Spring is still soup season

THE OTHER DAY IT WAS SO BLUSTERY AND COLD that I decided soup was in order. A nice between-season soup is the leek-potato one, and you can add fresh parsley or other greens to it just before serving to give it a fresher spring flavor. I found that I’d written a blog about it years ago, and it sounded good enough to recycle. It reminded me to sweat those leeks (awful as it sounds)! And though I was lacking stock or broth of any kind, I just used water and it was still just fine. With some bread or popovers, and perhaps a salad — I’d call it a meal fit for the season.

Fresh leeks are a glorious, yet humble, sign of spring. A few years ago, when I was visiting Cathy in California, a neighbor brought over a big bagful of freshly picked leeks, and I set to work on some leek-potato soup.

Most of this work took place around the sink, as leeks like to hold on to dirt in their layers, so they demand a lot of cleaning.  Basically, you cut off the dark green leaves and the root-y bottoms, then run the rest (the white and light green parts) under running water, making sure you clean between the layers. (Alternatively, sometimes  you can find trimmed, cleaned leeks in your grocery store.)

If the leeks are very fat, slice them vertically before cutting your horizontal slices.

I had never been quite happy with the texture of leeks in the soup I’ve made previously, so this time I consulted Cathy’s cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen, and these experts supplied the ultimate tip: sweat the leeks.

It’s not the most attractive term, but basically it means that you saute the slices of leeks in some oil or butter (use your judgement for how much) and then put a lid on top for 15 minutes or so. The leeks continue to cook in their own moisture, and they will become meltingly soft and intense.

Now all you need to do is to add some vegetable or chicken broth, a bay leaf and perhaps some thyme, salt and pepper, and a few potatoes — red or white or Yukon gold — cleaned and cut into about 1/2-inch dice. You can leave the skins on if you like. Cook till the potatoes are soft, then smash some of them against the side of the pot to thicken the soup.

It’s nice left chunky like this, with pieces of potato and leek in your soup bowl, or you can blend some or all of it for a silkier texture. Some minced parsley or other greens, and a dusting of Parmesan, is good just before serving.

I found this advertisement in a store flier. Were the mushrooms leaking out of the strudel?

Do not confuse a leek with a leak. If in doubt, please contact me for proofreading advice.

 

Eating green

It’s time for a St. Patrick’s Day post — so I’m recycling this one from 7 years ago. I just made my favorite green soup (parsley-potato) and I’m keeping things simple this year, with a toast to my Dad and the idea of America welcoming immigrants!

toby's kitchen notes

My family always celebrates St. Patrick’s Day.

It’s not that our Jewish family has any Irish ancestry. But my father always talked about the “Irish luck” that allowed him to escape Nazi Germany and arrive in the United States on March 17, 1939.

After he’d made the decision to leave–in 1936, when he lost his job after his boss was ordered to dismiss all Jewish employees–it took years and many obstacles before he could obtain a visa to America. By that time, February, 1939, there were no more boats leaving Germany. He packed a few belongings in a brown steamer trunk, said goodbye to his parents and brother, and took a train to Holland.

In early March, he boarded a small ship bound for America.  Because of rough seas, the voyage lasted fourteen days and the ship arrived in New York on March 17, 1939 – St. Patrick’s Day.

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Small comforts

I KNOW IT’S A CLICHÉ to write about “comfort food,” but the anxiety I’ve experienced  since the election has made comfort seem more necessary than ever. There is something calming about the normality of cooking, especially if you’re making something both comforting and nourishing.

Last week I made a mushroom-chicken pot pie topped with biscuits that fit the bill. Aviva showed me how to do this basically in one pot: saute onions and garlic with your choice of vegetables –some options: mushrooms, chopped potatoes or sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, cauliflower greens– in butter and/or oil in a cast iron skillet. Add a few tablespoons of flour and seasonings (salt, pepper, rosemary or thyme) and then add enough broth (chicken or vegetarian) to make a nice “gravy” for your pie. Add cooked chicken or leave it out for a vegetarian version. The sauce should be a little thinner than you want it as it’ll thicken in the oven. You can top with a biscuit dough, as I did here (Mark Bittman’s biscuit topping works well) or with a typical pie crust.

Or, for the easiest method, do as I did recently and use puff pastry (buy it frozen and thaw it). Lay a circle of puff pastry over your filling, and cut a few slits for the steam to escape.

For any of these toppings, bake at 400 degrees for about 30-40 minutes, until the filling is bubbling and the biscuits or other crust is golden.

