coconut curry red lentil soup with dried currants

Thanks to the little baby now at the center of my life, I have a new appreciation for single vessel meals that have the flexibility of being abandoned without overcooking.  Brace yourselves for more soups, stews, and casseroles on this blog!  I know... how stereotypical American...  well, so is my inspiration for this soup!  Good old Martha Stewart (or one of her ghost writers) inspired me to take a different spin on my usual red lentil soup by adding coconut milk and dried fruit.  Yum! 

Ingredients:
olive oil
1 1/2 c. carrots, diced
1/2 c. onion, diced
4 T. fresh grated ginger
half a head of garlic, pealed and minced
1 1/2 T. curry powder
1 T. salt
8 c. water
2 c. red lentils
1 16 oz. can coconut milk
dried currents
cilantro

Saute the carrots, onion, ginger, and garlic in olive oil until the onion is translucent.  Add the curry powder and cook for a minute.  Add the salt, water, red lentils, and coconut milk.  Bring to a boil and then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.  Use an immersion blender to partially blend the soup.  Serve with dried currents and cilantro.

lemon rice soup

This just in: peas!  Every spring I get a serious case of ants-in-the-pants in anticipation of eating my garden veggies.  You'd think I would know by now that these things take time.  Ah well.

I tried this soup recipe from Martha Stewart in the winter because I was craving lemon.  It was good but I felt that it needed spring veggies in it so I made it today with fresh snap peas.  Much better.  Next time I make this soup I will use some interesting mushrooms instead of the fake meat product because, well, that's more my style.

Ingredients:
8 c. veggie broth
1 1/2 c. white rice
2 Quorn chik'n cutlets (or mushrooms)
2 c. snap peas (or asparagus)
3 eggs
2 lemons
dill
salt
black pepper

In a large pot, bring the veggie broth and white rice to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes or until the rice is cooked.  Heat up the fake chicken per the packaging.  Slice it up so it looks shredded.  Add the fake chicken to the cooked rice.  Whisk the eggs.  Juice the lemons.  Pour the lemon juice into the eggs while whisking.  Slowly pour 1 cup of the hot rice broth to the eggs while whisking.  Pour the tempered egg mixture into the soup and stir.  Add dill, salt, and black pepper to taste.  Cut the snap peas into bite sized pieces and add fresh so they keep their crunch.  Enjoy!

pumpkin soup with dollap of refried black beans

 

Here's a soup that is really good for those cold winter dark days! It is a basic pumpkin soup dressed up with a dollop of black beans that I re-fried myself.  The main ingredient was a small "pie pumpkin" that has been sitting on our counter since we got it from our Isabelle Farm CSA in October. Good job holding in there, little pumpkin!  I would also like to note my excitement about getting to use our very own coriander seed that we grew in our garden this past year.

Ingredients:
pumpkin
frozen green chile
frozen corn
onion
coriander (garden!)
carrot (not local)
turmeric (not local)
cumin (not local)
ginger (not local)
black pepper (not local)
salt (not local)
oil (not local)

I roasted the pumpkin in the oven, scraped it out and cooked it with the other ingredients. I like making refried beans from scratch by frying cooked beans in oil with spices and mashing with a potato masher.

creamy parsnip soup

Local food in the middle of winter while traveling for the holidays?! That's crazy!  That said, while we were in Chicago, we managed to find a few fairly local ingredients at Whole Foods without exerting too much effort. And that my friends is huge because when I attempted a local diet just four years ago while living in Chicago, I could not find any local produce at Whole Foods even during the middle of summer!  So yes, we celebrated by making a rich parsnip soup.

Ingredients:
parsnips (from Wisconsin)
onions (from Wisconsin)
mushrooms (from Illinois)
butter (arguably from Wisconsin)
heavy cream (arguably from Wisconsin)
white wine
lemon juice
water
thyme
garlic
ginger
nutmeg
salt
pepper
radish sprouts for garnish (from Illinois)

Cook the parsnips, onions, etc and blend. Add the cooked mushrooms after everything is blended.  Garnish with radish sprouts.

potato leek soup

I was excited to find leeks at the last farmers market. I usually think of them as a springtime plant, but there they were. And the weather is perfect for soups like this!

herbed dumpling soup

We made this soup. Our noses ran in a good way while we ate it. Though I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed by the dumplings, but that's probably because I'm holding a grudge against them since I am now missing a bit too much of my pinky nail. Remember kids, knives are dangerous. But really, next time I am going to make garlic time bomb dumplings!

spreading the love

I am on a new mission to invite people over for dinner. I'm hoping to make it a regular habit, like once a week. So watch out, you may be next!

For the inaugural event, Eric and I made a creamy vegan spinach soup (spinach, sunchokes, scallions, carrots, roux, soy milk, spices) and a millet polenta with home canned tomato sauce. Our friends brought peach crisp made from frozen peaches harvested from a family tree.

Yay local, seasonal, organic, vegetarian food! Yay community!

pickle soup

I am 100% polish american. When I visit family in Milwaukee, I usually end up going out for a meal at a polish restaurant. As a vegetarian this usually leaves me to choose from eating potato pancakes or pierogi. I am quite content with this situation but one polish restaurant I went to had pickle soup and I was totally thrilled. Seriously, who thinks up pickle soup?! Ah my ancestry...

