Nourishing an Occupation 7: Red Curry Pumpkin-Peanut Soup

Are you cooking for an Occupation? I'm looking for guest bloggers to write about their experiences of the Occupy movement and their food. Please contact me here (note: this link will take you to another website).

This autumn, I find myself in the very happy situation of having an abundance of pumpkins.  Pumpkins are one of my favorite foods and are a wonderful medium for creative cooking.  They are not just for jack-o-lanterns or pie, but are a great basis for both savory and sweet dishes.

This Sunday, I looked at my pile of pumpkins and started a free improvisation soup composition.  The result: a savory Red Curry Pumpkin Peanut soup that was heartily enjoyed by guests from Occupy Wall Street and Vassar College at the Occupy Poughkeepsie encampment.

This soup is packed with protein, fiber, flavor, and thermal inertia.  You might be a nerd if you try to convince someone to try a bowl of soup based on its thermal inertia, but those are exactly the words I heard come out of my mouth, standing on the dark streets of Poughkeepsie.  By that, I meant it 'holds its heat', once warm, it stays warm for a long time and will keep your body warm too.

For this soup, I started with 2 pumpkins of 2 different varieties.  One 'Long Island Cheese' which is shown cut open above with the seeds mostly cleaned out, has a dull pale outer skin and a deep orange flesh.  When you cut into one, you'll get an aroma like a sweet melon.  These pumpkins are as big as the jack-o-lantern pumpkins that most people don't eat, but they have a much more flavorful and dense flesh. 

The other pumpkin was a smaller 'sugar' or 'pie' pumpkin.  It has a deep orange outer skin and pale, but sweet flesh on the inside.

 

After scooping out the seeds (I'll toast them later for snacking), I laid them face-down in backing dishes, put a little water in the bottom of each dish and roasted them in the oven at 375F.  I tested after about 45 min.  They are done when you can insert a fork into them easily.  The large one took about an hour to be done.  They smell really good while they're baking. When they were done, I set them on the counter to cool.

 

While the pumpkins were roasting, I soaked 6 oz dried bean thread (a/k/a cellophane) noodles in hot water and rinsed and soaked 10 dried shiitake mushrooms in a separate vessel of hot water.  Dried shiitakes are one of the best ways I've found to provide that richness of flavor called umami into vegan food.

 

I chopped 1 large onion and 3 large cloves of garlic and sauteed them in hot oil in my largest soup pot.  When they were translucent, I added a couple quarts of water. a couple cups of split red lentils (masoor dal) and a little salt and brought to boil. I cooked this at a rolling boil until lentils disintegrated.  I decided to add the lentils for 2 reasons: first, to add protein to make the soup more nutritious; second to give the soup a smooth, thick texture (and thermal inertia).  Red lentils are about the same color as pumpkin and fairly neutral in flavor so they did not interfere with the overall aesthetic that was developing.

When the lentils were nearly disintegrated and the pumpkin cool enough to handle, I scooped the flesh out of the pumpkin with a large spoon and plopped it into the soup.  The lentils and pumpkin simmered together for a moment while I went upstairs to borrow my landlady's immersion blender.  Being very careful, not to burn myself with molten pumpkin and lentils, I blended until the contents of the whole pot were nice and smooth.

I drained and chopped the softened bean thread noodles....

and shiitake mushrooms, and threw them into the pot.

I seasoned the soup with several Tbs of Thai Kitchn brand red curry paste, about 1/2 cup of smooth peanut butter, a dash of salty ume plum vinegar. a generous dash of soy sauce (I would have used fish sauce but I was making this soup be vegan), a splash of cider vinegar to brighten the flavor, a large dollop of tamarind concentrate and a squirt of Sriracha sauce for a bit of heat.  I was dismayed to find my fresh ginger had given up the ghost in the fridge, so I used some dried ginger, but fresh would have been much better.  As you might guess, this was not a precise process.  I rummaged through the flavors in my spices and condiments and added a bit of this and that, tasting as I went along.  This is the fun part!  I recommend you try it and don't worry too much about conforming to any standard.  Just balance salty, sour, sweet, umami, hot, and bitter and keep going until it makes your mouth happy.

