Rhubarb Sauce

Warm rhubarb sundae

Stir it into oatmeal, spoon it warm over vanilla ice creams for a delicious sundae,  put it on your holiday table in place of cranberry sauce, or just spread it on toast.  Rhubarb sauce zings with tart flavor and bright color.

My friends Christopher and Barbara have a big garden.  Last spring they filled their freezer with rhubarb.  When I went to visit them in early November, they were busy harvesting the last of their garden crops for the season and needed to make room in their freezer, so they sent me home with a metric buttload of frozen rhubarb. If you have your own rhubarb plant, great, but if not, don't give up hope.  If you have access to a friend with a rhubarb plant, they can almost never eat all of their rhubarb, so you might be doing them a favor by offering to take some off their hands.

I am such a good friend.

The sauce is super easy to make.  Just put about 2 cups of rhubarb into a sauce pan with a splash (about 1/4 cup) of orange juice, a generous shake of cinnamon, and sweeten to taste with brown sugar.  Let it cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until it is smooth and the consistency of apple sauce.

Sometimes, the sauce looks a little brown and not so attractive, so you can make it festive by grating in a couple of tablespoons of fresh beet.  This is totally optional and doesn't change the flavor at all.

Beet adds color.

I'm planning on putting this on my holiday table as a surprise alternative to cranberry sauce.  Your guests will be amazed at how delicious this simple sauce is.

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 4: Eggplant Pasta (with SNOW!)

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)

It was snowing when I left home to deliver my latest concoction to the hardy souls at Occupy Poughkeepsie. On a very cold night like last night, it's essential to have good, hot food to keep the body warm and fueled.

I was in the park on Wed night for a meeting of Occupy Poughkeepsie Moms and Dads and while I was there, I discovered among the donated food: 6 large eggplants, 3 cans of garbanzo beans, a can of black olives, and many boxes of dried pasta. I can make something with that!

If you've read any of my other blog posts, you won't be surprised to learn that I started cooking by chopping up garlic and onions and sauteing them in oil in the bottom of a soup pot. In this case, I used a whole head of garlic. While that was cooking, I washed and cubed 4 of the eggplants.

I added 2 large cans of crushed tomatoes along with the eggplant, a pound of sliced mushrooms, some water and about 1 cup of tomato juice that I had in the 'fridge. I couldn't actually fit all the eggplant into the pot, so I let it simmer for a while and after it had cooked down a bit I added the rest of it.

I seasoned the sauce with dried Italian herb blend, dried oregano, dried basil, black pepper, soy sauce, a squirt of Sriracha sauce and just a touch of sugar. This simmered for most of the afternoon. At some point, I chopped up 2 sweet red peppers, and the can of olives and added them and 3 drained cans of garbanzo beans to the pot.

I cooked 3 lbs of pasta in boiling water in my largest soup pot. 3 boxes, 3 shapes: rotini, rotelle, & rigatoni. When it was al dente, I drained it and poured it into a large aluminum serving tray. I poured the eggplant sauce over the pasta and mixed it all together. As I was getting ready to load it and 2 cans of sterno into my car, I looked out the window and saw the first snow of the season!

Here's what the camp looked like when I arrived.

By the time I got to Poughkeepsie, it was a wet snow, mixed with rain. Let me tell you, it was cold down there! I was glad I was able to keep the food warm with the sterno because as people arrived they really needed something warm in their bellies.


It's a great feeling to give a hungry, cold person a steaming hot plate of food.

Nourishing an Occupation 3: Vegetable 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 episode of 'Nourishing an Occupation' is about using the ingredients on hand to make something delicious and nutritious. One night when I was visiting Occupy Poughkeepsie, I noticed that someone had donated a bunch of fresh vegetables - potatoes, carrots, celery, zucchini, peppers, and cabbage. These are wonderful, vitamin-rich foods, but the encampment isn't really set up to cook and I couldn't picture anyone munching on a raw cabbage or potato. I know it can be done, I just didn't see it happening. So I offered to take them home and turn them into soup. I say take them 'home' but I actually didn't make this soup at home. I was staying with Friends Val & Bob Suter for a couple of days so it was their kitchen I messed up with my chopping and concocting and their spice stash I raided for flavors.

As usual, I started by chopping several large cloves of garlic and 2 large onions and sauteing them in olive oil in my largest soup pot. When it was translucent, I added 8 carrots with their skin on and 4 stalks of celery. After they had cooked a bit, I added a large can of whole tomatoes and a large can of diced tomatoes. I broke up the whole tomatoes with my paddle. I added a fews cans full of water to the pot. While it was heating up, I kept chopping vegetables and throwing them in:

6 potatoes, skin on
1 large rutabaga, peeled
1 large green pepper
3 zucchini squash
1 medium head of cabbage.