The pot pie is a little more ambitious than my usual comfort nourishment though. I gravitate toward the simplest form of cooking. Faithful readers of this blog (thank you!) know that I love SOUP, especially in fall and winter, when my go-to supper is soup and bread (or toast, popovers, cornbread, etc.).

Indeed I have a long family history with soup, one part of which I wrote about in my latest sketchbook:

In just the last few weeks, I’ve run through a lot of my soup favorites: lentil with spinach and lemon, parsley-potato; chicken soup with matzo balls, red lentil soup; and of course, minestrone.

My latest soup creation is another lentil soup, this time with lots of carrots to brighten its color, and some seasoning to perk up the flavors. I adapted it from a recipe by British food writer Diane Henry for “Turkish carrots and lentils with herbs” in the book Plenty (no, not the Ottolenghi Plenty).

Henry’s recipe is more a side dish with fewer lentils and no real broth; I doubled the lentils and added more water for a soup-ier version. She suggests fresh mint, parsley or dill for the herbs — I chose to use cilantro (but I do want to try the mint version sometime.) Henry also adds 2 teaspoons of sugar, but I left it out; it didn’t seem to need it. The coriander seeds and red pepper, along with the lemon and herbs give it a bright and lively flavor.

This first serving was more stew-like; when I heated it up the next day, I added more water to make it more of a soup. Really good either way.

Carrot-lentil soup

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly chopped
• 2 teaspoons coriander seeds, crushed
• 1/4 – 1/2 dried red pepper flakes
• 1 cup lentils
• 6 large carrots, sliced
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste (or you can use tomato puree)
• 4 or 5 cups vegetable stock or water
• salt and pepper
• chopped cilantro
• lemon juice

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan and saute’ the onion until soft. Add garlic and spices and cook for two minutes. Then add everything else except the cilantro and lemon juice.
2.  Bring to a boil and cook until tender, about 30 minutes. Add more water or broth as you like — it can be more of a lentil stew or a soup.
3. Adjust the seasoning, adding salt and pepper to taste. If desired, add a glug of olive oil to the soup (I don’t but you might want to).
4. Ladle into bowls, adding a generous squeeze of lemon juice and a good sprinkle of cilantro into each bowl.

I love Diane Henry’s concise description: “This shows just how delicious frugality can be.” And comforting too.

A day to celebrate

I decorated a lemon tart with lime and lime zest for St. Patrick’s Day. That was last year.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY IS A BIG HOLIDAY IN MY FAMILY — and not because we’re Irish or even big beer drinkers.

It’s because my father, Eric Sonneman, a refugee from Nazi Germany, arrived in this country on March 17, 1939. He was 28 years old.

When his ship arrived in New York on St. Patrick’s Day, the passengers were greeted by a band playing Irish music at the pier. My father knew nothing about St. Patrick’s Day, but his uncle, a recent immigrant himself who had met my father’s ship, insisted on going to Fifth Avenue to see the fabulous parade.

“I thought this is a wonderful country, to welcome the immigrants with a band and a parade!” my father always said. (A more complete story is here.)

Now I always celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as a day to remember my dad’s wonderful introduction to America.

In Chicago, where I grew up, they dye the Chicago River green for St. Patrick’s Day

The traditional food for the day, of course, is corned beef and cabbage, but that has never appealed to me. Something-or-other green (and a little Guinness stout) is enough for me. Last year I was fancy with the decorated lemon tart, but this year I’m lazier, and I’m just making my bright-green parsley soup (the recipe is here, though I now use my hand-blender) and some oatmeal-currant scones. It’s my own little St. Pat’s tradition. Anything green will do, though — even a green salad!

The important thing is the toast.  I’ll be toasting my dad and the country that welcomed him.

Fresh from the pantry (almost)

Red lentils are also called Egyptian or Mansoor lentils

THE ENTRY FOR LENTILS in the Oxford Companion to Food follows closely behind the one for lemons — and that seems right, as lemons add brightness to this easy-to-cook-but-sometimes-a-little-dull legume. A recipe on my lemon blog for Lemony Lentil Soup with Spinach (scroll to second recipe) is testimony to this great marriage.

Lentils have been cultivated since antiquity in Egypt, and evidence of lentils has been found in many prehistoric sites in Europe. In India, the largest producer of lentils today, they are an everyday food called dal, often cooked with onion and spices and served with rice. Next to soy beans, lentils have the highest protein content of all vegetables.

