November 27, 2009
Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 25, 2009 at 5:00 PM
The Thanksgiving Eve dinner.
[Photograph: Nick Kindelsperger]
Ah, the calm before the storm. Like just about everyone else, I'll be driving somewhere for the big feast, get stuck in traffic, and finally arrive a little worse for the wear, ready to stuff my face silly. It'll be worth all the trouble in the world, but there is no denying it's hard work. So tonight I felt like something that was decidedly not difficult, time-consuming, or heavy. I wanted a fast dish that required few ingredients.
This recipe from Mark Bittman fits the bill perfectly. It's kind of inspiring what a whole bunch of garlic [Ed. note: Which, according to Anthony Bourdain, should not be used on the turkey] and a few slices of bread will do when mixed with chicken stock.
The broth comes out deceptively rich and the bread gives it body. The shrimp fight valiantly against the broth, adding a slight touch of sweetness to each sip. It's warming but not excessive; humble without being boring. Not a bad way to start a crazy holiday weekend.
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Posted by Caroline Russock, November 25, 2009 at 12:45 PM
Thanksgiving is particularly hard on the fridge. Leading up to the big day, the fridge is filled to capacity. I know mine is stuffed so precariously right now, I have to think twice before opening the door. The fridge gets a quick rest while we eat, but then the scramble to find a home for all the leftovers begins.
The turkey carcass always poses a bit of a logistical challenge. While the uneaten sides fit nicely into easy stacking containers, the turkey remains are less graceful. Thankfully, Alton Brown has come up with a solution for utilizing the last bits of the turkey in Good Eats: The Early Years.
This recipe for Bird to the Last Drop is a hearty turkey and rice soup that can easily be thrown together a couple days after Thanksgiving, but my plan is to get it on the stovetop during the lull between dinner and dessert—that way, I can free up valuable fridge space.
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Posted by Tara Mataraza Desmond, November 24, 2009 at 10:45 AM
Even though I've had this Pumpkin Pancetta Soup on my Thanksgiving menu for weeks, and I'm only just getting to it now in the midst of the Great Pumpkin Shortage panic of 2009, I remain undaunted thanks to my tablescape. Oh, that's right, folks, I said tablescape.
Sometime back in October, on one of those gleaming fall Sundays when I was wandering aimlessly through a farmers market, getting suckered into buying every seasonal ingredient just because of the way the sun was bouncing off an autumn leaf or something, I picked up a few sugar pie pumpkins. The quaint little ones with the precious name that turn you into a domestic goddess or god just by setting them on the table as holiday décor.
They've been there ever since, looking adorable, until this morning when I drove my chef's knife right through the core to split them apart and send them to the roaster.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 23, 2009 at 4:00 PM
I was initially attracted to this recipe from Viet World Kitchen because it reminded me an awful lot of the Singaporean dish, Hainanese Chicken Rice. I'm kind of obsessed with that dish but rarely find the time to make it.
This soup wasn't as intense, and there was no spice to speak of, but it still managed to capture the warm embrace of ginger balanced by the acidic dipping sauce. Plus this one is a hell of a lot easier and less time-consuming than Hainanese Chicken Rice.
At first, I found the soup to be a tad underwhelming and bland. There is a definite ginger ring to each sip, but it lacks bite and presence. Fortunately, this can be changed by just chopping up the chicken and adding it to the bowl along with a healthy spoonful of the sauce. This act is totally inauthentic and probably a horrible social faux pas, but it really created something unique and delicious.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, November 17, 2009 at 9:30 AM
"It always feels so rewarding to add another type of neck to one's repertoire of necks."
[Photographs: Chichi Wang, unless otherwise noted]
I like to cook stews. I have a penchant for storied, time-consuming stews with a higher-than-average rate of failure. I realized this late into the evening, as I stood guard over my gumbo. The night was quiet and cold; the kitchen smelled of toasted flour and chili powder. Quite often, fat and solitude beget moments of clarity. When the turkey necks were fork-tender and the chunks of andouille sausage so plump and juicy, I wondered how I'd lived the first 25 years of my life without making Turkey Neck Gumbo for Thanksgiving.
