make eggplant and basil bisque; in fall, sweet potato soup often shows up on our weekly menus, and in the winter, there are many, but my favorite is this Italian White Bean Soup. Spring, I’ve realized, is missing a staple soup, and thankfully, Amanda Hesser not only revealed to me what kind of cook I am, she also provided that missing link: carrot and fennel soup.

Both carrots and fennel tend to appear at the beginning of spring in my part of the world, while the oranges are still lingering from winter, so the ingredient list makes this recipe nearly a perfect fit for this time of year. It is also, as luck would have it, a perfect soup for my marriage: David cannot abide the texture of completely pureed soups, but I’m not a fan of overly brothy ones. Pulsing this soup just a few times at the end of cooking gives it a chunky texture we both liked. The flavors are perfectly balanced too. I’ve made it twice in the last two weeks, so I’d say it’s a keeper, especially if these two vegetables keep showing up at the same farmer’s table in the weeks to come. Happy spring, friends!

Carrot and Fennel Soup

–adapted from Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser
The making of stock from the fennel stalks and carrot tops is my addition to the recipe, but I found it added an extra layer of flavor that heightened the carrot-fennel flavor combination. Plus, it’s always handy to have a good vegetable stock in the freezer, and this recipe makes twice as much as you’ll need for the soup. But if you need the soup today, water, or other vegetable stock will work fine too. I wouldn’t use chicken stock, though; the flavor will overwhelm the vegetables.
1 medium, or 2-3 small fennel bulbs with stalks and fronds (should give you about 1 1/2 cups sliced bulb)
1 1/2 pounds carrots, with tops (about 4 cups carrot slices)
Trimmings from: onion, garlic, and/or celery
2-3 quarts water
1 T. coarse salt
cracked pepper, to taste
1 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, sliced thinkly
Juice from one orange (about 1/3 cup)
1/4 cup sour cream, plus more for garnish
Salt and cracked pepper, to taste

First, prep your vegetables and make stock (I do this at least a day before I’m planning to make the soup): Trim the carrots, and peel if necessary (if I buy mine fresh from the farmer, I just scrub them really well), cutting off the green tops and removing the tough ends. Trim the fennel, cutting of the stalks, and removing the feathery fronds. Set fronds aside, and add all other trimmings to a big soup pot. Cover with water, and sprinkle in 1 T. salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Bring to a rolling boil, and let it bubble for 10 minutes or so. Turn the heat down so that the pot is simmering, and let it stew for several hours (I start mine in the morning and turn it off when I start dinner; by the time we’re cleaning up the kitchen at the end of the day, the stock is cool enough to put away). Let it cool, reserving about 4 cups for the soup, and freezing the rest. This should yield about 2 quarts stock.
To make the soup, heat the oil and butter in a big pot. Thinly slice the fennel bulb, and cook over medium heat until very soft and golden. Meanwhile, thinly slice the carrots and garlic. When fennel is changing color and soft, add the carrots and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the carrots begin to soften. Sprinkle with salt. Cover with 4 cups the stock and simmer until the carrots are very soft, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the orange juice, sour cream, and all but a handful of the fennel fronds (for garnish). Using an immersion blender or a food processor, pulse the soup a few times, leaving some large chunks and an uneven texture. If soup has lost its heat, return to the stove until warm. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of fennel fronds. We’ve found that a soft nutty whole-grain bread toasted and smeared with goat cheese makes this a delicious and filling dinner.

You all know the craziness which is our life; I have made no secret of the tightrope between home, work, home-work, work-at-home, marriage, parenting, etc. across which we madly dash day-in, day-out, and sometimes in-between the two. I hope that it either makes you feel less alone (yay! other people live crazily too!) or relieved that your own life is not this stressful (whew, at least my life is not this crazy!). I also hope that you have an hour or two in your day like our 5-7 pm, the time I’ve come to affectionately call the dinner hour.

In order to preserve some semblance of sanity for all of us, we’ve tried to set aside those hours for the three of us to spend in and around the kitchen. We usually sit Josie in her high chair right in the middle of our small space, and feed her dinner while we get our own evening meal together. Before we were parents, our nighttime eating patterns were haphazard and casual, wandering into the kitchen whenever hunger struck, leisurely pulling dinner out of our pantry and fridge, without a lot of fuss. These days, if dinner isn’t well underway by the time Josie needs a bath, we’re in serious danger of going to bed on yogurt and granola, especially if there aren’t leftovers.

