Chipotle-Infused Butternut-Miso Soup

I'm so glad this came out as well as it did. I was a little worried that I was trying to force together too many elements, but the concoction actually achieves a delicious harmony. I made my own veg stock, which I then infused with a large, dried chipotle pepper. I roasted the winter squash, which I then pureed with the miso paste and a ladle or two of broth.The salty-sweetness of the miso raises the profile of the smoky chipotle and the sweet butternut. The soup tastes rich and satisfying.

Chipotle-Infused Butternut-Miso Soup

Preheat oven to 400F. In a med. to large baking dish, toss together:

1 small-medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded and diced
drizzle of olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Roast until softened and golden. In a large saucepan, heat:

3 1/2 c. of vegetable broth
1 large, dried chipotle

Cook until the chipotle starts to soften. Add:

2 large shiitake tops, diced

Cook for a few minutes. Meanwhile, puree the squash with a ladle or two of the broth and

2-3 tbs. of white miso paste

To the broth, add and only cook until wilted, under a minute:

5-6 leaves of swiss chard or other green, cut into ribbons

Add the pureed squash to the broth; stir and heat through, but do NOT allow the soup to boil, or the miso will "die." Serve garnished with toasted squash seeds.

Gazpacho: a flavorful, raw soup

I'm finishing up the spring cleanse just as the semester grinds to a halt. It's a great way to finish up this cycle of my life. A lot is going to change within the next year -- even within the next few months -- so I feel that it is appropriate to clean, lighten, and finish projects with clear intentions and calm perspective.

Like last year's spring cleanse (which I did a few months before starting this blog), I spent 6 weeks eating a macrobiotic diet of whole foods, lightly cooked, supplemented with things like probiotics, enzymes, greens powders, whey powder, and lots of herbal tea. Also like last year, I lost a bunch of weight -- this time I dropped about 11 lbs. Of course, I had put on at least 8 lbs. over the stupid winter (can I just say that I wish Xmas would go away and never come back? Call me Scrooge -- w/e). So, I'm feeling thin and healthy, which is nice. I also had the chance to do a lot more with stinging nettles (I made a pesto with it! -- just steam or boil it until it's soft and then use it as a basil replacement), which are so good for cleansing. I made a strong tea with them and added some fresh peppermint for a fantastic cleanse tea. Really good for those "gaseous" times during the cleanse. ;)

I also experimented a bit more with raw food and liquids, which leads me to the title of this post. Gazpacho is such a great soup; it's pure vegetable and spoon-licking good. It's a great, light food. This is a really basic recipe -- feel free to experiment with different vegetables -- maybe some greens or carrots or some different herbs.

Gazpacho

1 lb. of ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped

1 spanish onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped

1 red bell pepper, seeded, chopped

2 cups tomato/vegetable juice (use one that is a medley of vegetables for more complex flavor)

1 tsp. apple cider vinegar (so good for you, esp. when cleansing)

1 tsp. of ground cumin (adds depth; makes the soup feel more "substantial")

1/2 c. chopped cilantro

1/4 c. olive oil

salt and pepper to taste (or use Bragg's)

Honestly, this is pretty easy -- everything ends up in the food processor or blender and is pureed until the desired consistency is achieved. Start with the tomatoes and then just add the ingredients, pretty much in the order given. Add the oil last, however, and pour it in slowly as the blender is running so it will incorporate well. Chill. Serve nice and cold.

Red Carrots are Only Red on the Outside

Some things really are just for show: Hummers (unless you're in Iraq), false eyelashes and red carrots. Really, you peel them, and they're just regular orange carrots underneath. The flavor is the same, too. So unless you intend to serve them unpeeled (which is fine with the beautiful specimens you might get in a farmer's market), their bright red cloaks are just window dressing.

Yesterday, I did a round-up of some recipes from other bloggers that I'm dying to try after the cleanse (ends this weekend when I go to Vermont!), and I indicated that I might just try Simply Life's Spicy Carrot Soup recipe and just tweek it for the cleanse. I just did that and the result is quite delicious. I used some red carrots I got from the CSA (last weekend was the last box. :-( ). I added a few things: some fresh ginger and a tiny bit of honey. Hope you like it!

Here's my version of Spicy Carrot Soup.

