African Sweet Potato and Peanut Soup

This recipe originally made its debut during the 2011 Turducken Extravaganza (about which, more later). We were in desperate need of a sweet potato recipe, but I was unwilling to do the same-old sweet potato casserole, complete with brown sugar or marshmallows. Now, don't get me wrong, I love sweet potato casserole, but with the thousands of courses and pot luck dishes we had that night, the casserole would have been lost in the shuffle. So we needed a new way to put the traditional ingredient in the Thanksgiving dinner.

And soup was the perfect answer. It started off the meal with a neo-traditional punch (there's a great smokiness to this recipe. Not hot, but a nice warmth) and it let everyone in the room know we meant business. And it was gobbled up. Literally. The soup went in about 5 minutes flat, an indication of a crowd pleaser if ever there was one.

Now, I prefer this soup with a nice hearty garnish of cilantro/coriander, but I know how some people feel about the stuff. Taking that into consideration, the soup does just fine with a garnish of peanuts, giving it a great texture.

Also, don't worry if you can't find unsalted dry roasted peanuts. The first time I made this recipe, I searched high and low for them in vain. I eventually relented and bought some salted peanuts, fearing that my soup would resemble a salt lick. But never fear! As long as you decrease the salt you add alongside the vegetables when cooking, your soup should remain thankfully un-salt licked.

Serves 6

Ingredients
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger root
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 pinch ground cloves
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped (feel free to add more if you want a more sweet potato taste to the soup)
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
4 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chopped, unsalted dry-roasted peanuts (plus more for garnish)
1 pinch cayenne pepper
3 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
1 bunch chopped fresh cilantro

Method
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Saute the onion 10 minutes, until lightly browned. Mix in the garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, and cloves. Stir in the tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrot, and continue to cook and stir about 5 minutes.

Pour water into the saucepan, and season the mixture with salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 30 minutes.

Remove the soup mixture from heat. In a food processor or blender, blend the soup and peanuts until almost smooth. Season with cayenne pepper. Return to the saucepan. Whisk in the peanut butter, and cook until heated through.

Serve warm topped with fresh cilantro and some chopped peanuts.

Hot Yogurt and Bean Soup

Well, the holidays have come and gone and a new slew of recipe books has come traveling down the pipe line. This year's addition? Plenty by London's favorite vegetarian, Yotam Ottolenghi (try saying that five times fast). As my mother has embraced the joys of the vegetarian lifestyle, this was the perfect recipe book for our newly meat-free family meals. Besides being entirely vegetarian, the book also favors slightly Middle Eastern flavors, often including ingredients you wouldn't necessarily find at your local Safeway (kirmzi biber, anyone?). But if you take Ottolenghi's crazy ingredients with a pinch of salt (and, to his credit, he does often offer easier and more available solutions to the more obscure ingredients), his recipes are usually easy and absolutely always delicious. And more often than not you'll find yourself making dishes you never thought you would.
And loving them.

Enter a hot yogurt soup. Call me small-minded, but I'm not the sort of person who would order anything with this title if I found it on a restaurant menu. Yet the variety of vegetables convinced me that this couldn't be bad. After all, everything else from the book had been delicious. Why stop now?

And indeed, this soup was phenomenal. Thick without being rich and with such a wonderful combination of flavors. Although I'm not always a fan of blended soups, this one won me over completely. You would never know when it's served that it contains both beans and rice. It's wonderfully hearty without being cloying. Half of the taste comes from making your own vegetable broth, which gives the whole soup a wonderful freshness.
Yes, it does take a bit of time. But trust me, for wow factor both on appearance and taste, this one is worth it.

Ottolenghi used fava beans in his soup (although makes the concession that you can use fresh or frozen). But thanks to scarcity of resources, I was forced to work with butter beans (related to the lima bean). And hey, I never noticed the difference. So huzzah to you if you can find the favas, but don't despair if you end up using the humbler lima or butter variety. 

