Archive for the 'soup' Category

History Dinner: Poor Man’s Potage and Tomato Soup Cake

Published on April 29, 2011 in 20th century, baking, cake, dinner party, potatoes, soup and vegetarian. 2 Comments
Tomato Soup Cake.  You’d never guess the secret ingredient. (it’s love!)

Last summer, I spent a week dining on recipes from MFK Fisher’s book How to Cook a Wolf. After I finished the project, there were two recipes I still wanted to try: Quick Potato Soup and Tomato Soup cake.  So I invited over a few friends and we dined.

Soup was first, served with buttered, fresh-baked bread:

Modern technology has made this recipe easier: instead of hand-grating a million potatoes, I used an immersion blender.  I softened then onions first, simmering them slowly in a whole stick of butter.  Delicious.  Then I added the potatoes, cubed but unpeeled, and about a quart of water.  I brought them to a boil and cooked the mixture until the potatoes were fork tender.  I heated a quart of whole milk on the stove while I used my blender to puree the soup.  I left it a little chunky, ’cause that’s how I roll.  I tasted the soup and added a generous quantity of salt and some pepper.

I used about 3/4 the amount of liquid that Fisher recommends; when I initially added the milk, the soup looked too thin.  But I let it bubble away on a low heat for about 30 minutes and it thickened up to a pleasant consistency.  This morning, the leftovers were souper thick, which is how I like it.

I served the soup topped with what I thought was flat leaf parsley, but was actually cilantro.  It didn’t matter, it was really tasty.  I also sprinkled parmesan cheese over top, which put a nice finish on the soup.  Simple ingredients, simple preparation, and simply delicious: the qualities that Fisher’s recipes are known for.

Potato and Onion Soup– one of the most perfect foods.

Dessert was Tomato Soup Cake:

The “soda” is baking soda and can be whisked in with the flour and spices.  I left out the clove, which I find to be an overpowering flavor, and used a very satisfactory blend of 1 tsp cinnamon, and a 1/2 tsp each nutmeg and ginger.  My “what you will” was one fuji apple and 3/4 cup chopped walnuts.  And yes: I added one can of Campbell’s “Soup at Hand” Classic Tomato Soup.

I didn’t make the frosting of “cream cheese and powdered sugar and a little rum” that Fisher recommends, although it sounds awesome.  I made a glaze with confectioner’s sugar and the juice and zest of a lemon.  Although the cake is great without frosting, too.

“This is a pleasant cake,” Fisher says, “which keeps well and puzzles people who ask what kind it is.”  I let my guests venture guesses as to the surprise ingredient.  They were nearly finished with their cake slices when someone finally said “Tomatoes?”  Initially, everyone dropped their cake in horror.  Then they found peace with the idea and wolfed the remainder down.

The cake was incredibly moist–shockingly most–without being heavy.  The spice blend was perfect.  Maybe you could taste tomatoes, but I’m not sure: I think it just added richness and depth to the other flavors.  And since the soup replaces milk and eggs, the cake is also vegan (as long as you use shortening, not butter).

I would absolutely, without a doubt make this cake again.

How to Cook a Wolf Week: Day 2, “Soup…is good.”

Published on September 15, 2010 in 20th century, soup and vegetables. 2 Comments
My groceries for a week.

A day of Sludge done with, I was relieved to get into more hearty dishes.  Above, my groceries for the week:, at a cost of $35 in total; including $10 worth of vegetables from my CSA, $5 for some un-homogenized milk from Ronnybrook farms, and the rest spent on bread, cheese, etc.

For breakfast, I had (in Fisher’s words): “…piles of toast, generously buttered, and a bowl of honey or jam, and milk…You can be lavish because the meal is so inexpensive.  You can have fun, because there is no trotting around with fried eggs and mussy dishes and grease in the pan and a lingeringly unpleasant smell in the air.”  Toast it was! Deep, brown, whole wheat bread, fresh from my local bakery.  Buttered, with a schmear of honey, and a glass of milk.  Done.

For lunch, I consulted the chapter “How to Boil Water” for Fisher’s lunch recommendation: “a heartening, ample soup.”  With a drawer full of vegetables, I decided to make “A Basic Minestrone.”  I was interested in Fisher’s interpretation of the classic Italian dish. “Probably the most satisfying soup in the world,” she says, ” for people who are hungry, as well as for those who are tired or worried or cross or in debt or in a moderate amount of pain or in love, or in robust health, or in any kind of business hugmuggery, is minestrone.”  Sounds reassuring, doesn’t it?