Spicy Carrot Soup

Ingredients:

1 tbs. coconut oil

1 sm. onion chopped

1 med. leek or 2 small ones, white and light green only, chopped

1 inch piece of fresh ginger, sliced

3 ¾ cups sliced carrots

1 fresh cayenne pepper

Dash of Bragg’s

1 tsp. coriander

½ tsp. cumin

3 cups vegetable stock

1 tsp. honey

Directions:

· In a soup pot, heat the oil. Add the onion, leeks, carrots, ginger, cayenne pepper and cook over medium heat until the onions start to sweat. Add the Bragg’s.

· Add the spices and stir.

· Add the vegetable stock and bring up to a boil. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes and the carrots are soft.

· Add the honey.

· Allow to cool slightly, and whirl the soup in a blender. Return to the stove and heat back up. For cleansers, serve with a garnish of parsley and/or pumpkin or sunflower seeds.

"Necessity's" Black Bean Soup with Corn Tortilla (Cleanse-Friendly . . . but don't let that stop you)

I know this woman named Necessity. She has an accomplished and successful daughter you may have heard of. She is the busiest woman I know, but she is also brilliant, warm and always has the best advice. As archetypal as a goddess and as familiar as your own mother, Necessity knows what you need.

Necessity lives in my kitchen, and she is always there (though sometimes she is silent, or I'm not really listening). She's really good at putting things in their place, in their proper proportion with everything else swirling in the soup. And, boy, does she know soup! She's especially gifted in the craft of "What's in the fridge?"-style soups and other concoctions.

Yesterday, in the middle of all my madness, it occurred to me that I needed to cook enough meals for myself to bring for lunch and to eat after work. Necessity was right there, telling me to cook the brussel sprouts (sautéed with garlic) and the kale (crisped in the oven with a little salt) and to make a black bean soup. Even though I didn't have all the ingredients for the Cuban black bean soup that I like (see Daisy Martinez's book, Daisy Cooks: Latin Flavors that will Rock Your World), I followed the advice of Necessity and invented -- dare I say it -- a black bean soup that was even better than the "authentic" recipes I've followed in the past.

"Necessity's" Black Bean Soup with Corn Tortilla

Ingredients:

1 tbs. coconut oil

1 small onion, sliced thin

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 serrano hot pepper, or hot pepper of your choice, seeded and finely chopped

1 large tomato, preferably fresh from your garden!

1 can. black beans, undrained (or if you really want to drain them, increase the vegetable stock)

1 cup (or more) of vegetable stock

1 cup fresh or frozen corn

Bragg's Amino Acids to taste (or salt and black pepper for the un-cleansers)

2-4 soft corn tortillas, torn into quarters

1 tbs. coarsely chopped cilantro

Directions:

* In a soup pot, Saute up the onion, garlic and pepper in the oil over medium heat.

* Add the tomato and cook it down until it melts.

* Add the beans and stock. Bring to a boil.

* Add the corn and splash of Bragg's. Cook for at least 20 minutes over low heat. The longer the better.

* Remove 1/3 of the soup to a blender and liquefy. Return to the soup and stir.

* When you want to serve, raise the heat to boiling and add the tortilla. Cook for about 2-3 minutes, until the tortilla takes on a pasta-like texture.

* Garnish with cilantro.

I ate this soup tonight, and it was so wonderful. So warm and comforting . . . and rather spicy! It was everything that I've been needing lately -- hearty and sustaining as a mother's food should be.

Food of the Wild Soup

I’ve wanted to make something like this for a long time: collect several wild edibles and put them together into a great-tasting dish.  Here, I’ve combined fiddleheads, stinging nettles, shitakes (yeah, well, they’re wild somewhere; I don’t know my wild mushrooms well enough to be safe) and arame (Japanese sea vegetable) for a soup in honor of the wild foods of both land and sea.

Food of the Wild Soup

First, soak about ½ cup of arame in cool water for 10-15 minutes. If you do this first, by the time you finish the other steps, the arame should have plumped up to twice its original size, which means it’s ready.

While that’s happening, please heed the warnings and follow the directions for preparing nettles seen here.

After you’re done blanching the nettles, you’ll need to do the same for the fiddleheads (but a minute or two, once, is long enough).

