Mulligatawny Makes You Feel Better

There are many upsides to being a vegetarian, but one undeniable downside: it's tough to find comforting soup when you're getting sick. There's simply nothing that can compare in restorative properties to chicken soup. At least, that's what Ruth always thought, until weekend before last, when she started feeling bad.

She wasn't sick exactly, just achy and sniffly, with all the warning signs of an impending head cold. As it happened, Tim was craving Indian food—not just any Indian food, but the food served by one of our favorite local restaurants. The wind was cold and blowing in circles, so we bundled up and trundled off.

Chilled and cranky, Ruth only wanted soup, so she decided to try mulligatawny for the first time. Why had she never tried it before? Maybe there was always something more enticing on the menu, but that night, after the waiter assured her it was vegetarian, she hopefully ordered a big bowl.

She was glad she did.

Hot, lemony, subtly spicy from cayenne and subtly sweet from coconut, the soup made her feel better instantly. The next night she made a big pot at home, working off several Internet recipes. She intended to freeze half of it, but there wouldn't be enough left to freeze: in a cold, achy week, mulligatawny was the only thing either of us wanted.

But that head cold? It never happened (note: sadly, it did happen, not long afterward—R&T). Mulligatawny might work even better than chicken soup.

This recipe seems infinitely adaptable—some versions call for apples, some for green peppers and cabbage—so feel free to experiment. Just aim for a balance of spice, sour, and sweet.

Mulligatawny

1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 cups chopped onion
5 chopped garlic cloves
1 1/2 T. garam masala
1 1/2 t. ground coriander
1 t. turmeric
3/4 t. cayenne pepper
a couple of whole dried red peppers (optional, depending on how much heat you like)
2 bay leaves
2 cups dried red lentils
8 cups vegetable broth
1 medium-size potato, peeled and chopped
1 big carrot, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 cans coconut milk
4 T. lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
lemon wedges

1. Heat the oil in a big pot over medium-high heat.

2. Add the onions and cook until starting to brown, about 15 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes

3. Add garam masala, coriander, turmeric, cayenne, dried peppers, and bay leaves. Stir for a minute. Add the lentils and stir until they are coated in spices.

4. Add broth, potato, and carrot and bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables and lentils are tender, about 20 minutes. Discard the bay leaves.

5. Using either a hand blender or a regular blender, purée the soup until smooth. (If using a regular blender, do it in small batches to avoid burning yourself.)

6. Add the coconut milk and lemon juice, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve with lemon wedges.

Summer's Over — Time for Soup!

Fall not only means the onset of cool weather—sweet relief to those of us who broiled in a summer heat wave—but truckloads of ripe vegetables. The harvest is in, the leaves are turning, the nights are chilly, and it's time to make soup. 

RoAnn Redlin offers this simple but delicious menu for a fall dinner, using classic seasonal ingredients. 
She says: "I had a great dinner last night. I made the quiche lorraine from the New York Times Cookbook and a new soup: cream of carrot/parsnip. I had to make a dessert out of what I had on hand, so I sautéed some apples in butter and brown sugar. Then I threw the leftover pastry from the quiche on top of the apples with cinnamon sugar. Voilà! A great meal. I loved the soup." 

Cream of Carrot Soup

4 T butter
1 package baby carrots, chopped
1 pound of parsnips, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 32-ounce boxes of chicken stock
1/3 c. uncooked rice*
1/3 c. half-and-half
Sage leaves (optional)

1. Sauté first butter, carrots, parsnips, and onions for 15 to 20 minutes. 

2. Add the broth, and bring to a simmer. After about 40 minutes, add the rice. 

3. Once the vegetables are soft and the rice is cooked, purée the whole thing with a hand blender or in a food processor. Add warm half-and-half. Garnish with chopped sage leaves. 

* All I had was wild rice, and it added an exotic flavor.

Celebrate the Harvest with Curried Pumpkin Soup

Our friends Chuck and Sandy put in a big garden every year, and this year we really appreciated it, as our own garden consisted solely of an inadvertently massive herb bed and, thanks to the Evil Stalker Groundhog, three pots of lackluster tomatoes. Not only did we get to taste lots of good food at Chuck and Sandy's house, they generously shared their bounty. A couple of weeks ago, Chuck presented us with a sugar pumpkin, a bag of herbs and chili peppers, and a considerately printed-out recipe.

