Tag Archives: Vegan

Gazpacho, pacho man! I want to be a gazpacho man!

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With croutons, parsley, and cilantro.

Still summer, still hot. Time again for a simple cold soup (many call it “liquid salad”), perfect for that moment your garden is in its annual throes of tomatorrhea, when your plants imitate the ketchup bottle in Richard Armour‘s famous poem: “none will come / and then a lot’ll.” Even if you don’t grow your own tomatoes, local supermercados, feiras, and grocery stores will be happy to provide you with a cornucopia of ingredients.

This particular verion of gazpacho was built from a foundation laid by the Spanish chef and international hero, José Andrés, and published in the Washington Post. I guarantee that if you follow his instructions to the letter, you will have an excellent bowl of soup, if slightly different from the one offered here.

Some people claim that the word gazpacho originated in Arabic, others say it came from Greek; the Real Academia de la Lengua Española, which is the final word on Spanish words, has come down firmly in the camp of “we aren’t sure.” One thing that IS clear is that the modern version of red gazpacho dates back no further than the 16th century, because the Old World (although they didn’t know it) was waiting for Columbus to bring back tomatoes and peppers. [Rock fans know this from the Neon Park illustration on the cover of Little Feat‘s album Waiting for Columbus. But I digress.]

[One further digression: other scholars assert that Hernán Cortés, not Columbus, introduced the Peruvian tomato to Spain in 1521. Regardless of who performed the introduction, it was widely embraced.]

Most culinary historians date gazpacho’s birth sometime between the 8th and 15th centuries, when the Ottoman Empire’s reach extended to Spain; others credit the Moors with a roughly contemporaneous version. Still others say an early precursor dates to the Roman Empire, and there are even some who push the date back as far as the Biblical book of Ruth. One thing that virtually all of them agree on, though, is that the first person to publish a recipe for it was the chief confectioner at the court of the Spanish kings Felipe V and Fernando VI, Juan de la Mata.

Looks good for being nearly 300 years old.

His treatise, Arte de Repostería (Art of Confectionery), was published in 1747 and is still studied. Even at that late date, tomato had not gained the preeminence it has today, and de la Mata’s recipe called for bread, water, anchovy bones, garlic cloves, vinegar, sugar, salt, and oil. [For more on the history of gazpacho, I commend the James Beard Award-winning author Clifford A. Wright, who not only has his observations on the origins of this delightful soup, but recipes as well.]

Throughout its ancestral home of Andalucia, and indeed throughout the entire Iberian peninsula, gazpacho evinces itself in a wide variety of textures and flavour profiles. Some are chunky, others puréed; some feature tomato and some don’t; certain cooks absolutely insist that bread crumbs have to be in the mix, while others are happy to incorporate such exotic flavours as watermelon or avocado. So my advice to you would be to keep an open mind, paw through a bunch of recipes, and find the one that zings the strings of your papillae.

Please don’t feel any sense of shame if you use canned tomatoes rather than fresh; some days, the local crop may be woody or just plain bland, and the canned option (particularly if fire-roasted) may yield a better finished product. But please do use the best olive oil and vinegar that your budget will allow. My last batch contained some artisanal olive oil we purchased directly from the producer in Marvão, just barely on the Portuguese side of the Spanish border. The vinegar was hand-carried home from Brauerai Gegenbauer in Vienna, and their products are just crazy great. You can use a good Sherry vinegar, but I like to add some Gegenbauer tomato vinegar to a glug of Lustau Sherry, both for the sweetness and the rounded texture.

As is true with many of my recipes, this is merely one of a gaggle of routes to the destination of yum. To usurp (and slightly corrupt) the title of a famous book/movie, Eat, Play, Love.

INGREDIENTS

1 liter / 4 cups polpa de tomate/tomato sauce (a combination of tomato paste and tomato juice can be substituted)
390g / 14 oz. can chopped tomatoes (check to see if salted or not)
600g / 21 oz. Padrón peppers (shishito peppers can be substituted)
1 cucumber, peeled and chopped (seeding optional)
5-6 cloves garlic (but I’m a garlic fiend, so you may want fewer)
100ml / 3.5 oz Sherry
250ml / 14 oz. extra virgin olive oil
100ml / 3.5 oz vinegar
Optional toppings/add-ins: croutons, parsley, diced tomato or bell pepper, toasted almonds, piri-piri sauce or Tabasco, cilantro

DIRECTIONS
Put all the ingredients into a blender. Blend on medium until desired texture is reached. Transfer to pitcher and chill (both you and the soup) for at least 2-3 hours to allow flavours to meld (the garlic may not completely mellow out until the following day). Garnish as the spirit moves. Serve.

Chilled Avocado Soup (Vegan)

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It’s a little warm and muggy today in São João do Estoril, Portugal, though I am not complaining. It appears from the news that much of the northern hemisphere is experiencing a heat wave right now, which makes it an ideal time for a super-easy-to-prepare chilled soup, especially one that requires exactly zero time on the stove. [Well, unless your bride asks you to make homemade croutons for it.]

A note about stock and salt: I use a Spanish commercial vegetable stock by Aneto that already has a little salt in it, so I let diners add some finishing salt if they wish. American cooks using commercial vegetable stocks will likely find them to be sodium bombs, so I would advise y’all to take it easy on the salt. Better Than Bouillon makes an excellent vegetarian stock base, but it’s not readily available here in Europe. Making your own vegetable stock so you can control the salt content is an option, but you certainly don’t want to do it on a hot day. At least I don’t.

INGREDIENTS

1 liter / 4 cups vegetable stock
125ml / ½ cup fresh lemon juice (lime juice can be substituted)
30g / ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 ripe avocados (minus skin and seeds)
3 green onions (scallions), chopped
4 cloves garlic (but I’m a garlic fiend, so you may want less)
1.25g / ½ teaspoon pimentón de la Vera
Optional toppings: croutons, parsley, diced tomato or bell pepper, toasted almonds, piri-piri sauce or Tabasco, cilantro

DIRECTIONS
Put all the ingredients into a blender. Blend on medium until desired texture is reached. Transfer to pitcher and chill (both you and the soup) for at least 1 hour to allow flavours to meld. Garnish as the spirit moves. Serve.


Instant Pot® Vegan Risotto with Mushrooms, Preserved Lemons, and Basil

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Canadian man makes Italian food.

As the news swirls with epic chills in the Midwest due to a polar vortex that has been altered by climate change, and when rain threatens my California home, it seems like the rib-sticking comfort of risotto is a reasonable response. Unlike my previous recipe for Saffron Risotto with Peas and Langoustine, this version was concocted in a cool bit of technology that had barely penetrated the public consciousness back then, and it’s vegan (although for my second helping, I grated a bit of Pecorino-Romano on top, and found it excellent).

Full disclosure: Although the idea for combining mushrooms and preserved lemons in a risotto originated with a yearning created in my tastebuds, several blog posts guided my thinking as I developed the recipe. You can find them at the Simple Vegan Blog, Vegan Heaven, Vegan Richa, Vegan Huggs, Chew Out Loud, and the ubiquitous Epicurious.

As is often the case, the recipe was developed around existing ingredients; I had some fresh basil in the fridge, it seemed like it would fit in with the other ingredients, and KAPOW, in it went. [One of my #squadgoals for 2019 is to undertake fewer unintentional fridge-based science experiments, a/k/a using ingredients before they stink up the joint.] Same deal with the dried mushrooms; they had been intended for a soup I was going to make for a friend who I later found out doesn’t like mushrooms.

The dried mushrooms I used were porcini (Boletus edulis), and an interesting variety known variously as slippery jack, pink boletus, and sticky bun. Although the package referred to them as Boletus luteus, which is their original 1753-era moniker gifted by the legendary botanist, physician, zoologist, and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, they are now known to be of a different genus and are more properly called Suillus luteus. You are of course welcome to use fresh mushrooms in addition to or instead of the dried.

Two other ingredients might be slightly unfamiliar to those with a limited pantry. Nutritional yeast is sold as flakes, granules, or powder, and is often employed in vegan dishes to add a cheesy or nutty flavour. You’ll find it in my recipe for Vegan Potatoes au Gratin, in fact. If your local supermercado carries it, you’ll likely find it next to the spices or in the health food/gluten-free/dairy-free ghetto. If not, well, your local GNC or Amazon.

The other possibly unfamiliar ingredient is preserved lemons. Common in South Asian and North African cuisine, preserved lemon is basically a brined or pickled lemon, generally salted heavily and marinated/pickled/brined for a month or so in salt and either lemon juice or water, if liquid is employed. Sometimes spices are added to the mix, but not generally. If you have neither the time, patience, or lemons for this process, they can be found in jars at many Indian, Middle Eastern, or North African markets, should you have such in your area. And yeah, Amazon. But seriously, they are super easy to make and they last a long time, so even if you have to buy a jar to get started, you should make your own, too. Surprisingly, the part you mainly want to use is the peel, not the flesh. Weird, huh?

The Instant Pot® doesn’t let you off the hook entirely when it comes to stirring stirring stirring your risotto; it bypasses only about 85-ish percent, which is not insubstantial. And while this method in all honesty may not yield that Michelin-star-worthy risotto of your Tuscan dreams, it gets close enough that I’ll take it on a weekday when I don’t have the Zen-like attitude or schedule that the former requires.

INGREDIENTS
100 g / 3.5 oz dried mushrooms (to be rehydrated) (or 16 oz. / .5 kg fresh mushrooms, preferably crimini)
2 tbsp. / 30 ml extra virgin olive oil (or other preferred oil)
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups / 600 g uncooked Arborio rice
1/3 cup / 75 g preserved lemon, minced
8 cups / 2 liters Aneto vegetable broth, or other low sodium veggie broth
1 loosely packed cup (1.5 oz. / 45 g) fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
1/4 cup / 10 g nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon / 1 g white pepper
salt to taste

“Mushrooms and lemons,” ring the bells of St. Clements.

DIRECTIONS
Rinse dried mushrooms thoroughly to cleanse them of grit, then drain. Then cover them in a liter (or quart / 4 cups) of warm veg broth. I used the stupidly expensive and stupidly great Aneto vegetable broth, available at a case discount at Amazon. If you have your own veggie stock, great. Otherwise I would recommend a mix of water and one of Better Than Bouillon‘s stock bases, such as the No Chicken Base. The mushrooms should hydrate in about 1/2 hour. Remove them from the liquid, then strain the liquid to remove any remaining possible grit and reserve the liquid. [The mushrooms soak up about 100-150 ml of the original liquid, which you can replace with more stock, water, or dry white wine.]

Dice onion, mince garlic, mince preserved lemons.

You can chop the mushrooms if you want; I didn’t.

Set Instant Pot® to “Sauté” and add olive oil to the stainless steel inner container. Add onion and sauté for about 5 minutes, until soft without colouring. Add the garlic (and fresh mushrooms, if you are using them) and sauté for another two minutes or so, stirring regularly. Don’t worry if there’s some browning on the bottom of the stainless steel container. Add minced preserved lemons and sauté for another minute or so. Add rice, and stir, to coat all the rice with a little oil. [Add another few ml or a tbsp. of oil if you feel like you need to.] Deglaze the bottom of the container with a little of the reserved mushroom soaking liquid. Add the rest of the liquid and the mushrooms, close the lid, then set Instant Pot® to high pressure (I used the “Bean/Chili” setting) for six minutes, making sure to set the vent on the lid to “Sealing.”

Chop the basil and set aside.

How much basil? This much basil.

When the timer goes off, carefully turn the vent from “Sealing” to “Venting.” [You may want to do this wearing oven mittens; be mindful to avoid the rapid jet of steam that will be emitted.] Turn power to “Off.” When the steam has vented, carefully open lid and set aside. The risotto will look a little soupy at this point, but it will thicken as you stir in the remaining ingredients. Stir in the chopped basil, nutritional yeast, and white pepper a bit at a time, making sure they are well distributed, until remaining liquid is absorbed. Add salt (if necessary), ladle into bowls, and serve.

Just like mamma mia didn’t used to make.

Summer Vegan Bean Salad I

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Bless you, Steve Sando.

Summertime, and the livin’ is… damn sticky, for the nonce, in Southern California. And there’s another heat wave coming. The last thing I want to do is to, say, sit over a pot of saffron risotto for an hour. I’d like something cool, and refreshing, and clean, and if I were able to subsist on gin and tonic or Croma Vera Albariño, well, I’d probably do that. My doctor might suggest some other course; I bet she’d be just fine with this one.

The first trick to any bean salad is — duh — great beans. I’ve long extolled the virtues of Rancho Gordo’s heirloom beans, and that’s where I started. The bride and I are particularly fond of their Royal Corona beans, which are kin to the Gigandes plaki, often spelled as yigandes, used in the great Greek meze served under an expansive canopy of tomato sauce and often accompanied by Feta cheese and bread. Rancho Gordo founder Sando is something of a bean whisperer, and cultivates heirloom beans all over the world, working with local farmers at fair prices. He is a hero, full stop.

The second trick to a good bean salad is a balance of flavours and textures. No one wants a limp bean any more than they want a wet noodle — and I mean that literally and figuratively. When I knew I would be building off a base of Royal Corona beans, I compiled a culinary dance card of prospective partners, seen below. Since this is a really adaptable bean, I knew I could go off in several directions, but not all at once. So: I decided to make it Vegan. I knew sun-dried tomatoes and marinated red bell peppers would be part of it for colour and taste and texture. Then it was a matter of filling in gaps. Celery for crunch. Capers for salt and tang. Slivered almonds for more crunch. Macerated red onion for a little assertiveness, but not too much, hence the maceration. Scallions and parsley for herbaceousness and colour. Fresh thyme for extra aromatics. There were some herbs and oil in the sun-dried tomatoes, and I decided to use them rather than rinse them off, and finish off the salad dressing as needed.

NOT “5 Livered Almonds.” The pen was malfunctioning.

