June 09, 2008

green garlic and spinach soup

Oh hi, it's me, it's seems that I've yet again fallen into crazy days at work, days that are interminable. My last push towards getting better from the endless cold involved getting a second course of antibiotics and last week was all but a blur, with 15 hour work days and general chaos notwithstanding. The antibiotics are also making me very tired as a result, but one of the side-effects is that of having trouble sleeping. Lovely, lovely stuff, I tell ya.

However, I have to, however briefly, tell you about this soup I made a few weeks back that was just beyond heaven. I was quite inspired by Molly's dreamy write-up on it and ever since I read her post on this soup, it's been on the foreground of my mind.

And so when I spied the green garlic at our Saturday local greenmarket, I was quite overcome with joy because this soup was now well within my reach! My enthusiasm scared KS a bit because once I set my mind on something food-related, I am very ebullient about it. He is more of a subdued force and acts as a very good foil to my otherwise irrational exuberance. But I think this time my glee was well-founded - we loved the soup so much, we finished all, but a single bowl of it in one hungry sitting.

I added some seductively fragrant extra-virgin olive oil to our bowls as we try to go as much dairy-free as possible. I highly recommend a dollop of the finest olive oil you have in the house to enhance it.

April 25, 2008

chicken soup with matzo balls

I meant to post this earlier this week – KS was sick this weekend and I made him this chicken soup. But I myself came down with a horrible stomach bug on Wednesday and could do no more than lie in bed and sleep while trying to shake of a fever. But now that I’m better, I have to post this recipe before it gets way too hot for chicken soup. Because this was KS’s favorite soup to date and besides the porcini mushroom soup which I can’t speak highly enough of, this might be mine too.

Everything in the soup just worked, the flavors were deep, developed, perfect. It possessed a thick heartiness to it, and filled your belly with warm, comforting, familiar flavors. I call it my everything-but-the-kitchen-sink soup. I put a lot of various things in it and it does take some time to make, but it is totally and wholly worth it.

Don't forget to skim the frothy part of the broth when the whole thing boils for the first time - for that I've included a rather unappetising picture of the froth - so you know what it looks like and are compelled to skim it ever-so-vigilantly.

I would also steer you in the direction of buying a whole chicken, rather than chicken parts. I’m convinced that there’s something magical in the proportion of white meat and dark meat and it makes the broth just right texture wise. It’s just as simple to pull the bones out of a whole chicken as chicken parts – when it’s so fully cooked it’s falling off the bone, the whole process takes mere minutes. Besides, when you get a whole chicken, you get the neck, the giblets and the tiny chicken liver – and aren’t those the best parts?

November 04, 2007

red lentil soup with garam masala

I have to give credit where it’s due – this soup would not have been possible if it weren’t for KS who kindly and willingly entertains my flights of fancy in the kitchen. If, while I’m eating breakfast at my desk at work, I email him to, oh, soak the lentils for an hour prior to me coming home and making dinner because I think this garam masala spiced lentil soup sounds swell, he emails back agreeably and ha! because victory is mine, and time, dear time, since there’s so not enough of you in the day, I’ve just tricked you if only a little bit and saved myself and KS an hour before we can commence dinner. If that’s not pure genius on my part, I don’t know what is.

I’ve already confessed to you that I’m a total sissy when it comes to morning darkness, but also like to clean few pots and pans in the kitchen on weeknight. The cooking thing too, you know, I do love it, but sometimes it separates me from my meal and while I feel all European and chic dining at 10 pm, I think my body prefers and earlier time (I think my body likes me to be square and eat at 7pm – body, if you’re reading this, 7pm dinners are not happening on weeknights. Ever. Unless I quit working.)

So daylight savings are here, (yay), which means, when I leave work it’ll be pitch black, but when I wake up, hopefully, there’ll be a smidgeon of light in the sky. And yes, while gym in the morning sounds like medieval form of torture (and until I am actually inside the gym working out seems to be), it does make me better focused, happier, more productive during the day. Not productive enough not to go in to work on a Sunday mind you, but it is, after all, November.

But, back to cooking and soup. November has arrived here without any forewarning and brought with it some cold and winds. I’m okay with the cold, I’ve got my new stylin’ warm coat and all, but the winds, the winds, people. I assure you that whatever winds you think you’re feeling, come to Tribeca and walk on Greenwich Street for a few blocks and you will know what I mean. It’s beyond a wind tunnel, it’s like a wind warp. No matter how warm a coat you have on, it will piece you through to the bone.