Though we're always sad to see the summer go, we love the harvest, and this soup makes good use of it.

One suggestion: Thrifty though we are, we try not to cook with those big Halloween pumpkins, which tend to be very fibrous. (Still, a friend of ours tells a great story about her extremely frugal mother, who used to drive through her neighborhood on November 1, make her humiliated children scoop up the smashed pumpkins, and then turn the road-kill vegetables into pies. We can't help admiring that.)

If you can, use a sugar pumpkin; butternut squash would also work well.

Curried Pumpkin Soup

4 cups puréed pumpkin*
2 T. olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 clove garlic, chopped
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 t. fresh thyme leaves
2 T. chopped parsley
1 t. curry powder
1 small hot pepper, minced (optional)**
1/2 cup cream or 3/4 cup whole milk

1. To prepare the pumpkin, cut it in half, extract the seeds and strings, then bake upside-down in a pan with about an inch of water in a 350-degree oven for about 50 minutes, or until you can easily remove the pumpkin from the skin.

2. In a large pan, heat the oil, then sauté the onion and garlic until soft and golden.

3. Add the stock, thyme, parsley, curry powder, and hot pepper.  Bring to a boil, the simmer for about 30 minutes.

4. Using an immersion blender, stationary blender, or food processor, purée the soup until it is smooth and creamy. Put it back in the pan (if you removed it to purée it) and simmer for an additional 30 minutes. Before serving, add the cream or milk and heat for a minute or two.

Though the soup is good served plain, a dollop of sour cream or a few toasted pumpkin seeds finish it nicely.

*If you can't get four cups out of the pumpkin, adjust the recipe proportionately.

** Chuck added a finely chopped, tiny habanero pepper to give the soup a kick; we used a couple of very small but deadly Thai peppers, which provided a nice afterglow.

Cool Off with Cucumber Mint Soup

Temperatures are rising again after a fairly cool weekend, and we're looking for recipes that will help us beat the heat. Snooping around online this morning, we stumbled across this great-sounding recipe for Cucumber Mint Soup, which makes use of two items that many of us currently have in abundance. (We are always looking for mint recipes.)

This would make a perfect dinner on a day that's so hot you can't bear the thought of using the stove or even the grill. Add some bread and wine—and maybe some cheese and a green salad, if you're feeling ambitious—and those miserable temperatures might suddenly be a lot more tolerable.

The Pantry Project: Vegetable Soup

All week we've been eating out of our freezer, and by last night we'd exhausted the leftovers, slightly amazed by how many beans and lentils were involved: Salsa Casserole, dhal, and something called "bean stew" that we couldn't remember making but turned out to be a pleasant surprise, filled with black-eyed peas and kale. 


So it was time to move on to the other frozen bags and containers: broccoli raab, peas, vegetable stock, leftover bean-cooking liquid, and parmesan rinds. That may not sound very promising, but we're experienced scavengers. We knew that our refrigerator contained aging baby carrots and celery and that our pantry held a lot of canned tomatoes, rice, and (yes) beans. It was a no-brainer: we decided to make vegetable soup. 


It's hard to go wrong making vegetable soup, but it's possible, if you add too much water or use the wrong vegetables. (Many years ago we made a giant batch using eggplant and green peppers. Don't ever try this.) But over the years we've finally gotten it down, and we make it every time we need to clean out the crisper drawer.

We hesitate to call this a recipe, because it changes every time we make it. Sometimes we use potatoes instead of rice; sometimes we use hominy instead of beans. Here's what we made last night.


Vegetable Soup


2 T. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped 
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 cup chopped baby carrots
1 t. dried thyme
4 cups vegetable broth* 
2 cups bean-cooking liquid
1 parmesan rind
1 cup cooked broccoli raab, chopped roughly
1 cup frozen peas
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 can kidney beans
1/2 cup jasmine rice**
salt and pepper to taste


1. Heat the oil in a in a large pot or Dutch oven. Sauté the onion, garlic, celery, carrots, and thyme for a few minutes, until they soften.


2. Add the liquid, parmesan rind, broccoli raab, peas, tomatoes, and kidney beans. Cook for a few minutes, then taste for seasoning. Salt and pepper as necessary.