Serves 4

Ingredients
6 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, quartered
4 celery stalks, quartered
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
5 thyme sprigs
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley
1 1/2 quarts water
3 1/2 cups shelled fava beans (fresh or frozen, again, here I used butter beans and the soup was just as tasty, it also saves you the time-sapping feat of shelling the fava beans)
1/3 cup long grain rice
salt and white pepper
2 cups Greek yogurt
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 egg
3 tbsp roughly chopped dill
3 tbsp roughly chopped chervil
grated zest of 1 lemon

Method

Pour 2 tbsp of the olive oil in a large pot. Heat up the oil and add the onion, celery, and carrot. Saute on medium heat for about 5 minutes; you want to soften up the vegetables without browning them. Next, add the thyme, bay leaves, and parsley and cover with the water. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

While the stock is cooking, proceed to shell the fava beans (if using. If not, huzzah! you have more time on your hands). Bring a saucepan of water to the boil. Throw in the beans and simmer for just 1 minutes. Drain, then refresh the beans under running cold water to stop the cooking. Next, remove the skins by gently pressing with your fingers against the sides of each bean, causing the soft bean to pop out. Discard the skins.

When the stock is ready, pass it through a sieve into a medium saucepan; discard the vegetables and flavorings in the sieve. Add the rice to the stock. Bring to the boil, then simmer, covered for 20 minutes. Now add half the beans and some salt and pepper and use an immersion blender to blitz the soup until it's completely smooth.

Whisk together the yogurt, garlic and egg in a large heatproof bowl. Add a ladleful of hot soup and whisk together. Continue gradually adding the soup until you've mixed in at least half of it. It's important to do this slowly, otherwise the yogurt might split due to the difference in temperatures.

Pour the tempered yogurt into the pan containing the rest of the soup. Place it on medium heat and warm up the soup while stirring constantly. Make sure the soup doesn't boil! Taste and add more salt and pepper if you life.

Ladle the soup into 4 bowls and drop in the remaining beans. Garnish generously with the dill, chervil and lemon zest and drizzle the remaining 4 tbsp of olive oil (this is crucial!!).

Thai Mushroom Soup baked in a Pumpkin + Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Behold, the mighty pumpkin. Well, surprisingly, not that mighty in the land of the Brits. Despite the hordes of pumpkins and pumpkin-flavored items in the US, alas, the UK (as I have waxed lyrically about previously) seems to shirk the glories of this gourd.

Although pumpkin soup is not completely unknown on this side of the Atlantic, versions seem to promote the standard "peel, cube, and cook" varieties. Now, I don't know if you've ever tried to peel a pumpkin, but there are few less rewarding tasks in this world. And a task guaranteed to either cause significant harm to you and/or your pumpkin, probably leaving you with little desire to carry on in the soup-making task.

Which is why *this* version of pumpkin soup is so glorious. No peeling required! Just the standard jack-o-lantern trick of cutting a lid on the top and scooping out the glorious pumpkin seeds (to be toasted later). Baking the entire pumpkin also makes a great display for the table (Martha Stewart eat your heart out) and you also get to live dangerously: Will the pumpkin collapse in the oven? Won't it? Yes, the soup takes a bit of patience, but the combination of Thai and autumnal flavors in this thing are completely worth it. Originally this soup (in a much simpler yet absolutely still delicious form) was found via River Cottage and basically involves cooking a bunch of cream and cheese in a hollowed pumpkin. My version makes the concoction a bit more soup-like with some complex Asian flavors and some mushrooms thrown in for earthiness. It's a soup that's a bit time-consuming but wonderful on those cold autumn nights.

Serve 4-6

Ingredients
One large pumpkin
1 can coconut milk
1 1/2 cups dried porcini mushrooms (rehydrated in boiling water and left to soak for up to 30 minutes, but SAVE the water which you rehydrated them in!!! If you don't want to use this, 2 1/2 cups chicken broth)
1 cup chestnut mushrooms, sliced
2 green or red finger chilies, diced
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
8 oz. gruyere cheese, grated
1/2 cup single cream
4 slices bacon (or bacon lardons), cooked and drained of fat
2 tbsp. Olive oil
3/4 tsp white pepper
Salt and black pepper to taste
Cilantro/Green onions (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 375ºF/191ºC.