Next, you need a dashi, which is a Japanese broth flavored with sea vegetable (usually kombu) and bonito flakes. If you don’t have these weird ingredients – I never do – use a vegetable stock and improvise with some dried nori (the seaweed they wrap sushi in) and some fish sauce (or fish stock). Put 4 cups of dashi/stock on the back burner, add some grated ginger if you like (I like) and a teaspoon of soy sauce, and just let it start simmering.

Meanwhile, heat a small amount of oil (not olive oil, here. Safflower, grapeseed, peanut would work) in a skillet. Add 5 or 6 chopped shitake caps and 1 small leek, sliced (white part only). Add a pinch of salt and a dash of sake (optional).

Add the fiddleheads and nettles, season with salt and black pepper and stir to incorporate.

When the shitakes are slightly browned, add mixture to the dashi. Keep heat low. Add the arame.

Before serving, take about ¼ cup of the broth and add to 2-3 tablespoons of red miso to dissolve. Add the dissolved miso back to the pot, stir and serve.

I serve this with udon noodles, which I prepare separately to prevent them from sucking up all the liquid in the soup.

Here are some other articles and comments about nettles:

"The Common Stinging Nettle" by Euell Gibbons, writing for Vermont Weathervane

"Stinging nettles -- I cooked them and lived!" at Chowhound

"Stinging Nettles Need a New Name!" at OrganicMania

"Mini Specialist| Food Found: Stinging Nettles" by William Snyder, writing for WSJ

Check out these recipes:

Nettles pasta with fava beans, from No Recipes

Spring Tonic Nettles Soup, from Wild Food Ways

Today's Lunch Spot: City Feed in JP

The Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain is a funky, artsy, conscious community with a vibrant ethnic presence and a real sense for what is now in food trends. And nothing is more now than the push to "get to know your farmer." City Feed and Supply (now in two locations in JP) is part corner grocery store, part coffee-sandwich shop. But the place proves Aristotle's assertion of holism . . . the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you're a vegetarian, a flexitarian, if you've read Pollan's books and you're afraid to eat meat or produce from the big, Gigantaursarus Mart, shop here. If you want red quinoa from a local grower, heirloom tomatoes grown in EASTERN Massachusetts, local, raw honey, shop here. If you want old school candy for a quarter -- Mary Janes, for example -- shop here. Most of the food is sourced locally and is sustainably or humanely produced. The retail store is so small that it defies the current "wisdom" that says consumers want endless variety. Conveniently located on Centre St. in the middle of all the action, it's easy to just pop in for a coffee and a poke about the store. It's the kind of shopping where you aren't planning for the week. More likely, picking up some fresh herbs to top off a pasta dish or a delicious bread, or, "Oops, forgot to get canned tomatoes, so thank god they have it here and I don't have to go to that other place." It's amazing what they do have in such a small space (But, it's probably the same size as the grocery stores our grandparents and great grandparents remember). It seems like it would be a good place to go if you actually cook, not reheat/microwave/assemble, your food.

Or, you can eat from the cafe. Today, I had an amazing, hearty sandwich, the Farmer's Lunch: extra sharp cheddar with whole grain mustard and mayo, granny smith apple, small-batch pickles, and romaine on a delicious baguette. I eat bread rarely, so I was pleased that the bread was so good. I also ordered a cup of chipotle sweet potato soup which was outstanding -- a smokey-spicy kick really stands up to the sweetness of the potato, and the use of (I'm guessing) thyme and tarragon really brightened it up. I loved this lunch, but it was way more food than even a very hungry girl could eat -- so I get to finish it later, either tonight or tomorrow. Yum.

Cream of Cauliflower and Fiddlehead Soup

Fiddleheads make an unusual appearance in a standard cream of cauliflower soup. Just make sure you don't overcook the fiddleheads. Reserve some of the smaller fiddleheads before you puree the soup. 

I made this soup at my parents' house yesterday. Mom's been moving away from cooking, sadly, so I didn't have access to a blender -- I had to puree the soup in a Magic Bullet!  It only took about a thousand batches (grumble, grumble). It was a little rustic -- really important to clean the fiddleheads and puree them well if you want a super-smooth texture. I think I might even press through a sieve or cheesecloth next time.