There are dozens of different colors and sizes of lentils, each with their own character. Brown or green lentils are fine, but red lentils are very nice for soups as they cook quickly and break down into a puree. And, of course, there’s the color. Some of that lovely salmon color fades with cooking, though, so I was happy to find New York Times’ food writer Melissa Clark’s recipe for Red Lentil Soup with Lemon, which adds carrots and tomato paste to the pot to bring some of the color back. And this time of year, when it’s often grey and dismal outside, I really appreciate a burst of color in the soup bowl.

When cooking any kind of lentils, don’t forget the lemon

Another thing to love about this soup is that (as long as I’ve got the red lentils in the pantry), I usually have all the ingredients on hand. Lemon, onion, garlic — check. Cumin, chile powder or cayenne, tomato paste — check. I don’t always have fresh cilantro, but parsley or even chives will do in a pinch.

Truth be told, I very rarely follow a recipe precisely (often not even more-or-less) but this one was so simple and easy — and didn’t call for any unusual ingredients — that I didn’t have my usual tendency to depart from it. (That is, aside from adding an extra carrot for more orange flecks, and a good squeeze of lemon juice in the serving bowls for brighter flavor.)

I made some popovers and a green salad to go with it, and called it supper.

 

 

 

Pistou!!

I’d bought some fresh cranberry beans at the farmers’ market, which were very tasty and tender

IT’S THAT TRANSITION TIME — warm and summery one day, cool and rainy the next. During the cool rainy (and windy) days last week, I wished I had some soup to eat. . . but I didn’t feel like making my usual fall and winter soups. I didn’t want to rush the season.

Then I saw this article and recipe in the New York Times for soupe au pistou, the Southern French vegetable soup flavored with basil (usually a basil pesto without the pine nuts).

The lovely thing about this particular recipe by David Tanis is that it uses all those vegetables that are in season right now, in September. However, it’s also very adaptable, and there are countless variations. For example, in a second batch I made, I cooked dried, soaked white beans instead of the cranberry beans. (Yes, I imagine you could substitute canned beans). And I couldn’t find romano beans, so I just used more regular green beans.

Another adjustment I made to the recipe was to skip the separate step of blanching the vegetables, and just cook them right in the pot (as one reader suggested), to my liking. I kept them bright and slightly crunchy for the first serving; the next day, when I reheated the soup, the vegetables were less bright but more tender. Both variations were good.

Some people use rice or macaroni instead of potatoes, or insist that tomatoes are essential if you want to call it soupe au pistou  (Here, for example, is a completely different recipe).

I like the potatoes, though, and I think the soupe is fine with or without the tomatoes. Since I’ve never had an traditional soupe au pistou, I can’t judge its authenticity except to say I like this soup, whatever you call it.

The dollop of basil pesto (without nuts, but if you have some usual pesto on hand, no one will object) adds a distinctive seasoning, but this soup is flavorful even without it (maybe then you should call it something else).

Really, this soupe au pistou is so good that it led me right back into the soup-making season–without regrets.

Shortcut salad

 

I had a head of cauliflower that was calling out to be roasted, so I took out a cookie sheet, set the oven to 400 degrees and cut off the woody parts of the vegetable. Then I broke and cut the cauliflower florets into small pieces, mixed them with a bit of olive oil and salt and spread them on the sheet, roasting until they were browning and a little crispy on the edges. That brings out and mellows the flavor of the cauliflower.

It would be easy to gobble up a whole head of cauliflower that way, but I resisted as I needed those tasty florets to go a little further.  I had in mind using them to make a nice healthy salad that I could put in the fridge so we could eat it for lunch or a snack.

Hmmm, wouldn’t it be good to have some chewy nutty farro as a base? –and some roasted peppers for color and flavor? Farro, an ancient strain of hard wheat, isn’t difficult to cook, but it does take a bit of time, and I just happened to have Trader Joe’s 10-minute farro on hand, as well as a jar of roasted yellow and red peppers.

I am usually reluctant to admit that I use some shortcuts, but that is pretty silly. Why not use shortcuts if the ingredients are healthy and they make your life a little easier?

The finished salad also had chopped green onion, parsley and mint and a dressing made of my favorite trio: lemon juice, olive oil and salt.

Variations? Of course! You could add beans, a different grain, a different vegetable, other herbs, vinegar in place of lemon, etc. etc. In fact, I had some leftover salad and I added sliced Kalamata olives, some pickled beets (also from a jar) and more lemon juice to freshen it up — and the second variation was good too.