Using a narrow pointed knife, slice around the stem of the pumpkin at a 45-degree angle. Scoop out pulp and seeds (but don't forget to keep the seeds for toasting!). Place the emptied pumpkin on a large baking tray that has been covered with aluminum foil.

Fill the pumpkin with half of the grated Gruyère cheese.

Meanwhile, heat a deep saucepan on med-high and add the olive oil. When hot, add the onion and garlic and saute for approximately 3-5 minutes. Add the rehydrated porcini mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms, and chilies. Cook for another 3-5 minutes, or until the mushrooms go soft and start to sweat. Add the bacon and cook for another 30 seconds to a minute. 

At this point, add the porcini mushroom water or chicken broth along with the coconut milk. Stir. Add in gently, while stirring, the 1/2 cup of single cream and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Season to taste with salt as well as the black and white pepper. 

A perfectly "done" pumpkin

Pour the mushroom soup mixture into the cavity of the pumpkin, on top of the gruyere cheese. Sprinkle the rest of the gruyere cheese on top of the soup mixture. Season again with salt and black pepper. 

Replace the lid of the pumpkin and place the entire thing in the oven to be roasted slowly. Depending on the size of your pumpkin, this may range anywhere from 1 to 2 1/2 hours. The key to cooking the pumpkin is to keep a wary eye on its structural integrity. Once the skin on the outside of the pumpkin starts to sag, be warned! There is a fine line between the glories of a cooked pumpkin and a heap of mush inside your oven. If in doubt, remove the pumpkin from the oven, remove the lid, and check for the done-ness of the inside flesh (should be fairly soft). 

When serving, make sure to scrape the inside of the pumpkin so that each bowl gets a good portion of the flesh and cheesy goodness (which by now has melted into the pumpkin itself) alongside the soup. Serve with cilantro and/or sliced green onions on top as garnish. 

Toasted Spiced Pumpkin Seeds

A fall classic and a great snack and/or soup topper!!

Ingredients

Seeds from one pumpkin (washed and dried)

Olive oil

Salt/Black Pepper

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp achiote (or other chile powder)

1/4 tsp cumin

Method
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

After removing the seeds from the pumpkin, rinse with water, and remove any strings and bits of squash. Pat dry, and place in a small bowl. 

Add the cayenne, cinnamon, achiote, and cumin to the bowl and stir to coat.

Scatter the seeds on a sheet pan in a single layer and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss to coat. Bake for 7 minutes and stir. Bake for another 7 minutes (or until seeds start to look dry and crispy). 

Vegetarian Posole with Mole

Anyone who knows me knows of my love of posole.
Or is it pozole?
Regardless, this is the single best thing about coming home to Phoenix. And not just any pos/zole. No, no. It must be made by Maria, goddess of Mexican cuisine, chef and owner of El Conquistador Mexican Restaurant. As is only right, she makes posole (both red and green) only on weekends, giving the broth time to marinate and thicken and become, in a word, wonderful.
Now, my personal favorite is her green variety. Made with pork, topped with slices of avocado and chicharrones (pork scratchings), and a healthy sprinkling of oregano, this soup is the stuff of dreams. Literally.
Because I'm unable to make the pilgrimage to the homelands very often, I'm always on the lookout for a posole recipe that could rival Maria's. And I have yet to find one. Too often they are thin watery things, with none of that fabulous deep rich flavor that makes Maria's so more-ish. Think more of a tortilla soup than a true hearty posole. And so I have been disappointed time and again when making them myself.
So when I saw a recipe in Bittman's Vegetarian cookbook, I was sure I was in for another let down. Yet my mother (who was a similar devotee of Maria's soups) has recently turned vegetarian, which has meant a sad new lack of posole in her life. I had to take pity and make this vegetarian version for her. We both knew it couldn't rival the Maria's, but still, we had to try.
And surprise, surprise! This may be the best homemade posole recipe I've found. Granted, there was a stunning lack of pork and thus it missed the rich meatiness to the original, but still, the thick broth, flavored with pumpkin seeds and tomatillos was spot on (also the addition of pork scratchings for my helping didn't hurt either). If I had a mind to make this for a non-vegetarian crowd, the addition of pork might send this recipe over the top to even rival Maria's version. I know this to be heresy, but still, Bittman deserves his credit for creating a vegetarian version of a soup that I thought to be solely within the realm of the meat-eating population.
Kudos, Bitty.
Kudos.