This is truly a salad that can be assembled by an elementary schooler, as soon as she can be trusted with a knife (and has the upper body strength to open vacuum-packed bottles, or can inveigle someone to do it for her).

Macerating the onion in this case consists of dicing it and dropping it in a bowl with enough water to cover it, dumping in a glug — that’s a technical term — of some sort of vinegar, and about .5 cup / 170 g of sugar, then stirring it up and setting it into the fridge for an hour or so, to blunt the onion’s sharpness. It’s not quite a quick pickle, but it does temper its aggressiveness.

As for the beans, I made them in my Instant Pot®. Rinsed them, covered them with water, and set the pressure on high for 25 minutes with a natural release. You can soak them overnight if you wish, and cook them in a trad soup pot (I do this in winter, just for the atmosphere), but I was shooting for fast results. I drained the cooked beans and rinsed them with cold tap water, then dumped them in with the already macerating onion to cool them down some more. Kilotonnes of options here, feel free to follow your path.

Give it a bit to mingle flavours, and you may or may not want to top it with a vinaigrette. As it turned out for me, just a few drops of great old Balsamic vinegar and a sprinkling of black sea salt flakes (the flakes were black due to charcoal; they weren’t from the Black Sea) finished it off nicely, even on the second day.

Summer Vegan Bean Salad I
Serves 6-8 as a main course, with extras

INGREDIENTS
1 lb. / 454 g dried Rancho Gordo Royal Corona Beans, hydrated and cooked
24 oz. / 680 g (2 bottles, 12 oz./340 g each) marinated red peppers, drained
25-30 capers
3 large stalks celery, diced
1 red onion, diced and macerated (see note above)
1 bunch scallions (10-12), sliced
1 cup / 60 g chopped fresh parsley
1 tbsp / 2.4 g fresh thyme, finely minced
16 oz. / 454 g julienned sun-dried tomatoes in oil (using the oil)
.75 cup / 85 g slivered almonds

Next go, we may find room for some of those other ingredients on the dance card, plus cucumber, jicama, nopalito, or something else!

Incidentally, if you’re not wedded to the Vegan thing, bacon & bleu cheese, prosciutto & Parmesan, or even chicken & chevre could be welcome additions.

One final and sad note: As I was writing this, I learned that the Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold died. He was as much a part of this city’s cultural life as Jim Murray or Jack Smith; he was the culinary literary equivalent for this city of the likes of Mike Royko or Studs Terkel or Herb Caen. He is simply irreplaceable, and his passing at 57 is too soon by decades. I cannot begin to imagine how much our lives will be impoverished by his absence.

http://www.latimes.com/food/jonathan-gold/

Curried Chickpea Smash [Vegan]

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It takes all my will to keep from eating it directly from the bowl.

Total dishes dirtied in the course of making this recipe: 1. [Plus five utensils: the can opener, potato masher, knife, fork, and measuring spoon. Oh, and I had to clean off the cutting board that lives on top of the right-hand sink.] That in itself gives this recipe a warm place in my heart.

Big ups to Jessica Prescott, from whose book Vegan Goodness: Delicious Plant-Based Recipes That Can Be Enjoyed Everyday this recipe was adapted. Further thanks to Deb Lindsey and Joe Yonan of the Washington Post, the former for making it look appetizing enough to try, and the latter for testing the recipe so I could goof with it in my own kitchen.

This takes literally about 10 minutes to pull together, even if your knife skills are as poor as mine, and it packs a wallop, taste-wise. Also, if you prefer to make this with garbanzo beans rather than chickpeas, they are an acceptable substitute.*

Curried Chickpea Smash
makes four sandwiches

INGREDIENTS

    1½ cups (one 15-ounce / 425 g can) chickpeas, drained (save the aquafaba!) and rinsed
    Flesh of 1 large ripe avocado, mashed
    2 tsp. / 10 ml extra-virgin olive oil
    2 tablespoons / 30 ml fresh lemon juice, or more as needed
    ¼-½ cup / 40-75 g finely minced red onion
    4 baby dill pickles, finely chopped (about ½ cup / 71.5 g)
    ¼-½ cup / 15-25 g finely chopped fresh cilantro/coriander (or fresh parsley)
    2 tablespoons / 13 g curry powder
    ½ tsp. / 3 g kosher or sea salt, or more to taste
    ½ tsp. / 1 g finely ground black pepper, or more to taste
    About ½ cup / 115 g lightly packed baby spinach leaves
    4 hamburger-bun-size rolls (or 8 slices of bread), toasted; or several slices of pita bread, cut into wedges for dipping

[NOTE: The amount of onion and/or coriander can vary widely according to taste. I like mine with a little more kick, which is why I go to the high end of the recommendation. Also, I use twice as much curry powder as was in the original recipe, I think partly due to my palate and the fact that my jar of curry powder has a little age on it and may have mellowed. To me, the main bar to clear is finding the right bread-to-filling ratio. If the bun is too big relative to its surface area (like a slider bun), you’ll have too much bread. On the other hand, if you toast regular sandwich bread, you need to go a little light on the filling for structure’s sake. Believe me, it’s a fun problem to have to work out.]

Next time, homemade bread.

DIRECTIONS

Combine the chickpeas, oil, and lemon juice in a medium bowl or flat bottomed storage container such as the one pictured at top. Smash with a potato masher or fork until fairly chunky (try to leave no chickpea whole). Stir in the avocado, minced onion, pickles, cilantro/coriander, curry powder, salt, and pepper. [If you are using this as a dip for pita, chop the spinach and mix it in; otherwise, reserve it for the sandwich building, directions to follow.] Taste, and adjust spices as needed (I often add more lemon juice and/or olive oil to keep it from being too dry, especially if I’m using it as a dip rather than a sandwich filling).

If you’re not using this as a dip for pita bread, place a few baby spinach leaves on the bottom halves of the toasted rolls (or bread) and top with the chickpea salad. Top with the remaining halves of the rolls/bread, and slice in half if the resulting sandwich seems unwieldy.

*Chickpeas and garbanzo beans are the same thing. That was a joke.

Soupe de la Semaine: Green Posole Soup [Vegan] [Instant Pot® recipe]

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This could actually be seriously vintage posole.

It is possible that I made soup the other evening with posole that’s older than Ariana Grande. As you can tell from the packaging, marks from the inner lining’s adhesive have bled through the external paper bag, and the very top (which had not been exposed to light) is a great deal lighter than the rest of the bag. To the best of my recollection, I’ve been to Santa Fe only a couple of times in the last 30 years: once in 1990, on my honeymoon; and once in 2015, to see the Santa Fe Opera’s excellent production of Donizetti’s La fille du régiment. I’m sure I didn’t buy this bag of posole on the latter trip. When the bride said that it was probably from 1990, I was gobsmacked. That would have meant it survived two cross-country moves, both of which took place in the previous millennium. Oy.

That said, it was really tasty soup. Full marks to The Chile Shop in Santa Fe (which is still in business) for the quality and durability of their products.

The word “posole” (or “pozole”) originates in the Nahuatl language, and is possibly derived either from “posolli” (or “pozolli”) which is alleged to mean “frothy” or “foamy.” Or it could come from the Nahuatl word “potzonti,” meaning “to boil or bubble.” It apparently used to be called “tlacatlaolli,” which is said to mean “threshed men corn.” But hey, I don’t speak Nahuatl, so I’m sort of agnostic on the issue. It is further alleged that human flesh was a key ingredient in the original recipe (although some have been less eager to embrace the description in Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s twelve-volume 16th century masterpiece, Historia general de las cosas de nueva España, also known as The Florentine Codex). I expect that very few modern butcher shops cater to the cannibal crowd, so as long as we’re going inauthentic, why not jump to a vegan version?

The central ingredient, of course, is cacahuazintle, or hominy corn. [Q:”Hominy corn?” A:”About a pound’s worth.” FX:rimshot.] Much like the Mexican flag, the soup comes in three colours: red, white, and green. I chose green, basically a riff off the version found on the 10th Kitchen website, based upon ingredients at hand and my culinary aesthetic (which included trying to make it fairly quickly).

Green Posole Soup
Makes approximately 14 cups / 3½ liters

INGREDIENTS
1 pound / 500 g dried white hominy (or two large cans pre-soaked) [25 oz. / 708 g per can]
1 large white onion, sliced thin lengthwise into strips
6-8 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 tsp. / 1 g dried Mexican oregano
1 bottle (23 oz. / 652 g) crushed tomatillos OR 1½ pounds / 700 g tomatillos, husks removed, rinsed
1 can (7 oz. / 198 g) diced green chiles (or 1-3 diced serrano chiles)
1 big bunch fresh cilantro/coriander, finely minced
2 tablespoons / 30 ml olive oil (or other vegetable oil)
½ cup / 65 g pepitas (optional)
8 cups / 64 oz. / 2 liters water or vegetable stock (Better Than Bouillon enhanced my stock)
Salt to taste

Soaking the dried hominy. When you pour the water into the center of the pot after you’ve added the corn, it looks like this. Cool.

DIRECTIONS

If you are using dried hominy, it’s best to rinse it off and soak it overnight. [That in itself makes a good case for buying canned hominy, which must be drained and rinsed before being added to the mix.] In either case, drain the soaked hominy and leave it in the strainer.

In the Instant Pot® interior container, add onion, olive oil, Mexican oregano, and a generous pinch of salt. Set Instant Pot® to “Sauté” function, and sweat onions, stirring occasionally, until softened; it’s okay if they get a little brown. Add chopped garlic and sauté for another minute or two, then press the “Keep Warm/Cancel” button.

If you are using whole tomatillos and chiles, you should pop them in a food processor with a little bit of water and the cilantro; chop until fairly smooth and add to the Instant Pot® container. Otherwise, just mince the cilantro and dump it in the Instant Pot® container with the crushed tomatillos and diced canned chiles. Add the hominy and stock (and pepitas, if you are using them). Close the Instant Pot®, and set the vent on the lid to “Sealing.” Then press the “Soup” button, making sure that the pressure is set to high.

Here is where paths diverge in the woods. IF you are using the canned hominy, set the time for 12 minutes, and allow pressure to release naturally when done, unless you’re in a huge hurry. IF you are using the dried and soaked hominy, set the time for 35 minutes, and allow pressure to release naturally when done, unless you’re in a huge hurry (in which case you should have used the canned hominy in the first place). [NOTE: Because my hominy apparently dated to the Mesozoic, it was still a little more al dente than I would have liked at the 35 minute mark. I replaced the lid and added another 15 minutes of cooking time. Still not quite there. So I replaced the lid again and added another 15 minutes of cooking time. Perfect. The lesson here is not to use hominy that was dried before the first web browser was invented.]

Yummy goodness that tastes better than it looks, I promise. I’m a way better cook than food stylist.

Soupe de la Semaine: Vegetable & Rice Soup [Instant Pot® recipe] [Vegan optional]

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Please, anything but this.

This soup was borne out of a need to use up a bunch of celery before it went south. [Seems like I make a lot of “necessity” soups.] Being an enterprising lad, I Googled “celery soup,” and got about 1.83 bazillion recipes for Cream of Celery Soup. I don’t want to demean the good folks whose soup provided Andy Warhol such a rich vein to mine for his art, but the cream of celery soup of my youth was possibly the worst-period-soup-period-ever. It was always the last can in the cupboard, and was only ever served out of dire necessity. To be fair, I think the only reason my mom kept any in the first place was so that it could be used as a sauce for some sort of ’60s casserole that has mercifully and permanently gone out of fashion. Fortunately, my Google Fu skills are strong, and I eventually landed on what appeared to be a terrific recipe by Martha Rose Shulman of the NY Times. It was modified to fit my ingredients, but it’s fairly faithful to the original.

Stop me if I’m sounding like a broken record here, but if there are two things I could ever want you to take away from this blog, they are these:

    1) You can do this. Goodness knows, I’m no chef. But I can make a tasty meal; that’s all anyone ever asks from an amateur.
    2) A recipe is a roadmap. There’s always more than one route to your destination. And, failing that, there are always other destinations.

Perhaps the two most delightful aspects to this recipe are 1) you don’t have to pre-cook the rice (a few minutes at pressure in the Instant Pot® does the job); and 2) you can make it vegan simply by removing the Parmesan cheese. If you can operate a knife, a spoon, a can opener, and a measuring cup, you can make this. You don’t even really need an Instant Pot®. It just will take longer on the stove (probably about 45 minutes to an hour of simmering, depending on how quickly your rice cooks up).

Doesn’t that look like a bowl full of healthy goodness? And we haven’t even added the tomatoes or the stock yet.

Vegetable & Rice Soup
Makes approximately 16 cups / 4 liters

INGREDIENTS
6 celery stalks / 400 g, diced
1/2 red cabbage / 400 g, shredded
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, diced
1 bell pepper, de-seeded and diced (I used 6 mini peppers instead)
6 garlic cloves, minced
Salt (preferably kosher) and pepper (preferably ground white) to taste
1 cup / 180 g uncooked rice (I used brown basmati)
3 tbsp. / 45 ml extra virgin olive oil (spring for some good oil!)
1 28-ounce / 794 g can chopped tomatoes, with liquid
1 1/2 quarts / 1.5 liters water or vegetable stock (Better Than Bouillon enhanced my stock)
2 tbsp. / 50 g tomato paste
1 teaspoon / 4 g dried thyme
2 tbsp. / 3 g dried parsley flakes (or 1 tbsp. / 4 g fresh parsley)
A small (50 g / 1.75 oz.) Parmesan rind
Celery leaves for garnish (optional)
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese for serving (optional)

DIRECTIONS
Chop up celery, cabbage, onion, carrot, bell pepper, and garlic cloves; place in Instant Pot® container. Sprinkle salt and pepper over vegetables and stir. Add olive oil and uncooked rice to container. Set Instant Pot® to “Sauté” and sweat vegetables, stirring occasionally, for about 10-15 minutes, until they soften a bit. Add chopped tomatoes, vegetable stock, tomato paste, thyme, parsley, and Parmesan rind (if desired — omit for vegan version). Mix briefly with spoon or spatula. Turn Instant Pot® to “Keep Warm / Cancel,” which will end the sauté function.