3. Add the rice and cook until it's done (about 15 minutes). If the soup is too thick, add water or broth to thin it. Taste again for seasoning. 


4. Fish out the parmesan rind and serve, proud that you've made such delicious use of a few cheap leftovers and pantry basics.


* Usually, we just use water when making this soup, but the leftover stock and bean water really boosted the flavor. 


** Cooked rice also works well in this recipe.

Beet Soup with Mushroom Patties

We intended to run Teresa Bobbitt's recipe for the Polish soup barszcz before Christmas, because it's traditionally served on Chrismas Eve. The holidays got away from us, but this recipe is too good to hold for another year. Winter brings wonderful beets to the market, so this can be made anytime you see a nice fat bunch in the store.

Teresa says, "Barszcz can be served as a main course with a big salad, or as the first course of a formal dinner. Both the soup and the patties are quite easy to make and can be prepared several days ahead and reheated."

Barszcz

3 onions

2 celery stalks or 1/2 celery root

2 parsley roots

2 onions

5 peppercorns

2 quarts water

6 medium beets, washed but unpeeled

1 t. dried marjoram

1 to 2 T. lemon juice

1 t. sugar

salt and pepper to taste

1. Simmer carrots, celery stalks or celery root, parsley root, onions, and peppercorns in salted water for 30 minutes. Strain.

2. Boil the beets in a small amount of water for 30 minutes. Run them under cold water, peel them, coarsely grate them, and add them to the broth.

3. Add the marjoram to the broth and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain, and discard the beets.

4. Add lemon juice, sugar, salt, and pepper.

Mushroom Patties

Stuffing:

2 T. butter

1 onion, sliced

10 ounces mushrooms, sliced

2 T. water

2 slices whole wheat bread

1 T. dried or 3 T. fresh dill

salt and pepper to taste

Dough:

2/3 cup butter

2 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

2 t. baking powder

2 egg yolks

1 egg

3 T. sour cream

1 egg white

For the stuffing:

1. Sauté onions in the butter until golden.

2. Add mushrooms and two tablespoons of water, and cook on low heat for five minutes.

3. Soak bread in water; squeeze.

4. Place everything in a food processor, add dill, season with salt and pepper, and blend until creamy.

For the dough:

1. Cut the butter into the flour with a knife or a pastry cutter.

2. Add baking powder, egg yolks, egg, and sour cream. Knead the dough for a few minutes, or put the ingredients into a food processor and process until the dough rolls into a ball.

3. Roll out dough into two 18-by-16-inch rectangles.

Making the patties:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Place a line of stuffing one inch inside the long edge of each rectangle. Fold the dough over the stuffing; brush with egg white.

3. Cut into 26 patties and place them on a buttered baking sheet.

4. Bake 35 minutes.

Add the patties to the soup just before serving. Serves six.

A Simple, Delicious Dish for the New Year: Ribollita

Once we got past the holidays, with their copious quantities of wine and cheese, we decided that some simple eating was in order— and that the Tuscan bread soup ribollita was the perfect match for our good intentions and the frigid weather.

We tasted ribollita for the first time a few years ago, in Tuscany. Our inn was a couple of miles from a delicatessen that seemed to exist primarily to serve the many tour buses that came rolling down the nearby highway. The deli's crude wooden benches and rustic tables contrasted with an enormous case of cheeses, sausages, breads, salads, and roasted vegetables. We ate there a few times, and although everything was great, the ribollita made a particular impression.

On the surface, it's a blah-looking mush of bread, beans, and whatever leftover vegetables the thrifty cook happened to throw in. But the flavor is astonishing, a mix of smoky pancetta, sweet tomatoes, rich broth, and garlic.

A quick Web search shows that versions vary considerably: some are little more than bread, pancetta, and tomatoes, while others resemble vegetable-packed minestrone. Here's the version we made on New Year's Day, which borrowed from several recipes, including Rachael Ray's (yeah, she's obnoxious, but she's often good on Italian dishes, and she possesses an endearingly awful Upstate New York accent that's even worse than Ruth's):

Ribollita

4 T. olive oil

4 ounces bacon (we used veggie bacon, which worked fine)

1 large onion, chopped

4 minced garlic cloves

2 carrots, chopped

1/2 cup red wine

6 cups stock (meat, chicken, or vegetable—we used veggie stock made in large part from the caramelized skins of roasted garlic, and it was great)

1 Parmesan cheese rind

15 ounce can tomatoes, with juice

28 ounce can white beans

4 cups chopped kale

4 cups bread, cut into 2-inch chunks

Salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the oil in a good-size pot, and fry the bacon for about five minutes.

