BYOL: Corn Soup

Is it too late to tell you about corn soup? I don't know. A few days ago I managed to find fantastic local sweet corn at the greenmarket but as I write this it's a blustery, chilly, autumnal evening and nothing could be further from my mind than corn - a vegetable that I most closely associate with clam bakes, backyard barbecues, sunburns, and cold beers.

But this soup? I just have to tell you about this soup. For something that contains no butter, cream, or bacon -- for being, in fact, fully vegan -- it is extraordinarily luxurious and astonishingly flavorful. Thanks to all of the natural sugar and starch in corn, it could almost be confused for a kind of creamy, sweet porridge. Dishes like this one make me wonder why anyone bothers with things like fat free brownies, protein muffins, and low calorie potato chips when you can make soup from nothing but vegetables and a slick of olive oil that tastes this good. And in around 45 minutes and at a price of around $10, no less.

By this point, I have a solid few months under my belt of bringing my lunch to work. I have come to two conclusions: 1) That I can usually make something moderately healthy in an hour or two on a Sunday, which is roughly equivalent to the time I would spend in a five day week consulting takeout menus or wandering up and down Park Avenue trying to decide what to buy for lunch, and 2) That if I don't make my own lunch, I will end up eating something regrettable. That might mean outrageously expensive sushi takeout; since I work for a restaurant, it also might mean caving into "family meal," the food that the kitchen puts out at midday for staff. I know that this might sound like an no-brainer lunch option, but you have to understand that family meal is always both delicious and outrageously heavy. Try eating a grilled cheese sandwich and cream soup or a plate of meat sauce and buttered pasta for lunch and tell me you don't have your head on your desk by 3 PM. Then, tell me you can still button your jeans at the end of the month.

If brown bagging it isn't your thing, a pureed vegetable soup like this is a stellar option to serve at a dinner party. My mother, who was for years in the position of single-handedly putting on multi-course holiday meals, often made a pureed vegetable soup the day before and served it as an hors d'oeuvre about 30 minutes before dinner. In retrospect, it was an ingenious way to keep guests busy while she raced around putting the final touches on dinner.

If local corn is gone by the time you get around to making this soup, never fear -- you can substitute many other vegetables into this recipe, including but not limited to carrots, zucchini, butternut squash, and asparagus.


Sweet Corn Soup

Serves 6

1 small onion, halved and sliced
1 stalk celery
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
9 ears corn
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups vegetable stock
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Sour cream (optional)
Fresh dill (optional)

1. Remove kernels from corn cobs and set aside. Discard cobs.

2. In a large pot, heat oil over medium-low heat until it moves easily across the pan. Add onion and celery and cook until softened but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant.

3. Stir in corn, salt, and pepper and let heat for 2-3 minutes. Add vegetable stock and bring stock to a simmer.

4. Cook partially covered for 5-10 minutes, until corn is heated through and beginning to soften. Remove from heat and strain through a mesh sieve, reserving liquid. Puree corn in food processor or blender to desired consistency, adjusting with cooking liquid to desired thickness. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

5. Serve warm or could, with a dallop of sour cream and/or a sprig of dill.

In Which My Book Club Finishes Most of The Book, But All of the Malbec

Last night was my night to host book club. Our August selection was Isabelle Allende's The House of the Spirits, which presented me with the perfect excuse to cook Latin food. I made empanadas and salsa verde and bought Argentinian wines and Spanish cheeses (sadly, the aged cheese is not part of the Latin repertoire, but I thought this the closest alternative). I also made a raspberry tart -- outside of the theme as well, but we've had two book club members get engaged this month and it seemed like an appropriately dainty, feminine dessert to bake in celebration.

The book club: it's made up of seven of my closest friends and came into being -- embarrassingly -- a year and half ago after I watched The Jane Austen Book Club (on a plane! I swear it was on a plane, okay?). In moment of (perhaps Ambien-induced) sappiness and nostalgia for college lit seminars, I decided that I wanted to start reading decent books again on a regular basis and, lucky as I am to have such clever friends, to get together with them for discussion. I swore that this would not be your typical book club -- it would be about ideas! Critical reading! Challenging ourselves intellectually, as we once did! We started with Edith Wharton and have worked our way through everything from Jhumpa Lahiri to Michael Pollan to Evelyn Waugh over the course of the last 18 months. Generally, the format for our monthly meetings is as follows: we spend some period of time discussing the book (longer in the case of Atlas Shrugged, shorter in the case of The Elegance of the Hedgehog) and then gradually the conversation devolves towards such topics as whether or not white-on-cream is a good motif for a formal wedding reception, which juice cleanse is the most bearable, how this one's relationship with her mother-in-law is going, whether that one is finding her job any more fulfilling these days. We get pretty drunk for a weeknight. As I mentioned, I just finished hosting a meeting with themed refreshments and a double engagement celebration. In short, it is your typical book club, and I'm surprised to find myself totally okay with that.