Place lid on Instant Pot®, making sure vent is turned toward “Sealing” rather than “Venting.” Press “Soup” button, making sure pressure is on “High.” Set timer for 16 minutes. Go answer some email or vacuum your front room.

When timer goes off, allow Instant Pot® to decompress naturally, or at least for 10 minutes, before carefully switching vent from “Sealing” to “Venting.” Remove lid, and adjust spices as necessary (soup will be hot). Ladle directly into bowls or mugs and garnish with celery leaves and/or grated Parmesan (omit latter for vegan version).

To borrow a phrase, “Mmmm-mmmm good.”

Tourtière Végétalienne [Vegan Vegetable Pie]

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Chef Marie (l.) and cousin Sheryl (r.) performing the Ritual Admiration of the Tourtière ceremony last December.

My great-great-great-great-great grandfather Pierre would disown me.

The very idea of making a vegetable tourtière would be as alien and outlandish to him as, um, reading Gwyneth Paltrow’s Twitter feed. As every Canadian knows, the only way to make this traditional Québécois holiday dish is with pork. Or a blend of pork and another meat. Or wild game. Or maybe the occasional bird. Spice, too, is highly variable from region to region. In fact, Susan Semenak of the Montreal Gazette suggests that each particular recipe may be a “tell” as to one’s genealogy. As you might have intuited, it’s quite the subject of debate, and if you thought Canadians are unfailingly polite, donnybrooks over the dish’s “authenticity” will disabuse you of that notion for good. [Although, to be fair, the CBC Radio host in the previous link responded individually — and no doubt courteously — to all the hate mail she got over a network story on the subject.]

I had a delicious tourtière in Vancouver this past holiday season (see picture at top), but for Lent this year, we’re all vegetarian all the time, so salty tasty pig parts are right out. In my scent memory, tourtière was always more redolent of warm winter spices (cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg) than pork, though, so I figured if I got the seasoning right and the filling didn’t clash, I could pull a decent vegan version together. Since I’ve always found a grilled portabello cap an acceptable substitute for a burger, I started with mushrooms. Potatoes and onions could make the leap from the trad version to this one without effort, but it still seemed to be missing something. I knew that certain ersatz meat-like products are made with lentils, and I had the dregs of a box of lentilles du Puy in the pantry, so in they went. If nothing else, at least they were French. Plus, I love their peppery bite.

[Sidebar: Le Puy lentils ain’t your standard ranch stash legumes. Known as “the poor man’s caviar” and “the pearls of central France,” the lentilles vertes du Puy are sufficiently distinctive to have been awarded their own AOC, much like Champagne and Roquefort cheese. So please don’t just wander down to your local south Asian market and load up on urad dal, good though it may be. Not for this dish.]

I’m not going to lie to you: this is not the sort of recipe of which you can say, “I just tossed everything in the microvection pot, and twelve-point-four minutes later, my family and I were discussing Corsi stats for the Vegas Golden Knights while shoveling forkfuls of a storied Québécois holiday dish into our cavernous pieholes.” On the other hand, none of the steps require a whole lot of sophistication or attention, so it’s pretty easy to pull this together while you are assembling your personal Death Star, extracting ink from a squid, or knitting handcuffs for children.

Tourtière in situ, avec des feuilles d’érable pour l’authenticité.

Tourtière Végétalienne
(serves 8-12)

INGREDIENTS

Tourtière Spice Blend
2 teaspoons / 12 g salt
2 teaspoons / 1 g Herbes de Provence
1 teaspoon / 1½ g thyme
½ teaspoon / 1 g cinnamon
½ teaspoon / 1 g ground ginger
½ teaspoon / 1/3 g marjoram
½ teaspoon nutmeg / 1 g (fresh ground if possible)
½ teaspoon / 1/3 g sage
½ teaspoon / 1/3 g savory
¼ teaspoon / ½ g allspice
¼ teaspoon / ½ g coriander
¼ teaspoon / 1/5 g dry mustard
⅛ teaspoon / ¼ g ground cloves
dash white pepper

Tourtière Filling
2 lb. / 1 kg potatoes, peeled, cooked, and mashed
1 lb. / 500 g crimini mushrooms
75 g dried porcini and Chilean Bolete mushroom mix (about 2 cups rehydrated, or just add another pound of fresh mushrooms)
1 cup / 200 g Le Puy French lentils, cooked (this is a type, not a brand name)
1 large onion, diced
2 ribs celery, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp. / 30 ml olive oil

Tourtière Crust
12 oz. / 340 g (about 2¼ – 2½ cups) all purpose flour
½ teaspoon / 3 g salt
1 cup / 2 sticks / 225 g Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks (or some other vegan shortening product)
8-12 tbsp. / 120-175 ml ice water (REALLY COLD!)
1 – 2 teaspoons / 5-10 ml vinegar

DIRECTIONS

For the Tourtière Filling:

You might want to read the directions all the way through once before leaping in; I tried to arrange several discrete steps to minimize waste of time and resources (like hot water). But if you’re doing other things in the meantime, feel free to rearrange the process to suit your schedule.

Assemble the spice blend, stir with a fork to mix, and set aside.

Rehydrate the dried mushrooms in warm water; this will take about half an hour or a bit more, depending on the mushrooms and their thickness. When they are plump, remove them from the water (reserving the water in the process) and rinse the grit off in a colander. Strain the reserved mushroom liquid through a fine sieve and set aside. [It can be used for a sauce or in stock later. It will keep in the fridge for a week, or it can be frozen for future use.] Chop the washed mushrooms and set aside in a bowl. Of course, if you are using all fresh mushrooms, you can skip this step. Wash the fresh mushrooms, chop them roughly, and set aside in a bowl.

Peel potatoes (this can be done while the mushrooms are rehydrating) and cut into quarters. Cover with about 1 – 2 inches (2½ – 5 cm) of water and boil gently in saucepan for between 15-25 minutes, until a knife slides in without resistance. Remove potatoes with slotted spoon and transfer to bowl. Mash potatoes with a pinch of salt and pepper, but no liquid (although if they are too much of a challenge, you could add 1/4 cup or 60 ml of the boiling water and give them a little bit of help).

While potatoes are boiling, rinse lentils and remove debris, if any. After potatoes have been removed from the saucepan, you can cook the lentils in the already-warm potato water, boiling gently for 20 minutes. When they are done, drain them, discarding the potato water, and set aside.

Dice onion, and add it along with the olive oil to a large pan (big enough to hold all the ingredients, which it eventually will). Brown onion, stirring occasionally, about 25 minutes or so.

While onions are browning, mince celery and garlic, setting them aside in separate bowls.

After onions have browned, increase the heat under the pan, add minced celery, and sweat it for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally. Then stir in lentils, minced garlic and spice mix, and cook for about 2-3 more minutes. Reduce heat and fold in mushrooms; simmer, stirring occasionally, until mushrooms have softened and released their liquor, about 15 minutes. If mixture seems too dry at any point along the way, add between 2 tablespoons and 1/4 cup (30 – 60 ml) of reserved mushroom rehydrating broth. When mushrooms are cooked, fold in mashed potatoes and mix with wooden spoon so that all ingredients are distributed evenly throughout. When it’s all warm (about 5-10 minutes), taste and adjust spices as necessary. [This usually means a bit of salt and pepper, but if your palate is discerning, you may detect that one element or another of your spice blend has disappeared, so you can fix that as well. Be forewarned: cloves, cinnamon, and ginger are very assertive, so add with caution, if at all.]

Remove from heat and allow to cool at least to room temperature before filling pie.

Here’s your shortening.

DIRECTIONS

For the Tourtière Crust:

Freeze shortening overnight. Chop shortening into small chunks. Add, along with salt and flour, to food processor bowl fitted with “S” blade. Pulse until a “gravelly” dough comes together that will adhere to itself if you pinch it in your hand (think wet sand). Notice little clump at left of photo.

Not quite ready, but close.

Begin adding ice water and vinegar solution a tablespoon or two at a time, and pulsing until dough begins to have enough moisture to cohere. There’s not a great way to explain this in print, which is why there are apprentices and grandmothers. Once you feel it, you will understand. In the meantime, check this vid, and you’ll get a sense of the process. [The video version is done with a pastry cutter rather than a food processor, but you’ll see how the chef gets where she needs to go.]

IMPORTANT SIDEBAR: Keep everything as cold as you can! Warm dough is greasy and soggy dough.

Not quite a 50-50 spilt.

Empty dough from processor and mold into a round-ish lump, wrap with cling film, and pop it into the chill chest — you know it as the refrigerator — to rest for AT LEAST an hour, though overnight is even better. When dough has rested, bring it out onto your rolling surface (I used a big cutting board with a floured silicone mat on top) and cut it in half-ish (the bottom crust needs to be bigger than the top).

In the pan, ready to be filled.

Roll out the dough from the center outwards until you have a sufficiently large crust for the bottom, two to three inches (5 – 7.5 cm) bigger than the pan. Don’t worry about overhang; that will be incorporated later. Once bottom crust is set in pan, fill with mushroom/lentil/potato mix, making sure to distribute it evenly.

Man, I’m stuffed.

Roll out top crust and place on top. This video shows not only shows about how to crimp the dough together, it’s a useful instruction tool on how to make pie dough period (even if his version is not vegan). You’ll need to vent your tourtière just like any pie, to allow steam to escape. You may choose to cut your vents in the shape of maple leaves, or you can just poke the crust a few times with a knife or fork. Have a little fun with it; after all, you’re making pie for dinner. How cool is that?

Vented and crimped.

Bake the filled tourtière for approximately 50 minutes at 175°C / 350°F. Serve warm, or allow to cool to room temp and serve then. Mushroom gravy, a wine reduction sauce, or a vegan mustard “cream” sauce are delightful accompaniments, but they’re going to have to wait for another post, I’m afraid.

Soupe de la Semaine: Sopa de Fideo… sin fideo [Gluten-Free & Vegan] [Instant Pot® recipe]

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¿Dónde está el fideo?

Because I’m not Mexican, I hesitate to call sopa de fideo the ultimate Mexican comfort food soup — probably sopa de tortilla or caldo Mexicano de albóndigas gets the nod there — but it’s certainly in the running for the propreantepenultimate Mexican comfort food soup. For those of you unfamiliar with fideo noodles, they’re like a thin vermicelli (itself the Kate Moss of the spaghetti world), and usually cut in short pieces (generally somewhere between an inch and 4 cm).

Given that the bride is currently on a carb-cutting crusade, I thought spaghetti squash might suitably supplant the original fideo. Nestled in broth, it doesn’t need to bear the weight of being the dish’s focal point, which it does when being substituted, rather unsatisfactorily, for actual spaghetti under a blanket of Bolognese. The Instant Pot® pulls double duty here, both cooking the squash and making the soup. All you need to do between steps is to remove the steamer insert and squash, then dump out the remaining water. No need for cleaning along the way, since the squash that just came out is going right back in.

[This recipe, of course, can be made on the stovetop as well; the spaghetti squash can either be roasted or microwaved beforehand (fire up the Internet Machine and ask the Google for advice on that). Once that’s done, you can pretty much follow the general directions under the “For the soup” section; allow about 30 minutes for simmering after all ingredients are added.]

As with many classic soups, recipes for this vary widely. While mine hews fairly closely to the down-the-middle basic version, I did add one exotic ingredient as a nod to the soup’s probable Spanish heritage: pimentón de la Vera, the Spanish smoked paprika whose mere scent sends me off dreaming Gallego dreams. If you want to keep it more anchored to the New World, you could sub chipotle chile powder, regular chile powder, or even a diced jalapeño or two. Look, some people put cayenne, cinnamon, and allspice(!) in this soup, so feel free to follow your tastebuds.

Sin fideo, incidentally, means “without fideo.”

Sopa de Fideo… sin fideo
(makes about 3.5 liters / 15 cups)

Spring onion, sometimes known as Mexican onion.

INGREDIENTS

1 spaghetti squash (approx. 3 lb. / 1½ kg.)
2 spring onions (or 5-6 scallions), sliced thin
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp. / 30 ml olive oil
½ teaspoon / 1.5 g cumin
1 teaspoon / 1 g oregano (preferably Mexican oregano)
½ tbsp. / 4 g pimentón de la Vera (or smoked paprika)
½ tbsp. / 9 g salt
1 can (28 oz. / 794 g) diced tomatoes
6 cups / 1½ liters vegetable broth
chopped cilantro leaves for garnish
slice of lime for garnish (optional)
thinly sliced radish for garnish (optional)
slice (or chunk) of avocado for garnish (optional)
salt to taste
pepper to taste

The Instant Pot® fits like a glove… if your hand is cylindrical and about seven inches deep. Or a spaghetti squash.

DIRECTIONS

For the spaghetti squash:

Take off store sticker, rinse squash and pat dry. Insert steamer trivet into Instant Pot® inner pot. Add 1 cup / 250 ml water. Place squash in Instant Pot®. Close and lock lid, making sure that release vent is set to “Sealing.” Press button for Bean/Chili (set pressure to “high”) and adjust timer to 18 minutes. When squash is finished, you can allow natural pressure release or use quick release; either works fine. Remove squash from pot, remove steamer insert, and discard steaming water when sufficiently cool. Cut squash in half, remove seeds and stringy debris. Scrape out “spaghetti” with fork, chop strands into short, fideo-like length (between an inch and 4 cm) and set aside in bowl.

All star alliums: garlic and spring onions prepare for what chef José Andrés calls “a dance” with olive oil.