So, as we hear grown ups are prone to do, we’ve developed somewhat of a dinnertime routine. It is, by far, my favorite time of the day — I am with my very favorite people, doing one of my very favorite things. But also, it invariably gets done, this making of dinner, and usually, it is, if not very fancy, very satisfying and good for my food-loving soul. If I accomplish nothing else in the span of 24 hours, something from start to finish that I can look at and say, “I did that today,” I at least usually manage to make dinner for my family.

When I tell you that this past week started with not one, but two, disastrous meals in a row, I hope you understand that I mean it when I say that it nearly sent me over the edge. The week before, we’d started classes with a sick baby, which meant no childcare, two sleep-deprived teachers frantically trying to prepare for students while comforting, holding, rocking, and carrying around campus a puny, sniffly toddler. It was quite a week. We survived the weekend and hoped Josie was getting better, but on Sunday, her fever spiked, so we took her to the doctor to discover that she had an infection in each ear.

By Monday evening, when I sat on the stool in my kitchen, stirring the risotto, I was sorely in need of a victory. Onions, garlic, white wine, arborio rice, and a whole quart of chicken stock were in the process of dissolving my exhaustion when I noticed something small and brown on my spoon. And another beneath a grain of rice. And, then they were everywhere, tiny little bugs. Bugs. In. My. Risotto.

I panicked, David took over and cleaned the pot out while I put Josie to bed, and we had grilled cheese sandwiches — all in all not the end of the world. But on Tuesday, after I’d grated and juiced lemons, minced garlic and jalapenos, and measured out the wine for pasta sauce, when the same tiny bugs floated to the surface of the penne I was boiling, I have to say that I teetered on the brink of insanity. If David hadn’t restrained me, I might have thrown out the entire contents of our pantry and eated a bag of potato chips for dinner. For the rest of the week.
You can imagine the trepidation with which I approached the dinner hour on Wednesday, and I resolved to use only food out of our refrigerator: that usually means soup or eggs. With the leftover roasted potatoes from Sunday’s dinner, half a bag of mixed veggies I fished out of the freezer, and the chicken stock I made on Tuesday afternoon to replace what had disappeared down Monday’s drain, a hearty, warm soup came together on my stovetop, without a single insect in sight. It may not have been much to look at, but it was real, homemade food, and at the time, it tasted like the best potato soup I’d ever had. What follows is not so much a recipe, per say, but an instruction guide for how to use what you have on hand and emerge victorious. It was, for this home cook, the formula that saved my dinner hour, and consequently my week.

What’s-In-Your-Fridge Vegetable Soup

What you need:

• Fat: Rendering bacon fat adds a nice flavor to potato soup, and that’s what I did for this version, but a combination of butter and olive oil will work fine too.
• Vegetables to saute for flavor: onion, garlic, and carrot was my combination, but you could also use shallot, celery or bell pepper.
• Other vegetables: I used 2 cups of leftover roasted potatoes and half a bag of frozen broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower, but if you have two heads of broccoli, or a bunch of carrots, or mushrooms, use them instead. Just make sure to think about the flavor combo; if you want mushroom to be the dominant flavor, don’t crowd it with another strongly flavored veggie like broccoli.
• Liquid: Homemade stock is always in my freezer; I used chicken stock for the potato soup.
• Garnish: I finished the soup by stirring in 1 T. cream and 1/2 cup grated extra sharp cheddar cheese. It had been a bad week — you can always sprinkle with toasted nuts or a dollop of creme fraiche if you want to be fancier.

