Ten days of soup, part 1

Aaron can’t chew for at least ten days, a byproduct of orthodontic work, and is limited to smoothies and pureed soup for the while.  I love soup so this is no problem for me, and have taken on the challenge to make the ten days of eating the same thing as interesting as possible, varied and tasty. 

Because the soups need to be pureed, all rely on a homemade stock and cooked vegetables, blended with the immersion blender. 

Day 1:  Butternut squash, flavored with the chipotle-adobo sauce I’m so enchanted with, and finished with a dash of half-and-half to smooth the chile flavor. 

Day 2:  Celeriac.  I hadn’t cooked with celeriac before, but had it on the list to try since last year’s trip to Paris, where it is served as a side salad in many cafes.  I used it as the main flavoring in this soup, and it has a lovely, delicate celery flavor.  The soup was finished with a touch of dijon mustard, a play on the typical french style of dressing served with the raw vegetable.  Celeriac is my new favorite soup base, not only because of the flavor, but because it has a silky texture when pureed and a fraction of the calories and carbs of potatoes.  It’s a perfect replacement for potato in soup.

Day 3: Mushroom, made with portobello and crimini in a long-simmered stock and pureed into smithereens.  I added chanterelle toward the end and did second, lighter puree.  Finished with just a touch of dry sherry and cream.

Day 4: Tomato-pepper, with roasted red and yellow onions, garlic and red peppers with olive oil and a teaspoon of half-sharp paprika.  The paprika toasted while the vegetables roasted.  If summer tomatoes were available I would have roasted them as well, but used a can of San Marzano pomodoro, which are a lot more flavorful than winter tomatoes.

Indian-American Fusion Thanksgiving

Holiday meals are a group affair in our home. Cooking is the main event, with friends and family hands on in the kitchen, hanging out nearby to visit, or taking kids outside to play while others work.  This year was particularly fun because my friend Shashi guided the day’s menu. Shashi and I met in 1994, and while we’ve eaten each other’s cooking over the years, in fifteen years of friendship this was the first time we cooked together.  It was a real pleasure to cook with her, and certainly a pleasure to eat her food. We put together an Indian-American Thanksgiving fusion meal, which consisted of (for the most part) traditional American ingredients done with Indian flair.

Shashi arrived with four bags of groceries, and along with Aaron, Travis, and three of his friends, we settled into an afternoon of cooking.  Nearly every dish started with the same four ingredients, a mix of diced onion, garlic, ginger and green chiles. However, spices varied the flavors so each dish was unique and savory.  Shashi guided us through several dishes and accompanying chutney, including eggplant stuffed with peanuts and coconut, green beans, cauliflower and tofu balls, and a fabulous pumpkin and turnip soup with North African spices. All of her cooking is done by feel, with tasting along the way to balance the heat and spices.

One interesting note is that each dish balanced heat, sweet, savory and salt for a complex flavor.  For example, we made chapati with a base of zucchini, mint, cilantro, garlic and chile, pureed in the food processor, then kneaded with whole wheat flour, rolled into flat bread and grilled.  The chapati were flavorful with a background sweetness and heat from the mint and chile, and a calm counterpoint to some of the more robust flavors.

Butternut squash and pepper stew

After a gorgeous, sunny fall in the bay area, cold weather hit for a few days this week.  I bundled in sweaters and brought out the soup pot.  Actually, even though it was sunny and warm last week I made a southwestern stew, so the soup pot hadn't been hibernating.   There's just something satisfying about making a big pot of soup when it's cold outside.  Last week I was browsing the Everyday Greens cookbook last week and was inspired by two stew recipes with similar vegetables (roasted butternut squash and red peppers), but with very different flavor profiles. One was heavily spiced with chiles, while the other relied on the natural flavors of the vegetables.  After making the spiced stew last week, this week I used the same vegetables but with a different flavor profile.

For the non-spiced stew I used a sweet vegetable mix of onion, fennel, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, and roasted butternut squash, with some of the stock we make in batches and keep in the freezer.  This was rounded out with chard roasted plum tomatoes and cannelli beans.  About the plum tomatoes...the tomatoes were dense and thick skinned, better for cooking than for eating raw.  I roasted halves face down with a little olive oil and salt on the exposed skins.  The skin and innards of the tomatoes separated, and while the meat went into the stew pot, the skins made tasty snacking right off the roasting pan.  It was sort of like eating potato skins with some tooth and salt, but with more flavor and less guilt.

The usual chopping, roasting and simmering ensued, and as the stew simmered the beans broke up to make a slightly thickened sauce.  White wine, garlic and salt were the only spices, and the flavors of the vegetables merged beautifully.  Next time I'll add some mushrooms as well; they would add a nice earthiness.  The stew was great as it was, but also on the sweet side because of the peppers, fennel and squash.  However, Aaron made pesto last month using the last of the sweet and lemon basil from the garden.  He froze it in small portions so we have doses of lemon-basil pesto for the winter.  We plopped a dollop on each bowl of stew, and the aroma and taste balanced the dish perfectly. 

The stew was rounded out with a glass of petite syrah and a fire...perfect for the first real night of fall.