I just wish I always had a vegetable-based salad or soup in the fridge for the best healthy fast food. It’ll probably never happen, but if shortcuts help me toward that goal, I’m all for them!

Beets and potatoes (and grandmothers from Russia)

A few days ago, I was talking on the phone with my cousin Yael–an Israeli, though she’s lived in the United States for decades now–about the traditional foods we had on Passover.

Our grandmothers were sisters — from the village of Shumsk (or Szumsk) in Russia (though sometimes the region was part of Poland and currently it’s part of the Ukraine) — and Yael and I discovered that both of us grew up with potatoes on the seder plate, either instead of parsley or alongside it. Why? Because in Russia (or Poland or Ukraine or whatever) there were no fresh vegetables growing in April.

I found radishes at the farmers market here, but it might still be too early for them in the Ukraine. Or Russia. Or Poland.

Passover foods generally involve a lot of potatoes, but beets are also traditional, especially for Jews from Eastern Europe, as it was another root vegetable available in early spring.

Yael told me about a sweet-sour beet salad she makes for Passover, and that reminded me of beet borscht. On Passover, my mother always served it a special way with an egg whipped in the soup tureen, turning the borscht from wine-red to a frothy deep rose color. Yael’s family made it that way too, she said.

Baba (Edess Kanfer Arshack)

My mother told me that her mother (my Baba) always made rossel (or rossl or rosel), which is sour or fermented beets, a kind of starter for genuine beet borscht.  She started the fermentation six weeks before Passover, putting cleaned and peeled chunks of beets in an earthenware crock and covering them with water, checking every few days. The women neighbors in Rock Island, Illinois, where my mother’s family lived, would come to the house and take a cupful of Baba’s rossel so they could make their own borscht.

Looking around the Internet, I noticed a couple of things about rossel. For a long while it fell out of favor as it takes quite a bit of planning and some attention. (Even my mother, who kept so many food traditions, never made it.) Plus people’s tastes had changed and sour fermented beets didn’t sound so appealing –although kosher dill pickles, which are fermented cucumbers, never lost their fans.

But recently, it’s having a bit of a come-back (though one couldn’t exactly call it a resurgence) as fermented foods are becoming more popular. Now I am seriously thinking of making rossel next year (my Jewish cookbook says three or four weeks ahead is sufficient), and perhaps some of my trusty readers will try it too. As Levy‘s bakery famously said, “You don’t have to be Jewish . . .”

In the meantime, I tried Yael’s beet salad with lemon juice and a touch of sugar, which captured the flavors of our shared history.

It made me think of the freedom our grandparents found when they left the Old Country, and that, along with the marvelous color, made me happy.

The ship that my grandmother took to America

Sweet-and-sour beet salad

Yael boils the beets. I baked them, wrapped tightly in tin foil, on a cookie sheet. Either way, if they’re large, they’ll take a while.

(By the way, I first removed the beet greens and steamed them, for another use. Don’t throw them away!)

When the beets are cool, you peel them and grate them. I think next time, I will under-bake them just a little. These were a bit too soft.

Once they’re grated, add lemon juice, sugar (I’d go easy on that) and a little salt, to taste.
There are many ways you could serve this salad, of course, but I thought it looked nice against the green of romaine lettuce leaves. You could fold the leaves around the salad and eat it as a finger food. It looks like a new Passover tradition for me!

For more on beets: A valentine vegetable

For more about Passover:
Edible, tangible memory
A cake for all seasons
Time for quinoa

 

Luck and a dream

Saint Patrick’s Day is my family’s day to celebrate my father’s “Irish luck.”

Seventy-five years ago, my father arrived in America, having escaped Nazi Germany.

Please read more of the story here, published online in Tablet Magazine.

Shamrocks growing outside my apartment

I don’t make anything fancy for the day (though I have been known to make S-cookies with green sparkling sugar) and I’m not a corned-beef-and-cabbage fan, so I’ll probably just make a variation of my emerald green parsley soup (thought I’d add some leeks to it this time) along with some Irish soda bread or maybe oatmeal scones.

And if there’s a beer around (it could be root beer or ginger beer or practically anything)  I’ll make a toast to my dad and all those who helped him and his family come to America.

Notes from a one-armed cook

When I returned from Italy with my arm encased in a huge plaster cast, I had a pretty good attitude. But it wasn’t long before I was brought to tears — by an onion.