What to Do:
I feel silly typing up instructions because I’m sure everyone knows how to make soup, but I’ll tell you a few things that I think make a difference in the final product. First, the basic method: saute the flavoring vegetables over medium heat until they’re soft and beginning to brown; I start with onion and carrot and add the garlic after the other two are soft. Next, you add the other vegetables, coat with the fat and flavoring, and stir in the liquid.
What makes it good (in my humble opinion):

• Puree half of the vegetables. This will make the soup thicker without added fat or calories, but still leave you a rustic texture to the finished dish.
• Coarse salt with flavor, like sea salt, not the iodized stuff. A lot of salt, and sprinkled in a handful at a time, after each step in the process, not right at the end. Taste as you go to make sure you aren’t over-salting and that the soup has enough flavor. Salt is what will coax humble potatoes and cauliflower into deliciousness.
• Homemade stock. I know, I know, this seems like a lot of trouble. But I’ve started keeping a bag in my freezer for vegetable trimmings, and after about two weeks, it’s full enough to make a huge vat of stock that will last at least a month, maybe more. And if you have the remains of a chicken, even better. It really does make a big difference in the overall flavor of soup, in my opinion.
• Simmer for as long as you can. The longer the soup has to hang out on the stove, the more its parts will melt into one, happy, yummy flavor.
• Eat with plenty of crusty bread. It’s mostly just vegetables and water, so why not?

As I said, this is not rocket science. But it has been reliable for us, and, in this season of life, reliable is what we need. Thankfully, the bugs in the pasta were the low point, Josie’s ears are cleared up, and the soup restored normalcy and comfort to our dinner hours. A small victory, perhaps, but a sweet one.

…just in case I forget. I tend to do that. Forget, I mean, about dinner.

It’s just that I get so wrapped up in the flurry of holiday cooking that sometimes I turn around at 6 pm and glance gleefully over the roasted butternut squash resting on the stove, the sweet potatoes that have just been pureed in the blender, the discs of pie dough awaiting refrigeration, and I realize: we’re going to have to eat take-out for dinner. Again. Which seems absurd, since it seems like I’ve spent the whole day in the kitchen.

So, tonight, and most likely for the rest of the week, we’ll be having this soup. If you happen to have some already-cooked sweet potato on hand, it comes together easily; the only trick is to think about it before 6 pm (unless you typically eat around 9, as we sometimes do), so it will have some time to simmer. If you don’t already have sweet potatoes cooked, you’ll need a bit more time, but since your oven is already set to 350 (you know, for all of those fabulous Thanksgiving baked goods you’re working on), you can throw in the potatoes and garlic at any time, and then, with the chop of an onion, it’s just a matter of assembly.

The soup is good, hearty comfort food, and, as an added bonus, it’s also packed with all sorts of good-for-you nutrients. Which, let’s face it, is even more important this week, as our bodies are gearing up for the holiday of excess. The best part about the soup is that the potatoes and garlic lend their creaminess to the texture, so no cream is actually needed. To cut out even more fat (and to make this a vegetarian soup), you could also omit the bacon and cook the onion in olive oil instead. Or, leave out the stock altogether, and use the potato mixture in enchiladas or burritos.

Or, make an entirely different soup, based on what you have that you could throw into a pot, or make pizza or pasta or a 5-course meal, but, please, whatever you do, don’t forget about dinner. Your body will thank you, come Thursday, for not having spent the week surviving on snatches of cake batter and take-out. At least I know, from painful past experiences, that mine will.

Smoky Sweet Potato Stew

The bacon, chipotle, and maple syrup pack this soup with flavor, so if you don’t have stock on hand, don’t worry, water will probably be just fine. Same goes for the corn — I had it, I liked the crunch it added, but it certainly isn’t essential.

4 smallish sweet potatoes, scrubbed (or 2 cups cooked, mashed potato)
Olive oil
1 head of garlic
4 slices thick-cut bacon, diced
1 medium yellow onion, small-diced
3 T. chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, finely minced (less if you are heat-sensitive)
2 T. maple syrup
1 T. coarse salt plus more to taste
1 can black beans
1/2 cup corn kernels, scraped from the cob or frozen
1 cup beer (preferably something dark)
2 cups stock, chicken or vegetable (or water if you don’t have stock, and more, if you want a thinner soup)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Poke holes in the sweet potatoes, rub them lightly with olive oil, and bake them whole, on a foil-lined baking sheet, for about 2 hours. Set aside to cool.

When the potatoes have 30 minutes left, slice off the top of the garlic head, wrap in foil, drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast for 30 minutes. Set aside to cool with the potatoes.

While the potatoes and garlic are cooling, cook the bacon in a large soup pot. When it’s done, remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Pour off all but about a tablespoon of the fat, and add the onions. Cook the onions over medium heat, stirring frequently, until well-browned and very soft, about 15-20 minutes.