Gumbo is a hallowed stew, a murky, dirty, deep concoction from Cajun Country down in Louisiana. Is dirty an appropriate word to describe a dish? To me, dirty connotes profound flavor, the concentration of hours of browning, deglazing, and stewing. The process for cooking such a dish is dirty—the scraping of the pot, getting each bit of caramelized meat to incorporate into the larger whole, skimming the fat that rises to the surface—this is the sort of labor in the kitchen that brings with it the satisfaction of sweat and grease.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 13, 2009 at 4:15 PM
"It's similar to tortilla soup, but with a richer, deeper broth."
[Photograph: Nick Kindelsperger]
I had no idea what sopa tarasca was before yesterday. Honestly, I'm still not sure if I completely comprehend the exact definition, but I can confirm that it's one of the best meals I've had in weeks.
I found out about the soup from this article in the New York Times, which traces the soup back to the town of Pátzcuaro in the Mexican state of Michoacán, where it was apparently invented in the 1960s. According to the author of the article, Dave Roos, sopa tarasca is a "tomato-based soup flavored with dried chili pasilla and Worcestershire sauce, thickened with corn masa and cream, and adorned with fried tortilla strips and Oaxacan cheese."
For the life of me I couldn't find a recipe that followed those guidelines, though I did find this version from Diana Kennedy by way of the Texas Monthly magazine. It doesn't follow the article's description precisely, but you can't argue with results like this.
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Posted by Caroline Russock, November 13, 2009 at 12:45 PM
[Photograph: Caroline Russock]
After a week of recreating recipes from How to Roast a Lamb by Michael Psilakis, it occurred to me that I haven't had such consistently healthy meals in a long time. During normal weeks I'll go through at least a pound of butter, a dozen eggs, and more heavy cream than I care to admit.
My shopping list this week—tons of vegetables, a little bit of meat and fish, barely any dairy aside from some crumbled feta and a few spoonfuls of yogurt—was almost puritanical compared to my usual haul. Thinking back over a week's worth of healthy Greek-inspired meals, I didn't miss a thing.
This recipe for Grilled Sardines with Chopped Salad and Skordalia Soup is a prime example of how a seemingly humble combination of fish and vegetables can be turned into a thing of beauty with Psilakis' Aegean expertise.
If you have never grilled sardines, seriously, you have to try them.
If you have never grilled sardines, seriously, you have to try them. They have nothing to do with the oily, sometimes stinky variety that has turned so many people off of the lovely little fish. This particular preparation couldn't be easier since your fishmonger does most of the work for you. All that's left is for you to debone them (it takes about 30 seconds per fish), season, and grill them. The Skordalia is a Greek garlicky puree of potatoes and vinegar, which serves as the glue that brings this plate together.
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Posted by Lee Zalben, November 11, 2009 at 8:55 AM
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large yellow onions, coarsely chopped
2 quarts chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 cup natural, unsweetened peanut butter (I used Peanut Butter & Co. Old Fashioned Smooth)
2 cups Libby Easy Pumpkin Pie Mix
Procedure
1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over a medium flame. Add the chopped onion and sauté until translucent.
2. Add the stock and bring to a simmer.
3. Add the peanut butter and stir until it is incorporated into the stock. Add the pumpkin and stir until smooth.
4. Let simmer for another five minutes and remove from heat.
5. Serve warm with a garnish of pumpkin seeds and chopped peanuts.
Posted by Blake Royer, November 10, 2009 at 5:00 PM
[Photograph: Blake Royer]
If cream of broccoli soup has a bad reputation for you—as it does for me, conjuring up a picture of thick sludge—then this might be the soup for you. I pulled it from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, entranced by the use of onions sauteed in butter, a splash of white wine, and sour cream. I imagined a rich yet balanced broth, neither gluey or floury, made to complement, not hide, the broccoli.