2. Add onion, garlic, and carrots, and fry until soft.

3. Deglaze with red wine.

4. Add broth, Parmesan rind, tomatoes, and beans, and bring to a boil.

5. Add kale and reduce to a simmer. When kale is cooked through—about 15 minutes, depending on how finely you chopped it—add the bread, and continue simmering for an additional ten minutes.

6. Serve hot with grated Parmesan.

By the time you serve leftovers, the bread in the ribollita will have absorbed all the stock. This nearly solid substance—which barely qualifies as "soup"—is very similar in consistency to what we ate in Tuscany.

Teresa's End-of-the-Long-Ride Squash Soup

Our friend Teresa Bobbitt is passionate about many things, including gardening, cats, and homeopathy, but she is particularly interested in cycling and cooking. (It should go without saying that her greatest passion is her husband and fellow cyclist, Bob.) She thinks nothing of riding 100 miles, then coming home to whip up a healthy meal that's as delicious as it is organic. This recipe is the perfect ending to an autumn ride.

Squash Soup

1 winter squash (such as butternut or acorn), peeled and cubed

2 sweet potatoes or yams, peeled and cubed

2 carrots, cut into chunks

half a large onion, chopped

3 to 5 cloves of garlic

1/2 t. minced fresh ginger

1 t. chopped herbs (coriander, basil, and thyme are all good)

1 t. curry powder, or more to taste

6 cups vegetable broth

salt and pepper to taste

6 T. sherry

Half and Half

croutons

1. Simmer squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, ginger, herbs, and curry powder in the broth until the vegetables are soft, about 45 minutes.

2. Puree the mixture until creamy, using either a hand blender or a food processor. If using a processor, return the soup to the pot. If it's too thick, add more broth.

3. Reheat the soup. Add the sherry and adjust the seasonings. Before serving, add Half and Half to taste and garnish with croutons.

Serves six.

Incredibly Versatile White Beans

The Tuscan version of a pot on the stove could be ribollita, a thick twice-cooked bread soup that has a foundation of white beans.

White beans are very easy to make and very versatile, for everything from appetizers to main courses.

We see a lot of people on the cooking shows using canned white cannellini beans, but although they work OK in a pinch , but generally they taste too, well, canned. Our favorite recipe comes from Saveur, a food magazine that we loved to read, but admittedly rarely used for actual cooking.

Here's the recipe:

1 lb. dried cannellini or navy beans

4 T. extra-virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, crushed

4 or 5 fresh sage leaves

3 to 5 whole black peppercorns

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Sort through the beans, discarding any small stones; then rinse the beans under cold running water. Place them in a large casserole, cover with at least two inches with cold water, and set aside to soak for four hours or overnight. (You can also use the quick-soak method on the dried-bean bag.)

2. Drain beans; then add 12 cups cold water, two tablespoons olive oil, garlic, sage, and peppercorns. Cover the casserole, bring to a boil, then simmer over medium heat for about one hour. Season to taste with salt, reduce heat to medium low, and gently simmer, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until the skins are tender and the beans are soft, about one more hour.

3. Remove from heat, set aside, and let beans cool in the cooking liquid. To serve, reheat beans in the liquid over medium-low heat, drain them, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the remaining olive oil.

You can eat these right out of the pot, drizzled with a bit more olive oil. Add a piece of sourdough toast and a roaring fire, and you have a simple but wonderful winter dinner.

Waste Not Challenge: Red Mole Black Bean Soup

This month there’s a contest at the Fine Cooking site that’s perfect for the likes of us: Ellie Krieger’s Waste Not Challenge to create a dish from refrigerator leftovers.

The contest only runs through April 30, and we only got around to reading the rules on Saturday, but as it happened, we had a few items that really, really needed to be used up.

