Matzoh Ball Soup

In honor of Passover, this week I made 2 different soups with matzoh balls. The first is a vegetarian matzoh ball soup chock full of vegetables that I shared with Friends at Bulls Head Meeting on Sunday. The second is a slightly more traditional chicken matzoh ball soup that was the opening course of a Seder I hosted in my home on Monday evening.

I began the whole project on Saturday by making a huge batch of matzoh balls. I used Streit's matzoh meal and doubled the recipe on the back of the box. I started by beating 8 whole eggs, 1/2 cup of olive oil, and 1/2 cup of water together, seasoned with a liberal shaking of Adobo seasoning.

I added 2 cups of matzo meal and mixed well.


I put it in the refrigerator and let the mixture chill for about 45 minutes. Then, I moistened by hands and rolled out balls about an inch in diameter and placed them on wax paper. At one point, the mixture became too sticky to work with, so I put it back in the refrigerator and finished after it had chilled some more.


The matzoh balls went back into the 'fridge to rest while I made the rest of the soup.

As I often do, I started by mincing some garlic and chopping a couple of onions, a bunch of celery and 4 large carrots. I heated a bit of olive oil in my soup pot and added the vegetables. While they were cooking, I chopped up a small head of cabbage, then added that.


I added 3 quarts of water and 2 large cubes of Knorr vegetable bouillon and let the soup simmer until the carrots were done. Then, I added a pound of fresh sliced mushrooms, a bag of frozen peas and a bag of frozen mixed vegetables.


I brought the soup to a boil and then dropped in half of the matzoh balls. I covered the pot and let them cook for about 20 minutes.

The other half of the matzoh balls went in the freezer for Monday's soup.

It is said that there are 2 kinds of matzoh balls - sinkers and floaters. These were somewhere in between - a little too heavy for my taste. I prefer my matzoh balls more fluffy than these turned out though some people like them more dense.

On Monday, I made another batch of soup - this one by boiling some chicken leg quarters for broth and then adding onions, carrots and celery. I seasoned the broth with pepper, salt, and Bragg Liquid Aminos. After picking the meat off the bones and adding it back to the broth, I brought it to a rolling boil and added the matzoh balls from the freezer. I was so happy and excited when they floated to the surface and became fluffy! As I dished up the soup during the break in the Seder, I garnished each bowl with freshly chopped parsley and green onions.

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....

Asparagus Chowder

A few months ago, John Perry, a member of Bulls Head Friends Meeting who frequently eats my soup, ask me, "What is your favorite soup, Vonn?" I had to think about it for a moment because I have lots of favorites, but then I answered, "Asparagus Chowder."

This is a soup that I only make in the springtime, when fresh asparagus is available. It must be spring somewhere, because when I went to the store yesterday, they had fresh asparagus on sale. I try to be a locavore as much as possible, but it's February, it's been a long hard winter & I've been sick for much of it, so a taste of spring is exactly what I need.

This soup was inspired by the tastes of my grandmother, Jean Fisher's cooking. She had a big patch of asparagus growing by the back door of her kitchen. She'd send me out to cut off the young spears and then, using fresh cream she had milked from own cow that morning, she would make a rich creamed asparagus. The flavor of the asparagus infused the cream, spiked with black pepper. As a child, I could eat this as a whole meal.

My asparagus chowder is lighter than my grandmother's creamed asparagus, but it's still luscious, savory, and rich.

I started this batch by scrubbing 5 medium white potatoes and chunking them into bite-sized pieces. I then covered them with ample cold water in a saucepan, added a large cube of Knorr vegetable bouillon and cooked them until fork-tender.


While the potatoes were cooking I prepared 2 pounds of fresh asparagus. I know that many people favor the very skinny asparagus spears, but I like the fat ones. They actually aren't any tougher and they have more tender flavorful insides. No matter the diameter, asparagus can be fibrous and woody at the bottom of the stalk. Fortunately it's very easy to separate the tough part from the tender part. Just grasp the tough end and snap it off - like magic, it breaks in exactly the right place. How cool is that?


As I broke all the tough parts off, I continued snapping the asparagus into pieces about an inch or so long. Isn't it beautiful!

I peeled and chopped 2 small onions. I heated some olive oil in my soup pot and added the onions and 2 cloves of minced garlic. When the onions were translucent and the garlic was beginning to brown, I stirred in 1 pound of fresh sliced mushrooms.

When the mushrooms had released much of their water, I stirred in about 3 Tbs of all-purpose flour. The flour browned and formed a thick paste around the mushrooms, onions and garlic.

Very gradually, in small batches, I poured the cooking liquid from the potatoes into the soup pot. I stirred well as I added the liquid to incorporate it into the paste without allowing it to form lumps. After all the liquid was added and bubbly hot, I added my asparagus pieces and let them simmer until they were tender but not mushy.

I added the cooked potatoes and some lowfat milk, stirred it together and let it heat through gently. I seasoned the soup with a shot of Bragg Liquid Aminos, a healthy dose of black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper. I garnished my bowl with some grated pecorino romano cheese. mmmmmm. My sweetie stopped by just as I was finishing the photo shoot and liked it so much she ate 3 bowls!

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.

Black Bean Soup with Hominy

It's a beautiful winter day here in the Hudson Valley. As I cook today, I'm watching live coverage of events as they unfold in Egypt and praying for both peace and justice for the people there. I'm also thinking about David Kato, the gay activist who was murdered in Uganda, and other courageous lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people who face persecution and violence around the world and here in the US. Keep loving each other, friends.

Today's soup is a spicy vegan black bean soup made extra hearty with the addition of hominy.

I began early this morning by cleaning & rinsing 2 lbs of dried black beans and then soaking them in hot water. I love the color of black beans which in a certain light are actually a very very dark purple. When they are wet they glisten like black jewels.



After a couple of hours, the beans were hydrated. I rinsed them again and covered them with fresh water. Cooking over medium heat, a slow boil, I added several cloves of minced garlic, and two large onions. I let the beans cook gently for a couple of hours and then I added a can of tomato paste, to help thicken the broth, and 2 chopped green peppers.

I seasoned the soup with Goya Adobo, liquid smoke, chili powder, ground cumin, black pepper and oregano. The flavor seemed a bit flat and a little bitter, so I brightened it with some vinegary juice from a jar of picked hot peppers and mellowed it a dash of sugar.

When the beans were nice and tender and the broth was rich and thick, I added 2 drained cans of white hominy.

It was ready to eat. I dished up a bowl for myself for dinner and garnished it with some grated extra sharp cheddar cheese (oops! not vegan anymore), some crispy fried onions, a squirt of sriracha sauce and some tortilla chips. The rest will go to Friends at Bulls Head Meeting tomorrow.