For the soup:

Set Instant Pot® to “Sauté.” Add olive oil to inner pot insert and allow to warm, then add garlic and spring onions. Sweat the onions and garlic until soft, stirring occasionally, for maybe 4-5 minutes. [No big deal if they begin to brown, but don’t let them burn or stick to the pot.] Add spaghetti squash and spices, stir to mix. Add tomatoes (with juice) and vegetable broth (you can use the tomato can for measuring the broth if you wish; add two cans). Secure lid, making sure vent is set to “sealing.” Press the “Keep Warm/Cancel” button once to stop the sauté function. The press the “Soup” button, adjust pressure to “high” (if necessary) and time to 10 minutes. When soup is finished, either natural pressure release or quick release work fine. Adjust seasonings and ladle into bowls. Garnish with cilantro leaves and the optional avocado, radish, and lime.

Soupe de la Semaine: Bowl of Sunshine — Vegan Yellow Squash & Corn Soup [Instant Pot® recipe]

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Last night, I re-watched most of High Fidelity for millionth time. It’s one of those movies that resonates with my inner record geek and reminds me what, but for the grace of my bride, I might easily have become. In this scene, Jack Black starts his shift at Championship Vinyl by subjecting the rest of the store to the almost oppressively upbeat ’80s hit “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina & The Waves. It got me to thinking: could I build a bowl of sunshine?

Short answer: yes.

A few days ago, I visited the “we’re selling this produce cheap” bin at the market and picked up half a dozen yellow squash — a kilo and a half — for 99¢. Coulda wound up in lasagna. Coulda wound up in cornbread. But I’ve been on a bit of a soup kick lately.

Yellow squash by themselves are not particularly assertive, taste-wise, so I knew they’d need a little help. A little spice. A little sweetness. And nothing that would detract from the yellow. The spice comes from white pepper and a jalapeño pepper (which is green, but tiny in volume compared to the rest of the soup). Coconut milk and corn provide the sweetness. And because my vegetable stock base is the colour of Vegemite™, the main bulk of liquid in the soup is water. For a moment, I considered making it a curry-based soup (the Flavor the Moments blog has an excellent vegan take on that here), but ultimately this recipe from the Love & Olive Oil blog resonated with me most.

Like many Instant Pot® recipes, this adapts easily to the stovetop; just add enough time to soften the squash. And boy freakin’ howdy, is this easy. The entire soup is made in the Instant Pot®, so no other pots and pans to clean up. [It’s even done in a single pot on the stovetop.] Prep is not at all demanding, because everything’s getting blitzed at the end (even the cook, should you so choose).

Unsquashed squash.

Vegan Bowl of Sunshine
(makes about 3.5 liters / 15 cups)

INGREDIENTS

6 yellow squash, roughly chopped (approx. 3 lb./ 1½ kg.)
1 sweet onion, roughly chopped
10 oz. / 300 g frozen, fresh, or canned corn kernels (drained if using latter)
1 jalapeño pepper, minced (optional, but recommended)
2 teaspoons / 12 g sea salt
2 sprigs fresh thyme
3 cups / 750 ml vegetable broth or water
1 can (13½ oz. / 400 ml) coconut milk (preferably the “fat” kind)
2 tbsp. / 30 ml olive (or neutral) oil for sweating veggies
1 teaspoon / 2½ g white pepper
2 tbsp. / 30 ml olive oil to finish (optional)
zest of one lemon (optional)
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Sweating the small stuff.

DIRECTIONS

Chop onion and jalapeño and add them to the Instant Pot®’s inner cooking pot; set to “Sauté” function. Sweat the onions and pepper until somewhat softened, then add the chopped squash and continue to sauté for another three or four minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing adheres to the pot. Add salt, water (or stock), coconut milk, thyme sprigs, corn, and white pepper; stir together. Hit the red “Keep Warm/Cancel” button on the control panel.

Ready for pressure.

Cover pot and lock lid (making sure the vent is set to “Sealing”), select “Soup,” set pressure to “High,” and time to 15 minutes. When finished, you may allow pressure to release naturally before unlocking lid, or you can do a “quick release” by turning the vent to “Venting.” [Be careful not to steam your hand.]

Make me smooth, chef.

Remove thyme sprigs, add lemon zest if desired, then process soup with immersion blender or in batches with a blender/food processor. [If you’re using either of the latter, drape a towel over the input tube or lid to allow the steam to vent.] Stir and allow soup to sit for a couple of minutes before tasting and adjusting spices. [NOTE: The immersion blender won’t make the soup silky smooth, so if that is your aim, use a Vita-Mixer and strain through a china cap.

Ladle soup into bowls, drizzle in a teaspoon (5 ml) or so of olive oil if desired, then garnish with a few grains of black pepper and bit of chopped parsley, basil, chives, or green onion.

Soupe de la Semaine: Vegan Potato Pickle Pot [Instant Pot® recipe]

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Not the prettiest soup, but it has a great personality.

One happy consequence of my current sixty-day Facebook cleanse is that I am spending more time researching (and cooking) recipes of all sorts.

If ever there were a happier marriage between a vegetable and an herb than potato with dill, I don’t think I’ve found it. And while I’m sure some of you might respond reflexively with “Yeah, what about tomato and basil, smart guy,” I’ll meet your snark with the pedantic retort that the tomato is technically a fruit and move on. The Potato Pickle Pot moniker is a nod to the Afro-Caribbean soup/stew known as Pepper Pot, although this particular soup’s roots seem to be Polish, where it, like its African cousin, is often made with cheap cuts of meat and is known as Zupa Ogórkowa. [My rebranding it as Polish Peasant Potato Pickle Pot seemed to be dipping an already gilded lily into Belgian chocolate fondue, so I dialed it back.] Both soups historically depended on available ingredients (peasants, y’know, can’t be choosers), so you’re welcome to think of this more as a template than a recipe. I’m sure no gendarmes from the local potagerie will be dispatched if you sneak in a turnip, some carrots, a rutabaga, or even some cabbage.

Many non-vegan iterations contain butter, milk, and even sour cream, but I was committed to a vegan version, and much like Magda at the I Deliciate.com blog, I considered — and then rejected — adding cashew cream. The puréed taters bring a rustic silkiness to the broth on their own. As with yesterday’s “Sofrito” Soup recipe, I opted to employ my Instant Pot® as a time-saving device to soften the potatoes, but the recipe is easily transferable to the stovetop. Just follow the directions for sautéing the onion, garlic, and potato, then add the broth/almond milk combo and simmer it until the potatoes are fork-tender (as if ready to be mashed). I expect that would take about 40-ish minutes, depending on how small your potato chunks were cut.

Of all the versions of this soup I researched, the one to which I owe the greatest debt came from a fellow Canadian, the woman who ran the One Vivacious Vegan blog out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. It’s little wonder she wanted a sturdy soup back in the fall of 2012; winters up there are doggone cold, and surprisingly long.

VEGAN POTATO PICKLE POT
Makes about 10 cups (about 2¼ liters)

INGREDIENTS

2 tbsp / 30ml olive oil
1 large onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
3 pounds / 1.5 kg potatoes, scrubbed and diced, but not peeled
3 cups / 700ml vegetable stock
3 cups / 700ml unflavoured and unsweetened almond milk (soy milk or rice milk should also be fine)
⅔ cup / 7g chopped fresh dill (or 3-4 tbsp. / 9-12g dried), plus a few extra sprigs for a garnish
½ cup / 120ml pickle brine (straight from the jar)
½ cup / 30g nutritional yeast
1 cup / 170g chopped dill pickles
salt and pepper to taste (remember, the brine is salty, so add it AFTER, if necessary)

Halfway through, it’s really not a pretty sight.

DIRECTIONS [Instant Pot®]

Chop onion, garlic, and potatoes and put them in separate bowls. Add oil to inner cooking pot, and set the Instant Pot® to its “Sauté” function. Sweat the onions until somewhat softened, then add the garlic and continue to sauté for another two minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing adheres to the pot. Add chopped potatoes and continue to sauté for 3-5 more minutes, just to warm the potatoes a bit and get them interacting with the onion and garlic. Add stock, almond milk, and chopped dill; stir together. Hit the red “Keep Warm/Cancel” button on the control panel.

Cover pot and lock lid (making sure the vent is set to “Sealing”), select “Soup,” set pressure to “High,” and time to 20 minutes. When finished, you may allow pressure to release naturally before unlocking lid, or you can do a “quick release” by turning the vent to “Venting.”

Process soup with immersion blender or in batches in a blender/food processor. [If you’re using either of the latter, drape a towel over the input tube or lid to allow the steam to vent.] You can pureé all of the soup at this point, but I like to leave a few of the chunks of potato intact. Add nutritional yeast, pickle brine, and chopped pickles. Stir and allow soup to sit for a couple of minutes before tasting and adjusting spices. Depending on your taste, you might want to add a little more pickle brine or dill to the mix, along with salt and pepper.

Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with a sprig of chopped dill. A baguette would be nice with this, although prudence would mitigate; you’ll have had a full day’s worth of carbs in the soup.

Soupe de la Semaine: Vegan “Sofrito” Soup [Instant Pot® recipe]

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Leaves you “sofrito” experiment.

This is not going to be so much a recipe for a soup (although there will be one) as a roadmap to soup. Please keep all your appendages inside the vehicle while it’s moving.

Like many people, I occasionally find that I have a few vegetables in the fridge that really call for imminent use, lest they turn into science experiments. Today, that happened to be a two-pound package of carrots, some celery, a yellow bell pepper, and the better part of a bunch of cilantro, plus an onion that was in the unrefrigerated veggie basket. Because February is traditionally a vegetarian month for the bride and me, I decided to fold the ingredients into a soup, rather than use them as a sofrito/soffritto, mirepoix, refogado, or Suppengrün for a meat or poultry dish. [The terms in italics are all variants on the same concept, which is that a group of chopped vegetables can serve as a flavour base for stews, gravies, sauces, and the like. Ingredients and proportions vary from country to country (and from kitchen to kitchen), but not so widely that they aren’t all kissin’ culinary cousins.]

Here’s where it gets interesting: with the possible exception of the cilantro, all the vegetables can easily be enhanced to make soups that will fit in a variety of culinary traditions. For example, if I’d added lemongrass, ginger, and soy sauce to the soup (even keeping the cilantro), it would have taken a turn for Southeast Asia. Some garlic, basil, oregano, rosemary, and marjoram would have pushed it toward Italy. Turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, and cumin would lend it an Indian or Sri Lankan vibe. I decided I wanted something else, a kind of mutt — er, hybrid — cuisine with elements of both Spanish and Tex-Mex.

And while this can definitely be made on the stovetop, it would take way longer than it does in a pressure cooker (Instant Pot® to the rescue again!). Basically, you’d follow all the main steps, but I would chop the vegetables into much smaller pieces to soften them more quickly. I’m guessing that 45 minutes to an hour in the stock at a high simmer (just below boiling) would do it. Then purée the vegetables and adjust spices as in the directions below.

WARNING: I like, and am accustomed to, spicy food. I would advise anyone trying out this recipe to cut the pimentón de la Vera and chipotle powder IN HALF to start. You can always make it spicier later in the process, if you wish. [If you cut the spices, you will also need only about half of the carob molasses as a consequence.]

Vegan “Sofrito” Soup
Makes about 10 cups (about 2¼ liters)

Carrots of many colours.

INGREDIENTS
2 lbs. / 1kg carrots, roughly chopped
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 red or yellow bell pepper, roughly chopped
3 stalks celery (need I say roughly chopped?)
1½ cups / 30g chopped fresh cilantro
5 cups / 1.25 liters vegetable stock (I used Better Than Bouillon and water)
1-2 teaspoons / 2-4g hot pimentón de la Vera (or smoked paprika)*
½-1 teaspoon / 1.5-3g chipotle powder (or other chili powder)*
1½-3 tbsp. / 33-66g carob (or regular) molasses*
½ teaspoon / 1g cumin
½ teaspoon / 3g salt
½ tbsp. / 8g apple cider vinegar (or other vinegar, or lemon juice)

Chopped up, mixed up.

DIRECTIONS [Instant Pot®]

Chop vegetables and cilantro and add them all to inner cooking pot. Add vegetable stock, pimentón de la Vera*, and chipotle powder*.

Lock lid (making sure the vent is set to “Sealing”), select “Soup,” set pressure to “High,” and time to 20 minutes. When finished, you may allow pressure to release naturally before unlocking lid, or you can do a “quick release” by turning the vent to “Venting.”

[At this juncture, the soup will look like you left your vegetables in dishwater overnight. Don’t be discouraged!]

Process soup with immersion blender or in batches in a blender/food processor. [If you’re using either of the latter, drape a towel over the input tube or lid to allow the steam to vent.] Add cumin, carob molasses, salt, and cider vinegar. Stir and allow soup to sit for a couple of minutes before tasting and adjusting spices. It’s at this juncture that you would add the remaining half of the pimentón de la Vera, chipotle powder, and carob molasses, should you choose.

Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with a little extra chopped cilantro. I forgot to reserve some and wound up using bread crumbs and chopped parsley for the photo. If you’re not concerned about being vegan, a dollop of sour cream and/or a sprinkle of cotija cheese would go nicely. Cashew cream is a fine vegan alternative.

*Please read the warning in red in the fifth paragraph; it’s there for your own good.

***********************************************************************

P.S. I’m perfectly happy if you want to replicate this recipe step by step, but it would bring me (and you!) greater joy if you use it as a “serving suggestion” instead, playing around with spices and quantities so that you can truly make it your own. Plus, you can clean out your fridge a bit in the process.

Soupe de la Semaine: Coconut Tomato [Vegan]

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The turmeric makes it yellow.

The bride and I just got back from Paris, where we dined somewhat indiscriminately. Maybe that’s not the precise word, because we were pretty careful (bordering on obsessive) about choosing our restaurants. We certainly dined well, if perhaps excessively. But since the scale ticked a little higher upon our return, we decided to dial it back a bit.