Turn the heat on the onions up to medium-high and add the syrup and the chipotle peppers in adobo. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes, then pour in the beer. Stir, scraping up any bits from the bottom of the pan, and cook for another 5 minutes, or until the liquid has reduced by half.

Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and squeeze the garlic cloves from the skin. Mash the flesh from the potatoes and garlic together, and add to the pot, stirring to combine. Stir in the black beans and corn and salt well. Add the stock and bring the soup to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, and let it cook for 10-15 minutes (or longer, depending on how hungry you are and how long it took you to remember about dinner). You may need to add more liquid to get the soup the consistency you like; ours was quite thick (and we liked it that way). Season to taste with salt. If you like, serve topped with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of the bacon pieces. Will feed two hungry people for dinner at least 3 times (about 6 main dish servings).

As I have written here before, I do not winter well. Granted, I do not live in a climate with an especially long or harsh winter, but perhaps the perception of the deep south as a relatively warm place tricks me into thinking that I shouldn’t have to suffer winter at all. Adding to the illusion, cold weather doesn’t really kick in here until after Christmas, so I come up from a brisk, chilly holiday season thinking that spring should soon be on its way.

Only, I’d better get through January and February first. This winter has been especially cold and wet — it rained and stayed below 40 degrees every day for the first three weeks of the spring semester — but I’d braced myself to be prepared. After all, aren’t pregnant women chronically hot? I’m afraid carrying an extra person around with me has not made the wet chill in the air easier to endure as I’d hoped.

Just when I thought I could duck beneath the covers and stay until April, the Japanese magnolia in our front yard burst into purple and white blooms, showering the ground beneath with a welcome carpet of petals quietly announcing that the end must be near. Armed with this tiny bit of hope for warmer weather, I determined to make it through the next few weeks of blustery cold. To get me through and provide sustenance for our growing little family, David and I got into the habit of making soup on Sundays.

A fitting winter Sunday afternoon project, making soup requires leaving the stove on for hours at a time and ends with comfort food to last through the week. If you are just barely surviving winter where you are, I highly recommend this seasonal therapy. For me, it accomplishes several things at once: it warms me as I cook it, it warms me when I eat it, and it provides food for us on the nights when I just want to come home, put on my pajamas, and crawl into bed without standing over the stove. Soup has surely saved us from many a night of take-out (although we’ve had our share of those too). If you’re hankering for a warm bowl of something to tide you over until spring, head over to A Veggie Venture, where Alanna has been collecting soup recipes all month long.

This tortilla soup, adapted from the Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, is not particularly difficult, although it does require a few preliminary steps before you throw everything into the pot to simmer. The complexly layered flavors reminds me a bit of a hot gazpacho: fresh with garlic and onions, rich with tomatoes and broth, smoky with the heat of the dried chilies. The onions and garlic I used were especially pungent; next time I make it, I might saute half of them to soften their bite just a bit.

A word about the dried chilies: the Lees call for a combination of anchos or mulatos and pasilla or guajilla chilies. I couldn’t find either of the latter two, so I substituted another dried hot variety, chiles de arbol. If you can’t find any dried chilies at all, I would recommend substituting roasted ones (poblanos would work well, I think, combined with a hotter pepper like a habanero or a serrano). Canned chipotles would also add an interesting note of smokiness and heat.

Whatever you do, don’t skip the toppings — they make the soup, in my opinion.

Vegetarian Tortilla Soup
2 cups corn or canola oil
4 whole dried chiles ancho (or other sweet-smoky pepper)
4 whole dried chiles de arbol (or other hot pepper)
10 soft yellow corn tortillas
Ground cumin
Chile powder
Seasoned salt
5 cups vegetable broth (you can substitute chicken broth for a non-veg version)
1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with liquid
1 large yellow onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, chopped,
Kosher salt, to taste
Cracked black pepper, to taste

Toppings:
1/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream
zest and juice of 1 lime
1/4 t. chile powder
1/4 t. seasoned salt
Cilantro, chopped
Avocado, sliced

Heat about an inch of the oil in a soup pot. While the oil heats up, prepare the dried chiles: slit each one down its side, remove the stem and seeds, and cut into large pieces. (Kitchen shears are well-suited for this job). Add the chile pieces to the hot oil in batches, toasting for about a minute per batch. They should be a little soft and fragrant. Remove with tongs to a plate and set aside.