The flavor was nicely balanced and the texture was almost there.  The broth was smooth and rich on the tongue.  The mushrooms were nicely chewy and the noodles were fun, but it needed a bit of crunch.  I had a purple kohlrabi in the fridge from the last CSA pick up of the year.  Kohlrabi is a member of the cabbage/turnip.  It has the texture of a very crisp apple and a flavor like very sweet brocolli.

I cut the kohlrabi into matchsticks and used them as a crunchy garnish with color contrast.

Who says occupation dining can't be elegant?

Nourishing an Occupation 6: Guest Blogger Alia Gee & #OWS

Vonn's Note: Alia and I connected through our blogs. She's been cooking for Occupy Wall Street from her home and delivering her food to Liberty Plaza. Below is her recipe for split pea soup with variations, along with an excerpt from her blog, Cooking Up Something Good.

Are you cooking for an Occupation? I'm looking for guest bloggers to write about their experiences of the Occupy movement and their food. Please contact me here (note: this link will take you to another website)

Alia: I'm very proud. I had made him a sign that said "Whose future? My future!" and he said, "No, Mommy, I have my own idea for a sign." There I am, oppressing my kid... So I told this story to my protest buddy just as the Gothamist photographer came by, and they took his picture and his awesome interview.

Friday I took down red lentils with star pasta and Snickers candy bars. (Er, in separate plastic bags.)

Chatted with Cheryl the Kitchen Lady and got the number for someone who is organizing comfort trips to greet protestors when they get out of jail. The poetry anthology at the park keeps getting stolen, so they’re asking people to email their poems to the guy organizing it. Crowded but good vibe, everyone seemed focused and determined and I saw at least one working group meeting. I always feel better when I see people sitting in a circle on the ground.

Someone needed help carrying boxes of apples and cider, three of us raised our hands but I was the only one who managed to keep up with the nervous donater. He looked around, scowling, “People aren’t volunteering as much as they did at the beginning,” he grumbled. I thought about it. When there are a handful of people, it’s easy to see how if something needs doing, You need to do it. When there are several hundred people, it’s easy to think Someone Else can do it.

My fix was to haul boxes out of the street to the police barrier, catch the eye of someone with empty hands, smile, and say, “I need you to take this box to the kitchen.” It looked like everything got where it was supposed to go, mostly, so I am satisfied with that.

Split pea soup

I love split pea soup, and I love that this recipe is both vegan and a complete protein. My friends and I meet up on Friday nights to cook together for the local Occupation.

2 big onions (or, enough to completely cover the bottom of the biggest pot you have)

Olive oil (more than 2 Tbsp… enough that you can cover all the onions at the bottom of the pot with a thin coat after you’ve stirred it)

Cook over low heat while you scan the contents of your vegetable drawer.

Finely chop up a small bulb of garlic and add it if you have it, don’t stress if you don’t.

Consider your drawer, and add (if you have it) chopped mushrooms and/or sweet peppers and/or celery.

Cook over low-medium heat, stirring at least every 5 minutes so that nothing sticks to the bottom. Add more olive oil if you think it needs it. The occupiers do not care about cholesterol. It’s very freeing.

When the onions are translucent and the mushrooms are small and brown and squishy and the peppers have done whatever it is that peppers do… add a lot of dried split peas and double the amount of liquid. (Water works, or vegetable stock if you have some you like. If you use enough onions you don’t need the stock for flavor. When it’s on sale/I’m feeling fancy, I’ve been known to use apple cider.) Stir. 

Add some barley. I usually do 2 parts peas to 1 part barley, but the soup police will not arrest you if you differ from that ratio.

Chop and add any root vegetables you have—carrots, parsnips, maybe even potatoes. Add them, and turn the heat up so it might eventually get to a rolling boil before you go to bed.

