Green Soup with Ginger

I got the idea for this soup from Heidi Swanson's great cooking blog, 101 Cookbooks, featuring vegetarian recipes using whole foods. I have cooked several recipes from her blog, all great! She has also written a cookbook, Super Natural Cooking, that I think I'm going to have to buy even though my cookbook shelf has already overflowed to the shelf below. I made a number of changes in her soup, which was originally from a cookbook called Love Soup by Anna Thomas. (I love how recipes travel through kitchens and mutate.) The version on her blog has sweet potato and chard, which also sounds wonderful; I just was trying to maybe please my teenagers, who interrogate me about the ingredients of any new dish and would mostly rather I cooked the same recipes the same way every time. So I made it more like a leek and potato soup, which they love, except with spinach and ginger. I loved the green spinach and fresh ginger flavor and so did my husband and one of our teens. The older one prefers my usual leek and potato soup (no surprise). Here's the soup:

Green Soup with Ginger
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1-1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 lb. yellow potatoes (about 3 med.), peeled and diced
1 leek, washed and sliced (white and light green parts only)
1 bunch spinach, washed and chopped
3 Tbsp. fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
2 cups vegetable broth, made with Rapunzel bouillon cube (see Note)
2-4 tsp. fresh lemon juice
ground pepper to taste
1 Tbsp. heavy cream (optional)

Saute the onion in the olive oil on low heat, sprinkling with a little salt, until it is soft and starting to brown, approx. half an hour. Meanwhile, put the potato in 4 cups of cold water in a soup pot and add 1 teaspoon salt. Add leek and ginger to the pot, and bring to a boil. Add sauteed onions when they are ready. Simmer for approx. 20 minutes, then add the spinach and simmer until vegetables are tender (another 5-10 minutes). Let soup cool for a few minutes, then puree in a food processor or blender. (Can also leave chunky.) Return to the pot and add lemon juice, pepper, and more salt to taste. Reheat slowly and swirl in the cream, if desired.

Note: Usually I make soup with chicken broth, homemade when possible. But it seemed like the charm of this soup would be in the vegetable flavors, so I honored Heidi's version and used vegetable broth made with the Rapunzel cube that Heidi recommended. I have to say, the broth made from the cube was very good.

...and slices of quince

This is what was in the surprise seasonal package I received from my friend Karen's farm. Those sensuous yellow fruits are quinces, walnuts in the background, and the mahogany fruits in front of the walnuts are jujubes. Here's what Karen says about the jujubes: "The Jujus are perhaps an acquired taste. Just pop them in your mouth--they do have a pit. They are chewy, with a date-like quality and they are ripe when slightly dry and wrinkled." I've been doing just that--popping them in my mouth--and they are like dates, a little less sweet, with a crispy dry skin.
As for the quinces, with their subtle, appley fragrance--she suggests making quince paste. She enclosed a recipe for cotognata (Italian) that refers to the nuns making it and pressing it into special ceramic dishes. I do love quinces, but not quince paste; it's just a little too medieval for me. Luckily, I have Jane Grigson's Fruit Book, which has some great quince recipes and this wonderful poem about quinces, composed by Shafur ben Utman al-Mushafi, an Arabic-Andalusian poet who died in 982:

It is yellow in color, as if it wore a daffodil
tunic, and it smells like musk, a penetrating smell.

It has the perfume of a loved woman and the same
hardness of heart, but it has the color of the
impassioned and scrawny lover.

Its pallor is borrowed from my pallor; its smell
is my sweetheart's breath.

When it stood fragrant on the bough and the leaves
had woven for it a covering of brocade,

I gently put up my hand to pluck it and to set it
like a censer in the middle of my room.

It had a cloak of ash-colored down hovering over
its smooth golden body,

and when it lay naked in my hand, with nothing more than
its daffodil-colored shift,

it made me think of her I cannot mention, and I feared
the ardor of my breath would shrivel it in my fingers.

This is the kind of thing I adore Jane Grigson for. I think I will make Quinces Baked in the French Style (sort of like baked apples) with them, after I enjoy them for a while in their glass bowl.