There were so many vegetables, I had to add more water to the pot.

While this simmered, I seasoned the broth with 2 cubes of 'Not-Chick'n Bouillon', soy sauce, red pepper flakes, black pepper, and a seasoning blend from Adam's Market that the Suter's had in their cupboard that seemed to be a cross between Abodo and Old Bay.

This was so much soup that even after taking it down to Occupy Poughkeepsie and feeding everyone on site, I still had half of it left. On the next day, Saturday, a big rally and march were planned and a lot of extra people were expected. I decided to take the leftover soup home, add to it, and bring it back for lunch.

The next morning, I put the soup back on the stove and added more carrots and celery. These are the veggies I had left. I added more water and more seasoning.

I took the soup back down a little before noon and started serving it up. It was a beautiful day and lots of people showed up to take part in the rally. Most of them were surprised to be offered a hot bowl of soup - but radical hospitality is as big a part of the message of the movement as any slogan on a sign. The only picture I got of the camp that morning is before people started showing up; after they arrived, I was busy playing improvised music with my friend Noah.

While I was talking to others who attended the march and the later General Assembly, I found other people who had been bringing food or who wanted to start bringing food. We decided to get together and coordinate our efforts so that we all wouldn't bring food on the same night and that every night the full-time occupiers would have a hot, nutritious home-cooked meal.

We call ourselves 'Occupy Poughkeepsie Moms & Dads' even though most of us are not parents of the full-time occupiers. We care about the goals of the movement and would rather support it by providing food and comfort than by sleeping in the park. Since we took this photo, the group has grown to 14 people and we've provided hot meals every night for 2 weeks. We've also taken on providing blankets and insulation, having a list of nurses on-call for medical questions, and are working on getting flu shots for any occupier who wants one.

Nourishing an Occupation 2: Sesame Noodles

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)

In this episode of Nourishing an Occupation, I show you how to feed 34 people a delicious, nutritious vegan meal for about $14. The occupiers at Occupy Poughkeepsie, along with visitors and hungry kids from the neighborhood all dug in and enjoyed these Sesame noodles.

With this dish, I started by making a sauce. In a large sauce pan, I heated a bit of oil and added several tablespoons each minced garlic and ginger. After about a minute, I added about 1.5 cup of smooth peanut butter, 1/2 cup of water, 1/3 cups of soy sauce, 1/4 cup vinegar and an extremely generous squirt of Sriracha sauce and sesame oil and stirred it well so it would melt. I tasted this and adjusted the ingredients, adding a bit more of this or that until I had a sauce that was nutty, a bit tart, a bit salty, and with a bite of heat. I let it warm and simmer on the stove.

I filled my largest soup pot 2/3 full with water to boil and cooked 3 lbs of linguini. Cooking that much pasta at once is tricky because if your pot isn't big enough it will stick together. If you don't have a giant pot, cook in 2 or 3 batches. As soon as the pasta was al dente, I drained it and immediately rinsed it well with cold water.

While the sauce was simmering and the pasta cooking, I chopped up a large napa cabbage, 3 sweet red peppers, and a bunch of arugula and put them raw, into a large foil serving dish. I chopped a bunch of green onions and put half of them in with the other veggies. I chopped up a bunch of cilantro and set that aside with the remaining green onions for a topping.

I cut up 2 lbs of firm tofu into small cubes and stirred them into the peanut sauce, then let the sauce cool a bit.

I put the pasta into the big foil dish with the vegetables, and using my clean hands, mixed everything together. Then I poured the cooled sauce over everything and mixed it through thoroughly. I topped the dish with chopped green onions, cilantro and a sprinkling of black sesame seeds.

This was a big hit with the occupiers and the neighborhood kids who stopped by the park couldn't get enough.

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.

Golden Cauliflower with Green Garlic

The growing season has returned to the mid-Hudson Valley! Here in Hyde Park, both my local farmers market and Hearty Roots CSA are back in business as of this week. That means that my soups will start to include these lovely fresh, organic ingredients straight from the farm. If you also receive a weekly farm share and aren't always sure what to do with your produce, this might be a good place to follow along as I cook with my farm share too.This week's soup features a puree of cauliflower and potato along with some of the early season crops from my farm share, Japanese turnips and green garlic.

I began by chopping a large onion and sauteing it in olive oil in the bottom of the soup pot until it was translucent. While it was cooking, I washed and cut into chunks a whole cauliflower, 5 white potatoes and the roots of 6 turnips. I saved the green tops for later.

