in the garden: corn

Summer corn, is there anything better? My family loves it best cut off the cob, then lightly sauteed in some butter with salt and chives. Delicious.

In the season, when it is plentiful and it is 6 for $1 at the farmer's market, you can only eat it sauteed so many times. I found this soup recipe, a great way to enjoy corn and very easy to freeze for those January days when you dream of farmer's markets and corn.

Late Summer Corn Chowder by The Family Table

winter soup session: mushroom soup

I feel sure that anyone my generation grew up with a memory of Campbell's creamy mushroom soup.  Or their moms used it in a three ingredient casserole.  Well this recipe brought me back, I had a visceral deja vu of that taste.  However, this soup is made from fresh yummy mushrooms, homemade stock with just a hint of mascarpone cheese swirled in for creaminess. 

Mushroom Soup by The Family Table

winter soup session: fennel and celery root

Who would have thought that this:

Would turn into this (with the help of 5 women peeling and zesting and chopping):

As I did my research on these vegetables, I found that both celery root and fennel are in the same family as carrots.  Celery root is full of Vitamins B and C, and potassium.  It lacks the sweetness that its cousins, carrots and parsnips, have and thus is low in carbohydrates.  It fills you up, but is very low in calories.  Fennel is full of anti-oxidants, is anti-inflammatory, has Vitamin C, potassium and folate.  They mix nicely together, as veggies in the same family do.  This soup is very easy and very filling.

We made it with these spicy cheddar shortbread crackers (featured in the lower left corner of the picture).  They were delicious, and with a food processor, they took no time to make:

http://food52.com/blog/7049-mark-bittman-s-spicy-cheddar-shortbread


Fennel and Celery Root Soup by The Family Table

winter soup session: cauliflower soup with coconut, curry and lime

Cauliflower, yum. 

My favorite way to eat cauliflower is roasting, and it is so simple.   Quick instructions:  cut the cauliflower head into florets, toss in olive oil, dust with salt and pepper and put on a pyrex glass pan or a cookie sheet.   Place in a 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes, or until starting to brown and caramelize.  Eat.

For a little change of pace, this curried cauliflower soup is simple, fast and delicious.  Aside from the benefits of cauliflower, this recipe has turmeric which has huge medicinal properties: anti-inflammatory; helps give relief to arthritis; helps to prevent colon and prostate cancer; helps to reduce polyps in the colon; lowers cholesterol; protects against alzheimer's.
Truly "magical" perks.

Enjoy.  I made a pot of rice and enjoyed my curry soup with sauteed zucchini and the rice.

Cauliflower Soup with Curry, Coconut and Cilantro by The Family Table

winter soup session: ribollita

"Ribollita" means "reboiled" in Italian.  Typically, as a family would continue to eat their minestrone day after day, it would get to be more liquids than solids as people would favor the beans and vegetables over the liquid.  To thicken it up, cubes of stale bread would be added to the soup.  A new meal was created.

To make ribollita, canned beans can be used (healthy tip: if you rinse well your canned beans you can decrease the salt in them by 50%).  However, it is yummier and healthier to use your own simmered beans.  And on a wintery day in Chicago, bubbling beans is a great zen activity, it feels satisfying. Once your beans are cooked, you can put them in a tupperware, or a baggie and freeze them until you are ready to make soup.

Ribolitta can be made with any vegetables you have on hand.  I give you the recipe for what I used, but feel free to use what is on hand.  Any fresh vegetables will make a delicious soup.  Although greens of some sort are a necessity.

Ribollita Soup by The Family Table

winter soup session: tunisian soup with swiss chard, chickpeas and harissa

Swiss Chard is a beautiful, and nutritional plant.  It grows at the garden from May until November.  I like to describe it as somewhere between spinach and kale.  It wilts quickly in a soup like spinach, but you need to take the stems off as they take longer to cook.  Some mistakenly throw away the stems, but I just dice them and then throw them in when you saute the aromatics (carrots, onions and celery).  Swiss Chard is in the chenopod family along with beets, spinach and quinoa.  It is high in vitamins C, E and K.  Swiss Chard has anti inflammatory and anti oxident properties and contains lots of manganese, beta carotene and calcium. 

I adapted this recipe from Gourmet and cook it regularly.  The harissa gives it a richness, the chickpeas add protein, and the swiss chard adds color and vitamins.  Make the harissa first.  I took this harissa recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks "Sunday Suppers at Lucques".  It is possible to buy harissa in upscale grocery stores, but this is so easy and it makes enough so you can keep what you don't use in a canning jar or tupperware in the fridge.  It lasts for a while.  I swirl it into soups or toss on roasted vegetables.