Boeuf Bourgignon

Just like everyone else who saw the movie "Julie and Julia," I had an irresistible craving to make Boeuf Bourgignon afterward. It was so very satisfying to watch a movie about cooking and a cookbook, specifically about two women who take a ridiculous amount of time to cook amazingly decadent things to eat and each write a book about it. Meryl Streep is fun to watch and she is obviously having fun, too; I think she must be more like Julia Child than Julia Child was. And the 1950s French interiors and dresses are to die for.
I don't have Mastering the Art of French Cooking, although I did have one within hands' reach at my mother-in-law's house this weekend. (She said the recipes had too many steps.) I decided not to ask to borrow it because I didn't really need to make Julia's Boeuf Bourgignon. I was quite happy to make Mark Bittman's simplified version from his cookbook The Best Recipes in the World. It's a good recipe, with not too many steps. But no carrots! I missed the carrots.
It was delicious, but it didn't rock my world. I do like beef stew but I think I like it with more vegetables in it (especially tomatoes) and no so much, well, beef. My husband liked it and I liked it and one teenage boy liked it. The other didn't. The Boeuf Bourgignon made me remember a similar beef stew that my dad used to make that was really good. I'll have to ask him about that one.
I love it that Mastering is selling out all over the country. I wonder how many people will actually cook anything in it, besides the Boeuf Bourgignon, of course. Boeuf Bourgignon is brown food, so it doesn't photograph too well. That white sphere is a pearl onion.

Galette-O-Rama!

It's galette season at our house right now. These were (top to bottom) nectarine, strawberry-rhubarb, and peach. I tried to make my son a birthday cake but he requested a galette instead. I stil like pies...but actually these are easier and the crust never gets soggy. I follow the recipe exactly in Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Fruit. Whenever I have deviated from the recipe, something has not been quite right, so this is one of the few recipes I follow exactly.

The Joy of Meatloaf

(Apologies to the Chronicle for using the photo; I didn't think to photograph my meatloaf. But this is Cindy's as Cindy made it.)
I've written about my copy of my mom's Joy of Cooking (1964 edition). It's not often that this cookbook makes it into the news. But today's New York Times has a short piece on a nutritional study comparing the calorie counts of servings from the original 1936 edition and the 2006 one, with a reference to lean times, both financially and gastronomically. In case you prefer not to click over to the article, the study found that there is an average of 39% more calories per serving in the current edition's recipes, due to more caloric ingredients and larger serving sizes.
I've long noticed the evolution of recipes toward more luxurious ingredients and larger serving sizes in recipes from my own cookbooks. Because I was curious whether my impression was accurate, I compared 4 meatloaf recipes, spanning approximately the same number of years as my lifetime, with an eye on the approximate calories of each (that part is not so scientific).
1964 Joy of Cooking: 1 lb. ground beef, 6 slices of bacon, 1/2 cup of cream (among other less caloric ingredients), to yield 4 servings.
(I haven't actually tried this recipe.)
1989 Silver Palate New Basics Cookbook, "Cajun Meat Loaf": 2 lb. ground beef, 1/2 lb. andouille sausage, etc., to yield 8 servings
(This is very Silver Palate--adding an extra twist to gussy up a classic. It also includes various peppers, cayenne, etc. I find I usually have to delete at least one ingredient, and sometimes several, from every Silver Palate recipe, although I haven't actually tried this recipe, either. I'm not sure I want andouille sausage in my meat loaf but to be fair they also have a recipe for meat loaf without it, although that one also calls for spinach, carrots and cumin. Uck.)
Undated, probably from the 1990s, SF Chronicle meat loaf: 2 lbs. ground beef, no bacon or sausage or cream, to yield 8 servings.
(This is the slightly boring recipe I usually make--so far the leanest.)
2009 "Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen Mighty Meat Loaf" from last week's SF Chronicle: 2 lbs. ground beef, no sausage or bacon, to yield 4-6 servings.
("Cindy" as in Cindy Pawlcyn. I just tried this one last week, but we got more like 8 servings out of it, even with 2 teenage boys eating. Serving size on this one is way bigger than the others. This recipe is a lot more interesting than my usual, with more ketchup, more herbs, more minced vegetables, and even more ketchup in a spicy sauce with horseradish poured on top as a gravy. It was a big hit. I was told, in firm tones, that this beat my usual meatloaf. In fact, here it is, along with 3 other meat loaf recipes from the Chronicle's meat loaf extravaganza, if you want to try it).