I added the potatoes, cauliflower and turnip roots to the onions and covered them with water, bring the pot to a boil to cook until tender. I season the mixture with Adobo seasoning, black pepper, a couple teaspoons of garam masala and a couple teaspoons of turmeric.

One of the more unusual vegetables in my farm share this week was green garlic. The immature bulb of the garlic is milder than a mature bulb. The green leaves remind me of leeks. In the center is the flowering stalk called the scape, which is full of garlic flavor with bright green overtones and a snappy texture on the teeth.


I cleaned the garlic, trimmed the end of the leaves, removed the fibrous center stalk and chopped the rest. Then I sauteed it in a bit of olive oil until it was tender and set it aside.


When the cauliflower, potatoes, and turnip roots were tender, I turned off the stove and let them cool a bit. I borrowed my landlady's immersion blender and I've learned my lesson in past soups about splattering molten vegetable purees around the kitchen. As soon as it was down to a safe, but still warm, temperature, I pureed the contents of my pot until it was smooth.


With the soup rich and smooth, I returned it too the heat and washed and chopped the tops of the turnip greens.


I finished the soup by stirring the turnip greens and sauteed green garlic into the pot. The greens cooked in just a couple of minutes. The garlic and Indian spices are so fragrant - this soup smells as good as it tastes.

Split Pea Soup

Delicious, nutritious, easy, and cheap. If you are trying to feed a family on a low budget, you can't do better than split pea soup. My vegan version of split pea soup includes chunky root vegetables and plenty of seasoning.

I start by chopping up a large onion and 3 large carrots and mincing up 3 cloves of garlic. I heat a little olive oil in the bottom of my pot and throw in the vegetables and stir them around.




While the vegetables are cooking, I scrub and cube 4 large potatoes with the skins still on. When the onions are translucent, I throw the potatoes into the pot.


I put 2 lbs of dried split peas into a colander and rinse them well - looking for any small bits of debris to discard. Green is my favorite color and these look really beautiful when they are wet.


I add the peas and 2.5 quarts of water to the pot. I season the soup with a large cube of Knorr vegetable bouillon, about .5 tsp of Wright's Liquid Smoke, black pepper and Adobo seasoning. You could use salt instead of Adobo, but the Adobo adds a nice flavor. The liquid smoke gives the soup a surprising smoky flavor without ham or bacon.

Another thing that is nice about split peas is that they don't take very long to cook. After adding all these ingredients, I brought the soup to a boil, then reduced the heat to simmer. Because the peas are split, they will disintegrate into a thick puree-like consistency when they are done. It's important to stir them now and then while they are cooking to keep them dispersed through the liquid. Add more water if they get too thick. I'm making this batch extra thick for Friends at Bulls Head Meeting tomorrow to take home, so they can add more water when they reheat it.

New Paltz Meeting's Ministry of Soup

This past Sunday I worshiped with Friends at New Paltz Meeting on the other side of the Hudson River in New Paltz NY. New Paltz Meeting, along with Poughkeepsie Meeting, Cornwall Meeting and my meeting Bulls Head, are part of a regional group that we Quakers call the Quarterly Meeting, because we get together once a calendar quarter.

New Paltz Meeting also has a ministry of soup, but their custom is a little different. They have a kitchen right next to their meeting room and as soon as Meeting for Worship is over, they pull a big table into the center of the room and bring out some nice bread and a pot of soup that has been warming. Everyone shares soup and fellowship together as we come back to the temporal plane after the experience of worship.

New Paltz Friends take turns making the soup. This Sunday David Goodwin made a hearty black bean soup that smelled deliciously of cumin. I found David enjoying sunshine and soup on the porch and took his picture and got him to tell me about his soup.

David started, as I often do, by sauteing some onions, garlic and carrots in a bit of oil. Then he added 4 cans of black beans, 2 cans of tomatoes, and a can of corn (whole not creamed!) and 12 cups of vegetable stock. He seasoned the soup with ground cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper. This was a simple but flavorful soup that fed a room full of Friends and everyone seemed happy to go back for seconds.

If you are visiting New Paltz, the Quaker Meeting is right on off the main drag downtown. It's a lovely meeting that is very welcoming to families with small children and they won't send you away hungry.

Urad Dal

When I visited the Asian Supermarket in Albany a couple of weeks ago, I bought several bags of mystery legumes, including a 2 lb bag of urad dal. Urad dal is a type of bean product from India. Specifically it come from matpe peas. Matpe peas are small, round, black peas. When you split matpe peas and mill the black skin from them you end up small, cream-colored dried disks - urad dal.