February is normally one of our two vegetarian months per year (and not because it’s the shortest, since our other is October), but we’re kickstarting it off a few days early as part of our “Going Clean in ’18” campaign. I saw a version of this soup in Urvashi Pitre’s Indian Instant Pot® Cookbook, and it’s very close to this one, but I adjusted some of the portions because I love cilantro and ginger, and I’m not afraid of a little pepper. While she prepares it in an Instant Pot®, it works just fine as a stovetop recipe. It’s easy and delicious both ways.

Three quick notes: Should you be using fresh tomatoes, the immersion blender (or food processor) might not decimate all the seeds to your satisfaction. If you’re fussy about that, you could strain the soup (I didn’t). Second, this could easily be adapted for omnivores; some shrimp or cooked chicken (especially thighs) would make an excellent complement. Finally, this is pretty great served cold as well, just in case you want to make it in summer.

Coconut Tomato Soup
Makes about 8 cups (about 2 liters)

INGREDIENTS
3 lbs. / 1.5 kilos tomatoes, roughly chopped
(you can use canned if they are unseasoned)
1 red onion, diced
3 cloves minced garlic
1 chunk minced ginger (approx. 1 inch / 2.5cm) (approx 2.5g)
¾ cup / 15g chopped fresh cilantro
1 can coconut milk (13.5 oz. / 400ml) (I prefer the “fat”/”whole” variety)
1-2 teaspoons / 6-12g salt
¾ teaspoon / 1.5g ground white pepper (or cayenne pepper or Piment d’Espelette)
1 teaspoon / 3g ground turmeric
1 tablespoon / 22g agave syrup or honey (the latter is not vegan)

DIRECTIONS [Stovetop]

Chop tomatoes (unless using canned), dice onion. mince garlic, peel and grate ginger, wash and chop cilantro and add them all to soup pot. Add coconut milk, remaining spices, and agave syrup or honey.

Heat over medium heat until just about boiling, then back the heat off and allow to simmer for 30 minutes.

Process soup with immersion blender or in batches in a blender/food processor. [If you’re using either of the latter, drape a towel over the input tube or lid to allow the steam to vent, or you will Jackson Pollock your kitchen walls — and yourself — with hot soup.]

Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with a little extra chopped cilantro.

Before the magic of the immersion blender.

DIRECTIONS [Instant Pot®]

Chop tomatoes (unless using canned), dice onion. mince garlic, peel and grate ginger, wash and chop cilantro and add them all to inner cooking pot. Add coconut milk, remaining spices, and agave syrup or honey.

Lock lid (making sure the vent is set to “Sealing”), select “Manual,” set pressure to “High,” and time to 5 minutes. When finished, allow pressure to release naturally before unlocking lid.

Process soup with immersion blender or in batches in a blender/food processor. [If you’re using either of the latter, drape a towel over the input tube or lid to allow the steam to vent, or you will Jackson Pollock your kitchen walls — and yourself — with hot soup.]

Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with a little extra chopped cilantro.

Here Comes That Grain Again: Vegan Kamut® Bowl With Peppers, Greens, and Toum

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The bride’s keen on grain bowls lately, and I’m about 47.8% less enthusiastic about quinoa than she is, so I have been poking around for alternatives. While at the store, ostensibly to pick up some farro, I saw this thing in the grain section that looked like a sibling (of farro’s, not of mine): Kamut®. I had no idea what Kamut® was, but that didn’t stop me from bringing it home like a stray culinary puppy. Long story short, it’s a variety of wheat, whose journey out of Egypt was perhaps less tortuous than, but nearly as interesting as, the Jews’.

Allow me to quote from the trademark owner’s website:

    The story of KAMUT® Brand khorasan wheat began in 1949, when Earl Dedman, a US Airman stationed in Portugal, received some unusual looking grain from a friend who claimed to have taken it from a tomb in Egypt. More likely, the friend had purchased it from a street vendor in Cairo, Egypt with the story that it had come from an ancient Egyptian tomb. Earl sent thirty-six kernels of the wheat to his father, R. E. Dedman, a farmer near Fort Benton, Montana. Within six years, the elder Dedman had grown the small number of seeds into 1,500 bushels, calling it “King Tut’s Wheat.”

In 1977, it fell into the hands of Robert Quinn, who tried unsuccessfully to get the people who make Corn Nuts to manufacture a wheat version of the snack with this grain. But Quinn and his dad continued to grow it on his family farm, which went completely organic in 1989. The following year, the USDA recognized the grain as a protected variety officially named “QK-77,” and the Quinns registered Kamut® as a trademark to guarantee that the original grain would remain unmodified and always be grown organically. From there, it got licenced to dozens of producers and is used in products from cereal to pizza… to this grain bowl.

This recipe follows a general formula I’ve developed for grain bowls: grain, some roasted/pan-fried vegetables, an element to add at least a bit of crunch to the texture, wilted greens for a little bitterness, some salt, and an acid (tomatoes, lemon juice, vinegar, or, in this case, toum) as a brightening agent. Please don’t shackle yourself to this recipe! It was created and modified on the fly, riffing on literally dozens of other options I sifted through from Pinterest pages and Google searches.

Instant veggie stock enhances the water.

A NOTE ON COOKING KAMUT®: A little searching on the Internets yielded some insight on how to cook it in an Instant Pot. Much like dried beans, the typical method for preparing Kamut® is to soak it overnight in water (or, in my case, vegetarian bouillon), but I didn’t have the time for that, and I — quite fortuituously — did have an Instant Pot. Much thanks to cookbook author Kathy Hester, whose The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook for Your Instant Pot: 80 Easy and Delicious Plant-Based Recipes That You Can Make in Half the Time yielded the info that if you press the “Adjust” button once after having set the Instant Pot up on the “Multigrain” cycle, “it will look like it’s going to cook for a normal 60 minutes. But on this setting — only on the multigrain 60-minute cycle — the grain first gets a 45-minute warm water soaking before the 60 minutes pressure cooking time. It’s great for Kamut® and other long-cooking grains.” If you don’t have one of these marvelous devices, you can just soak the grain overnight and prepare it according to the directions on the package. That method works just fine, even if it’s a little (well, a lot) longer. [Reminder from Russ Parsons, former LA Times food editor: “Rinse thoroughly. I mean thoroughly. In a strainer under running water.”]

One cup of dry Kamut® looks like this when cooked.

A NOTE ABOUT TOUM: Toum is a garlic-based Lebanese dipping sauce not far removed from aioli or the Ligurian agliata. The best recipe for it that I’ve found is at the Tori’s Kitchen website (she even thoughtfully includes step-by-step photography). If I deviate from her recipe at all, it’s usually to add more garlic, the cowbell of the pantry. There’s just never enough. When you’re making it, be sure your water and lemon juice are really cold, or the sauce might break up. But it’s super tasty, simple to make, and you will discover a million applications for it, from grilled veggie sandwiches to tater tots to pasta.

A Cuisinart full of toum.

Vegan Kamut® Bowl With Peppers, Greens, and Toum

INGREDIENTS:

For the grain:
1 cup / 225g dried Kamut® khorasam wheat
3 cups / 700ml water
1 tbsp. / 15ml Better Than Bouillon Seasoned Vegetable Base (or other vegan bouillon cube)

For the bowl:
2 cups / 325gm cooked Kamut® khorasam wheat
12 baby bell peppers or 2 medium sized regular bell peppers (red/orange/yellow, chopped)
1/2 onion, finely diced
5 oz. / 1 cup / 150g cashews, preferably roasted and salted
sea salt to taste
5 oz. / 140g coarsely chopped greens (this time it was kale, baby spinach, and arugula)
2 tbsp. / 30ml olive oil

For the toum:
3 1/2 – 4 cups / 700ml sunflower or canola oil, chilled
1/2 cup / 70g / about 1 head peeled garlic cloves
1/2 cup / 120ml lemon juice, divided
1/2 cup / 120ml ice cold water, divided
1 3/4 / 10g tsp salt (preferably Kosher salt, fleur de sel, or sea salt)

I was generous with the toum.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Cook Kamut® according to instructions (see A NOTE ON COOKING KAMUT®, above). Set aside.

Make toum according to instructions (see link in A NOTE ABOUT TOUM, above). Set aside.

Chop onion and bell peppers, place in bowl, and set aside. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in large pan on high heat until just about smoking. Add cooked Kamut® and toast, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes or until slightly browned. Lower heat to medium and stir in onion and peppers. Cook for about 8-10 minutes, or until veggies have softened, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, wash and chop greens. When vegetables have softened, add chopped greens and stir until wilted. Add cashews, stir, and salt to taste. Top with toum and serve. Serves 2-3 as main or 4-6 as side dish.

Praying for Grain: Vegan Fried Rice, Mushroom, and Super Greens Bowl

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Asked the bride last night if she had any ideas for tonight’s dinner, and she responded with, “I pinned some grain bowls on my Pinterest page.” Some people find Pinterest really useful and convenient. I am not one of those. So after I looked through all 266 pins in the “No Animals Were Harmed” folder, I wound up (as I often do) perusing Food & Wine’s website. On it, I found this recipe, for Kale-and-Shiitake Fried Rice. It was pretty close to where I wanted to go, but it had eggs, and I was in a vegan mood, so I made a few simple mods for tonight’s meal.

This is super easy to whip together if you already have some cooked rice lying around, so I made a bunch in the Instant Pot last night before going to bed. Obvs, you can use any type of rice, but I find that brown Basmati rice is a good middle path between an insipid white and a cloying brown. The author of the Food & Wine recipe (David Lebovitz) recommended day-old rice, which he says works better to absorb the flavourings. Makes sense, since it will dry out a bit in the fridge overnight. As far as the greens go, I used a mix from the local market, but you could easily add or substitute arugula, collard greens, turnip greens, watercress, or even the leafy part (not the stem) of bok choy. Mustard greens, on the other hand, might overpower the dish, so have a care if you are thinking of adding them.

[NOTE: I love my Instant Pot; I made a whole slew of rice all at once with nary a care. Typically, the recipe for rice in the Instant Pot calls for a 1-to-1 ratio between liquid and dried rice; for brown rice, however, I’ve found that a 1.25-to-1 ratio of liquid to rice works better. Also, the “Rice” button on the front of the cooker is calibrated for white rice. If you are making brown rice, you’ll want to cook it at high pressure for 22-24 minutes, then let the cooker depressurize naturally, which takes about 10 minutes.]

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup / 60ml olive oil
One 1-inch / 2.5cm chunk of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2 oz. / 57g sliced or slivered almonds
6 scallions, thinly sliced
12 oz. / 350g mushrooms, thinly sliced
5 oz. / 141g coarsely chopped “super greens” (kale, chard, mizuna, and baby spinach or whatever greens you prefer)
4 cups day-old cooked brown Basmati (or other) rice
3 tablespoons / 45ml lemon juice (juice of one medium lemon) or equivalent rice wine vinegar
Sea salt

DIRECTIONS

In a wok or large skillet, heat the oil. Add the ginger, almonds, scallions, and a pinch of salt. Cook over moderately high heat, stirring constantly, until the ginger and scallions are tender, about 2 minutes. Add the sliced mushrooms and a generous pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the greens, season with salt and stir-fry until wilted, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the cooked rice and stir-fry until heated through, about 3-5 minutes. Serve immediately.
 Serves 2 as a main course (see bowl in picture), or 4-6 as a starter or side.

Soupe de la Semaine: Vegan Hot and Sour Soup

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M-m-m-m-m m-m-m-m-m good.

M-m-m-m-m m-m-m-m-m good.

It all started with a bag marked Dried Black Fungus (Whole).

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Okay, I’m a geek. I admit it. Some people go to the beach, others go to art museums. I go to ethnic and foreign grocery stores. I’m happy to wax poetic about my experience at Carrefour in Galicia, but this one was much closer to home. It’s a market called LAX-C, and while it’s nowhere near LAX (a/k/a Los Angeles International Airport), it (like the airport) encompasses several of Los Angeles’ communities quite vibrantly. While strolling the aisles, I saw this bag of dried black fungus and just had to have it. Somebody out there clearly used this stuff, so it wouldn’t kill me, I figured. Into the shopping cart it went. I could figure out later what it really was and how it might be used.

When I got home, I discovered that it was nothing more exotic than dried wood ear mushrooms. I felt like kind of a naïf, but as luck would have it, I knew exactly how they might be deployed in a recipe.

I’ve been eating hot and sour soup for as long as I’ve been dining at Chinese restaurants, which is more than half a century. And yet, I never tried to make it myself until last night. Idiot me. Wow, this is simple. If you can operate a spoon, a knife, a pot, and a flame, you can do this. And if you have a cold, as I did when I made it, this soup beats the living tar out of chicken soup in terms of restorative powers.

NOTE: It’s easy to convert this soup to the trad non-vegan version, too. First, substitute chicken stock for vegetable stock. Then, add some shredded cooked chicken (or shredded cooked pork) at the same time you add the mushrooms, and right at the very end, beat a couple of eggs in a small bowl, and drizzle them into the soup as you stir it (that keeps them from lumping up).

If you want to keep this gluten-free, use tamari sauce rather than soy, and have a care if you are buying commercial vegetable broth that it doesn’t contain any grains that have gluten. Chances are, if it’s gluten-free, it will say so somewhere on the package.

INGREDIENTS

    2.5 oz. / 70 g package dried Chinese fungi, such as wood ears or cloud ears
    6 oz. / 170 g sliced fresh shiitake mushrooms
    8 oz. / 225 g canned bamboo shoots, sliced
    1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
    1 tablespoon / 20 g red chile paste, such as sambal oelek
    1/4 cup / 60 ml soy sauce (or tamari sauce if you want to keep it gluten free)
    1/4 cup / 60 ml rice vinegar
    1 teaspoon / 6 g salt
    1.5 teaspoons / 3 g ground white pepper
    1/2 teaspoon / 2.5 ml sesame oil
    8 cups / 1.89 liters vegetable stock
    8 oz. / 225 g firm tofu, drained and sliced in 1/2-inch cubes
    2 tablespoons / 16 g potato starch mixed with 1/4 cup / 60 ml water (you may also use cornstarch)
    4-6 green onions, chopped, for garnish

Soaking your fungi.