***
 A Basic Minestrone
 From How to Cook a Wolf by MFK Fisher (1942).

1/4 bacon or salt pork or fat ham.
1 small onion
1 stalk celery
1 handful fresh, chopped parsley
2 cups tomatoes, peeled
1 tsp each oregano and basil

Any other vegetables you have on hand

1 cup of dry pasta

Salt and pepper

I cut the fattiest pieces off a ham steak I bought for dinner later this week.  I put this fat in a large soup pot, and let it render before I added the onion to soften.  Ham fat as a soup base?  Delicious.  Then in went the celery, parsley, and herbs, and left to soften for 10 minutes.  Last, the tomato (I used canned), stirred constantly until heated through.  Then, I added two quarts of water.

At this point, Fisher recommends adding whatever vegetable you have on hand (but never beets!); I added 1/2 a small, green cabbage; 1 potato; 2 cloves garlic; 1/2 an acorn squash; 2 carrots; 2 stalks celery; and a handful of kale.  Fisher recommends chopping these fine; then mashing them with a potato masher…While I can’t explain Fisher’s obsession with smooshed food, I decided to simply leave the veggies finely chopped.

I brought the soup pot to a boil, then turned it down to a simmer, and let it cook until the vegetables were tender, about an hour.

When deprived of seasoning for a time, one forgets the richness it adds to a dish.  As the soup simmered, it smelled like sweet summer days and freshly cut lawns: green and spicy.

20 minutes before serving, I added a cup of dried macaronis.  Then,  just before ladling it into bowls, Fisher says to “Churn the soup ferociously, and serve over thin toasted bread or not, but always with a good ample bowl of grated dry cheese to sprinkle upon each serving, as the pleased human who eats it may desire.”  I adorned my soup with grated Romano.

The soup, it turns out, was o.k.  I’ve had better; I feel my addition of kale instead of spinach wasn’t such a good choice.  It made the soup olive green and a little stinky.

But the soup wasn’t bad, either. It was warm and filling, and I felt ready for the rest of my day.

Tonight, we’ll continue with our Italian theme for the day, with a vegetable Frittata.

History Dish Mondays: Turtle Soup

Published on February 1, 2010 in history dish mondays and soup. 0 Comments

Photo by Everett Bogue

Yesterday, I cooked up a batch of a popular 19th century summertime treat, Turtle Soup.  It went over surprisingly well with my friends!  But you’ll have to wait to read more about it: I was testing my turtle recipe for an upcoming article in Edible Queens magazine.  The Summer 2010 issue will feature this dish and many more.

Retronovated Recipes: Soup Meagre

Published on June 10, 2009 in hunting and gathering, retronovation and soup. 0 Comments


Soup Meagre is a great spring recipe from about 1723.  It’s a sort of catch-all meal made of all types of early season vegetables: onions, peas, and leafy greens.  

The original recipe can be found in the American History Cookbook;  in the original, you add a hunk of stale bread and cream the soup together into something I can only imagine resembles baby food.  In my modernized version, I leave this final step out, and let the vegetables maintain their integrity in the broth.

I made this soup recently at my friend Mark’s house: I had gathered some wild onions from a farmer’s field and brought them over as a gift.  He pointed out some wild greens in his front yard, and we decided to make a batch of soup meagre.

The original recipe features sorrel, a leafy green that is ready in May when it’s cultivated, and June if it’s found wild.  It’s flavor is tart and distinctly lemony.  When choosing greens for this soup, I recommend using a combination of mild and tart flavors.  I also enjoy making this soup heartier with the addition of a hard boiled egg for garnish.  This recipe can be made your own with the additions of any ingredients you have on hand: mushrooms, white beans, ham;  be creative.  We didn’t have cloves, so we used cinnamon and red pepper flakes.  This recipe can also easily be made vegetarian by using a vegetable broth instead of chicken.  

The point is: feel free to diverge from this recipe in ingredients and proportions.  It’s very hard to go wrong.