I have never cooked urad dal before, so I did a little internet research before I started. I read that after soaking, urad dal would take about 3 hours to cook. That didn't seem possible for such little beans that looked a lot like lentils. I was very skeptical, but they did indeed take a very long time to cook. The soup I made this week used a couple of exotic ingredients, namely the urad dal and the Indian spice blend garam masala. Garam masala is a blend of ground Indian spices. Preparation and components vary; the one that I have contains coriander, red chili, cumin, clove, anistar, mace, fennel, black pepper, bay leaves, cinnamon, dried mango, salt, and clove leaves. If you get a chance to buy these 2 unusual ingredients, the soup itself was very simple and turned out well.


I started by heating some olive oil in my soup pot, while I chopped up 3 medium onions, 3 cloves of garlic and a 2 inch piece of fresh ginger. These went into the hot oil. I stirred them until the onions were translucent and then I threw in about 3 Tbs of garam masala - I'm not exactly sure because I didn't measure and for a while I feared I had used too much but in the end it turned out fine.

I stirred constantly while the spice was in the oil and it became darker and thickened much like a roux. I quicked added some water, my rinsed urad dal and then more water, reduce the heat and let the pot simmer. And simmer. And simmer. I stirred often, checking during every timeout in the men's NCAA basketball tournament game Kansas vs. Boston U. Even after my beloved Jayhawks were victorious, the dal was still not done.

When the dal was finally tender and the liquid thick - I added water a few more times - I added a large bag of frozen chopped spinach and a tsp of salt.

This soup has a thick consistency like runny oatmeal. In fact, it was really good for breakfast the next morning. 2 lbs of urad dal made a LOT of soup.

On Sunday at Bulls Head Friends Meeting we had our monthly potluck and program. I had enough soup that I heated half of it for the potluck and packaged the other half for Friends to take home.

Barley-Lentil Soup & Radical Hospitality at the William Penn House

Last weekend, I traveled to Washington DC to work with one of my clients of my website design business. The William Penn House is a Quaker hostel and program center on Capitol Hill. I was delighted to discover that in addition to html and Drupal, there was also soup!

The staff and volunteers at the William Penn House strive to practice Radical Hospitality. In explaining Radical Hospitality, Faith Kelly, the hospitality coordinator at William Penn House, quotes St Benedict: "to invite all people into your house as if they were Christ.” I think that radical hospitality should also include soup.

On the last day of my trip, William Penn House hosted a group of Friends from Friends House in Sandy Spring MD for lunch and I was invited to join in their meal of lentil-barley soup, homemade wheat bread, salad, and brownies. Faith made a huge pot of delicious soup. She cooked from a recipe from an Amish cookbook called Plain and Simple Cooking. The soup was rich, hearty and vegan. The barley gave it a wonderfully comforting texture. Faith used red lentils which disintegrated into the broth, as red lentils do, to blend with canned tomatoes and carrots and make a lovely bright orange color.


As you can see, everyone certainly enjoyed the lunch. If you want to give this soup a try but don't have the book, I found this recipe that looks pretty close.

I close this week's blog post with a bit more on Radical Hospitality from Brad Ogilvie, program director of the William Penn House:

Our goal is to simply provide hospitality – a warm place where those gathered can share their hopes, dreams, visions. Among these are family and friends. We ask that people recognize that we do not seek to persuade people in any way. It is an exercise in hospitality – for us to be together, learn together and grow together. We will not agree on all things, and even where we might agree, we will not agree on how we get there. We do ask that we agree to listen to others, being free to speak our truth while welcoming others to do the same. It is out of this shared experience that we become better for having our time together.

Miso Madness

In honor of 'March Madness', I present today's soup, 'Miso Madness'.

Truthfully, I usually make the soup on Saturday
so I can take it to Bulls Head Meeting on Sunday, but I was out having adventures yesterday, so I had to make a soup that was quick and easy enough to make this morning. I'm NOT a morning person, so the emphasis is on the easy. My adventures? A trip with friends to Albany NY where we took in a museum, ate at CCK my favorite Chinese joint in upstate, shopped at the fabulous Asian Supermarket where I turn into a total kid going nuts with all the novel smells, sights, and tastes, and then played drums at the Albany Dances for Universal Peace. Some of last night's purchases at the Asian Supermarket also inspired this soup.

One of the great things about miso soup is that is incredibly simple to make and yet has wonderful soothing complex flavor and is healthy too. I'm putting loads of stuff into this batch, but with the exception of miso, water, tofu and something green, everything else is optional. This is a great soup to play around with - pretty much anything light tasting will go well in miso soup. Some of the ingredients I put in this batch are shown in the picture below: scallions, Chinese mustard greens, bamboo shoots, red miso, bean thread noodles (shown in the package and soaking in hot water), dried shitake mushrooms, tofu, and carrots.