The book: it's lushly written, fantastical and tragic in a way typical of Latin American literature from the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julia Alvarez. Perhaps a little dark for my taste but if you have a high tolerance for fictional misfortune, I recommend it. While only half the group had made it all the way through the book in time for last night, the verdict was strongly positive.

The empanadas: I am a white girl from Sleepy Hollow whose experience with South American cuisine is limited to dining at a couple of those all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse horror shows and traveling to Buenos Aires once, so I have absolutely no business making empanadas. Nonetheless my virgin effort at the savory pies was well received, which is to say that the group of us, most of whom are not ravenous in the face of doughy, beefy things, finished off nine empanadas over the course of the night. Afterwards The Viking gobbled up the remains and declared that "they tasted like a Cornish pasty." I have no idea what that means but it appears to have been a compliment.



The raspberry tart: Serviceable. The pistachio crust, which I made in accordance with the instructions despite my intuition that the ratio of butter to flour was off, was sure enough too buttery to be workable. Once I managed to practically spoon it into the tart shell it shrunk during its time in the oven, and cooked unevenly. But the flavor ended up okay in the end and it didn't crumble to dust when sliced as feared. All seemed to enjoy it, but then again it's hard to stray too far from the mark when you're using vanilla pastry cream and local raspberries.



The salsa verde: a monster hit, served with tortilla chips and the first thing to be completely polished off last night (aside from several bottles of wine, natch). Salsa verde (the Mexican kind) is typically made with tomatillos but this one substitutes zucchini. Once all the lime and cilantro is piled in you would never know it was zucchini you were tasting. I'm not sure whether this always counts as a good thing, but if you're dying to get rid of zucchini and/or can't find any tomatillos, then it does. Used as a dip, it's a great way to demonstrate a modicum of effort with guests without actually having to roll up your sleeves and make a real hors d'oeuvre. And in addition to going well with tortilla chips, it's also a great garnish for steak or fish.



The recipe is from this month's Bon Appetit. Don't feel that you need to pay particularly close attention to the quantities, because this is one of those recipes for which there is truly no need for precision.

Zucchini Salsa Verde

Makes about 2 cups

10 ounces zucchini (about 2 medium), trimmed, chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/3 cup chopped white onion
5 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon chopped seeded jalapeño chiles
Grated peel of 1 lime
Kosher salt

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Serve immediately, or keep refrigerated for up to one week.

Roasted Tomatoes, The Low And Slow Way

I've already mentioned in a previous post the sort of revival camp fervor that Fuppies lavish on August fruits and vegetables.

Well, the tomato in particular enjoys a status above all of its late summer brethren (zucchini, peaches, squash blossoms, corn, etc) in the minds of Fuppies, eliciting a level of zeal and devotion usually reserved for ones family, best friends, and favorite brand of vodka. Especially heirloom tomatoes. If the Fuppies had a flag, it would be Alice Waters and Dan Barber cradling a bushel of heirloom tomatoes in their arms.

I poke fun, but there's something to all this enthusiasm over the arrival of the local tomato. Here's why:

1. Good tomatoes are undeniably delicious. They are bright and vegetal when fresh, deeply savory when cooked, and versatile enough to be at home in everything from pasta sauces to a BLT.

2. When local tomatoes are out of season the tomatoes that you get at the supermarket mostly come from Florida (year-round) and California (spring/summer). Because the fruit bruises so easily when ripe, they are picked unripe and later ripened using Ethelyn gas. This process, and all the changes in temperature that occur as they travel from the field to your kitchen, is why off-season tomatoes are so often mealy and insipid.

3. Tomato farming in Florida (and to a lesser extent California) is infamous for its exploitation of immigrant workers, many of whom exist in a state of wage slavery and live and work in inhumane conditions.

So, if you care about things like great tomato texture and human rights, and certainly if you are a Fuppie, you really should only eat tomatoes when you can get them locally, which means 4-6 weeks per year. Thus the fanaticism during that brief period when the good stuff is available.