The wine and sour cream are indeed essentials here, the wine bringing a gentle acidity and the sour cream a key tartness. Heavy cream is often used in soups like this, which is undoubtedly luxurious, but I preferred the roundness and balance of the sour cream. I also took Bittman's suggestion in the recipe description to have the soup next to a grilled cheese sandwich, a natural pairing.
Apparently, I'm in the mood for creamy soups—last week's corn soup with roasted poblano, now this. It must be the time of year.
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Posted by Caroline Russock, November 10, 2009 at 1:15 PM
Middle Eastern flavors have been bouncing around the Mediterranean for centuries and worked their way into Greek cuisine long ago. Cinnamon found its way into Greek cooking through the Turks, who brought it with them during their occupancy. Greece declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821, but the country held onto its fondness for cinnamon.
Cinnamon shows up in some pretty unlikely places in Greek cooking, and this recipe for Sweet and Sour Eggplant and Onion Stew from Michael Psilakis's How to Roast a Lamb is a prime example.
Eggplant and cinnamon might seem like an improbable pair, but, as it turns out, the Greeks (and the Turks, for that matter) were really onto something.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, November 10, 2009 at 9:00 AM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
Pig's stomach and beef tripe are fairly common finds in ethnic markets, but it's not everyday that I come across lamb tripe. Sitting next to an assortment of livers, the packages of lamb tripe were neatly stacked and as usual, dirt-cheap. Without knowing exactly what I'd make of it, I claimed a pack of the tripe and rushed home in anticipation. Unfurled on my cutting board, the organ was a sight to behold.
Though we often refer to ruminants as possessing four stomachs, each stomach is actually a section of the larger whole. Beef tripe is sold as such: honeycomb and omasum, for instance, are packaged separately. Since lamb is much smaller in size, all the discrete sections of its stomach—the tender, succulent honeycomb tripe, the spongy, furry rumen, and the flatter omasum—appear in one continuous swath.
To celebrate an innard I'd never eaten before, I embarked on a recipe I've never tried. For months now, I've been obsessed with the idea of sealing my pots with dough, an age-old method for low and slow cooking. Molded just to fit the shape of the cooking vessel, a rope of dough provides a formidable seal to preserve the moisture of a stew.
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Posted by Blake Royer, November 5, 2009 at 4:30 PM
[Photograph: Blake Royer]
Comforting as ever, corn chowder is a food for the fall as the weather gets cooler. And though it's easy enough to make a delicious corn chowder with lots of heavy cream and flour, I was more interested to see how this recipe—more of a soup than a chowder—from Rick Bayless would turn out. Instead of cream and flour, it's thickened with corn starch and the starch from the puréed corn kernels. It works—while the recipe is made with just milk, it has the silky mouthfeel of something with a lot more fat in it.
The Mexican twist here is also interesting, which is the addition of roasted poblano chiles. They pair well with the relatively bland taste of creamy corn, adding some needed kick and smokiness. To make this a full meal, Bayless calls for cubes of chicken breast or shrimp; I used some leftover shredded chicken and it worked wonderfully. And though Bayless doesn't mention it at all, I couldn't help but eat it next to buttered, freshly baked cornbread.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, October 30, 2009 at 2:00 PM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
The memorable meals in our lives take place in the presence of friends and family. Dishes we cook for those we love leave indelible impressions in our minds, like culinary timestamps. Even so, I eat some of my best meals when I'm alone in the kitchen, cooking something I've honed obsessively.
Nights spent in solitude demand a different approach. Cooking can take as little as half an hour or longer than two, but the pace is never hurried. Only one vessel is used so there's less to clean afterward. Ingredients are high in quality, but extravagant purchases seem beside the point. Every cook has such a dish: a meal that can be composed of disparate items, all gathered together to satisfy a singular palate. For me this dish is Korean soondubu jjigae, a tiny cauldron of bubbling, spicy, silken tofu.