Ingredients:
onions, potatoes, pickles, veggie broth, sour cream, fresh dill

Cook the onion in oil until transluscent. Add the potatoes, pickles, and veggie broth. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes. Blend. Temper sour cream and mix it in. Add some fresh dill.

cream of aspargus soup

I picked up these beautiful asparagus spears from the farmer's market. Yay spring! I also picked up a tattered old copy of "The Moosewood Cookbook" from a yard sale for 25 cents. I am kind of in love with the missing cover, notes in the margins, and food stains. The first recipe in the cookbook is cream of asparagus soup. Mmm... how fortuitous...

garlic broth

I know that garlic presses can be controversial but I happen to like using them most of the time. However, there's often a lot of flavor left in the peel after pressing. I sometimes save onion peels in the freezer to make vegetable broth, but since we go through a lot of garlic, I thought about making a "mostly garlic broth." After boiling the peels in water for a bit, I strained out the skins, added some salt, and had a delicious broth that warmed me up while I went on a recent hike.

squash lentil soup

Autumn soups... mm-mmmm!! I didn't feel like measuring ingredients, but here's what I threw in: pureed winter squash, red lentils, potatoes, apples, onion, chard, lots of sage, coriander, cumin, ginger, cayenne pepper, salt, vinegar, water.

komatsuna mushroom noodle soup

We've had a string of rainy days in Boulder that made us want some soup. I made this using komatsuna and mushrooms from the farmers market.

Ingredients:
1 T. canola oil
2 small spring shallots (or onion)
6 garlic cloves, minced
4 T. ginger, minced (frozen or fresh)
6 c. water
3-4 t. bouillon/reduced stock
1 c. small dried mushrooms
2 T. mirin
2 T. rice vinegar
2 T. soy sauce
1 lb. Komatsuna
8 oz. rice noodles (fettucine width)
1/4 c. almonds, ground
4 T. miso paste
1 T. sesame oil

In a large soup pot, saute shallots in canola oil for a minute or two. Add the garlic and ginger. When they start to stick to the bottom, add water and stock. Add mushrooms, mirin, rice vinegar, and soy sauce. Chop and add the komatsuna stems, then chop the komatsuna leaves and add. This will give the stems a little bit more time to cook. Wait until the komatsuna looks fully cooked, then add the rice noodles and cook until they are soft. Then, remove from heat and add the ground almonds, miso paste, and sesame oil. The ground almonds add some creaminess to the soup. Dissolving the miso paste can be difficult. It may help to remove a cup or two of the soup liquid to mix with the miso. The sesame oil gives the soup nice sparkling orange oil bubbles floating on top. Top notch!

Side Note:
I used homemade vegetable stock. I saved up onion, garlic, green onion, and maybe a few radish scraps in the freezer. When it came time to make the stock, I fried the scraps in some oil until browned and then added some water. I cooked it down and added a few dashes of soy sauce. The reduced stock doesn't freeze solid, so cubes won't work. I froze it in a small tub so I could scoop out a tablespoon whenever I needed it. And I ended up using it all in this soup! The strength of the stock depends on what you put in it and how much you boil the water down. I estimated this was equivalent to 3-4 boullion cubes or teaspoons of boullion paste. You could use a dashi stock for a more authentically Japanese soup.

borscht soup

Beets are one of the few vegetables we can find pretty much year round in our cool climate zone. They are so hardy and yet they somehow manage to be nutritious and beautiful too!

Serving Size: 3

Ingredients:
3 small beets, diced (1 c.)
3 c. water
1 T. sugar
1 t. salt
1 t. "better than bouillon" vegetable base
1/8 cabbage, diced (1 1/2 c.)
2 T. lemon juice
1/2 t. dill
1/2 c. plain yogurt
1 t. all-purpose flour

Add the beets, water, sugar, salt and vegetable base to a medium pot and bring to a boil. Boil until the beets are tender, about 20 minutes. Puree the tender beets with an immersion blender.

Add the cabbage, lemon juice and dill to the pot. Allow to simmer until the cabbage is tender and has absorbed the red beet juice, about 20 minutes.

Take the pot off the heat. Remove some hot liquid with a measuring cup. Mix the flour, yogurt and hot liquid thoroughly. Add the creamy mixture to the soup and serve!

Side Notes:
The main ingredient of real Polish borsht is kwas which is fermented beets. Since we did not feel like fermenting our beets, we just added lemon juice. Honestly, if you were being a purist, kwas is all you would really need to have borsht. The dill and yogurt are fluffy additions. Also, if you were any other person making a creamy borsht, you would add sour cream not yogurt. We prefer to use plain yogurt only because it is so versatile.

miso soup

After a cold walk home, miso soup is fantastic because it can be prepared quickly and warm your belly that much sooner. Plus, most of the ingredients can be kept on hand in the pantry and refrigerator, allowing it to be a rather impromptu meal even in winter.

Serving Size: 2

Ingredients:
3 c. water
1 T. frozen, minced ginger
1 t. freshly pressed garlic
2 t. "better than bouillon" vegetable base
1/2 c. diced extra firm tofu
2 T. miso paste
torn toasted seaweed sheet as desired

In a saucepan bring water, vegetable bouillon, ginger and garlic to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Add diced tofu and allow to simmer for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Add seaweed and stir in miso paste.

Side Note:
It can be difficult to know in advance when you will want to use a small amount of fresh ginger in a recipe. We like to peel and mince our ginger, freeze it on a cookie sheet, and then scrape it into a bag for freezer storage. The frozen, minced ginger works well in soups, stews, and cayenne pepper-ginger tea!