Which is where this soup arrives. A hot bowl of this, and you will feel warm all over again. It has a myriad of spices, and while you can certainly make it hot-spicy, you can just leave it at spicy, as in flavorful. We needed that extra kick so I gave it a little sambar powder and KS of course added hot sauce to his bowl. Oh and I loved putting together my own spice blend - it made me so happy!

And aside from being a 30 minute dinner dish (without the soaking of the lentils part) and a one pot meal to boot, it tasted like a good, authentic, Indian soup. It was really good, incredibly good in fact – and had more developed flavor the following day. To make it even better, we served it with a toasted piece of rye-raisin bread. The spices in the bread with the sweetness of the raisin were a perfect compliment to the soup flavors and the bread helped to temper some of the spice. Will I be making it again this season – this simple, quick, flavorful, warm, delicious, low-maintenance, nearly-no-clean-up soup? You bet.

August 31, 2007

the long-winded way to tell you about this sorrel thing i've been so crazy about

So really, how many childhood-memories-in-a-recipe can I recall before even the most congenial person rolls his or her eyes and groans “What is it with your perfect childhood? Why can’t you just live in the present?” And really I do, I promise you. It’s just that for so long I wanted to eat everything, but the cuisine I grew up with. And reading a piece in this week’s New Yorker magazine’s annual food issue by Gary Shteyngart, with whom I share many an immigrant experience, I paused to examine my teenage aversion to the cuisine of my childhood and my obsession with all things American-cuisine related, including those golden arches, I now so revile.

I don’t know what caused me to start craving my “ethnic” food so to speak. I put ethnic in quotations, because for as long as I lived in Russia, I was constantly reminded of not belonging. Being Jewish in Russia, had little to do with your religion (which my parents didn’t practice in the slightest), and everything to do with your “race” or “ethnicity” because that’s what it was and continues to be considered. So the Russian food I grew up with, mixed with the Jewish food of my family, was all mixed together, but I was always conscious of Russian culture as that to which I didn’t belong. It was only in America that my Jewishness became associated with my religions leanings, and where I came from, namely Russia, became my defining cultural adjective. When people ask me about my background, I tell them I’m Russian.

In any case, there was a long, long period, when I refused to go out to Russian restaurants and willingly eat and cook Russian food. I chastised my mother, I wanted to change, to adapt, and I was tired of eating the same kotlety and borscht I grew up with during my childhood. But something changed after I moved to New York. It wasn’t that I suddenly found myself surrounded by Russian friends, it wasn’t so much the presence of Russian cuisine in my beloved Brooklyn, where I first made my home in New York. It was something else, a feeling of loneliness perhaps, that made me crave the food again. Far away from my family, without a single friend in the city, working long hours in an environment that was harsh and pitiless, I would come home from work, throw a dozen of frozen pelmeni into the pot of boiling water and in ten minutes, I would have hot and hearty dinner waiting for me. A dollop of sour cream, a splash of white vinegar and I would sink into the couch with my bowl of meaty dumplings closing my eyes at each swallow – blissfully forgetting my misery if only for the few minutes it would take me to consume my dinner. I think it was then that I realized that you can leave home, if only temporarily, only to long for it again. I envied my Russian friends with families around them, I wanted that security as well. But I chose this lot for myself and had to stick it out.

When KS and I met, I was delighted to learn that he had an appetite and a food curiosity that rivaled mine and while it took me awhile to cook for him, I definitely tried a few Russian dishes on him – and he loved each and every one of them. Stuffed cabbage, pelmeni, the Russian potato salad otherwise known as olyvie, borscht, mushroom soup, herring – KS ate everything and always went back for seconds.

And so when I begged him to get a sorrel plant for our rooftop garden and he acquiesced, I told him of this wonderful schav my mom would make for us in Russia where sour grass, its other name, would be abundant and cheap. We brought the little plant home and gave it a nice pot. But it never grew to anything big and I postponed the soup each time.

That is until last Saturday, when I found myself staring at bags of sorrel at our local green market. I was so excited that I grabbed the bag as fast as I could as if the other dozens of bags were suddenly going to disappear. I brought the bag home and proudly proclaimed, “Oh, I am making us some schav, baby!!”

To which KS replied, “Yeah, so um how do you make it?”

And this is where I drew up a blank. Sure, I’ve eaten this soup more times than I could recall, but I had no idea how to make it. Of course, mom, only a phone call away, patiently explained to me how to make this super simple soup. And when I say super simple, people, I mean, this is the pits. It’s as easy and fool proof as it gets. No wonder we made this all the time in the summer. And the little shrimpy me with no appetite whatsoever, would eat two full bowls of this every time.