Roughly translating to "soft tofu stew," a pot of soondubu is possibly the silkiest tofu dish you will ever cook. A classic Korean tofu dish with countless variations, no two pots of soondubu are ever the same. Usually, the softest type of tofu we can buy at the supermarket is labeled "silken." The delicate tofu used for this dish far eclipses the standard level of silkiness. Quivering like a nearly-cooked custard, soon-tofu is gently lowered into a pot of fiery red broth spiked with hot chili and garlic paste. Simmered with meat, seafood, and vegetables, each pot of tofu is brought a vigorous boil and speedily moved to the table for consumption.
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Posted by Kerry Saretsky, October 29, 2009 at 4:45 PM
[Photographs: Kerry Saretsky]
Last week I wrote about my trip to Provence this past summer, and my stay in a little seaside town called Cassis. I thought, from the name of the town, that I'd be sipping Kir Royales made with Burgundy's specialty crème de cassis (made from the homonymously named blackcurrant), but I ended up spending my entire trip in pursuit of the perfect bouillabaisse.
Bouillabaisse is a saffron seafood stew with a past. As the fishermen in Marseille harbor went out to collect the great fish they would sell to the upscale restaurants, they would also collect little local rockfish for themselves, like rascasse or scorpionfish. These they would throw jumbled into a stock nearly identical to the equally iconic soupe de poisson, along with some potatoes. And that would be dinner.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, October 28, 2009 at 4:15 PM
"For a quick meal on a gray and gloomy day, it's hard to beat this."
[Photograph: Nick Kindelsperger]
Truly authentic hot and sour soup, if such a thing exists, probably contains some ingredients that aren't super easy to track down in most local grocery stores. I mean, when was the last time you saw day lily buds, chinkiang vinegar, or wood ear fungus just hanging out on the shelves? No, for this batch I took the easy route.
This recipe from The Kitchn is good enough to make you forget about "the rules." It's a relaxing and warming soup, the kind that makes you relish the upcoming winter transition.
Hot and Sour soup is all about balance. The heat comes not from chiles, but from white or black pepper. The sour comes from a judicious pour of vinegar. The recipe calls for about three tablespoons but I added more to give the soup more zing. You can even crack some more pepper on top—it's really up to you to craft your perfect bite.
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Posted by MichaelNatkin, October 21, 2009 at 2:45 PM
Serious Eater Michael Natkin of the vegetarian blog Herbivoracious drops by every Wednesday to share a delicious recipe to expand our vegetarian repertoire.
[Photograph: Michael Natkin]
Most winter squash soup recipes are either too sweet and filled with pumpkin pie spices or too overpowered with curry spices for my taste. The squash itself can be so delicious, I prefer to enhance it primarily with brown butter, which accentuates the rich, caramelized earthy flavors.
Butter consists of fat water and milk solids. The flavor of brown butter comes from cooking those milk solids until they, you guessed it, brown. It turns out you can dramatically enhance that flavor by adding a tablespoon of non-fat milk solids to the butter as you cook it. I first learned about this from Ideas In Food (who in turn got it from Cory Barrett at Lola Bistro in Cleveland) and it is pure genius. I'll never do it any other way again.
With a soup this simple, the details really matter. Be sure to get the squash deeply caramelized in the oven to develop its flavor, then puree and sieve the soup thoroughly to achieve a suave texture. The same general procedure will work with other winter squash such as butternut, sugar pumpkin, or delicata.
The soup is garnished with a bit of maple-syrup sweetened yogurt, which balances the squash and gives you just that little extra autumnal flavor.
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Posted by Tam Ngo, October 21, 2009 at 11:15 AM
Phở đuôi bò. [Photographs: Tam Ngo]
Since we'll be stuck in dark drizzle for months to come, let's talk about phở, a perfect food for chasing away the doldrums of winter.