Add the rest of the oil to the pot and heat to about 350 degrees (medium-high on my electric stove). Meanwhile, cut 6 of the tortillas into thin strips; leave the remaining 4 whole. Line a plate with paper towels. Fry the whole tortillas one at a time for about 1 minute per side, or until crisp. Remove to paper towel-lined plate and season immediately with cumin, chile powder, and seasoned salt. Repeat with tortilla strips, which will crisp faster. Discard the oil.

To the pot (I used the same one), add 2 cups of broth, diced onions, chopped garlic, and the canned tomatoes and liquid. Sprinkle with a palmful of Kosher salt. Bring to a boil. Add the toasted chiles. Crumble in the whole tortillas. Simmer (bubbles just below the surface) until the liquid has reduced by about a fourth, about 10-15 minutes. At this point, you’re going to puree the soup in a blender. Here’s what I recommend: pour the hot soup into the blender and let it sit for a few minutes to cool.

Meanwhile, you can prepare the toppings: stir together the buttermilk, sour cream, lime zest and juice, and seasonings. Wash and chop the cilantro and/or green onions. Slice the avocado. Get out some bowls.

When you think the soup is cool enough not to explode your blender, place a dish towel over the top of the blender, and pulse a few times. If it appears to be behaving, puree until smooth. Return the pureed soup to the pot, add the remaining broth, and bring back to a simmer. Serve with a dollop of the lime cream, a handful of cilantro, slices of avocado, and a fistful of tortilla strips. Be warm and think lovely thoughts of a coming spring!

PS: Thanks to all who have sent pregnancy encouragement my way; your thoughts and words of kindness have brightened many a dreary, tired day!

Two things I have bought every week at the farmer’s market for the past few weeks: corn and shrimp. Both have a delicately sweet flavor that reminds me of summer, so the combination is a natural one in my mind.

Shrimp and corn soup as prepared in restaurants around here is usually either roux-based, dark and heavy, or cream-based, light in flavor but not in substance; both versions are a bit too hearty for this sultry summer heat.

This shrimp and corn soup is light and flavorful, packed with the flavors of the two featured ingredients and not much else, which, for this simple girl, is how soup should be. The broth I made from shrimp stock in my freezer, boiled with the leftover corn cobs, but you can make vegetable stock with the corn and water if you don’t have any shrimp stock on hand or if you’re pressed for time.

This soup is a good dish to make on a lazy summer afternoon–it takes a bit of time, but not much cooking really; most of the time you can spend sipping lemonade and watching the stock simmer. I served it with a green salad and Rosemary Olive Oil bread (Rorie’s recipe, which I altered by reducing the sugar to 1/2 cup and substituting pine nuts for the walnuts–it was fabulous!)

Summer Shrimp and Corn Soup

3 ears corn
1/3 cup milk
2-3 cups shrimp stock (or water)
1 T. olive oil
1/2 large sweet yellow onion
1 clove garlic
2 small new potatoes, small-diced
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 lb. of small to medium shrimp, shelled
Fresh basil leaves, for garnish

Cut the kernels for the corn cobs and set aside.
In a large pot, combine the shrimp stock with the trimmings from the onion and the corn cobs. Simmer for about 45 minutes.

In a small saucepan, cover the corn kernels with the milk and heat over medium until the milk boils; reduce the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes. Set aside.

Heat the olive oil over medium to medium-low heat; add the onion and garlic and cook until translucent but not brown, about 10 minutes. Add the potatoes, season with salt and pepper, then cover with stock. Simmer for about 30 minutes. Adjust seasonings and add the shrimp. Cook the soup for another 5 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink and opaque. Serve topped with chopped fresh basil. Serves 4 as an entree, 6-8 as a starter.

My love of all things Ina is no secret to those who know me well. I have learned much about cooking from the Barefoot Contessa, and her cookbooks remain my most-often referenced.

For Christmas, my dear sister-in-law, who shares my love of the Contessa, gave me Barefoot in Paris. The reason I haven’t posted about it yet is because I believe in getting to know a cookbook before I commit to a full-blown evening with it. Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to take things slowly, reading the book through over a cup of coffee once or twice, getting a feel for what it has to offer, before I settle on my first recipe.

