Sweet Pea Soup

I call both of my girls “Sweet Pea.”  My Mom called me “Sweet Pea” too.   So when I was working on a recipe to use up the last of my buttermilk and stumbled on this tempting combination of peas and mint, I couldn’t help but give it a cute name:  Sweet Pea Soup!

Peas and mint are a natural springtime match-up.  This soup comes together in half an hour, and with another half hour to chill,  it will be ready to eat.  I used both frozen peas and pea pods (which are all over my Farmer’s Market, and probably yours, too.)  If you can’t find pea pods, just double the frozen peas and use a full pound.  The recipe calls for you to strain the blended soup, which gives it a more silky, smooth texture.  You can skip this step if you are in a hurry, or if you like a little thicker body to your soup.  Either way I think you’ll love it, and so will all the “Sweet Pea’s” in your life!

Sweet Pea Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 cup pea pods, any kind
• 1 onion (sweet Vidalia would be nice, but I just used a regular white onion), chopped
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 8 ounces frozen peas
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 handful mint leaves (save a few pretty ones for garnish)
• salt to taste

Directions:

1. In a large pot, heat the pea pods and onion in the butter.  Cook over medium heat for ten minutes until the onion is getting soft.
2. Add the frozen peas and chicken stock.  Cook on medium for ten minutes.
3. Turn off the heat.  Pour in buttermilk and mint.  Blend with an immersion blender, or transfer to a large blender and blend in batches until smooth.  Taste and add salt to your liking.
4. Strain the soup through a mesh sieve (or not, your choice.)  Cool in the refrigerator for half an hour.  Serve chilled, with additional mint leaves for garnish.

Broccoli Stalk Soup

I’m coming in, just under the wire, with a soup recipe to round out January as National Soup Month!  It’s creamy, it’s Paleo, it’s as frugal as can be:  Broccoli Stalk Soup!

I seriously buy about ten pounds of broccoli a week, and I’m ashamed to admit how many stalks have gone to waste over the years.  My girls didn’t want to eat the tougher stalk and will only eat the florets, and to be honest, they do take a little more work to prepare if you want to serve the stalk together with the floret, since you have to peel off the tough outer layer.  But I couldn’t accept throwing all those healthy green vegetables into the compost bin, so I made a broccoli soup out of them.  Hooray – it is delicious and uses up nearly all the stalk.  So much less to compost!

If you don’t follow the Paleo diet, feel free to use one large or two small potatoes in place of the rutabaga.  But I really liked the rutabaga – I think it adds a sweetness, and contributes a creamy texture to the soup when you blend it.  And because you are blending it up, you don’t have to worry about mincing and dicing carefully – just chop up your veggies and cook them til tender.  You can serve this with some shredded cheese on top, or like I did, with a dollop of plain yogurt.  You can also add a little more chicken stock than I did if you want a thinner soup.  But I like it this way:  thick, warm, and truly satisfying!

Broccoli Stalk Soup

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons olive oil or bacon fat
• 1 large rutabaga, peeled and cubed
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 6 broccoli stalks, plus one head of broccoli
• 4 cups (or more) chicken or vegetable stock

Directions:

1. In a very large pot, heat the oil and add the rutabaga, garlic, onion and carrots.  Cook on medium, stirring to keep the garlic from burning, for about ten minutes.
2. While the other vegetables are cooking, prepare the broccoli.  With a paring knife or vegetable peeler, peel the broccoli stalks.  Cut off the bottom half inch of stalk, and then cut the stalks into smaller pieces.  Chop the head of broccoli and separate the florets.  Add the broccoli to the pot and cook another five minutes.
3. Add the chicken stock and cover the pot with a lid.  Simmer over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.  Transfer soup to a blender – CAREFULLY! – in batches and blend until mostly smooth.  You can leave a few chunks if you like.  I used an immersion blender and it worked very well.  You can add a little more stock here if you want a thinner soup.
4. Serve soup hot, garnished with grated cheese or yogurt.

Doenjang Jiggae - Korean Basics

In Korean cuisine, there are two main types of soup:  guk and jiggae.  Guk is very brothy, while jiggae is more like a stew and is more substantial.  Doenjang jiggae is one of the most basic and traditional Korean soups, and is named for the fermented soybean paste that is the center of the stew - the doenjang.

There are many different brands.  I don't read Korean, so honestly, when I buy a tub of doenjang, I read the ingredients and hope I pick a good one.  I'm sure they can't vary that much between brands, but some varieties include other flavorings and ingredients, like anchovies, so read the ingredients list carefully, or look for illustrations on the label to make sure you buy just regular, plain doenjang.

Doenjang roulette - I picked a tasty one!

Once you buy the doenjang, you're set for a while.  It's already fermented, and will last a good year in your fridge.  The other ingredients in doenjang jiggae are readily available and won't require a special trip to the Korean grocery store. 

Enjoy this healthy, richly flavored soup with rice for a first foray into Korean cuisine at home!