These included an aging batch of vegetable stock, an ancient but apparently immortal jar of Trader Joe’s red mole paste, part of a can of tomatoes, a rapidly ripening avocado, and some black beans, cilantro, and queso fresco left over from a recent Friday night dinner.

With a few contributions from the spice and onion drawers, these ingredients all came together in a dish that falls somewhere between soup and chili.

Will we use this recipe again? Definitely. But what we enjoyed most was the challenge to make do with what we had—to add this, tweak that and in the process come up with something entirely new and, for all practical purposes, free.

Recipe

1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. olive oil
7 cups vegetable stock
2 cups cooked black beans
1 ½ cups diced canned tomatoes, with juice
2 T. red mole paste
1 t. ground cumin
1 t. dried oregano
1 T. mild chili powder
1 T. Bragg’s Liquid Aminos* (optional)
salt and fresh-ground pepper to taste
four small corn tortillas, shredded

Garnishes:
diced avocado
chopped cilantro
crumbled queso fresco**

1. Saute garlic and onion in oil until soft.

2. Add stock, beans, and tomatoes. Bring to boil, then reduce to simmer.

3. Add mole paste; stir until paste dissolves.

3. Add cumin, oregano, chili powder, Bragg’s, salt, and pepper. Simmer for 15 minutes.

4. Add shredded tortillas; simmer until they fall apart, about 20 minutes.

5. Serve with garnishes.

* If you ever find yourself with a flat-tasting vegetarian dish, this product adds depth of flavor without adding a lot of salt. It’s available in many supermarkets (near the vinegar), or in any health food store.

** Although you can substitute feta cheese for queso fresco, the Mexican cheese adds a nice meaty texture to the soup. Available at Costco as well as Hispanic markets.

Never Waste a Flavor: Homemade Stock

Whether they’re based on meat, poultry, or just vegetables, boxed and canned stocks can really add to your food bill, particularly if you’re fond of soups and stews. But if you use your freezer wisely, you can make your own stocks for free!

Last year, when we were working through a big weekly box of produce from our local C.S.A., we noticed how quickly our kitchen compost pail was filling up with beautiful, organic scraps. Although this was great for our compost bin, it seemed very wasteful, especially as a quart of veggie stock cost more than $4 at our neighborhood market.

So we changed our ways. Now we save almost all of our vegetable trimmings in a large Ziploc bag we keep stashed in the freezer. Aside from the Big Three flavor basics (onion, celery, carrot), the bag may contain, at any given moment, the trimmings of asparagus, eggplant, leeks, shallots, garlic, mushrooms, parsley, potatoes, red bell peppers, spinach, squash, tomatoes . . . . actually, it’s easier just to list what shouldn’t be added to your veggie bag, because of their strong flavors or color: beets, broccoli, cilantro, ginger, green pepper (if you’re planning on making borscht or broccoli soup or something Asian, however, some of these would work fine.)

Once you’ve filled your Ziploc—or, if you’ve been slacking off or cooking a lot of veggies, two Ziplocs—dump the frozen trimmings into a stockpot along with whatever Death Row items are in your crisper: wilted lettuce leaves, withered carrots, yellowing celery. If you have leftover cooked vegetables that probably won’t get eaten, they can be tossed in.

Next, add enough water to not quite cover. Beware of putting too much water in your stock; you can always add more liquid later if need be. If the mix is light on carrots or onions or greens or garlic, feel free to chop some up and throw them in. (Really, though, we’ve found that no matter what’s in the mix, the stock always comes out fine.) Simmer it for about 30 minutes, until everything is cooked and mushy. Strain it into a large bowl. Because we're real cheapskates, we use a potato masher to extract every bit of flavor.

We generally end up with between 6 and 8 cups of stock. Usually, we leave the container in the refrigerator, and dip into it as we need it, but if we’ve made an extra-big batch, we’ll freeze some.

This recipe is for vegetable stock, but the same can be done with the cooked or uncooked bones of chicken, fish, or meat. Nigella Lawson boasts of turning her freezer into “Golgotha” and carting home bones from other people’s dinner parties (now that’s what we call thriftiness!).

As long as you save your vegetable scraps, you’ll always have the base for an economical batch of soup or stew. And you may never have to buy prepared stock again.