***
Soup Meagre
Inspired by a recipe from a 1723 manuscript as it appears in The American History Cookbook by Mark H. Zanger.
3 bunches leafy greens, including any combination of spinach, parsley, kale, sorrel, lamb’s quarter, or dandelion; washed well.
1 medium onion
2 cloves
1/2 stick salted butter
2 cups peas
3-6 cups Chicken stock
Salt and Pepper to taste
Hard boiled eggs for garnish
1. Melt butter in bottom of pot. Add onions and season with salt and pepper.  Cook until transparent.

2. Add chicken stock, cloves, and peas.  Bring to a boil.  Test peas for doneness (they want to be a little under done at this point). Taste and re-season broth, if necessary.

3. Add greens and cook five more minutes, or until greens are just wilted.

4.  Garnish with hard boiled eggs and serve.

Note: this soup is not good the next day; the greens tend to get slimy  So only make as much as you will eat in one meal.

History Dish Mondays: Featherballs

Published on May 24, 2009 in history dish mondays, jewish, schmaltz and soup. 0 Comments

You are gonna love these balls.

This week, in my ongoing Jewish-American cooking project, Ilana and I are attempting Featherballs:

Featherballs are essentially matzo balls, but are unique in the fact that they are flavored with nutmeg or ginger. My friend and cohort Ilana pointed out that ordinarily in matzo ball soup, it’s the broth that is the most flavorful, and the matzo balls added as filler. In this recipe, the flavor of the matzo balls are brought to the forefront. Additionally, these balls do have a light and fluffy texture–but we’ll get to that in moment.
I journeyed to Brooklyn to meet with Ilana and her boyfriend Jed, for a lesson in Matzo balls. They filled me in on some matzo ball facts: That they were normally made with butter or margarine, so they anticipated this recipe to be much richer, and possibly heavier. Additionally,
most New York matzo balls are fist-size, like the ones you’ll find at Katz’s or the 4th Ave. Deli. These featherballs were to be rolled the size of walnuts. Their are also two types of matzo balls–the light “floaters” and the dense “sinkers.” Neither are wrong, just a personal preference.
We whipped the eggs and the schmaltz until each were fluffy, then combined them and added the dry ingredients. We split the dough between two bowls, and flavored half with nutmeg, and half with ginger. The dry ingredients were added, and mixed by hand until just combined. Jed warned us that over mixing the ingredients would result in a matzo ball as hard as rock.
Jed also said that with most matzo ball recipe, you let the batter chill first, and then roll the balls. In the recipe, you roll first and then chill. We shrugged and followed the recipe.
While the matzo balls chilled in the fridge, Jed cooked some carrot slices in chicken broth. We used boxed broth, but one of the cool things about this recipe is it written for a home cooked soup: you would make you soup, skim the chicken fat off the top, add the fat to the matzo balls, and cook the balls in the soup. Jed also noted that the carrots are essential; they help to break up the saltiness of the broth and the matzo, and gives your palette a rest.
The featherballs are dropped into boiling chicken broth.
When the broth came to a rolling boil, we dropped the featherballs in and covered the pot. 18 minutes later they were done. Be careful not to cook them too long–they begin to fall apart in the water. Some may be a little underdone in the middle, which is fine. We turned off the burner and served us up a bowl of featherballs.
I have to admit, I have no basis of comparison, these being perhaps the second matzo balls I’ve had in my life. But I did think they were really good. Jed and Ilana have grown up on matzo. The three of us agreed the texture was great–Jed and Ilana said much less dense than an ordinary matzo ball. It was light, but also very hearty. After eating four, we were full.
We couldn’y taste the ginger in the featherballs, although they were still salty and good. The nutmeg taste was present, and they were deigned the favorites by Jed and Ilana. For me, it was hard. I associate the taste of nutmeg with dense cakes of the 1850s, and it was difficult to get out of the mindset. We speculate that mace (the spicy out shell of a nutmeg) might also make a good featherball.
The featherballs were really perfect. Ilana hit the nail on the head: “These are the best matzo balls I’ve ever had. I think we’ve really rediscovered something.”
In the coming weeks, we plan on doing one more Jewish cooking day based on our Manischewitz cookbook. Ilana and Jef will handle savory dishes (pumpkin pancakes, tamales, asparagus wheel) and I’ll attack sweets (boston pie, orient cake, farfelroons). I will keep you updated as to our progress.