As the weather has been truly stew-worthy and as I thought my foray into French cuisine should start with something simple and classic, I began with Beef Bourguignon. Not the most photogenic dish, mind you, but don’t be fooled by its humble appearance. This stew is well worth the time you must wait for it to come to full flavor and the price of the wine and brandy you must put up to coax the homely beef, carrots, and onions into saucy decadence.

One of the things I most like about the dish is its versatility. The first night we ate it over garlic-rubbed bread, as the Contessa instructs. But rice and egg noodles also made good accompaniments, and thinned with some beef broth, it makes an excellent soup. The best thing about it, though, is that I made it on a Monday and it provided at least 3 other meals for us throughout the week (that’s 8 servings altogether), and I thought it was even better each time I ate it again, which doesn’t usually happen with me and leftovers. For a busy, cold week, this beef stew was my perfect match. Definitely worth the wait.

Beef Bourguignon
adapted from Ina Garten’s Barefoot in Paris (thanks, Hannah!)

Olive oil
1/2 pound bacon, diced
2 1/2 pounds beef chuck, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 pound carrots, sliced thickly on the bias
1 yellow onion, sliced
1 red onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup brandy
1 bottle dry red wine
1 14 1/2-ounce can beef broth
1 T. tomato paste
1 T. chopped fresh rosemary (or thyme or sage)
3 T. butter
3 T. flour

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Heat a teaspoon or 2 of olive oil in the biggest skillet (with a lid) you’ve got or in a Dutch oven.  Brown the bacon until it’s done, but not crispy. Remove the bacon, but leave the fat; return to medium-high heat. Add the cubes of beef in batches, making sure not to overcrowd the pan. Turn the pieces quickly to brown the meat on all sides; remove to the plate with the bacon.

When all the meat is seared, add the carrots and onions to the pan and cook for about 12-15 minutes, until the onions are golden brown. Add the garlic, and cook for another few minutes. Season with plenty of Kosher salt and cracked pepper. Now comes the fun part. Have the half cup of brandy and a match or lighter. Add the brandy, and light it on fire, standing away from the stove. It will burn off in less than a minute, but it’s fun to watch!

Stir in the beef and bacon pieces, and pour in the wine. Stir and season with salt and pepper. Add the beef broth; make sure that the meat is sufficiently covered. Stir in the tomato paste and rosemary. Bring the mixture to a boil, then pop it into the oven to cook for about an hour.

Remove the pan from the oven and return to the stove top. Mash the butter and flour into a paste, and stir into the stew to thicken. Bring it to a boil; reduce and simmer for about 10-15 minutes. To serve, layer thick slices of crusty bread, rubbed with cut garlic, into bowls; ladle the stew on top.

Note: Ina’s recipe calls for small frozen onions and sauteed mushrooms, to be added after the stew has been cooked in the oven. I was too hungry to slice and cook mushrooms by the time the stew was ready, but I’m sure they would make a nice addition. In my opinion, the stew is onion-y enough, so I left out the frozen ones altogether.

I know I shouldn’t complain about the cold. I live in southern Louisiana for crying out loud. But I tell you, when we bought our house (in July when it was 100 degrees), we didn’t really think to check the insulation or ask about the efficiency of the heating system. Boy do I wish we had. The conventional foundation means we’re up off the ground (cold), and the 1920s windows and doors are not quite as tightly sealed as they were, say, 80 years ago (drafty and cold). Plus, it’s humid, which makes the cold colder.

And I, friends, am not a cold weather kind of girl.

The cold affects my culinary senses one of two ways: either I crave standing in front of the hot stove making something hearty and satisfying or I simply want to stay in bed, food or not (it’s really the only warm place in our house besides in front of the stove).

Fortunately for David, I’m coming out of the stay-in-bed-with-my-books-and-computer slump and working towards spending as much time in front of the stove as possible.

This soup is an old standby, and it hits the hot spot on both counts: spice and temperature. The soup is rich and garlicky, thick with the tomato puree and chunky because of the chopped ones. After a big bowl of this (and the time I spend cooking it) I sometimes can even take my coat off and not be freezing.

But only sometimes.

