Category Archives: soup

Apple & carrot mulligatawny soup

Posted on by
2

mulligatawny

If you’re like me, and you’re a highly esteemed scholar of food history as it relates to Europeans aggressively roaming the earth and changing their cooking styles and the food-preparing habits of the people they met as they traveled… Okay, obviously I’m not an esteemed scholar of anything. But I am a bit of a buff, when it comes to the role of food in the history of colonialism. As I’ve mentioned before, in relation to savory pastries. Anyway! If this kind of thing interests you at all, than you’ll have some thoughts about Mulligatawny. I think the name means “pepper water,” and as I understand it, the soup came about because somebody was trying to make Indian flavors palatable to Englishmen. But it became hugely popular! And the whole notion of the soup is completely open to interpretation. You could put anything in there and call it mulligatawny! I made this soup thinking about a mulligatawny I ate at an Indian restaurant somewhere just outside of London, when I was about 7 years old. I remember apples. I remember pleasant spices. I remember a tawny color. And that’s about it! But something must have worked on some strange level, because my Isaac, who is 6, and who generally won’t eat much of anything unless it’s pale and has lots of butter on it…asked for 3 helpings of this soup!!

Here’s Dead Milkman Punk Rock Girl, which really has nothing to do with mulligatawny, but it’s so stuck in my head! And it’s a good song for valentine’s day tommorrow!
Continue reading →

Roasted butternut & tomato bisque

Posted on by
1

roasted butternut bisque

Remember Bob Ross and his happy accidents? This soup was the result of a happy accident, in some ways. NO I DIDN’T PUT TOO MUCH BURNT SIENNA ON MY FAN BRUSH!! I just made the roasted red pepper-almond sauce too hot and spicy. That’s right, the one we made with our empanadas. So last night, with fiendish cleverness and calculation, I decided to use the sauce as a base for a soup! Thus spreading the spicy joy around, and rendering it more palatable. I decided to add roasted butternut squash because it’s so mild and sweet that it could easily accommodate a bit of heat. And then I thought about all the roastiness going on, with the pepper, and the chipotle, and the squash, and I thought fire-roasted tomatoes would go well (from a can, unfortunately – it being February). So I made this lovely, velvety, sweet, smoky, spicy bisque.

Here’s Lee Perry with Roast Fish and Cornbread, because, let’s face it, I’m never going to have recipe for roast fish, and this song is wonderful!
Continue reading →

Coconut-lime-vegetable soup

Posted on by
2

cocnut lime soup

The elegance of this light, bright soup belies its humble origins. In point of fact, this soup is the result of a very nearly empty vegetable drawer and a half-used can of coconut milk! I tend to save the white, hearty, wintery vegetables till the end of the week, and use the more brightly-colored, more easily-spoiled veg earlier. But I had carrots and peas, man! I could have added those! I made a choice to use only white vegetables! A conscious choice! I think they look nice with the silky tart-sweet coconut lime broth. As it happens, you could really use any vegetables you like in this soup – it’s eminently adaptable. Carrots and peas would have been pretty, actually. So would broccoli, or spinach, or sweet potatoes… You could also add basmati rice, if you wanted a heartier dish, or you could serve it over long, thin pasta, or you could add nuts – cashews or pistachios would be good, here. Or you could add red lentils. Or lots of cilantro. Go crazy, baby! I liked it in this simple manifestation, though – just what I was in the mood for. Sometimes vegetables and broth are all that are needed.

Here’s Louis Armstrong singing about being stranded on a Coconut Island. Now doesn’t that sound nice?
Continue reading →

Roasted tomato & white bean soup with wild rice and tarragon

Posted on by
Reply

Tarragon soup

My husband said that this soup tastes like a wintery memory of summer. I concocted a soup that tastes like a memory! I can’t tell you how happy I felt, hearing that. There is something about tarragon (and there’s an unapologetic 2 tablespoonfuls of fresh tarragon in this soup!) that tastes like a sensation from a memory or a dream. It’s hard to describe or place, but in some part of your mind it makes perfect sense to you.

I have to tell you, I made this soup in such a roundabout fashion I’m not sure I can make the recipe make sense for anybody else! I don’t have a lot of experience cooking beans from scratch. When canned beans are so good and so cheap, and so easy…well, I tend to rely on them! I also don’t have a lot of experience with slow cooker crock pots. I got one for Christmas (thanks, Ellie!) and I’m still trying to figure out how it works. So here’s what happened…I combined all the ingredients for this soup in a big sauce pan, I brought them to a boil, and then I poured it into a slow-cooker, on high. I left it there for a couple of hours, as I gadded about the neighborhood.

When I returned, I checked the soup, and the beans were still rock hard. So, being an extremely impatient person, I poured the soup back into a big pot, brought it to a boil again, cooked it for another hour, and it was perfect. The truth is, if I made this soup again, I think I’d use canned small white beans, or maybe pre-cook the beans and save the broth to make the soup. The wild rice will still take about 45 minutes to cook, so all the flavors will still simmer nicely together. That’s the recipe I’m going to write down. Someday I’ll try it and let you know how it goes.