No, it wasn’t the onion’s irritating juice that was making me cry. It was the reality that without the use of my left hand to hold down the onion, there was no way I could cut it. I had been enjoying other people’s cooking in Italy, but now I wanted to cook for myself and Steve. And without onions — well, what kind of cooking would that be? In my book, onions are as essential as lemons!

Yes, Steve offered to chop the onion, but it was an ordeal. Let’s just say, he is extra sensitive to the onion irritant, and a lot of cursing was involved . Anyway, he was doing so many other tasks (including a total clean-up of the kitchen)  that I didn’t want to ask him again.

I don’t know that I ever before fully appreciated the marvel of hands, especially two of them. Or the pleasure of doing even menial tasks for myself — or for someone else.

With a little research, I discovered there are special single-handed cutting boards, which range from simple ones with spikes and corners to hold food down to the fancier Swedish cutting boards with suction feet, more spikes and a vise. These are especially helpful for amputees or stroke victims. But I figured it wouldn’t be worth buying one for my remaining month in a cast.

The purple cast is the latest in a series

Thank goodness my disability is more temporary — and that I also discovered that Trader Joe’s carries bags of chopped onions! Before long,  I was sauteeing onions (with celery and carrots that I chopped myself using the cleaned ‘baby-size’ carrots) for minestrone . . . and I only had to ask Steve for help in opening the can of tomatoes.

I’ve cooked quite a few dishes during this arm-healing period — several batches of minestrone soup, wild mushroom risotto, polenta, spinach-and-feta frittata, oatmeal scones, cornbread, etc. — but it hasn’t all been easy. Over the last 44 days, I’ve had to develop some advice for myself — and then remind myself of it along the way. So here are the basics :

Be patient– and lower your standards. Plan extra time, because everything will take longer than it used to (or than it does for others).  Your frustration will lower in proportion to the extent that you accept this reality. Also, your diminished abilities may mean that you are messier and less precise than you used to be. It helps if you are not a perfectionist.

Adapt when you can — There’s no shame in holding a zipper-lock bag with your teeth so you can open or close it, or clasping a jar in the crook of your damaged arm so you can use your functional hand to open it.  Maybe you have to carry jars of water to the heavy cooking pot rather than bringing the pot over to the sink. Maybe you or your friends will come up with creative tools to help with tasks (Steve’s brother Duane had made a wooden holder for the Microplane grater, which I relied on.) A lot of times, there really is an alternative method, even if you don’t get a specialized cutting board.

Stop making yourself crazy. So you can’t do everything. Who can? Adapting can only go so far. My DIY mode had to go. I gave up baking bread in the cast iron Dutch oven (way too heavy) and enjoyed bread from a wonderful local bakery. I tossed out my snooty attitude about  buying vegetables in bags (so wasteful and expensive, I’d thought) and gave in to packaged pre-cut butternut squash and triple-washed lettuce in bags (since Steve won’t use the salad spinner.) Also, I decided there was no harm in the occasional frozen food or even (heaven forbid!) using the built-in microwave which I’d formerly relegated to skillet storage.

Ask for help. No matter how independent you are, you will not be able to do everything yourself. If you are lucky, there will be someone around or next door or down the street or even across town who won’t mind helping — and may even be glad you asked.

Still, asking for help — and accepting it graciously — is a lot harder than it seems it should be.

When friends ask, “What can I do to help?” it helps to have something specific in mind — that is, if they really mean it (but do give them an easy out, so you don’t strain the friendship).

For example, when Jennifer asked what I wanted for my birthday, I told her: “A fresh pineapple. If you would cut it for me.” I’d been eyeing the new shipment of pineapples in the store but there was no way I could cut one myself.

So… lo and behold! — I got exactly what I asked for. And it was one of the best pineapples I ever tasted. Thank you, Jennifer!

Allow for mixed emotions —The accident made me contemplate how much I have to be grateful for, from the fact that I didn’t break my right arm or my leg (or both arms, for that matter) to the loving support of Steve and friends. But I wouldn’t be honest if I said it was all gratitude all the time. Every now and then I needed to whine a little about the pain or the disability. I was glad that Steve would (usually) just listen sympathetically without telling me to shape up. Then I could get over it and go on.

It’s surely a minor problem being a one-handed cook — as Cathy says, remember the big picture — yet  I won’t deny that sometimes it’s just a drag. That’s why I’m really  looking forward to tomorrow, when the cast comes off!