Phở bò is a Vietnamese beef noodle soup; phở đuôi bò is one made with oxtail. Regardless of meat choice or spice, the prototype is plush with the mouthfeel of gelatin, springy noodles, and bright herbs.
Phở originates from northern Viet Nam but the whole country sups the soup with patriotic zeal. Phở broth in the north tastes honestly of the meat and bones it's cooked with. The further south, the more likely you'll find it spiked with the warmth of anise, clove, cinnamon, and the like.
My-Man-of-Eternal-Patience and I have been tinkering with our recipe for several years now. Starting with Mai Pham's ingredients and Andrea Nguyen's tips, we threw in the accumulated wisdom of a few Vietnamese mums for good measure.
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Posted by Carolyn Cope, October 20, 2009 at 8:00 AM
Note: You may know Carolyn Cope as Umami Girl. She stops by on Tuesdays to help us cook through seasonal surplus with ease.
[Photograph: Carolyn Cope]
I'll be honest. I was a little hesitant to post a butternut squash soup recipe this week. You all are pretty sophisticated eaters, and there's a fair amount of puréed butternut sloshing around in the world every fall already. It's not like I'm going to convince anyone I invented butternut soup. It's no hairy gourd bread, I'll tell you that much.
It's creamy. It's vegan. As its mom would say, it has a lot going for it.
Don't get me wrong. This is a really tasty soup, and it's unimpeachably nutritious. It boasts subtle, balanced flavors that are a refreshing alternative to the usual pumpkin pie spice. (Okay, fair enough, I'm the one boasting, but as my sister used to confound herself by saying, it's "six of one half, dozen of the other," am I right?) It's creamy. It's vegan. As its mom would say, it has a lot going for it. I just wasn't sure it was exciting enough.
But then I had a few of those days last week where the sky feels like it's cracking into giant, ugly shards and throwing them like javelins at your shoulders. And boy was I glad to have a pot of this soup in the fridge. I'd tell you how many bowls of it I've eaten in the past seven days and how many people I've shared it with, but trust me, it wouldn't leave a very ladylike impression. Let's just say it's a good thing for my karma that I'm sharing the recipe. Here's hoping the sky is listening.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, October 16, 2009 at 2:45 PM
"Poured over a bed of noodles, it's just as soothing but far more exciting than your average chicken noodle soup."
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
Call it Myanmar; call it Burma. Nomenclature aside, relatively little is known about the cuisine of a country that's larger than both Thailand and Vietnam. Most of the stories we hear pertain to Myanmar's unstable political history—of British colonization, of despotic military rule under the guise of socialism. Political turmoil takes the front page, yet little is said about Burmese-style biryanis with mutton and pickled mango, cold rice dishes flavored with papaya and tamarind, and curries that incorporate garam masala as well as fish sauce and lemongrass.
The cooking tradition of Myanmar reflects its geographical location: poised between India to the west and Thailand to the east, China looms in the northwest region. Burmese cuisine reflects the influence of its neighbors, giving new meaning to the term "Asian fusion." Featured this week: Burmese Chicken-Coconut Soup, simmered with caramelized onions and plenty of turmeric and paprika. Poured over a bed of noodles, it's just as soothing but far more exciting than your average chicken noodle soup.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, October 14, 2009 at 4:45 PM
[Photographs: Nick Kindelsperger]
If you're going to make an orange soup, you might as well go all out this recipe. Though monochromatic, there is a surprising amount of balance here. Sweet potatoes add the luscious, creamy texture, the apricots the sweetness, and the curry powder the complexity. It's a frightful amount of flavor with so few ingredients—and it takes less than 30 minutes to make.
But if you just need to make this more difficult, than how about making your own curry powder? Bon Appetit has a great beginner's recipe. It's not terribly difficult, especially if you have all the whole spices ready to go in your cabinet. The end result is just more haunting and complex. If you're not into that, Penzeys Spices has some very good curry blends. Either way, this is a soothing cold weather soup that's stupendously easy to make.
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