Here’s Jimi Hendrix’s sweet Remember. One of my favorite songs ever!
Continue reading →

Patatas bravas and cauliflower soup

Posted on by
1

You know that Spanish tapas dish, patatas bravas? The one with potatoes in a spicy, smokey tomato sauce? This is my soup version of that. Plus cauliflower, for texture, flavor, and because potatoes and cauliflower are such good friends. It’s an easy soup to make, and the broth – warm, rich and spicy, is perfect for the freezingly dreary weather we’ve been experiencing here lately. I wanted it to be very brothy, but if you wanted a thicker soup, I think it would be nice to add a picada at the end…a mixture of toasted almonds, bread fried in olive oil, and garlic, all roughly ground together. I might try that some time! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Here’s Mississippi John Hurt’s beautiful Spanish Fandango, and Elizabeth Cotten’s equally heartbreakingly beautiful Spanish Flang Dang.
Continue reading →

Spinach, white bean, pecan bisque

Posted on by
Reply

Spinach White bean pecan bisque

This soup is like green velvet. Greener than velvet is this soup. Ahem. This soup is made with a base of pecan tarator sauce. That’s what makes it smoooooth, and that’s what gives it a wonderful depth of flavor. I used butter to make this, but if you used olive oil instead it would be vegan, and yet so mysteriously creamy! I made croutons from the same whole grain bread that’s in the tarator sauce. I cut it into rough cubes, fried them for a few minutes in olive oil, and dusted them with basil and black pepper.

Here’s Bobby Vinton’s Blue Velvet because it’s stuck in my head now!
Continue reading →

Root vegetable minestrone

Posted on by
2

Root vegetable minestrone

I was in the mood for something really simple. Just vegetables in a warm broth, slightly sweet/slightly tart. I liked the idea of using root vegetables, because they seem perfect for the time of year, and for the simplicity I was seeking. They also have a nice contrast of sweet (carrot, sweet potato) and slightly more assertive (turnip). I seasoned this very simply – just rosemary, basil, oregano and a little fennel seed. I made pasta to add if you wanted, which, I suppose, is what makes this minestrone and not just vegetable soup. I used elbows, because there’s something sort of childish and soup-out-of-a-cannish about them, which I like. And I added a few spoonfuls of sugar when it was cooking, and squeezed a lemon in at the end, but you could easily leave out the sugar and let the vegetables shine with their own sweetness. SInce this is supposed to be simple, I’m going to stop talking about it and tell you how I made it!

Here’s Mikey Dread’s Roots and Culture.
Continue reading →

Kale, sweet potato & chickpea stew with cumin, paprika & lime

Posted on by
17

Kale :& chickpea stew

Kale is not one of those shy and retiring greens that wilts away to nothing at the first sign of attention. I admire that quality. The presence of kale in this dish is probably what makes it a stew rather than a soup. The kale retains its curly, assertive texture to make this thick and hearty. The sweet potato and golden raisins add a touch of sweetness, and the chickpeas – well, you can’t go wrong with chickpeas, can you? The broth of this stew is a lovely mixture of flavors…it’s the broth that transforms humble, potentially stodgy ingredients into something exciting to eat. Smoky paprika, earthy cumin, spicy red pepper, and bright, tart lime. We ate these with pumpkin popovers.

Here’s DJ Food with Stealin Stew

Continue reading →

Fennel, white beans, walnuts …

Posted on by
Reply

… tomatoes, olives, capers, white wine, rosemary…
We’ve decided to have a lot of saucy soups and stews this week. Not sure why, it just seems like a good second-week-of-January menu. This particular saucy stewy dish is the kind of meal that is quick and healthy, but that you would make even if it wasn’t, because it tastes so good. Everybody in my family ate it in a slightly different fashion. I had it as a kind of warm salad, over red leaf lettuce and arugula, topped with gorgonzola, which got a little wilty and was really nice with the walnuts and fennel. My littlest son had it with pasta. Which is to say he ate a bowl of pasta and butter. My older son had the white bean … ragu, shall we call it? over gemelli pasta, and my husband had a mixture of pasta and arugula with his ragu. My favorite part of this meal was the walnuts. A nice unexpected crunch, a lovely toasty flavor. This would also be good with rice, or just a nice loaf of crusty bread.

Here’s King Curtis’ wonderful Memphis Soul Stew. I love this kind of song, I really do.
Continue reading →

Roasted cauliflower and potato soup

Posted on by
1

Potatoes roasted with rosemary and garlic – such a perfect combination. So completely comforting. This soup combines these flavors, as well as the equally perfect combination of cauliflower roasted with brown butter and caraway seeds. It’s not an elegant soup, but it is a delicious and substantial soup. We ate it on the coldest day of the winter, so far, with warm goat cheese rolls fresh out of the oven. Exactly right! I had actually roasted the cauliflower the night before, and cooked the potatoes in a clay pot at the same time. But I’m going to give you this recipe as though you were starting from scratch. It will work equally well either way.

Here’s Papas by Mr Loco. That means potatoes, doesn’t it?
Continue reading →