This recipe is different than other schav recipes I’ve seen out there. I’m not sure why my family makes it differently, but I can honestly say I prefer my mom’s recipe to the other ones I’ve had. For one thing it’s more clean-tasting, and secondly, it’s clear and pretty. But like all childhood-favorite foods, we always think our version is better than everyone else’s.

We’re visiting my parents this weekend and my mother’s making borscht. I’m sure there will be other Russian goodies present. And I can’t wait.

August 17, 2007

a blanket and a soup

Whether or not you’re working in finance and even if you understand the stock market about as much as cats can read, you have probably (unless you were camping for two weeks in the mountains) been privy to what the markets have been doing recently on sub-prime news. The malaise has spilled from the US indices, which have been languishing and have nearly lost all their 2007 gains, into markets world-wide. So even if a “naked short” makes you think of an unclothed midget, and an “option” to you is whether to take a nap or go for a run, chances are, if you have any personal investments whatsoever, you have watched them lose their gains – and it’s been a bit depressing to say the least. I know I know, what goes up, must, eventually come down.

But I'll spare you the market analysis because I don’t feel qualified to really comment further, however, despite the fact that I work in the field. Suffice to say, it’s been quite busy at work, longer days, working from home, and I’ve all but forgotten that shiny beacon of light – the gym. When I am stressed out, I turn to my kitchen, not so much to eat, but to cook. The chopping, the stirring, the clean-up in between, all soothe and comfort me. They allow me some control over the world which often feels uncontrollable. And I like to get me some of that control from time to time.

In times like these, stressful and worrying times, while most ply themselves with sweets and baked goods in times like these, I turn to the warm savories: soups, mashed potatoes, rice and endless cups of tea (not quite the savory, but warm!). As soon as this recipe flashed across my screen, it was pretty much all I could think about. Sure, I read words like “chilled” and "freeze", but I knew this soup could be enjoyed warm as well as hot. I decided to cut the recipe in half from its original proportions, in case it turned into a soup for a small army and substitute sage for thyme. I’m rather indifferent to thyme as an herb and prefer the frosty-looking leaves of sage. But those are just the details. Oh and since there was no crème fraîche anywhere in our neighborhood (who knew, Tribeca?) we had to settle for sour cream. But in my Russian sour-cream adoring book, that’s hardly a tragedy.

I encourage you to try the soup first without the crème fraîche or sour cream and then add the dairy in – if your soup turns out anything like mine, you will notice how the dairy really accentuates and deepens the flavor. KS, of course, had to give his bowl a bit more kick with some home-made Trinidadian hot sauce, given to us by a friend. And the soup works both ways – warm and chilled – so if you make it and cannot wait to try a bowl that very same evening, go for it. Grab a light blanket, pop in a movie, eat this soup by spoonfuls. I was in such a state of bliss eating mine that I temporarily forgot about the Wall Street doldrums.

February 19, 2007

basking in someone else's glory

I was a bit saddened by this NYTimes article – couples where one person is the alpha cook and doesn’t give up control, watching his partner’s every kitchen move, and sometimes (gasp!) putting them down! This made me sad, for food, to me, is one of many ways we show that we care, extend ourselves, and bond with others. While I am extremely detail oriented and a perfectionist in the kitchen, I am also of the persuasion that I don’t need to be in control in the kitchen all the time. Quite the opposite, I find it quite refreshing to kick back and let someone else do the work in the kitchen. Provided of course, that the person cooking know what he’s doing. Luckily for me, the BF is that person, knowingly navigating the kitchen and teaching me a thing or two in the process.

Which brings me, perhaps, to a bit of a name change here. After I sang him praises and vowed to give him due credit for this entry’s meal, he decided he no longer wanted to go in the disguise of the vacuous and impersonal label of BF, and instead adopt a nom-de-plume of Konstantin Steel (the K, being my Russification of his vision, I’m sure). If you start wonder where on earth he came up with such a name, then I’ll allude to a discussion we once had of what our names would be if we were exotic film stars. His was Konstantin Steel; mine – will remain a deep, dark secret. Ha!

But back to all things cooking-related; this week, I’ve cooked almost nothing. Work’s been quite demanding and there was Valentine’s Day in the middle as well. I did accomplish quite a bit last week, on the kitchen front, but I’ve yet to blog about it – I am SO behind (head down in shame).