Spicy Tomato Soup

4 slices bacon
1 yellow onion, chopped
6-8 cloves garlic, chopped
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 16-ounce can chopped tomatoes
1-2 t. Kosher salt
2 cups chicken stock or canned broth
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
Cracked black pepper
Half and half or heavy cream (optional)

Cook the bacon in a large pot until brown and crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Cook the onion in the bacon fat over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, until just tender. Add the garlic, and cook for another 5-8 minutes, until both are very soft and the garlic is beginning to turn golden. Salt and pepper well. (I don’t measure my salt, but with soup, I’ve found that if you season as you go, instead of all at once at the very end, you’ll end up with a nicely enhanced flavor, rather than a salty soup.) Stir in the crushed tomatoes, then add the chopped ones and their liquid. Add the broth, and season again. Bring the soup to a simmer,then reduce the heat and add the cayenne. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed. The soup is ready to serve at this point, but I usually leave mine on the stove on low heat for a while, to let the flavors mingle a little longer. When ready to serve, spoon into bowls and top with a few drops of half and half or cream and a crumble of bacon. Focaccia bread makes an excellent vehicle for dipping, if you’re so inclined. This soup could easily be vegetarian: substitute olive oil or butter for the bacon fat and vegetable broth for the chicken stock.
This recipe is my submission to this week’s ARF Tuesdays over at Sweetnicks.

I am probably in grave danger of being called in by the veggie police for blasphemy. After all they do for me–feed my body the nutrients it needs, liven up my salads, play a second fiddle to the main courses–and all I do is talk about how I need to dress them up in order to eat them. Why do I feel this way about vegetables? Well, I’ve been giving that some thought. I really don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’ve had bad experiences with canned or frozen ones that scarred me. Maybe I’m just not familiar enough with how to prepare them in a way that makes them taste good instead of bad to me. Whatever the reason, I’m trying to conquer my dislike of vegetables, one recipe at a time, so when I saw this soup recipe over at The Gracious Bowl, I knew I had to give it a try.

If you like soup and you haven’t visited Adrienne and Margaret’s blog, you should check it out. I have long been a fan of the comforting and nourishing powers of soup, so I check their site often for new ideas and recipes. They posted this recipe last week, and I immediately wanted to try it. We love Italian sausage, and since David loves beans of all sorts (and I, sadly, do not), I’m always trying to think of new ways to fix them where we might both be happy. This soup really did the trick. It is thick and hearty and utterly satisfying. The sausage and beans give it enough substance to make it filling, and the loads of vegetables makes it extra good for you. I simplified the original recipe just a tad–I eliminated the bacon and cooked the sausage, onions, garlic, and carrots all together before adding the rest of the ingredients. Also, Margaret included the rinds of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, which sounds like a lovely addition–I just didn’t have any. The recipe was also perfect for my new schedule–I threw everything together in the morning before class, and then David put it on to simmer a couple of hours before I got home.

(more…)

This soup is so simple, but really satisfying too. The sweetness of the squash, enhanced by the cane syrup and basalmic vinegar in the roasting process, provides the main flavor for the soup, but the subtle savory depth of the carrot and onion mellows the sweetness a good bit. I use a sweet onion so that the contrast is not too stark, add a dollop of mascarpone cheese for texture and creaminess, and sprinkle the bowl liberally with fresh nutmeg. Homemade chicken stock provides a richer flavor, but canned broth works too.

This recipe is designed to use up leftover squash, but other roast vegetables would work too, especially in combination. The wonderful thing about soup is that it’s a pretty forgiving medium. You’d rather use celery than carrot? Fine. Don’t have mascarpone cheese? No big deal. Want to add sweet potatoes? Go right ahead! My favorite thing about this soup recipe is that it makes use of what I have and allows me to play with the flavor combinations already at work with a minimum amount of time and effort. To have dinner on the table, the only thing I had to do was chop and saute the carrot and onion, add the rest of the ingredients and let them simmer, and throw together a salad. What’s even better is that the soup could be made early in the day, or even the day before, and then just warmed up later.

You’ll probably be seeing more meals like this one from me in the coming months–starting Tuesday, I have class three nights a week. If dinner’s going to be made, it will have to be done in the daylight hours. Yikes!

(more…)