rhubarb daal

This is a wonderful way to enjoy rhubarb as a vegetable, and a tart and refreshing meal for a spring evening.

Start with some oil in a heavy pot, and heat up ½ tsp. (whole) cumin, ½ tsp. (whole) coriander, and 2 tsp. each brown and yellow mustard seeds until they start popping. Then add a very thinly sliced onion, a small fragment of cinnamon bark, and chili peppers (to your taste, I added three whole chiles de árbol). Stir until the onions are translucent. Then add a bunch (about a pound) of rhubarb chopped into ½-inch slices. Stir, and season with a bit of salt. Add two cloves of crushed garlic, ½ tsp ground turmeric (dried, or thrice that if fresh), and a knob of freshly ground ginger.

Then add 1½ cups of red lentils. Cover with stock (chicken, or vegetable — or plain water and another but of salt) and stir. Cook for 30-40 minutes, until the lentils are done and the rhubarb has dissappeared into the daal. Serve with saffron rice (or your choice of other starch), a dollop of yogurt, and some fresh cilantro.

butternut squash soup

 This is one of the best butternut soups that I have ever made — one each butternut squash, red onion, yellow onion, in chunks. Toss with chicken fat (this worked really well, but unless you have rendered chicken fat lately, use olive oil or another fat) in a dutch oven with salt, whole cloves of garlic, two bay leaves and four or five good-sized dried cayenne peppers, and roast until everything is taking on color. Add six cups of good chicken stock (this was a rich 8-hour stock) and put back in the oven until the vegatables are soft and ready to be puréed (an hour or two). I have found that the best way to purée is to pass the soup once through the medium or coarse plate of a food mill and to then mill the soup again on a finer setting (this creates a smoother consistency than a blender, and doesn't separate when chilled). The roasting-and-braising creates a beautiful, rich color with a wonderful texture. Garnish with cilantro or whatever strikes your fancy:

gazpacho for the heat wave

Another heat wave is on its way to Chicago, so I'm stocking up on Gazpacho. My last recipe came out of things I had from the market, and this is only slightly modified: 4 large tomatoes, an orange and a red bell pepper, a cucumber, a head of garlic, a red onion, a splash of vinegar, a half bunch of cilantro, salt, freshly ground cumin and pimentón de la Vera dulce, a smoked Spanish paprika. Lastly I added a dose of very good olive oil (maybe a third or quarter cup?), which really rounds it out and makes a difference since it isn't cooked. (This had to be done in two batches in a standard 14c food processor). Makes about two liters.

soup

Chicken broth with shoyu, tofu, buckwheat soba, thai chili peppers, leeks and scallions. Perfect to fight off the flu everyone has.

miso soup

Simple miso soup with chicken stock in lieu of dashi makes for a very satisfying dinner on a cold day.

simplicity.

Finally secured some miso and bonito flakes. Then, of course, dashi with kelp and bonito. I poached some julienned carrots in the dashi, removed them to a bowl and poached two eggs in the dashi. I removed the eggs, placed them atop the carrots and topped them with some greens whose name I forgot (some mild cruciferous green from the Korean market). I brought the dashi to a quick boil, added garlic-chili paste and turned off the heat; into that miso was whisked and then poured over the eggs and vegetables. Finish with sesame oil. So satisfying on a snowy day. Ate with cold rice wrapped in nori.

roasted kabocha soup

I had half of a roasted kabocha squash in the fridge, some goats milk that needed to get used up and a handful of scotch bonnets. It's also autumal in the cold, blustery and quiet sort of way. This is extremely comforting. The scotch bonnets give this a smooth heat that balances with the kabocha but leaves lingering heat on the lips. The goat milk is subtle but grassy and smooths it all out.

Temper a cardamon pod, a cinnamon stick and a tablespoon each of coriander and mustard seeds (heat on high in grapeseed oil until the mustard is popping and everything is fragrant). Add a diced red onion, and grated garlic and ginger. Then add a chopped whole (or seeded, if you like) scotch bonnet and a teaspoon each of turmeric and salt. Let sweat on high. Add a cup or two of goats milk (or cow or almond milk, I'd imagine), half a roasted kabocha and water to make it smooth, if necessary. Reduce to a simmer. Pass though a sieve or food mill.