Makes: at least 8 servings

Ingredients
6 cups precooked hominy (i.e. canned)
1 1/2 cups freshly toasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds, just toasted in a dry pan until lightly brown and popping)
4-6 cups vegetable stock (or chicken stock for the non-vegetarians)
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
4 medium poblano or other mild fresh green chiles, roasted and cleaned (I did mine under the broiler in the oven for about 5-10 minutes, remove the skin and seeds)
2 serrano or other hot green fresh chiles, roasted and cleaned (see above)
1 lb tomatillos (16-20 depending on size), husked and rinsed (canned are okay, but include their juices)
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons chopped epazote or radish greens (optional, I couldn't find any so mine was without)
1 tablespoon fresh oregano or marjoram leaves
salt and black pepper
1/4 neutral oil, like corn or grapeseed

Optional Toppings:
Sliced avocado

Chicharrones (pork scratchings/rinds)

Method
Place the pepitas and 1 cup of the stock in a blender or food processor; puree until smooth; transfer to a large bowl. Put the onion, garlic, chiles, tomatillos, herbs, and a large pinch of salt and pepper in the blend or food processor and puree until smooth (I had to do mine in batches, also add a bit more stock or water if necessary). Mix the tomatillo puree with the pumpkin seed puree.

Put the oil in a large pot over medium high heat; add the mixed puree and cook, stirring frequently, until it's dry, 10-15 minutes. Gradually stir in another 3 cups of the remaining stock; reduce the heat to a gentle bubble and cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened, another 15 minute or so.

Add the hominy. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Serve hot with various garnishes.

Spinach Soup with Bacon and Thyme Croutons

My culinary life has had a bit of an upset recently. Mark Bittman, master of the minimalist cooking approach, has hung up his apron strings at the New York Times. His recipes were a source of many a weeknight dinner for me and his blog will be much missed. This doesn't mean that the Bittster is gone forever, however, he has resurfaced already with a brand new blog about...well...cooking. The point of the blog is still a bit beyond me, but as far as I can gather, he's now writing about simple hearty recipes that you can make easily. Which sounds...remarkably like his earlier blog, but never you mind. I feature here one of his newest creations (or rather recommendations). His entire entry on soup claims to show you the last four recipes you'll ever need for soup. I tend to disagree but regardless, his first item on the list, a spinach and yogurt soup is simply marvelous.

Well, marvelous if you put bacon in it. Which arguably makes everything better. The soup is ridiculously easy to make and wonderful for those late winter nights where there's still a bite in the air but you can tell spring is just beyond the horizon. When you add these croutons to it, well, here's to Bittman and here's to soup.

Ingredients
1 onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
3 cups water
2 tomatoes, diced
1 tbsp oregano
2 tbsp paprika
2 tbsp achiote powder (or chili powder)
12 ounces spinach
1/2 cup parsley, chopped 
1 1/2 cups greek yogurt
3 slices bacon, cooked and chopped into bite size pieces.
salt and pepper 
Thyme croutons (see recipe below)


Method
Put 1 chopped onion, garlic cloves, spices, 3 cups water, and salt and pepper in a pot over high heat.

Boil, cover, lower the heat and simmer until the onion is tender, about 10 minutes.

Add chopped spinach, tomatoes, oil, and parsley leaves; cook until the spinach is tender, 2 to 3 minutes.

Add Greek-style yogurt and purée. Stir in bacon pieces.

Garnish: A spoonful of Greek-style yogurt and chopped parsley and some thyme croutons

For croutons:
Tear up day-old bread into small bite size chunks. Douse with olive oil and a sprinkling of thyme. Put under grill/broiler under golden (c. 3-4 minutes).