But KS, my goodness, he was a cooking superstar this week. He picked up my slack and raised it up a notch. So not only did he make me a sublime dinner of Lobel’s steak with mashed potatoes, mushrooms and roasted green beans for Valentine’s Day (I’m still faint from it), but last night, he whipped up this Tuscan White Bean soup that hit just the spot. He even soaked the beans the night before. All I did was chop the vegetables for our customized mirepoix and eat the soup. Not bad for an alpha cook! Not to mention yesterday morning when he made us delecable huevos rancheros, toasted tortillas and everything, and all I did was pour coffee and grab some forks.

So you see, I relinquish kitchen control quite easily, in fact, KS and I switch the alpha cook roles depending on who is cooking what and who’s specialty it is. Today, for example, I promised to make him those white chocolate, pignolia nuts, cranberry cookies he’s been asking for weeks. While I’d rather not mention repeats here, the cookies were such a hit, I’m still hearing about them two months after Christmas. This will be my alpha cook moment – but last night, I was quite happy in the beta category, playing sous-chef and staying out of the way.

In the end, I think that two very competent cooks can play nicely in the kitchen – it’s just a matter of taking turns, giving up a little control, and most importantly realizing that the person who is cooking for you is crafting a gift of love, and what can be more perfect that that?

December 29, 2005

Borscht - Improving the Original

Sometime mid-week last week, I felt divine inspiration to cook and toss all my daily tasks to the wind. I suspect that sudden burst of energy and desire were prompted more by the chilly weather and gusts of wind than by any deity tapping me on the shoulder with a whisk or a baster. Fondly recollecting my mother’s soups – for she claims the title for best soup-maker – I phoned her to get a recipe for one of my childhood favorites, and thus a Russian standard – borscht.

Many an American has wrinkled his nose when a beet is introduced into a conversation. Growing up in a suburban America, I was always defending root vegetables. Turnips, carrots, beets, radishes. I was labeled a weird eater, an immigrant. And I grew up thinking that not only beets were uncool (albeit tasty), but they were also a form of lower-income diet. Imagine my surprise when my monthly issue of Martha Stewart Living arrived (I must have been the only 16 year old with a MSL subscription) and I found a salad of beets and chevre beautifully displayed as one of the recipes. Either beets were gaining ground or Martha was going back to her Polish roots. Either way, beets broke out of their stigma.

Nowadays you find beets in most prestigious restaurants. They’re in salads, in vegetable arrangements, served as elegant side-dishes. Their deep, rich color and sweet earthy flavor and texture are both filling and surprisingly light. They smell of the earth, of winter and of hearth. And despite their lowly upbringing, they’re quite elegant and sophisticated.

The soup takes a few hours to make if only because you want the flavors to deepen and blend together. It is not a complicated soup to make provided you have patience to chop everything and stir occasionally. When completed and ready to eat, it will warm you up from a cold wintry day and satisfy your hunger. As intense in its flavor as it is hot, borscht really exemplifies Russian cooking – hearty, warm and flavorful.

December 01, 2005

Porcini Mushroom Soup

Porcini Barley Soup

As soon as colder weather hits, my thoughts turn to comfort foods. Foods that are warm and liquid that make me feel all cozy inside. And what can be more comforting on a cold winter day than a bowl of soup? Mushroom soup to be precise.

I’ve made this soup every Thanksgiving for the last three years. I also tend to make in in the colder fall and winter months. It’s intensely flavored, fragrant and filling soup. People have been known to get seconds and some – thirds. When I was a little girl, it was one of the few things I would always have the appetite to eat. My mother served it to me with a thick slice of black, Russian bread with butter.

This is an old family recipe. I’ve elaborated on it by substituting some shallots for some of the onions. I think it deepens and complements the flavor of the mushrooms and gives the soup a deeper, more complex flavor. My mother, ever so reluctant to have the family recipe altered, agreed with me after tasting my version.

I insist on using only porcini mushrooms for this soup, otherwise the flavor is just not the same. You can find dried porcini mushrooms in specialty stores, or order them online – their dry state does not weaken their flavor. I’ve not encountered fresh ones in the United States, however, back in Russia where I grew up, we feasted on the fresh ones in the summer and fall.

Porcini mushrooms are distinctly flavored with a deep earthy, nutty, almost meaty flavor. It is my absolute favorite mushroom (other than a chanterelle, which gets second place in my book) and can be used to create an absolutely incredible sauce to mashed potatoes. Barley and potatoes add texture to the soup, so don’t skip them. You want stuff in your soup – stuff is very important, and fewer things make a meal more comforting than potatoes.