Happy New Year!

If you haven’t heard, it’s been unusually rainy in L.A.
I’m on a serious soup kick (as evidenced on this blog). I’m like Jamie on Top Chef; have you noticed how she’s always making soups? I bet they’re delicious, even though she should have gotten kicked off already for underdone chickpeas/hospital visit (?) Why did Jen have to go? Why did she yell at the judges? God, I love that show.

Tortilla Soup is usually made with chicken broth, and shredded chicken, and lots of other stuff.

I wanted to develop a recipe that was vegetarian/vegan. This is not adapted from any specific recipe, so you can call it inauthentic or whatever. It tastes good, and it involves condiments and garnishes!

Tortilla Soup
1 Large Onion
1 Medium Red Bell Pepper or Pablano Pepper
3 Garlic cloves
1/4 Cup tomato paste
2-4 Cups canned tomatoes (whole, diced, roasted, whatever)
3-4 Cups vegetable stock/water
1/2-1 Tablespoon Chipotle chilis (I actually just use the sauce they come in, and it has a big kick, so add to your liking)
1 Bay leaf
1 Tablespoon Cumin
1 Teaspoon Coriander
1/2 Teaspoon Chili Powder
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil

Garnishes and Toppings
Corn Tortillas – Cut them in half, and then into strips. Fry them in oil until browned and crunchy.
Cilantro – Rough Chop
Avocado – Cubed
Lime Wedges – For squeezing
Cheese – If you fancy or aren’t vegan

Get a soup pot on the stove and turn the heat on to medium. Add oil. Get it hot.
Chop onion and pepper and throw it in the pot. Let the onion and pepper soften – about 10 minutes.
Add garlic, cumin, coriander, chili powder, chipotle, and bay. Let that cook another 2 minutes or so.
Add tomato paste, coat everything with it.
Add canned tomatoes and vegetable stock/water. Bring everything to a boil, then simmer for 20-30 minutes.
Once it’s simmered, turn off the heat and blend the soup with an immersion blender (or in a blender, but it’s so much easier with a blender on a stick.)

Garnish Preparation:
While the soup is simmering, prepare the garnishes.
Fry tortilla strips, cube avocados, cut lime wedges, chop cilantro.

To assemble the soup:
Put some tortilla strips in the bottom of a bowl.

Ladle soup on top of the strips.
Top with avocado, cilantro, and more tortilla strips.
Squeeze lime juice on the soup before eating.

Enjoy!

Recently, my dad gave me Around My French Table as a gift (yay!). It’s a beautiful book, with countless recipes I’m eager to try. Predictably, I was most interested in trying out the desserts first.

This spice-poached pears recipe is delightful and perfect for a winter dinner party. I might even call it vanilla-spiced pears, because the flavor of the vanilla bean is so strong and wonderful.

*I take out the pear core with a melon baller.

Dorie Greenspan’s Spice-poached Apples or Pears
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup sugar
3 cups water
Zest and Juice of 1/2 an orange (zest removed in wide strips)
Zest and Juice of 1/2 a lemon (zest removed in wide strips)
2 pieces star anise
1 piece thin cinnamon stick
1 split vanilla bean
3 medium apples or pears – peeled, halved and cored

Put all the ingredients except the fruit in a large saucepan, turn the heat to medium-high, and bring to a boil. As soon as the liquid boils, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer the syrup for 5 minutes.

Carefully drop the apples or pears into the pan and bring the syrup back to a simmer. Cover the pan and cook until the fruit can be pierced easily with a thin knife, 10-15 minutes, depending on the fruit; check early and often. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the fruit to a bowl.

Turn up the heat and boil the syrup for 10 minutes, at which point you’ll have about 1 1/4 cups. Pour the syrup over the fruit, cover, and let cool until slightly warm or at room temperature.

*I like to serve it with ice cream or whipped cream.

(Poaching liquid)

For years and years, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make Squash Soup good. The best version of it I ever had was at Milk on Beverly (seriously). I’ve made decent versions, but none were great.

What do bad squash soups have in common? They’re BLAND. After trying all kinds of flavorings and spices, I started to think that the only way to combat bland is with shitloads of cream. It felt like the easy way out. I started compiling all the squash soup recipes I could get my hands on. FINALLY, I figured it out:

YOU NEED TO ROAST THE SQUASH FIRST.

