Soup

I've Got a Cold Only Tom Kha Gai Can Cure

03 Feb 2012
Tom Kah Gai

If you are seeing a picture of tom kha gai then it is safe to assume that I feel like crap. 

Sometimes you just don't need a recipe to know what your body craves. This is one of those days, because I have a bad cold. One of those I don't want to do anything at all kind of colds.

I have been battling it for 5 days. It started typically enough with a scratchy throat. By the next day I had a stuffy nose, but no fever. In fact if it weren't for the stuffy nose I would have said I felt just fine. I had just about convinced myself that it was not a cold at all, just a mild allergy flair up.

But, alas sometime in the night these sniffles moved into my chest and sat down with a great heavy thud! My chest is so congested that it actually feels as if a great big bear is sitting on it while sticking a long feather down my throat. Tickling away for his own amusement. The tickle leads to a cough, the cough leads to hack and the hack brings up some of the nastiest stuff you'd ever want to see.

I used to think that the only thing for a cold was hot tea and toast. But I have learned there is another sort of relief and I have come to swear by it. If you live in Los Angeles long enough, you find that you shed your old skin and develop all sorts of new habits. The simple, comforting and spicy Thai soup known as Tom kha gai or Tom kha kai is one of those skins you develop. One of those adopted experiences that become completely your own. So now whenever I have a cold, it's this soup and this soup alone that makes me feel better.

God Bless the thriving Thai community in Los Angeles.

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Real Men Eat Watercress (Soup!)

10 Jan 2012
watercress soup with sage

Move aside quiche there a a new super food in town and men love it.

Real men like Napoleon Bonaparte and (yep) Sippity Sup! And we're not the only super-dudes in love with this peppery green bite. It’s said that Hippocrates, the father of medicine, built an entire hospital next to a patch of the stuff because he recognized early on the health benefits it could provide to his patients. Gruff Greek soldiers ate watercress to increase their masculine vigor. Even Roman Emperors said it enabled them to make “bold decisions”. I can vouch for that. I ate Creamy Watercress Soup with Sage and decided to write this super-charged tribute.

In Victorian times elegant ladies jumped on the watercress bandwagon too. It could be purchased in parks and street corners, gathered into posey-style bundles. These daintly little nosegays could be nibbled upon, like an ice cream cone while strolling.

And what a nibble watercress seems to be. It's said to have more vitamin C than oranges, more calcium than milk, more folate than bananas, and more iron than spinach.

But its real attribute is that manly men like it. The Romans even believed it could prevent baldness. Now I ask you what man wouldn't eat watercress with that kind of information available to him? Still, even if you have a full head of hair (or are in fact a lady) eating watercress still has delicious benefits. Most notably it has a peppery crunch that elivens this vibrantly colored creamy soup made with leeks, and potatoes called potage au cresson. My version is a simple (but manly) take on the classic. GREG

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Creamy Watercress Soup with Sage

watercress soup
By jgreghenry Published January 9, 2012
Prep time: 30
Yield:1 (Servings)

Ingredients:

  • 2 T unsalted butter
  • 2 leeks, halved lengthwise, cleaned, white and light greeen parts roughly chopped
  • 1 medium potato, peeled and diced
  • 1 clv garlic, peeled & minced
  • 3 stalks celery, roughly chopped
  • 3 c chicken stock
  • 2 bn watercress (about 1 pound), leaves only, plus more for garnish (optional)
  • 6 leaves of fresh sage, rinsed and chopped
  • 0.5 c heavy cream
  • 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
  • 1 pn each, salt and white pepper, to taste

Directions

Melt the butter in a large sauce pan set over medium heat. Add the leeks, celery and garlic, stirring to coat. Lower the heat and cover the pan, cooking the leeks until softened somewhat, but not yet colored, about 4 minutes. Add the potato and chicken stock. Simmer, uncovered until the potatoes are tender, about 12 minutes. Remove the pot from the pan and stir in the watercress and sage. Set the pan aside to cool somewhat.

Meanwhile mix the cream and egg yolks together in a small bowl. Set aside.

Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until very smooth. The strain the soup with a fine meshed sieve discarding any solids. Return the soup to the pan, setting it over medium heat and bring to a boil. Remove the pan from heat and stir in the cream and egg yolk mixture. Season with salt and white pepper. Garnish with watercress (optional). Serve warm.

Simple Lessons in Roast Tomato Soup with Mussels & Fennel

26 Dec 2011
Roast Tomato and Mussels Soup

I don't know whether to say I have a cooking lesson or a history lesson to share with you today. Either way it all starts (and ends) with Roast Tomato Soup with Mussels & Fennel, so I hope that much catches your attention and you'll stick around for the lesson.

It's a lesson I picked up from an old book. You see, I like old cookbooks. I grab them when I see them. I have one called Italian Bouquet from 1958 and I turn to it again and again. Though technically it's not a cookbook as it contains very few recipes. It's really more of a food lover's epicurean travel guide to Italy. It offers all sorts of interesting information about regional Italian cooking traditions.

Recently I was flipping through this book and came across the section on Sicily. Many of the foods typical to the region are described here, and since Sicily is an island a lot of space is dedicated to seafood.

Which sets the stage for an interesting culinary technique I learned from this book. It's a great way to add authentic of the sea flavor to soup, without using a whole lot of actual seafood. Which may seem odd. But remember Sicily is traditionally a land of extremes. So when a Sicilian cook's fishmonger was unable to supply her with all the fish she wanted for her brodu di pisci, or the family's budget didn't allow for an elaborate array of fresh fish, she had a trick. She'd use a combination of garlic, parsley, chilies, and salt pounded into a rough paste and then fried in local olive oil. This paste could be added to water and used as a simple stock for soup. The miracle of this method is that it produces a stock that does indeed taste a bit like the sea.

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Roast Tomato Soup with Mussels & Fennel

tomato and mussels soup
By jgreghenry Published December 24, 2011
Prep time: 120
Yield:1 (Servings)

Ingredients:

  • 4 lb roma tomatoes, roughly torn or chopped into big chunks
  • 1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 4 clv garlic, peeled & chopped
  • 1 fennel bulb with stems and fronds, separated
  • 0.75 c olive oil
  • 1 pn each kosher salt and black pepper
  • 4 T flat leaf parsley leaves, chopped
  • 1 red calabrian chili, or similar, with seeds minced
  • 6 c water
  • 3 lb mussels, scrubbed & debearded

Directions

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Put the tomato pieces with all of their juices, the chopped onion, 2 chopped garlic cloves, and the fennel stems and most of the fronds (save the bulb for the soup and a few feathery fronds for garnish) onto a parchment line rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with 1/2 cup olive oil and season well with salt and pepper. Toss to get all the vegetables coated in oil. Roast the vegetables about 1 hour and 15 minutes until slightly charred, rotating the sheet halfway through cooking. Remove from oven and let cool somewhat.

Scrape the vegetables and any accumulated juices into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse 10 or 12 times, scraping down the sides once or twice, until a very rough puree is formed. Push the mixture through a fine meshed sieve or tami using a wooden spoon into a clean bowl. Work in batches, discarding the solids as you work. You should get about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of silky smooth sauce, thick enough to coat a wooden spoon.

Quarter the fennel bulb lengthwise then remove the core from each section. Slice the fennel crosswise into thin slivers. Set aside.

Using a mortar and pestle grind the remaining chopped garlic cloves, parsley, red chili with its seeds, and a large pinch of salt into a very rough paste. Heat the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil in the bottom of a large soup pot or Dutch oven. Add the paste and fry until fragrant about 3 minutes. Add the water to the pot along with the fennel slices and bring to a boil. Lower heat and cook until fennel softens somewhat, about 8 minutes.

Add the clean mussels to the pot and cover it with a lid. Cook until the shells open, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat and let the mussels cool in the liquid until they can be handled easily. Once cool enough, discard any mussels that did not open and remove the rest from their shells. Discard the shells. Divide the mussels between 6 shallow soup bowls.

Add the tomato sauce to the broth in the soup pot, adjust seasoning. Bring to a boil, then pour some of the hot broth over the mussels in each bowl. Garnish with reserved chopped fennel fronds. Serve hot with crusty bread.