Red shiso makes a fantastic garnish and goes splendidly with kabocha.

kimchi jjigae

Kimchi jjigae is the ultimate comfort food. It's richly flavorful, easy to make, can be made with all sorts of ingredients (initially, when looking into making it, I was amazed at the variety of recipes) as long as you have kimchi. For this jjigae — which tasted better on the second day and even better on the third — I sauteed 3 anchovies in some oil (from the jar, since I was finishing them off), added a good amount of kimchi (my very successful gobō-carrot-cabbage-dried shrip attempt), sautéed that and then added water, some kombu (kombu stock could have replaced water/kombu), cubes of tofu and some wonderful fresh shiitake that I picked up at my CSA. (Had I had pork belly on hand, I'd have added it before the kimchi.) I let that stew very slowly while I made rice. Towards the end I added coarsely chopped snap peas.

The snap peas stayed bright, green and crunchy. The anchovies disappeared — as they should — for that je ne sais quoi that anchovies add to everything (same effect that dried baby shrimp has on kimchi). Fresh (local!) shiitake are a real treat and they and the cubes of tofu take on the kimchi's tang (and this is best made with old kimchi). Very very satisfying, and the acidity of the kimchi us refreshing despite the heat from the chili flakes.

Garnish with dulse for the ultimate effect.

breakfast

I made one of the most satisfying (and surprisingly simple) breakfasts in a long time today.


I made a simple miso soup (dashi, tamari, miso, julienned carrots) and ate that with Japanese white rice, nattō, and a steamed egg (and tea, of course, being that smallest bowl).

So I was steaming the rice... which, this being the first time I've tried that, I must say is ridicuously good. I took Sho-Chiku-Bai sweet rice, soaked it for 20 minutes, placed it in a bowl in a steamer with an equal volume of water and steamed it for 20 minutes. It came out perfect. And then my nattō needed something. So I greased a small bowl with sesame oil and steamed the egg, beaten, for maybe 6-8 minutes. It was stirred three or four times during that period. And it was moist, creamy and the ultimate topping for rice mixed with nattō (or at least on par with a raw quail egg).

soup and cheese

I have proved, once again (to myself at least), that grilled cheese and tomato soup are the ultimate food pairing. And maybe not just an ultimate comfort food, but an ultimate food. Period.

Soup:

• one onion, sliced
• eight smallish carrots, likewise
  
• a few stalks celery, chopped
  
• two leeks, sliced thin
• four or five large orange tomatoes (I used the ones with red near the top, shaped like beefsteaks), chopped into big chunks
• four cloves garlic
  

Sauté the first four ingredients in olive oil and a nob of butter. Season with salt. Cook until onion starts to get some color (twenty minutes on medium-low?). Add the tomatoes and garlic. Add enough water to cover the tomatoes. Cook for half an hour or so until very soft. Pass through a food mill. Add some olive oil into the pan and cook 2tbs flour for a few minutes. Add puréed soup back to the pot and reheat. Add pepper.

Make that grilled cheese while it reheats. This is great with emmenthaler on sourdough. Nasturtiums add a nice green and peppery touch. With these tomatoes there's no need for the baking soda trick: these are a little lower in acidity as it is. So you just get pure tomato goodness. And cheese and bread, fried, make it heaven.

spring soup

"Spring Soup" : Adapted from Jane Grigson's Fruit Book.


Grigson's recipe is essentially a rhubarb soup, which she suggests needs sugar and in which cayenne is "important." I added asparagus and omitted the two aforementioned additions. It has a nice bite, like a sorrel soup. The bite from the rhubarb goes wonderfully with the asparagus, which was a bit of a gamble.

knob of butter
a tablepoon or two olive oil
2 medium onions, sliced
1 ½ carrots, sliced
salt
½ bunch rhubarb, sliced
½ bunch asparagus, sliced
3 small cloves garlic
1 quart vegetable stock

Sauté the carrots and onions in the butter/oil. Season. Add rhubarb, asparagus and garlic (whole). Lower heat, cook for 5 mins., then cover. Cook until soft, then add stock. Cook 20-30 minutes. Pass through a food mill or purée and strain.


This was tart and thick (does rhubarb have pectin in it?). A surprisingly great combination. The garnish is a raw asparagus tip and some fresh lovage.

soup from the soup queen

Wild mushroom & walnut soup

Tunch showed off this wonderful soup in The Salted Cod. (Pictured is my attempt). It's wonderfully earthy and rich and extremely satisfying. I started it a bit late and the only store open (Big Y) didn't have leeks (neither did I, having just made leek soup) and I had forgotten porcini, but I made do. And half the liquid that I used was turkey stock (last of Thanksgiving's). I also, as suggested, upped the walnuts (who doesn't like walnuts anyway?). I also didn't use a blender (as I don't have one and food processors don't like soup) -- it was passed twice through my food mill.