Since there's a limit to how many fresh tomatoes even the most devoted tomato lover can eat in the form of salad, sandwiches, and the like, I strongly suggest roasting them. Slow roasted tomatoes are unbelievably versatile. Just a few of their many uses:

-Chopped up and included in sauces and vegetable sautes
-Mixed into risotto
-Pureed with tomato juice, oil, and vinegar for a vinaigrette
-As a pizza topping
-Seasoned and dressed with olive oil as an antipasto

There are two different approaches to the tomato roasting process: cooking them at a high temperature for under an hour, or at a low temperature for a much longer period of time. I'm a fan of the latter, as I find that the tomatoes roast more evenly, without drying out too much or acquiring a burnt flavor.



The slow roasting process takes 4 or so hours from start to finish but only around 20 minutes of active time. That makes it the perfect activity for when you're puttering around the house on a rainy August Sunday, as I was this past weekend. I spent Sunday afternoon plowing through laundry, grumbling along with The Viking about the deteriorating quality of The New York Times, and periodically tending to my roasting tomatoes. It was a septuagenarian sort of day.

Roasted tomatoes will last for 1-2 weeks in the fridge and up six months in the freezer, making it possible to extend your fresh tomato supply clear through winter. If I were a person who knew how to can things, I would also tell you how to can them. But I'm not. Maybe next year.

After roasting ten tomatoes on Sunday, I chopped up a few of them and included them in the filling for a vegetable lasagna (complete with homemade pasta, Italian grandma style). The result was pure summer comfort food, light but satisfying.



Slow Roasted Tomatoes
Adapted from Think Like A Chef

10 Roma tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
1 head of garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
5 sprigs thyme
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cut tomatoes in half latitudinally, place in large bowl along with garlic, olive oil, thyme, and seasoning, and mix gently.
3. Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and place the tomato halves on the baking sheet, cut-side down. Pour contents of the bowl over them, distributing thyme and garlic evenly.
4. Bake for 20 minutes (until skins loosen) and then remove and discard skins. Pour any juices that have accumulated into a bowl and reserve.
5. Return the tomatoes to the oven and reduce the temperature to 275 degrees, periodically pouring off and reserving the juices.
6. After about 3 hours, remove the tomatoes from the oven and allow them to cool on their baking sheet.
7. Put garlic, tomatoes, and juice in separate containers and store.

Qu'est Que C'est Dans Ma Boite Du CSA? Kale, Swiss Chard, Lettuces, Radishes, Carrots, Spring Garlic, & Garlic Scapes

Another Wednesday, another batch of sad vegetables languishing in my crisper drawer. I didn't get a chance to do much cooking these past days (too much World Cup, too many Real Housewives reruns, too little culinary ambition), and as a result was again unable to make the most of my CSA delivery. Whimper.

I'm becoming slightly worried that this CSA produce is going to function much in the same way as my New Yorker subscription, which exists to sit around the house and make me feel bad about myself, reminding me of the person that I could be: someone who reads contemporary short fiction and doesn't let good food go to waste.

But, let's start with the high points.

Kale and carrots went into this gorgeous white bean & kale soup. It's Dan Barber's recipe (courtesy of Bon Appetit, available here), and I have to say that it seemed suspiciously healthy when I first encountered it. I worried that it might turn out to be one of those things that personal trainers and trophy wives eat and rave about but that really tastes like sawdust mixed with dishwater.



It does not. It's tangy and light and delicious. The key here is the Sherry vinegar added in at the end -- if you don't have Sherry vinegar on hand, do not skip this step. You can use white wine vinegar instead. Also, make sure to give the stock and white wine plenty of time to reduce down to make a concentrated broth, even if you exceed the timing marked in the recipe.

The Viking and I ate the soup with some disappointing store bought bread. The whole meal happened to be vegan, for those of you who go in for that sort of thing. For those that don't: I'd suggest frying bacon or pancetta in with the shallots at the beginning for a heartier soup.

The next night, I made a pasta dish from the Swiss chard, garlic scapes, and spring garlic, and served it with with pork cutlets in a cider-mustard sauce.



For the pasta dish, I separated the leaves and stems of the Swiss chard, chopping them separately. Then I sliced and sauteed garlic scapes and spring garlic (white parts only) in olive oil. I added in the sliced stems and a little water, letting them soften and then adding the leaves and little bit more water. Then I added almost 2 cups of chopped San Marzano tomatoes. That all got mixed together with a pound of penne and 1/2 cup Parmesan. As a side note, do yourself a favor and buy high quality pasta -- something other than Ronzoni, De Cecco, and Barilla if you can find it. It has more texture and flavor, and really makes all the difference.

I digress. I suppose I shouldn't spend any more effort trying to distract you from the issue at hand, which is of course the big bag of lettuces and radishes left in my fridge. I briefly considered eating a side salad with my double espresso this morning, but ultimately decided against it. They're still sitting in the fridge wilting right now, probably wishing that they were delivered to someone who really appreciated them.