Most recipes just have you stick the squash raw in the pot. That’s the wrong thing to do if you’re interested in an awesome tasting soup. So here’s my recipe, adapted from Peter Berley’s The Flexitarian Table, and Alton Brown.

WINTER SQUASH SOUP

2 large squash (6 cups) – 1 Butternut, 1 Kabocha (the contrast of these two made the soup super better than if it was one or the other)
1 medium white onion – small dice
1 medium leek – small dice
3 cloves garlic – minced
1 tablespoon FRESH grated ginger (so good)
4 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup apple cider
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons fresh sage
1 tablespoon honey (optional)
1/4 cup Half and Half or heavy cream (optional)
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Cut your squash in half (see above), and scoop out the seeds and stuff. Drizzle olive oil over the squash, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pop it in the oven for 30-40 minutes, or until cooked/fork tender (squashes and ovens vary).

Meanwhile prep the rest of your ingredients. Once the squash is cooked, scoop it out and have it ready for the soup.

In a soup pot or a dutch oven, pour a little olive oil in to coat the bottom of the pot. On medium heat, sauté onions and leeks for 5-10 minutes until the onions soften but don’t brown. Add garlic and ginger, and sauté for 5 more minutes.

Add squash flesh, veg. stock, cider, and sage. Bring all the ingredients to a simmer. Simmer for 20 minutes, then turn the heat off.

Blend the soup. (I live for immersion blenders). Taste it. Add salt and pepper accordingly. You can add some honey if you want it sweeter (you probably won’t need to since roasting the squash makes it super sweet). If you like things creamy, add some cream. I added a couple tablespoons of cream for a little extra flavor. It helped, but was in no way the star of the show. Honestly, I could have left it out altogether.

Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from Mark Peel’s NEW CLASSIC FAMILY DINNERS

This recipe isn’t hard, but it has a lot of steps. This is great to make when you feel like being in the kitchen for a bit. This recipe is not great if you’re in a rush to get food on a table.

Also, this soup has no dairy or meat!

Roasted Tomato Soup
5-6 pounds vine-ripened tomatoes
2/3 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Kosher Salt + Fresh Ground Pepper
6 ounces bread (preferably without seeds, preferably whole wheat)
1 Large Onion (Coarse chop)
2 Stalks of Celery (Coarse chop)
1/2 Pound Leeks (2 small or 1 Big… Don’t skip this!)
1 Small Red Bell Pepper
1/2 Dried Chili (Or you could use 1/2 TSP red pepper flakes, depending on how hot you want it)
1 Head of garlic (Rough Chop)
Handful of thyme (fresh)
Handful of Basil (fresh)
Handful of Parsley (fresh)
My additions: 1 1/2 Tablespoons Tomato Paste, and 2 Tablespoons Maple Syrup (Both of these things were to help out the acid situation – my tomatoes weren’t so sweet… taste your roasted tomatoes to determine)

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. One rack in the center, one rack in the top third. For round tomatoes cut them in half through the equator. For Roma tomatoes, cut them in half lengthwise. Toss those guys in a large bowl with 6 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Put them cut side down on a sheet pan (see above). Place on the middle and upper racks of the oven. Roast for 45 minutes, or more importantly, until they’re done: they will have blistered slightly browned skins and the tomatoes will be soft. In my oven, the top rack finished 5 minutes before the middle one – so check it out, the tomatoes may be done at different times.

2. While those guys are roasting, cube the bread and toss it with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Put it on a baking sheet and toast it in the oven (or toaster oven!) 10-15 minutes or until they’re crisp/done

3. While all that’s happening, get your veggie base going. Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil over med. heat in a soup pot or Dutch oven (if you want to hire me for something, I accept payments in Le Creuset). Add the onion, celery, leeks, bell pepper, chili, and some salt and pepper to the pot. Cook veggies over medium low for 15 -20 minutes until softened with light color. Stir often. Then add all that garlic for another 5 minutes. Stir often. Add the tomato paste and get all the veggies coated.

4. Add the roasted tomatoes, bread cubes, 1 quart of water, and bring everything to a simmer (turn the heat to Medium High). Add some more salt and pepper. Simmer 30 minutes, stir it often so that nothing burns on the bottom.