As you can see, the first thing I did was heat some water and soak 3 packages of bean thread noodles so they will become pliable. These noodles, are great for soup because they don't get mushy if they sit in liquid for a while. They are also called cellophane noodles because they turn clear which is just plain fun. I also like them for the Ministry of Soup because they are made from mung beans instead of wheat and so people who avoid gluten can eat them.

I chopped up some a large onion, some garlic, and fresh ginger and heated a couple of Tbs of vegetable oil in the bottom and my pot. I put in the garlic and onions first and when the onions were just starting to turn translucent, I added the ginger and stirred around well. I sliced 6 carrots, fairly thin and at an angle (looks cool and cooks faster) and threw them in too.


When the onions were cooked, I added 4 quarts of water and a generous handful of sliced dried shitake mushrooms. I let it heat through to finish cooking the carrots and soften the mushrooms while I went to work cutting up other stuff: a pound of extra-firm tofu was cut into small cubes; a head of Chinese mustard greens was sliced fairly coarsely; the bamboo shoots were already julienned so all I had to do was open the can and drain them. The most fun was cutting up the bean thread noodles. Technically, you don't have to cut them up but it will make it much easier for me to dish up helping for Friends to take home if I don't have to deal with loooooong noodles, so I drained them from their soaking water and them cut the whole mess into a checkerboard pattern. Why was this fun? They make the coolest sound when you cut them - kind of a squeaky, squishy, squick sound. You have to try it for yourself.

When the carrots were cooked (I tested them by biting one), I added the rest of the ingredients in this order: bean thread noodles, the bamboo shoots, miso, Chinese mustard greens. It's important to notice that I put the miso in at the end. It's a fermented soy product that is rich in beneficial (probiotic) micro-organisms. They can stand to be hot, but you don't want to cook them much or you'll kill the probiotics. It will still taste good but won't be quite as healthy. Miso has a consistency like peanut butter, so after I added about 4 Tbs, I stirred it well to melt and dissolve it into the broth. I also put the mustard greens in late because I wanted to just wilt the green leafy part but leave a bit of crunch in the midrib.

I turned off the heat but still wasn't done. I seasoned the soup with a splash of soy sauce and sesame oil. Threw in a handful of dried wakame seaweed, which hydrated immediately, and finally topped it off with the sliced scallions. Now, it's done. Just in time to get to meeting....

Dahl V1.0

I'm naming this week's soup Dahl V1.0 because this is my first attempt to make a dahl. It was fun and easy and turned out well so I expect I'll keep playing around and making more variations on the theme.

I've had dahl in Indian restaurants and at the home of a friend and I really like it. I've always thought of dahl as a thick, spicy soup but as I do a little research for this blog post, I am learning that 'dal' or dahl refers to any legume that has been split and the outer skin removed. So, there are many varieties of dahls and the soups that can be made from them. Look for Dahl 2.0 and more in the future here.

I was cooking this weekend at the home of my sweetie Wahabah so I could hang out with her and dip into her spice stash at the same time. She was cooking a lamb curry and an apple pie at the same time - there were some excellent smells coming from her kitchen.

To begin the dahl, I first assembled the lovely array of spices I will use: cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, ginger, coriander, black pepper, cloves, and fenugreek.


I chopped a couple of large onions and heated some olive oil in my pot. I think that authentic Indian cuisine would use butter or ghee, but I'm cooking for some Friends who don't eat dairy, so I'm using olive oil instead. I saute the spices and onions together in the oil. This is when the aroma filled the apartment. Wow! I wish you could smell it.



When the onions were translucent, I added some red lentils, water, and salt. First I had to admire the beautiful color of the lentils.


As they cooked, the lentils thickened the broth. I added more water several times. When they were mostly done, but still individuals, I rinsed some kale, tore it into bite-sized pieces, and added it to the soup. When the lentils had disintegrated into a thick mush, the kale was done too.

Wahabah & I enjoyed this soup too much. When I got home and looked in the pot, I realized there wasn't enough left to take to meeting with me in the morning.

I put it back on my own stove and added some yellow split peas (since I had used up all my red lentils) and water. When they were cooked, I added some frozen, chopped spinach. Dahl 1.1. By the time I took the soup to meeting on Sunday morning, it was green. The picture above was taken of Dahl 1.0 at Wahabah's. I think I liked it better then because the split peas overpowered the gentler flavor of the red lentils.