Harissa by The Family Table

If you have some leftover beef brisket, shredded chicken, pork carnitas on hand, throw it in the soup pot.  I like using egg noodles, or farro, or barley, or israeli couscous...whatever is in your cupboard.

Tunisian Soup With Chard by The Family Table

winter soup session: sunchoke soup with apples and lentils

Jerusalem artichokes (aka Sunchokes) are the tubers of a sunflower.  They are interesting looking, they store well, they can be eaten raw, steamed, sauteed, pureed, they are a good source of calcium, iron, potassium, vitamin C, vitamin B, fiber, folate and magnesium.  BUT....and it is a big but, they are hard to digest and thus have gained the name "fartichokes".  In 1621, an english botanist, John Goodyer wrote this about them: "they...cause a fithy loathsome stinking wind within the body...and are a meat more fit for swine than men".  Some cookbooks attach most of the gas to eating them raw (you can ask my cooking partner Amy about this).  So, if you dare, this recipe produces a deliciously creamy soup, especially with the garnish of black lentils, apple and chives (or tarragon).

This picture is of the soup pre-puree form, both are good.

Sunchoke Soup With Apples and Lentils by The Family Table

winter soup session: coconut curry carrot soup

There are so many recipes for carrot soup, ask around, everyone has a go-to version.  This one is simple, rich and coconut-ty with the warming flavor of curry.

Who would think a bunch of carrots...

Could turn into this:

Coconut Curry Carrot Soup by The Family Table

winter soup session: italian wedding soup with herbed chicken meatballs

I like to look up the history of my soups.  For the Italian Wedding Soup, I imagined there was going to be a romantic story of true love wrapped around an elaborate feast.  I was very surprised when I learned that the cited wedding is the really the marriage of green vegetables and meat, to each other.

Similarly to beef borscht, this soup is made with many different combinations, basically whatever you have on hand, as long as the sacred marriage is respected.  For the meat, I have seen it as chicken, brisket and meatballs.   The chicken meatballs in the recipe below are delicious baked in the oven for about 10 minutes at 350 and eaten straight off the cookie sheet.  The taste of parmesan comes through and the chicken flavor is a nice change from heavier beef meatballs.

As yummy as the baked meatballs are, for this soup, they are best when poached in the actual soup broth as they are light and easy to eat while slurping down the soup (I would like to thank Kim for this brilliant suggestion).  For the vegetable, I have seen it including cabbage, spinach, kale and escarole.  Having made this with both spinach and escarole, I prefer the escarole as it holds up better and imparts a nice flavor.  That being said, if you have spinach, throw that in.  Most people don't have bags of escarole hanging about.

Italian Wedding Soup by The Family Table

winter soup session: spicy grain and roasted root vegetable soup

I have long been an admirer of First Slice.  Mary Ellen Diaz, their founder,  left the restaurant world to start First Slice, a non profit organization who's goal is to ensure that needy and homeless people get "the first slice" of a pie, not the crumbs.  She funds her dream by selling subscriptions to family dinners.  For 10 weeks, at $78 a week, families come pick up 3 freshly prepared, then frozen meals for the week.  Included in the price is money to provide the same quality meal for homeless people at various shelters and soup kitchens in the Chicago area.  Her program is so inspiring.

I found this delicious, vegetarian and protein rich soup while researching grains.  Mary Ellen shared it with Food and Wine, saying that it is one of the more popular soups at the shelters.  I tinkered with it slightly, roasting the vegetables before adding them to the chile broth.  One of my soup session friends, Heather, planned to add shredded roast chicken to it.  Topped with crumbled tortilla chips, it would resemble a tortilla soup closely.

Spicy Grain and Roasted Root Vegetable Soup by The Family Table

winter soup session: beef borscht

It did not escape my observation that "beef borscht" was the hardest class to fill in my soup series this winter.  I guess I get it:  beets are not loved by everyone nor does the name really grab you.  Just say "borscht", it does not immediately inspire appetite.  Regardless, I was so excited to start sampling recipes and finding the perfect combination: beets, braised meat, vinegar, red cabbage and orange zest!

After mixing many recipes, I have come up with a nice blend.  When I first made the recipe, I seared and then cooked the short ribs in a stock pot with carrots, celery, fennel, onion, making a little stock that I then used as the broth for the soup.   Today at Family Table cooking, we shredded beef brisket that I had made in my crock pot the night before, and then used the cooking liquid for the soup broth as well.  Borscht is a great vehicle for leftover meat.