Hmmm. Maybe meatloaf wasn't the best choice for my unscientific study, since the first two seem to be more or less equivalent, and only Cindy's showed a big jump in calories. Cindy's meatloaf was adapted from a restaurant recipe, which tend to be more caloric and luxurious. Also, after an era of food excess, even a comfort food associated with frugality has to feel plentiful, hence the excessive serving size. Well, it is exceptionally good meatloaf.

A Tale of Two Frozen Desserts

I recently made these two different frozen desserts. The one on the right is maple bourbon frozen yogurt; the one on the left is maple ice cream with buttered pecans. Just by looking at the photo, you can tell the one of the left is creamier and more delicious. In fact, it is incredibly good and chock full of pecans (not stingy like some butter pecan ice cream). I made the frozen yogurt to go with the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, but although it has a nice tangy flavor with a hint of bourbon, it's too icy. My sister said thoughtfully, licking her spoon after eating her portion, "You could make maple ice cream..." So I did, "for my book group." (Although the idea that I need an excuse to make ice cream with two teenage boys at home is a little ridiculous.) I could have made the frozen yogurt creamier by straining some liquid out of the yogurt, but it would still be just frozen yogurt. The maple ice cream with buttered pecans might be a bit over the top with pumpkin pie; I like it with Anna's Ginger Thins (hey--that would make some adorable little ice cream sandwiches).

The recipe for the maple ice cream, and the buttered pecans, is from David Lebovitz's decadent ice cream book, The Perfect Scoop. I will not reproduce the recipe here because if you are at all tempted to make this and have an ice cream maker you should go out right now and buy the book from your local independent bookstore.

Revisiting Jane Grigson

I found a persimmon haiku in Jane Grigson's Fruit Book, a literary cookbook that has been reissued this year. I was browsing through the persimmon section, reading what Jane says, since we still have a giant bowl full of them--even though I've given bags away to three of my friends. Jane did extensive research into the origins of different fruits and their varieties, and has many obscure stories about fruits in this book, as well as recipes, some contemporary, some centuries old. But after all, she recommends just eating them fresh, which I will continue to do. I happen to like the cover art for my edition (the 1982 one) of this cookbook, too, so I had fun playing around with my freshly purchased Comice pears and Pink Lady apples.
This haiku is by Issa:

Wild persimmons
The mother eating
The bitter part.

Jane Grigson has some other wonderful cookbooks besides this one: The Vegetable Book, Good Things, English Food, and The Observer Guide to British Cookery, of which I have a signed copy. I was working in London in 1983 as an au pair for a family. The mother worked at the Observer magazine, and she was doing a big food series with Jane. The articles were extracted from the British Cookery book, and the mother I was working for gave me a signed copy. I never met Jane--and it's too late now because she died in 1990--but I liked hearing stories about her. Jane had a fondness for photos of cooked dishes, which my employer always tussled with Jane about. As a photo editor, she looked for good photos. She liked the photos of people in the landscape, harvesting Irish sea urchins in Kenmare, or the butchers in their shop in Darlington, rather than the photos of a brown pot of brown stew. I have to say she was right; I love looking at the photos in British Cookery. The book is a journey through different parts of England, focusing on local purveyors, seafood harvesters, farmers, and traditional recipes. I have to say I haven't delved into the recipes much. "Jugged Hare with Forcemeat Balls" and "Eel Pie" never really inspired me, and British cookery doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation. But I took a look through it again and found some wonderful, unusual recipes. I am making a vow to explore some of them this holiday season.