Soaking your fungi.

DIRECTIONS

Place the dried fungus into a bowl and cover with 4 cups / 1 liter boiling water. They should soften in about 20 minutes to half an hour. Squeeze them out into the bowl and place them on a chopping board. Reserve the liquid (it goes in the pot later).

Toss out the nasty tough bits.

Toss out the nasty tough bits.

Slice up the fungus into spoon-size bits. You will find that the “stem” (pictured above) is particularly tough, so cut it out and discard it. It may be white, or it may not, but you will be able to tell with your fingers that it’s not been rehydrated. (It was only the very center of those two mushrooms that I tossed; there was still a fair amount of useable fungus.)

Strain the remaining juice into a heavy soup pot or dutch oven (don’t want any mushroom grit). I had 3 cups / 700 ml mushroom water, so the remaining 5 cups / 1.1 liters of liquid came from vegetable stock, and I put that on a fairly high heat to bring it to a boil. You can add the mushrooms (both kinds) at this time.

Drain the sliced bamboo shoots and slice to matchstick width (I cut mine in thirds lengthwise), and add to broth. Grate the ginger into the pot (a microplane works well for this if you have one), or grate over cutting board with box grater and add to pot.

Add chili paste, soy/tamari sauce, sesame oil, salt, and rice vinegar to soup. Stir. Add white pepper 1/2 tsp. / 1 g at a time, and taste; I like it hot, but you may want to stop at 1 tsp. 2 g if you are not a heat freak. If soup is boiling, back it off to a simmer. At the 15 minute mark of so, add the drained and cubed tofu.

In a separate bowl, whisk 2 tablespoons / 16 g potato starch with 1/4 cup / 60 ml cold water to make a slurry. Transfer slurry to pot, stirring soup with whisk as you do to prevent clumps from forming. Cook a further 10 minutes and allow to thicken. Add chopped green onions and serve. Serves 4-6.

NOTE: The process can be speeded up dramatically if you do your mise en place ahead of time. Basically, you need to have the mushrooms and the bamboo shoots in the hot broth for about 10 minutes to sofeten them up, and you need a further few minutes to allow the potato starch slurry to thicken the soup. If you use a cornstarch slurry to thicken the broth, it needs a little time to cook off the pasty taste. That’s why I like potato starch.

Also, the “hot” is coming from the white pepper and the “sour” is coming from the vinegar, so those are the two variables you’ll want to control most carefully to achieve the balance you want. You may want to add each of those a bit at a time, tasting as you go.

Soupe de la Semaine: Turkish Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup -or- Közlenmiş Kırmızı Biberli ve Domatesli Çorba [Gluten-Free and Vegan]

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I was tempted to call it the “Istanbowl.” Shame on me.

Yeah, the title is a mouthful. Happily, though, so is the soup.

I didn’t sample this when I visited Istanbul back in the ’80s, but I think I have some general sense of the Turkish flavour palate, and since this dish is reputed to be much like chicken soup is in America (which is to say that there are a quadzillion variations), this should be on pretty safe ground. I consulted with my Turkish pal Nil ex post facto (sending her the picture you see above), and she confirmed that I was in the ball park, and that I had nailed the spelling. I’d hate to give y’all a recipe for Turkish Roasted Red Bat Turd Soup thanks to a typo.

Many recipes call for bulgur wheat as the thickening agent and starchy backbone, but I opted for quinoa, since it’s gluten-free and generally considered safe for celiac patients, depending on whose article you read. If that’s not an issue for you, help yourself to bulgur wheat, rice, or even Israeli couscous (which is actually a pasta) in its stead. The smokiness comes not only from the roasted peppers, but also from the fire-roasted tomatoes and the pimentón de la Vera (or smoked paprika). You may add a pinch of smoked salt to finish before serving if you wish. Lots of bass notes to be had here. You can always add the zest of 1/2 lemon or a teaspoon (5 ml) of vinegar if you feel it needs to be brightened up, but I don’t think you’ll need it, as the acid in the tomatoes should balance it nicely. Some recipes also call for cornstarch as a thickening agent; I would deploy a tablespoon / 10 g of potato starch in a slurry if I thought it needed it. You be the judge.

The biggest downside of this soup is that it requires some time to bring together, unless you happen already to have roasted red peppers (not the marinated kind) and cooked quinoa in your fridge. In that case, it’s a snap. But it will take somewhere between 30-40 minutes-ish to cook the quinoa, and maybe 35 minutes to groom your peppers to soup-readiness. Your patience and dedication will be rewarded!

INGREDIENTS

    3 red bell peppers, halved, de-seeded, and roasted, with skins removed
    3/4 cup / 135 g dry quinoa, cooked (use package instructions) [will yield 2 1/4 cups / 415 g]
    2 tablespoons / 30 ml olive oil
    1 onion, diced
    3-4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
    2 tablespoons / 5 g sun-dried tomatoes, chopped (or red pepper paste or tomato paste)
    1 teaspoon / 2.5 g smoked paprika (I prefer Spanish pimentón de la Vera, and I used picante/hot rather than dulce/sweet)
    1/2 teaspoon / 1.5 g red pepper flakes, to taste
    1 teaspoon / 2.5 g dried mint (maybe double that if using fresh)
    28 oz. / 793 g can fire-roasted tomatoes (or 10-12 fresh tomatoes, roasted and chopped)
    8 oz. / 227 g tomato sauce
    4 cups / 950 ml vegetable broth
    Salt & coarsely ground black pepper
    OPTIONAL: 1 tablespoon / 10 g potato starch for thickening
    OPTIONAL: Fresh mint for garnish
    OPTIONAL: Sour cream (or vegan alternative) as garnish

Simmerin' away.

Simmerin’ away.

DIRECTIONS

Roast the peppers: Turn on broiler. Spread peppers on an aluminum foil lined cookie sheet, skin side up, in a single layer (you may need to repeat this step to roast all your peppers). Place cookie sheet about 3″ / 8 cm below broiler element. Roast until peppers are blackened across the top, around 10-15 minutes.

Transfer roasted peppers to a medium-sized bowl and cover with plastic wrap, allowing them to steam for 15 minutes minimum. Using your fingers, peel off the charred top layer of skin and discard. Give peeled pepper slices a rough chop, small enough to fit easily on a soup spoon, because they will not be puréed. Return to steaming bowl and reserve, along with any juices they shed, for later.

Cook the quinoa according to instructions on the label. I find that the stove-top method, while longer, produces superior results to the microwave method. YMMV. Set aside cooked quinoa for later use.

Cook the soup: In a 3½ quart or larger Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot, warm olive oil and onion on fairly low heat. Sauté, stirring occasionally, until softened and turning translucent, about 5 to 8 minutes. Add the roasted peppers (with any liquid they’ve thrown off), sun-dried tomatoes (or tomato or pepper paste), and garlic; cook a further 3-4 minutes until garlic is slightly less aggressive. Add smoked paprika/pimentón de la Vera, pepper flakes, amd mint; cook for about 30 seconds to release aromas. Add the can of tomatoes, the tomato sauce, vegetable broth, and cooked quinoa. Cook over medium heat for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally. After the first 5 minutes or so, add salt and pepper to taste, but not too heavily; you will adjust the seasonings just before serving. Taste periodically along the way (clean spoons each time!). If you think the consistency is too thin, whisk in 1 tablespoon / 10 g of potato starch with a little of the soup broth in a bowl, and add to the pot. Soup should thicken noticeably within five minutes. Taste at 30 minute mark, adjust seasonings (and thickness, if necessary), and allow to thicken if need be. Remove from heat and ladle into bowls. Garnish with mint sprigs and/or sour cream (or vegan alternative) if so desired. Serves 6 to 8 as an opening course, 4 as a main.

Soupe de la Semaine: Celeriac, Fennel, & Apple Chowder (Gluten-Free and Vegan)

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Chowdah!

Chowdah!

It would seem that the most likely derivation of the word chowder comes from the French chaudière, meaning “boiler” (and is also an archaic French word for cauldron or kettle, from the Latin calderia). The Brits, though, not wanting to be left out of the linguistic fun, claim that the word springs from their jowter, or fishmonger. To be sure, many of the best known chowders do contain fish, but this one is a vegetable and fruit chowder that’ll stick to your ribs on a chilly night.

The original recipe was published in the excellent Cook’s Illustrated All Time Best Soups volume, and this variation was also influenced by a post on the terrific Big Girls, Small Kitchen blog and Ina Garten’s recipe for Celery Root and Apple Purée (which is very much like this soup without the vegetable broth).

I took two significant detours: I omitted the heavy cream (thus keeping the soup vegan), and substituted potato starch for wheat flour (which makes it gluten-free). Trust me, you won’t miss the cream a bit; if you process in a Vita-Mix, it will be plenty creamy, but even if you just use an immersion blender the soup will emerge a tiny bit more rustic, while still maintaining that silky mouthfeel.

When it comes to the wine, you don’t really need to use a $38 bottle of Roche 2014 Carneros Chardonnay French Oak Reserve, but damn, it was good (and you only need half a cup (or 120ml).

Special note for celiac patients: Be extra-sure that your vegetable broth is free of wheat or barley or malt products. These often show up in commercial vegetable broths and broth bases.

INGREDIENTS

    2 tablespoons / 30g Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks (or unsalted butter, for non-Vegan version)
    1 onion, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
    1 fennel bulb, halved, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces, plus 1 tablespoon minced fronds
    Salt and pepper
    6 garlic cloves, minced
    2 teaspoons / 1.6g minced fresh thyme (or 3/4 teaspoon / .75g dried)
    2 tablespoons / 20g potato starch
    1/2 cup / 120ml dry white wine
    5 1/2 cups / 1.3 liters vegetable broth
    1 celeriac (also known as celery root) (14 ounces / 400g), peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
    12 ounces / 350g red potatoes, scrubbed but unpeeled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
    2 Golden Delicious or Granny Smith apples, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
    zest of 1 lemon or orange
    1 bay leaf

Soup on the boil.

Soup on the boil.

DIRECTIONS

Put butter, onion, fennel, and a couple of pinches of salt in a heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, cook over medium heat until translucent, about 5-8 minutes. Add garlic and thyme, cook for 30 seconds to a minute until fragrant. Raise heat to high and add potato starch, stirring continuously, and cook for another 2 minutes or so. Add the wine to deglaze the pot, making sure to scrape up all the bits on the bottom; let most of the wine boil off.

Stir in the vegetable broth, celeriac, potatoes, and apples. Add bay leaf and zest your citrus over the pot. Bring to a boil and then back the heat off to a high simmer. Cover pot and cook for 35-40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are all tender.

Remove from heat. Discard the bay leaf. Process 2/3 soup in batches; if you are using a blender or Vita-Mix, making sure to cover feed tube loosely with tea towel (do not plug it up, because steam needs to escape). Return processed soup to pot. [Alternatively, use an immersion blender to process soup, making sure to leave at least 1/3 chunky.] Season with salt and pepper to taste, and ladle into bowls. Garnish with fennel fronds and serve. Makes 6 servings.

Soupe de la Semaine: Roasted Pepper Soup with Cilantro Cream

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My pal Beth, herself no slouch around the kitchen, dropped a UXB (UneXpected Book) into our mailbox earlier this week: Cook’s Illustrated All-Time Best Soups. It boasted a number of recipes that will serve as inspiration during soup season — which is all year, of course, but especially in the winter. I had my eyes set on a celeriac, fennel, and apple chowder for the opening salvo, but the bride had other ideas, and she wins.

Over the course of due diligence (I almost never cook a recipe without scanning the Interwebs to see if someone has concocted a more interesting version), I came across the Cookie + Kate blog, in which she lays out several entertaining reasons for not making this soup. Long story short, it’s not particularly cheap to make (unless you grow your own peppers), and the pepper roasting process is both time-consuming and a wee bit tedious. That said, just like her, I concluded that this soup is so tasty that any quibbles about prep were overcome mere nanoseconds after the intersection of tongue and spoon. [All the original recipes I consulted to arrive at this one called for red bell peppers, but the local supermercado‘s red peppers looked a little sketchy, so I made it with orange ones instead. I presume yellow bell peppers, or a mix of all three, would work equally well.]

For those of you who are interested, the recipe is easily vegan-adaptable (see notes below); while the half and half is a tasty touch, I tasted the puréed soup prior to its addition, and I could easily have stopped there, ingredient-wise. Recipe yields 4-6 large servings.

INGREDIENTS

Cilantro Cream

    3/4 cup / 170g sour cream (or soy yogurt for vegan version)
    2 tablespoons / 30ml half and half (or cashew cream for vegan version)
    2 tablespoons / 5.3g fresh minced cilantro leaves
    zest of 1 lime, plus juice from half of that lime (approximately 2 tablespoons / 30ml)

Soup

    8 red (or orange, or yellow) bell peppers, roasted, skins removed, and chopped
    1 tablespoon / 15ml olive oil (I used basil-infused EVOO) (double if making tortilla strips)
    2 medium garlic cloves, minced
    1 medium red onion, chopped
    1 teaspoon / 2.5g ground cumin
    1 teaspoon / 2.5g smoked paprika (I prefer Spanish pimentón de la Vera, and I used picante/hot rather than dulce/sweet)
    3 tablespoons / 50g tomato paste (or 8 oz. / 227g tomato sauce)
    1 tablespoon / 10g potato starch
    4-6 cups / 950ml-1.4l vegetable broth; start with smaller amount, adjusting for consistency as desired
    2 bay leaves
    1/2 cup /120ml half and half (or 100ml cashew cream + 20ml coconut oil for vegan version)
    2 tablespoons / 30ml dry sherry
    2 tablespoons / 5.3g minced fresh cilantro
    salt and pepper, to taste

Garnish (optional)

    3 corn tortillas, sliced into thin, 2-inch long strips, fried in oil until crispy

INSTRUCTIONS

For the Cilantro Cream:
Whisk all the ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover with plastic and refrigerate until serving.