5. Here’s where it gets tricky. The recipe suggests you remove the soup from the heat and pour it through a food mill fitted with a fine blade. Do you have a food mill? Do you know what one is? I don’t have one (yet). Also, I had a bread issue. Mine had seeds, it’s all I had so I used it.
So. If you don’t have a mill, this is what I did: I blended the soup with an immersion blender. You can use a regular blender if you don’t have an immersion one (but immersion blenders are cheap and worth the investment). I then took a regular fine mesh strainer and strained the soup. I caught A LOT OF SEEDS, tomato and otherwise. If you have a food mill, pour the soup through it, and then blend the soup after it’s gone through the mill. This suggested method will probably create ultimate smoothness.

6. I heated the strained soup, and added any seasoning I felt it needed. It was silky, had depth, and was creamy without cream. Delicious!

I served the soup with roasted chicken pesto salad and broccoli crunch salad. At home, I’d probably want to eat it with grilled cheese.

I could watch Julia all day.

The omelette is tricky. It’s satisfying to execute it perfectly. I like to use a spatula to mix up the eggs as they set. It seems to make my omelette a little fluffier.

Julia is right (always). She’s especially right about needing a good omelette pan. It makes all the difference in the world.

If you’re not in the mood for an omelette, you could try Beef Tartare Gratineé Letterman.

I know it’s no surprise that I love Julia. Aside from her enormous influence on home-cooking, I love her because she’s just so ballsy: can you imagine a TV chef today making mistakes on camera? burning food? plating imperfectly? laughing at herself?

Cooking is often an attempt at achieving perfection. Perfection is often impossible. In Michael Ruhlman’s book The Soul of a Chef, he describes how Thomas Keller, early in his career, had to make Hollandaise sauce every day. That Hollandaise sauce became Keller’s obsession. The sauce never came out the same way twice.

No one deals with imperfections better than Julia.

Last Night’s Menu:
* Marinated chicken skewers with Harissa and Hummus dipping sauces
* Root vegetable tagine served on a bed of whole wheat cous cous
* Israeli-style salad (means lots of cucumber, tomato, green onion)
* Bittersweet chocolate and pear cake, with brown butter! (recipe via Smitten Kitchen of course)

You guys, homemade Harissa is a revelation.
I’ve had goopy, too thick, too cumin-y, gross Harissas. This was none of those things:

Harissa Dipping Sauce Recipe
Adapted from Food & Wine Magazine, November 2010
*Technically, I think Harissa is traditionally more of a chili paste. This is more red pepper dip, but whatever, call it red sauce if you feel like it. I care less about the name, and more about the taste. This tastes good.

– 3 Whole Roasted Red Peppers (You can buy these in a jar or at a deli counter, but it’s easy to roast them yourself if you’re in the mood)
– 1/2 Tsp Cumin
– 1/2 Tsp Coriander
– 1/2 Tsp Caraway
– Thai Chili (I chopped up about 1/2 a tsp, but if you like spicy, go crazy)
– 1 garlic clove
– 2-3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
– Juice of 1/2 a large lemon (or to taste)
– Salt and Pepper

Food and Wine will tell you to toast whole cumin, coriander and caraway seeds, and then grind those suckers. I didn’t have a spice grinder (or coffee grinder – which is the exact same thing), so I used pre-ground (but fresh!) spices. If you’re going to grind your spices, use a whole teaspoon of each kind of spice.

Mince your chili pepper and garlic.

Use a food processor, blender, or an immersion blender and combine all the ingredients until you blend the Harissa to your liking. I’m not interested in perfectly smooth, so my Harissa wasn’t

Instead of chicken skewers, you could marinate and cook some tofu or seitan to dip in the sauce. Lamb would be delicious too. Hummus is a nice complimentary sauce to serve alongside Harissa.

The second revelation came from this Root Vegetable Tagine:

This dish is savory, but has a surprising sweetness to it. The yams and parsnips released their juices and made something incredible. It looks sort of mundane, but this dish is so delicious. Naturally sweet, filling, aromatic, autumnal, yum.

Adapted from, Bon Appetit Oct. 2010. I added parsnip, and took away one of the turnips they recommend. My chickpeas were plain, not spice roasted. I didn’t grind my spices. I added extra garlic. I omitted preserved lemon (I may reconsider this in the future). Otherwise, I followed the recipe.

To end the meal…cake!