Today was another, even warmer perfect fall day and the leaves are peaking. I got to work outside for a couple of hours and enjoy the sounds and smells of the season. The scarcity and magic of these days makes them even more valuable, and the undercurrent of melancholy at the fleeting warmth gives each moment added weight. Time is fat like pumpkins right now. To balance the divine excess of last night, a couple…
Category: Soup
Another chilly wet day required soup, and this time I went for a Japanese-style dinner with a bunch of small dishes followed by a big bowl of soba. Clockwise from upper left: beet pickles, sorrel and nasturtium salad (sesame/ume shu dressing,) leftover braised pan di zucchero, and our own Japanese eggplant cooked with scallions in a serious sauce of garlic, rice vinegar, shoyu, agave syrup, and HP sauce that Christine bought me recently so I…
Milo got another cold- mild, but still requiring this sort of medicine: a broth made from mirepoix and chicken thighs in which cannelini cooked for two hours, and into which I dumped broccoli, parsley, and peas at the last minute. Just before that, some frozen porcini agnolotti from the store had a simmer. A 2006 “Petit Bourgeois” Chavignol (by Henri Bourgeois) sauvignon blanc was good, but a tad crisp and austere for such hearty peasant…
Faced with a cool day, perfect things in the garden, and some milk left in the jar we got from Juliette, a creamed soup seemed to be the right choice. Tofu provided a nice flavor and textural complement, as well as protein. So the heavenly mirepoix from the garden began a really nice soup that then included potatoes, leeks, and broccoli, then got stick-blended with milk into a thick unstrained purée; I wanted this rustic…
I remembered to soak some mung beans when I came back from our walk, so they cooked pretty fast when it was time to make dinner. Into a pan of our divine mirepoix they went, with water and pepper, and simmered while I took the chicken mushrooms from calzone night and added them plus some maitake (confusingly referred to as hen-of-the-woods) to smoked chicken broth I made with all the carcasses from the party. Bean…
Milo has a cold, so garden goodness in the form of carrot, onion, celery, and parsley went into a pot with chicken thighs to make broth. The carrot, subsequently cubed, and the chicken meat combined with the strained broth, wild rice, and orzo to make a simple, archetypal dinner that he slurped up with abandon and yet was refined enough for us to enjoy on a less sniffly level.
I owe the inspiration for this to cookiecrumb, who referred me to Becks & Posh based on the “Bolted Lettuce” post from the other day. The happy presence of duck broth in our freezer (they leave those giblets in there for a reason) made it even better, and let me clear out a large part of the lettuce bed for the fall crop. All the various bolted varieties went in: butterhead, red and green oakleaf,…
I try as much as possible to be open to the confluence of ingredients, influences, and the day in question when making dinner; the best examples of my cooking seem to reflect all three in equal measure and still remain original, nourishing, and yummy. Tonight was a decent example. Our friend Leanne emailed to thank us for the giant zucchini we gave them yesterday and said she had made fritters- latkes of sorts- with potatoes…
The leftover oysters went in a pot with cubed new potato, the rest of the turnip/daikon mash, a bit of tomato paste, garlic, a squeeze of lemon, and water to cook into a chowder of sorts; in order to amplify the chowderness (chowderivity? chowdertude? chowderosity?) I whisked in a bit of yogurt and butter at the end, along with some halved grape tomatoes for color and contrast with the paste. The corn meal from the…
This has been a week of many soups; we all had the flu and tonight we sent the last sniffles packing with a nice finale. Previously, I had made minestrone from the fried lamb chop bones, then a chicken broth that began as something similar to tonight, but larded with copious hot sauce, ginger, and garlic to napalm the wretched microbes, then ended up as fridge soup a couple of days later with pasta, beans,…