For the Crispy Tortilla Strips:
Cut tortillas into strips about 2″ (5cm) long and 1/4″ (2/3cm) wide. Warm 1 tablespoon / 15ml olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add tortilla strips and salt. Stir to coat the strips with the oil, and fry until both sides are golden and crispy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer to a plate lined with a paper towel to cool. NOTE: If you are making the vegan version, be sure no lard was used in the tortilla manufacture! Corn tortillas are gluten-free, if you are concerned about that.

Peppers pre-peeling.

Peppers pre-peeling.


Post-peeling pepper perfection.

Post-peeling pepper perfection.

For the Soup:
Roast the peppers: Spread peppers on an aluminum foil lined cookie sheet, skin side up, in a single layer (you may need to repeat this step several times to roast all your peppers). Place cookie sheet about 3″ below broiler element. Roast until peppers are blackened across the top, around 10 minutes.

Transfer roasted peppers to a medium-sized bowl and cover with plastic wrap, allowing them to steam for 15 minutes. Using your fingers, peel off the charred top layer of skin and discard. Take peeled pepper slices and give them a rough chop (they will be puréed later, so no need to be fussy about it).

Cook the soup: In a 3½ quart or larger Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot, warm olive oil and minced garlic on fairly low heat. Sauté, stirring occasionally, until the garlic gets a little foamy and sticky, about 6-7 minutes. Increase heat to medium, add onions and sauté until softened and turning translucent, about 5 to 8 minutes. Add the cumin and smoked paprika/pimentón de la Vera and cook for about 30 seconds to release aromas. Add the potato starch (or flour) and cook for one minute, stirring constantly. Add the tomato paste (or sauce) and gradually whisk in the stock, stirring to prevent lumps. Add the peeled red/orange/yellow peppers and stir. Bring the soup to a gentle boil, then reduce heat to maintain a simmer and cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Once your soup is done cooking, remove it from heat and allow it to cool for 5 minutes.

Blend the soup: Transfer soup to a blender or Vita-Mix (do NOT fill it over halfway, unless you wish to decorate your walls and person with hot soup); drape a kitchen towel over the blender (so the escaping steam doesn’t build up or burn your hands) and process in batches. Transfer puréed soup to another pot and continue until all of the soup is blended. Alternatively, use an immersion blender to blend the soup in the pot. Blend until the mixture is smooth and creamy. If soup is too thick, add vegetable stock to achieve desired consistency.

Transfer soup back to cooking pot and rewarm gently on the stove; add the half & half (or vegan substitute), dry sherry, and chopped cilantro. Divide soup into individual bowls, and drizzle in cilantro cream. Top with crispy tortilla strips (optional) and serve.

Soupe de la Semaine: Pasilla, Potato, & Garlic Soup — Vegan-style

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I’ve got a beef (no pun intended) with the Food Network and the Cooking Channel. Much like MTV, they drifted away from their original vision and began offering a schedule filled with fake drama and connerie that has precious little to do with anything that happens in a kitchen, professional or amateur. People being tasked to make dishes with ingredients like licorice, chicory, hickory, foie gras, and lima beans. The self-appointed Mayor of Flavourtown swanning around the country, sunglasses dangling ridiculously off the back of his bleach-tipped head like an errant swath of toilet paper attached to a shoe. And the content-free talking-head programs where workaday foodstuffs such as pretzels and cupcakes are routinely characterized by the multiple hosts as amazing. Look: if you can be amazed by a pretzel, your kidney is going to rocket out of your dorsal abdomen when you see the northern lights or the Eiffel Tower. Also, any native English speaker who modifies the word “unique” deserves to be banished to an asteroid outside the Van Allen Belt. So I’ve pretty much gone cold turkey (albeit heirloom breed, free-range, and antibiotic-free) on them.

But when one network closes, another one opens. I discovered that one of my local PBS station’s digital sub-channels features programming from a sort of network-within-a-network: Create TV. It’s excellent, and filled with cooking friends both old and new. Julia Child. Andreas Viestad (of New Scandinavian Cooking). Rick Bayless. Steven Raichlen. Hubert Keller. And the timeless Jacques Pépin.

It was Pépin’s show that inspired me to make this soup; his version is potato-free and employs sour cream (I wanted to make mine vegan). I also wanted to tone down the heat a bit, and give it some more body. As it turned out, I had half a dozen Yukon Gold potatoes lying around, and they filled the bill nicely. But to add an extra bass note, I roasted them first. I should also offer up a hat-tip to the Kevin Is Cooking blog, whose Roasted Pasilla Chile and Potato Soup with Shredded Chicken recipe also inspired me.

Before I get into the nuts and bolts, don’t blanch at the concept of the soup using a whole head of garlic. (Don’t skimp, either.) Because the garlic is added initially as whole cloves, it’s not overwhelming (even though it is puréed later). Which reminds me: if you are using pre-minced garlic or garlic paste, dial it back… A LOT.

Ingredients

8 large dried Pasilla chile peppers, rehydrated (Ancho or Guajillo peppers may be substituted if necessary)
8 cups / 1.8 litres vegetable stock or water
6 medium-to-large Yukon Gold potatoes (about 3 lbs. / 1.5 kg)
2 large yellow onions, diced (about 4 cups / 600g)
1 head garlic (approximately 20-25 whole cloves)
2 + 2 tablespoons / 30ml + 30ml oil (I used garlic-infused olive oil)
1 large can (28-ounce / 793g) diced tomatoes — fire-roasted if you can get them
1 tablespoon / 3g dried oregano leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Chopped fresh cilantro, if desired, for garnish
Vegan sour cream substitute, if desired, for garnish
Fried tortilla strips or crumbled tortilla chips, optional (check to see that they are made without lard if you are cooking for vegans)
1 sunny side up egg per bowl, optional (this invalidates the vegan-ness, so have a care)

Onion family reunion.

Onion family reunion.

Preparation

1. Soak dried Pasilla chile peppers in vegetable broth for approximately two hours. When they are rehydrated, remove them from broth, seed them and chop them roughly. Set aside. Be sure to reserve soaking broth.

2. Preheat oven to 400°F/200°C. Wash and dice potatoes into 1″ / 2.5cm cubes (you may peel them if you prefer, but it is not necessary). Place cubed potatoes into plastic bag with 2 tbsp / 30ml oil), and shake to coat. Dump potatoes out on a cookie tray and spread out into a single layer (you can line the pan with aluminum foil or parchment paper for easier cleanup). Salt lightly. Roast for 45-60 minutes, until nicely browned. [If you wish, you can turn them over midway through the roasting process, but it’s not strictly necessary.]

3. Peel garlic and dice onions. [No need to be too fancy here, since it’s all getting puréed later.] Place in large pot or Dutch oven with the remaining two tablespoons / 30ml of oil, and cook over medium heat until onions are translucent, approximately 5-7 minutes.

4. Strain in the reserved vegetable stock (this will catch any remaining seeds from the Pasilla soaking), and add chiles, potatoes, tomatoes, oregano, plus a little salt and pepper to taste (be frugal; you can always add some more later).

5. Bring soup to a boil, then reduce heat, cover partially, and cook at a simmer for 60 minutes (or longer, if you have the time). Process soup with immersion blender, food processor, or Vita-Mix. [Be very careful when you purée hot soup — leave room for steam to get out (I cover the feed tube loosely with a dish towel), and if using an immersion (stick) blender, be careful when it exits the surface of the soup, so as to avoid coating both chef and walls.] Adjust spices as necessary and serve.

Before the blend.

Before the blend.

Soupe de la Semaine: Sweet & Sour Cabbage Soup — Vegan-style

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As you might have guessed from the headline, I’m going to try to post a soup recipe every week. We’ll see how that goes. But if I am to hold the throne of “Le Roi de Potage,” awarded me in Paris a few years back (another story for another time), it’s time to step up.

They say it never rains in southern California, but that’s not quite true. This evening was one of those rare and welcomed occasions, and soup is the ideal antidote for a dark and stormy night. As I trawled the Internets, looking for something to suit my fancy, I unearthed a couple of Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup recipes, which I melded to make this one. The first was modified from the NY Times by ofallytasty.com, who adapted it from The National. The second came from cookforyourlife.org, who wisely noted that the pimentón helps to make up for the smokiness that ham would ordinarily bring to this soup in its non-vegan state. Alternatively (or even better, additionally), you could finish it with a tiny pinch of smoked salt (I heartily recommend Hepp’s 7-Fire Smoked Sea Salt — it’s not cheap, but a little goes quite some distance, and it’s sooooo good). Some of the recipes I read called for an immersion blender to purée a portion of the soup, but I found it unnecessary. Dealer’s choice.

Idiot me, I didn’t measure how much the recipe made, but it will easily serve 10-12 as an opener and 6 as a main, especially if augmented with a baguette.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons / 30ml neutral oil
2 large yellow onions, diced
2 teaspoons / 4g caraway seeds
2 bay leaves
1 large can (28-ounce / 793g) diced tomatoes — fire-roasted if you can get them
1 fairly large cabbage, cored and shredded (approximately 2.5 lbs / 1.1 kg)
8 cups / 1.8 liters vegetable stock or water
4 tablespoons / 50g brown sugar
2-3 teaspoons / 4-6g smoked paprika (pimentón de la Vera is preferred if you can get it)
Salt and pepper to taste
3-4 tablespoons (45-60ml) fresh lemon juice or vinegar (apple cider vinegar is what I used, but white wine vinegar would be fine)
Pinch of smoked salt for finishing, optional
Sour cream or vegan sour cream substitute, if desired, for garnish
Baguettes or rolls to serve alongside, optional

Preparation

1. Heat oil in a Dutch oven or other heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and cook until translucent, 5-7 minutes. Stir in the caraway seeds and cook for 1 more minute.

2. Add the diced tomatoes (along with their juice), the stock (or water), and the bay leaves. Cook for about 10 minutes or so, to warm the liquid.

3. Add the shredded cabbage, brown sugar, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, for at least 1 hour (but two is better, especially if you want your cabbage a little less crunchy).

4. Stir in vinegar or lemon juice right before serving (start with 2 tbsp. stir, and add more to taste), then cook for about 1-2 minutes to allow flavours to blend; serve with a baguette. If desired, sour cream or vegan sour cream substitute may be dolloped on top, and a tiny(!) pinch of smoked salt may be added per portion for finishing.

NOTE: When reheating, add a small amount of your acid (lemon or vinegar) to refresh taste.

We Be Jammin’ (Specifically, Strawberry Balsamic Jam with Black Pepper)

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Itty bitty jars of sweet and savory goodness.

Itty bitty jars of sweet and savory goodness.

Ah, the joys of ADHD. I had planned on making a strawberry-cherry pie, then strawberry-rhubarb tarts, but when the steam had settled, my two pounds of luscious Driscoll strawberries found their way into a jam. Generally speaking, I’m not a huge fan of strawberry jam, because it tends to be both a little sweet and a little insipid for my taste, but I came across several recipes for a strawberry balsamic jam, and then the vision of serving it with an aged white Canadian Cheddar kicked in — no, wait; goat cheese! or maybe a stinky Roquefort! (see what I mean about the ADHD?) — so I committed to making a small batch.

Six ingredients. Six. No added pectin. Comparatively speaking, a fair amount of work for six four-ounce (118 ml) jars, but highly satisfying, especially when you give them away as gifts to a grateful palate (even if it’s your own).

STRAWBERRY BALSAMIC JAM (makes six 4 oz./118 ml jars)
Ingredients
2 lb./1 kg fresh strawberries
3 tbsp/45 ml lemon juice (fresh-squeezed, if you can get it)
1.5 cups/300 g granulated white sugar
4 tbsp/60 ml balsamic vinegar
1 tsp/5 g sea salt or kosher salt
1/2 tsp/1-2 g freshly ground black pepper

Berries and sugar, macerating nicely.

Berries and sugar, macerating nicely.

Rinse and hull strawberries. Place in a bowl with sugar and let sit for at least 1-2 hours (or overnight, if it’s convenient), mashing the strawberries after about 10-20 minutes.

Berries and sugar, all mashed up.

Berries and sugar, all mashed up.

Meanwhile, prepare jars and lids (which is to say, throw them in boiling water for a minimum of 10 minutes). [You have the option of making this a refrigerator jam if you don’t care to do the whole home canning thing; strictly up to you. I chose to preserve the preserve in the traditional manner. Otherwise, be sure to use it up within about 10 days.]

It may not be quick, but it does get thick.

It may not be quick, but it does get thick.

Place the strawberry and sugar slurry in a non-reactive saucepan, add the lemon juice, and bring to a boil on medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium and continue to cook until jam is at the jell stage, stirring frequently and watching at least semi-observantly. [For me, this was about 45 minutes, but your pan and stove may bring about a different result, timewise; one of the recipes I read said you could get there in 30 minutes.] Add the balsamic vinegar, salt, and black pepper the last five minutes of cooking, stirring continuously. Remove the pan from heat.

Jam and a few spare jars.

Jam and a few spare jars.

Pour jam into hot, prepared jars, leaving 1/4″ headspace. Refrigerate immediately or seal and process jars for 10 minutes in a water bath canner. If processing in water bath, remove and let jars sit for 24 hours, ensuring a good seal. Remove bands and store for up to one year… if you think you can wait that long before finishing it all off.

Boiling, but not mad.

Boiling, but not mad.

[Thanks to my pal Susan Park for the suggestion of adding the salt; it cuts the sweetness nicely, and plays well with both the strawberries and the vinegar. And thanks to my cousin Sheryl for the gorgeous cutting board that served as a tray for the jars.]