Borscht by The Family Table

winter soup session: lentil

There are so many different recipes for lentil soup: some are pureed, some are chunky, some are yellow, some are red, some have orange zest and ginger, some have sausage, some have vinegar.  I inherited my go to lentil soup recipe from my friend Sarah who had served it to my daughter for dinner.  It comes, adapted from the blog "vicious ange", from Bill Granger's "Sydney Food" and it is delicious: hearty, vegetarian, with a bit of a kick from the chiles de arbol.

Here are the pots from this week's Family Table cooking.  We were a symphony in red, a true advertisement for Le Creuset's cherry line.

As you can see from the picture, it is a thick soup.  If you like more of a brothy soup, just increase the amount of stock or water that you use.

Lentil Soup by The Family Table

Lentils were recently called one of the five healthiest foods by Health Magazine.  After soybeans and hemp, lentils have the most protein of any legumes or nuts.  When eaten with rice, lentils are a complete protein (contains all nine of the essential amino acids necessary for a human's diet).  They are also have a good fiber content, good iron, folic acid and vitamin D.   My preferred lentil is the green lentils de Puy, mostly because they keep their shape so nicely in a soup or for a lentil salad. 

How to cook lentils:

• Rinse the lentils, until the water runs clear, then put them in a pot
• Top them with water, covering by a couple inches.  Salt.
• Bring to a boil.
• Turn the heat down to a simmer, cover the pot.
• Cook until it is to your liking.  This usually takes about 20 minutes. Test it, it is done when it is soft.
• Drain the excess water out. 

I love tossing my warm lentils with a simple mustard vinaigrette, maybe adding in some diced red onions and eating for lunch. It is also a great bed for a seared filet of salmon. Or, cool them down, keep them in freezer bags in your freezer until you have a lentil hankering. They are a great way to get some protein into a simple green salad.

We also made Cauliflower Flatbread to go along with our soup:

 
Roasted cauliflower is one of my family's favorite vegetable.  I just cut the cauliflower into smaller florets, toss it in olive oil, salt and pepper and then bake on a pyrex glass dish at about 400 degrees for 30 minutes or so.  The cauliflower gets all brown and caramelized.

If it is not all eaten the moment it comes out of the oven, use this recipe from Mark Bittman for a nice side, or as a yummy appetizer.

winter soup session: chicken, sweet potato and barley soup

You might have noticed me wax on about barley in my last winter session posting on December 4th.  I love that short rib, mushroom barley soup but this one is a close second, and much faster and easier especially if you have some leftover cooked chicken hanging out in your refridgerator.

The original recipe, adapted from Melissa Clark from the New York Times, labeled it as "spicy".  I do not feel the heat (although you certainly could increase the chili powder) but I really appreciate the warmer spices melding together, especially with the coconut milk pulling it all together.

The next time I make this soup, I will add the spinach in at the very end so it retains its color and nutrients a bit more.

Spiced Sweet Potato, Chicken and Barley Soup by The Family Table

fall session: barley

Barley is a whole grain high in fiber and high in protein.  Barley can help reduce the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and colon cancer.  It also helps to lower cholesterol.  Typically barley is seen in soups, but as grains's health benefits are broadcast and people get more comfortable with their versatility, barley salad recipes are becoming more common.

How to cook Barley:

• Rinse the barley until the water runs clear. 
• If you soak the barley for a few hours or overnight, it will speed up the cooking time.
• Put the drained barley in a pot, cover with water, covering by a couple inches.  Salt.
• Bring to a boil.
• Turn the heat down to a simmer. 
• Cook until it is to your liking.  This usually takes about 15-20 minutes if you pre-soaked the grain or more like 40 minutes if it was not pre-soaked.
• Drain the excess water out.

In Family Table cooking we made a lovely Pearled Barley Salad with Apples, Pomegranates and Pine Nuts.  It is a nice recipe, best when eaten soon so the apples don't get mushy.

But our main dish was the delicious barley soup, made with beef short ribs, wild and button mushrooms and other wintery vegetables.

Following are the recipes for two barley soups: the first, the hearty short rib, barley and mushroom soup pictured above.  The second, is a creamy chicken, vegetable and herb soup that is simple and yet so good.  Quick to prepare, it does not need as much cooking time as the more substantial short rib soup.  Enjoy them both:

Short Rib, Barley and Mushroom Soup by The Family Table

Creamy Chicken and Barley Soup by The Family Table