I like my peas properly dissolved, which usually means cooking them for at least three hours. What I’ve been doing for the Occupation is cooking things for an hour or two, then turning the heat off and going to bed. In the morning I turn the pot back on again, but time has worked its magic and the peas usually dissolve pretty quickly into the mush that I like. If it’s too runny at this point to safely decant into gallon Ziploc bags, I add more barley because it only takes half an hour to cook and sucks up liquid pretty well.

If you have room in your pot and want to make room in your pantry, adding 2 cans of sweet corn and/or 2 cans of diced tomatoes will add fiber and color. Yea, color!

VARIATIONS

Substitute red lentils for green split peas. They cook more quickly than the peas, which is convenient, and they look less like mushroom vomit than regular lentils. Win! The other day when I made them, I substituted star-shaped pasta for the barley so it was adorable as well as delicious.

The above is also how I make squash risotto—start with olive oil and onions and whatever I have in the veg drawer, add rice and liquid and 4 boxes of frozen squash. Stir. (If I have fresh or frozen spinach and nothing else to do with it, I’ll throw that in half way through.)

At the end the rice should be a little too damp, and then I add lots and lots of cheese. And then it is super delicious and thick but alas, not vegan.

Oh well, what a shame. More for meeee…

http://alia-gee.blogspot.com/

Thanks Alia!

Nourishing an Occupation 1: Red Lentil and Brown Rice

Author's note: After several months of hiatus, I've been inspired to return to the Ministry of Soup, by a leading to help nurture and nourish the full-time occupiers of Occupy Poughkeepsie.

Are you cooking for an Occupation? I'm looking for guest bloggers to write about their experiences of the Occupy movement and their food. Please contact me here (note: this link will take you to another website)

Ever since the Occupy Wall Street movement took Zuccotti Park on Sept 17, I had been watching and reading and trying to understand the movement. As a life-long activist, I have been discouraged by apathy for a long time. To find a group of people so inspired by the justness of their cause as to be willing to sleep outside and risk arrest and police brutality captured my imagination. As October rolled around, the movement began to spread and I learned of a small group trying to get started in Poughkeepsie, near where I live. I made connection with the group through email, but something held me back from attending the first march on October 15. I think I was uneasy and needed to meet the people involved and get a feel for their commitment to non-violence before taking to the streets.

On Sunday, the 16th, I learned that Occupy Poughkeepsie did not intend to be just a simple march through downtown, but was set up as a full-time encampment. As I left my Quaker meeting after our monthly potluck, the weather was turning grey, damp and chilly. A message came through on my Blackberry. We're in the park, we need food and water. I knew immediately that it was time for the Ministry of Soup to spring into action.

Fortunately, I had just been shopping at Krishna Indian Grocery so I had a good supply of dried lentils, which cook faster than other legumes. I decided to make a modified red lentil dal to warm and nourish the folks in the park.

I started by chopping 2 large onions and 3 cloves of garlic. I heated some oil in my biggest soup pot and then sauted the onions and garlic. When they were translucent, I added 1 large can of whole tomatoes, which I broke up roughly with my cooking paddle, and a large can of diced tomatoes. I threw in about 1 lbs of red lentils and 2 cups of brown rice and added enough water to cover it all by a couple of inches. I cooked it over medium heat.

As the soup cooked, it thickened and I added more water to keep it at a nice consistency for a hearty soup. I seasoned it with garam masala, black pepper, salt, tumeric, and uwe plum vinegar.

While it was piping hot, I took the whole pot out to my car and drove it to Hulme park in Poughkeepsie. Since I didn't know what kind of supplies they had, I stopped at the store for bowls, spoons and supplemented the whole mess with a large bag of day old bagels and a giant jar of peanut better.

When I arrived at the park, I discovered that the occupiers had been subsisting on pizza for 2 days - not very nutritious or financially sustainable. Some were a little reluctant to try the strange soup at first, but after a couple of guys tried it and exclaimed that it was delicious, so even the 'picky eaters' were diving in.

I was received with graciousness and gratitude and stayed for the General Assembly where I found tremendous caring and earnestness. I came down to the park to fill and warm stomachs. I left with a warm heart.