Celebrating Celeriac with a Superb Soup [Vegan]

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Celeriac, before and after a trim.

Celeriac, before and after a trim.

If there is an uglier vegetable on the planet Earth than celeriac (Apium graveolens variety rapaceum), I have yet to find it. Fortunately, much as beauty is only skin deep, in the case of this magnificent and underappreciated vegetable, so is ugly.

While celeriac itself doesn’t grow very deep — maybe six inches or so beneath the surface of your average garden plot — its roots in food history are deep indeed. In Book V of Homer’s Odyssey, it’s described as a component of Calypso’s garden, albeit in the Greek it is referred to as selinon. In one passage, Hermes admires the environs of Calypso’s cave, festooned with grapes, violets, and wild celery before stepping inside to beseech her to let Odysseus go and finish his journey back to Ithaca. But that’s another, much longer, story.

In ancient times, and for much of their early history, both celery and celeriac were regarded more as medicines than as foodstuffs. Pliny the Elder claimed that the so-called helioselinon was “possessed of peculiar virtues against the bites of spiders.” He also suggested that it could be used to revive sick fish. But by the 17th century, it was being cultivated in France, and by the 18th, it was being used in England for soups and broths.

Fast forward to today: soups and broths! For your consideration, here’s a soup that contains not just one, but two of the planet’s least photogenic vegetables (the latter being parsnips), along with a little ginger (no beauty contest winner itself), some onion, tarragon, and lemon thyme.

CELERIAC AND PARSNIP VELOUTÉ WITH GINGER AND LEMON THYME

Ingredients
48 oz./1.42 litres vegetable broth
2 large celeriac roots, peeled and roughly cubed
3 large parsnips, peeled and chopped
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon (or more, to taste) fresh ginger root, finely chopped
2 tsp./1.2g dried tarragon (it’s what I had at the time; fresh is good too, but use less)
4 sprigs fresh lemon thyme
1 carrot, cut into “coins” (optional)

Before you get all huffy, this is not technically a velouté, inasmuch as it is not thickened with a roux and cream, but it resembles one in texture. If you just want to call it soup, you have my blessing.

Cleaning the celeriac is best done with a very sharp knife, and it may be treated the same way you would strip off the rough outer skin of a pineapple; ideally, you’ll get off all the brown bits underneath the skin, but don’t make yourself crazy (or whittle the vegetable down to half its original size) getting there. Chopping the peeled celeriac is a bit of a chore, and may require rocking your knife back and forth a bit to get through the dense root. Alternatively, you can use a cleaver, if you have one. The parsnips should be scraped with a vegetable peeler, much like carrots, then chopped. As for the ginger, I started with a segment that was about the size of my thumb and scraped off the peel with a spoon before mincing it as finely as my admittedly mediocre knife skills would permit.

Once the prep is completed, making the soup is a snap; basically, you just dump all the ingredients into a big pot, bring it to a boil, and back it off to a simmer for about an hour to soften up the veggies and give the flavours a chance to blend. Then remove the thyme sprigs (which will have shed their leaves), and transfer the soup, in batches, to a food processor, blender, or Vita-Mix. [IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT clamp down the lid on your food processor/blender in such a way that steam cannot easily escape, or you will run the risk of both scalding yourself and decorating your walls with hot soup. I leave the top plug out of my Vita-Mix’s “Action Dome” and drape a tea towel over the opening to allow steam, but not solids, to egress.] Alternatively, the soup can be processed in situ with an immersion blender. Process until smooth.

Perhaps not the root of all soups, but it is a soup of all -- well, almost all -- roots.

Perhaps not the root of all soups, but it is a soup of all — well, almost all — roots.

You might note that salt is not a component of the ingredients list, and that’s because the vegetable broth I used (I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t have any vegetable stock of my own lying around) contained 570mg of sodium, presumably in the form of sodium chloride, which was plenty salty for my taste. Your taste (and your broth) may vary.

To finish the soup off, I sliced a small carrot on a hand-held mandoline, arranged the carrot “coins” into a small “flower,” and sprinkled a few leftover thyme leaves on top. I might drizzle a few drops of olive oil on it as well next time, but it’s by no means necessary. Serves 6-8 (easily!) as an opening course.

Lovely Little Lentils, BBQ- (and Vegan-) Style

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Unlike, say, in Ireland, the orange and the green go very well together here.

Unlike, say, in Ireland, the orange and the green go together very well here.

Much as I once was with beets (which is to say not a fan), The Bride used to be with lentils. I’ve long loved these little legumes, probably had my first infatuation with them as dal in the street food stalls of Mumbai (which was Bombay when I was there), and I brought it home with me. Sadly, it was not shared. Red, orange, green, yellow; I tried making all sorts of lentils for my then-girlfriend (now The Bride) in all sorts of ways, and to no avail. She said they all had an unpleasant aftertaste, and I figured that it must be some genetic thing, like people who find that cilantro has a “soapy” taste.

One evening, we were dining at a now-shuttered, much-missed restaurant, Zax in Brentwood, when they served lentils cooked in duck confit, and I ordered same, prepared to eat them all myself, if necessary. To my way of thinking, one could probably cook the contents of an ashtray in duck confit, and it would be at the least palatable. [I might be stretching the truth a w-e-e bit there.] Long story short, she had them and loved them. Yay! At first I thought that some chemical compound in the confit might have bound itself to whatever was triggering her (thankfully absent) aftertaste. But I also asked the waiter to query the chef (former Top Chef runner-up Brooke Williamson) on whether they had done anything special to prepare the lentils (other than the confit, of course): blanched them first, soaked them in brine overnight, something that I hadn’t thought to do. The answer: “No, nothing at all.” But she did mention that they had used Le Puy lentils.

Le Puy lentils, much like Champagne and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, may only be produced in a specified region, according to national law (and international custom, even though some disreputable sparkling wine producers call their product “Champagne” and some non-Italian cheeses claim – falsely – to be Parmigiano-Reggiano). They’re grown on the mountain plateau around the French town of Le Puy en Velay in the Haute-Loire region, whose climate and volcanic soil impart a particular flavor to the humble legume. In fact, they were the first French foodstuff, apart from wine and cheese, to be awarded the famous “Appellation d’ Origine Contrôlée” designation of quality and assurance of origin.

Above and beyond their terroir, Le Puy lentils are their own species (Lens esculenta puyensis), as distinct from other lentil species as a tasty Portobello mushroom is from the poisonous California Agaricus. Le Puy lentils tend to be comparatively expensive in America (generally $7 – $10 USD per pound/half kilo, though domestically grown versions may go for a little less), but they’re tasty, and The Bride likes them, so what’s a few extra bucks? That said, this recipe can be made with virtually any variety of lentil. Have a care, though; some varieties cook much more quickly, and some don’t hold their shape, turning somewhat mushy (though still tasty).

The original recipe from which this one was inspired came from an excellent cookbook by Cara Eisenpress and Phoebe Lapine, In the Small Kitchen: 100 Recipes from Our Year of Cooking in the Real World. It chronicles two twenty-somethings on a tight budget trying to make tasty and inexpensive meals in their tiny kitchens. It’s a great starter cookbook for someone who’s getting their first apartment, but it also has some recipes that really resonated with me as well (I encountered it as part of a piece I wrote for the LA Review of Books a couple of years ago). I haven’t changed it much, although this version makes a double batch and adds kale, because California law requires kale to be an ingredient in every vegetarian recipe (just kidding, but it almost seems true).

If they don't say "Le Puy," they're just not for me.

If they don’t say “Le Puy,” then they’re just not for me.

BARBECUE LENTILS WITH SWEET POTATO AND KALE
Serves 4-6

Ingredients
1 cup / 200 g Le Puy lentils
4 teaspoons / 20 ml olive oil
2-3 teaspoons / 11-17 g salt
4 cloves garlic, 2 minced, 2 whole
1 onion, diced
1 small sweet potato or yam, diced
1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon / .75 – 1.5 g dried chipotle pepper powder (or cayenne pepper)
1/8 teaspoon / .4 g ground ginger
1/2 cup / 120 ml ketchup
2 teaspoons / 10 ml Dijon mustard
4 tablespoons / 60 g brown sugar
2/3 cup / 160 ml balsamic vinegar
dash or two Worcestershire sauce (optional, leave it out for Vegan version)
1 small bunch kale, shredded

Maybe 6-8 stalks; not a whole lot. Probably 3 cups when chopped.

Maybe 6-8 stalks; not a whole lot. Probably about 2-3 cups when chopped, maybe a little less.

Bring the lentils to a boil with 3 cups (or 700 ml) of water and the two whole garlic cloves. Simmer 30-35 minutes, uncovered, until lentils are soft but still hold their shape. Toward the end of cooking, add 1 teaspoon (5.5 g) salt.

Wash kale, pat dry and shred, removing stems. (If you wish to include chopped stems in the finished dish, you’ll add them at the same time the lentils are added; otherwise, you can discard them.) Set shredded kale aside.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a frying pan. Add the onion and minced garlic and sauté until soft and slightly brown. Add the sweet potatoes and cook until softened, about 5-8 minutes. Stir in the chipotle pepper and ginger, coating the vegetables, then add the ketchup, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and remaining 1-2 teaspoons (5.5 – 11 g) of salt (taste after adding the first teaspoon!), and bring to a simmer. Drain the lentils, reserving the cooking water, and add them and about 1 cup of cooking water to the pan. [This is also where you add the chopped kale stems, if you are using them.] Simmer until the sauce coats the lentils and is fairly well thickened. Taste for seasoning, adding Worcestershire sauce and sugar or vinegar if necessary. Somewhere around 15-30 minutes prior to serving, stir in the shredded kale, making sure to coat it all; give it time to soften to desired consistency, then serve.

FUN LENTIL FACT: The words “lens” and “lentil” both share the same Latin root, and it’s because a biconvex lens (like the one in your eye or a typical magnifying glass) is shaped like a you-know-what.

A Sweet Spot Between Laura Calder and Martha Stewart

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A beautiful book, in every way.

A beautiful book, in every way.

If you’ve been on this blog before, you’ll know that I’m all over exploring the unknown, from exotic ingredients like lutenitza and sriracha salt, to crazy science stuff, from sous vide to avoiding botulism. But today, let’s take some advice from The Far Side creator Gary Larson’s cow: “Don’t forget to stop and eat the roses.”

First time cookbook author Gwen Rogers is neither a trained chef (like Laura Calder) nor a multi-gazillion-dollar-crafts-and-style marketing juggernaut (like Martha Stewart), but in her new book Welcome to Honeysuckle Hill, she deftly threads the needle between the two, creating simple dishes that are simply gorgeous.

Take, as a for instance, her Blueberry Crisp with Almond Streusel recipe.

Blueberry Crisp with Almond Streusel. (photo by Renée Anjanette, courtesy Gwen Rogers)

Blueberry Crisp with Almond Streusel. (photo by Renée Anjanette, courtesy Gwen Rogers)

This is so simple, an eighth-grader could make it. But it looks, and tastes, delightfully sophisticated (in its rustic way).

Blueberry Crisp with Almond Streusel (adapted from Gwen Rogers’ journal)

FOR THE ALMOND STREUSEL:
¾ cup/150 g granulated sugar, unleveled
12 tbsp/170 g unsalted butter (for the vegan variant, substitute Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks)
2 cups/256 g all-purpose flour, scant
¾ cup/115 g finely ground almond meal flour, heaping

FOR THE FILLING:
4 cups/400 g fresh blueberries, washed and dried
½ cup/100 g granulated sugar
1 tbsp/15 ml lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1 tsp/5 ml lemon zest

Preheat oven to 375°F/190°C.

FOR THE STREUSEL: In a medium bowl, combine sugar, all-purpose flour, and almond flour and mix thoroughly. Cut in butter until mixture becomes a coarse crumb. Set aside.

FOR THE FILLING: In a medium bowl, use a spatula to gently toss together the blueberries, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Let mixture sit for about 15 minutes. Place blueberry mixture into a 1.5-quart baking dish (9″ x 9″ x 5″ or 11″ x 11″ x 4″) and cover completely with Almond Streusel. Bake for approximately 45 minutes, until top is browned and berry filling is bubbling.

NOTE: This streusel makes enough for 2 (9-inch) pies or 2 blueberry crisps. If you only plan to make one, freeze the remainder for later use on your morning yogurt or evening ice cream. Serves 8.

Simple, elegant, tasty; the host's (or hostess') trifecta. (photo by Renée Anjanette, courtesy Gwen Rogers)

Simple, elegant, tasty; the host’s (or hostess’) trifecta. (photo by Renée Anjanette, courtesy Gwen Rogers)

Her Watermelon, Feta, & Mint Kabobs (pictured above) can be assembled in just slightly more time than it took to type this sentence, and yet they are a welcome and refreshing change from more traditional hors d’oeuvres, especially in the summer.

What Rogers brings to the table — quite literally — is a sense of casual elegance that’s all about making life easy on the chef/host/hostess and making life comfortable and welcoming for the guest. Her recipes will remind you that you don’t have to be a CIA grad to put together a menu that will leave your guests feeling happy and impressed, and you don’t need to deploy a squadron of minions to put together a table that looks thought through and stylish.

Ho do you like them yapples (apples stuffed with sweet potato)? (photo by Renée Anjanette, courtesy Gwen Rogers)

How do you like them yapples (Granny Smith apples stuffed with sweet potato)? (photo by Renée Anjanette, courtesy Gwen Rogers)

And when it comes to the book itself, the photography is a visual feast comparable to the actual foodstuffs being described. The printing is voluptuous, replete with pictures of the author and her family that would give Giada De Laurentiis and clan a run for their money. It’s beautiful, inspiring, and empowering, and worth every centime of its $35(USD) price tag.

Welcome to Honeysuckle Hill can be purchased at Gratus, should you find yourself in Beverly Hills, or through the author’s website, http://honeysucklehillbook.com.