Doenjang Jiggae

Ingredients:

• 1 block tofu (I like firm, but you can use any kind)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 or 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 2 cups water (if you are making rice to go with the jiggae, save 2 cups of the starchy water from rinsing the rice.  This will give your broth a little more substance.  If not, no biggie.)
• 1/4 cup doenjang
• 2 zucchini or other summer-type squash, sliced
• 1 or 2 hot peppers, diced (optional - I don't use them because I'm kind of wimpy)
• 1 bunch enoki mushrooms (I didn't have any, but they're very cute, so pick some up if you see them)
• 2 or 3 green onions, sliced very fine

Directions:

1. Unwrap tofu and drain away water.  I also like to press the block of tofu between two bowls and get out as much water as possible.  In a soup it doesn't matter as much as if you were frying it, but still, squeeze that baby for all you're worth!
2. In a large pot, heat over medium flame and add sesame oil and the tofu.  Saute the tofu in the oil, breaking it up into small pieces.  After a few minutes, add the garlic.  
3. When the garlic gets golden, add water and the doenjang, stirring to dissolve the doenjang.  It will still have pieces of bean; don't worry about those.  You just want to make sure the doenjang gets incorporated and doesn't sink like a stone to bottom of the pot!
4. Add the zucchini (and mushrooms and hot peppers, if you are using them), turn the heat down to low, and simmer for about 20 minutes.  Taste for seasoning - you can add more doenjang if you want a deeper flavor, or you can add soy sauce too.  Serve hot, sprinkled with green onion.

Avgolemono

It's that most wonderful time of the year -- Soup Season! When it gets cold, nothing is better than a giant bowl of soup. Avgolemono (coming from the Greek, "avgo" means egg, and "lemono", well, you can probably guess that one!) is a quick, easy chicken soup spiked with lemon, thickened with egg, colored with spinach, and chock full of bright, cheery flavors!

If you are looking for more recipes to use up chicken carcasses, here is one of the best. I'm sure a turkey carcass would work just as well. Use two breasts with bones if you don't have a carcass handy. The starch component offers a little leeway: I like orzo best, but you can try rice (be sure to add the rice about 20 minutes before the spinach and other ingredients so it has time to cook through) or another small pasta or grain.

Avgolemono

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken carcass, or 2 chicken breasts with bones and skin included
• 1 10-ounce box of frozen chopped spinach
• 3/4 cup orzo
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
• salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Put the chicken carcass in a large pot with enough water to cover. Boil until chicken is cooked through and falling off the bone. Remove carcass to a large bowl to cool. Strain broth and return to pot.
2. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove from bones and chop into small pieces. You should have 2 - 3 cups of chicken.
3. Return broth to the stove and heat on medium. Add the box of spinach (it's fine it it's still frozen, just drop that green block in there!) to the broth, along with the bay leaves and the chicken. Now look at the consistency of your soup. Do you like it really brothy? Add more water. Do you like your soup thicker? Now is the time to raise the heat and reduce your broth.
4. When you have your preferred consistency, add the orzo to the soup. Cook on medium heat for about 8 minutes.
5. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs with the lemon juice. Slowly add a ladle-full of your broth to the eggs, to temper them, so they don't seize up when you introduce them to the soup. When the eggs have been warmed by the broth, turn the heat off the stove. Slowly stir the egg and lemon mixture into the soup. Keep stirring to make sure you don't get any eggy clumps. Season with salt and pepper.

I like this soup with a big salad and some bread. Enjoy!

Project: Save the Kales!

The Patient: A large bunch of kale

Status: Critical

Last Ditch Effort: Soup

It was a dark and stormy night .... Just kidding. It was a lovely morning, just before noon. I had my 2 year-old's lunch ready to go, but had nothing for myself. I opened the veggie drawer in the fridge and - eeeeek! That kale was on its last legs. Wilted, shriveled, looking like something that I might not feel too bad throwing out. Except I still saw a little glimmer of hope there, in the form of soup. But what kind?

I rummaged around for something else to go in the soup. Aha! A package of tofu that was 3 days away from hitting its expiration date. This was shaping up into an Asian sort of soup. I found a bottle of Korean soup base in the pantry (a gift from my mother-in-law, which I hadn't tried, so I knew not what it wrought.) This would work. It just needed one more thing, something magical, but I didn't know what it was.

I opened the freezer, fingers crossed for some hidden yummy I'd forgotten about. I opened a plastic grocery bag to find ... dumplings! Hooray! They were Korean mandu (gyoza, in Japanese) and I remembered my mother-in-law giving them to me a month ago. They were filled with ground pork, green onion and ginger - simple, and the perfect companion to my kale and tofu.

This soup was so easy and so tasty! It was also packed full of vitamins (kale is beyond good for you) and protein. The variations on this theme are endless: replace the Korean soup base with miso paste for a Japanese flavor, or switch out the gyoza for frozen ravioli or tortellini and use chicken broth for an Italian soup. Either way, you're eating kale - and that has to be good!

Korean Kale Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch kale (yours doesn't have to be on death's door like mine was - fresh is fine!)
• 1 package firm tofu (19 oz. or 10 oz., whatever you have - I used the big size)
• 1/2 cup Korean soup base (see note)
• 6 - 8 mandu / gyoza, or more, depending on the size, any flavor (Trader Joe's makes pretty good frozen ones, if you don't have an Asian grocery store, or mother-in-law, nearby)
• a sprinkle of furikake for garnish

Directions:

1. Wash the kale, and remove the tough stems. Chop the leaves into bite-sized pieces.
2. Heat a little oil (I used sesame oil) in a large pot. When hot, add the kale and saute for a few minutes. Add the tofu and saute for another few minutes.
3. Add approximately 4 cups of water and the liquid soup base. Cover the pot and let cook for 4 minutes at high heat.
4. Add the mandu, and make sure not too much of your broth has evaporated (add more if you like; I prefer mine a little more stew-y) and put the lid back on. Let cook about 10 minutes, until the mandu are cooked, but not falling apart.
5. Ladle into a bowl, sprinkle with furikake, and enjoy your kale!

(Note: I would tell you what kind of soup base it is, but it's all in Korean. Like, everything except the ingredients and the words "Korean Soup Base". It seems to consist of soy sauce, sugar, and "seafood extracts", whatever that is. I bet, if you were adventurous, you could recreate the flavor using fish sauce (nam pla), some soy sauce and some sugar.)