Borscht with Goat Yogurt

I have recently found myself buried in so many beets that I didn't know what to do. I get them almost every time I pick up my CSA box and I like them, but come on, how many boiled beets can one eat? How many pickled beets can one eat? And even if you put them in a soup where they're not the "main event", they turn the whole thing purple, as if to say, "Ha-ha, thought you could push me out of the spotlight, did you! Well, I'm beets and I'm here!" I feel like beets are constantly mocking me; they even dyed the inside of my dishwasher pink.

Well then, why not learn how to make borscht? I always did love dill, and the stuff is so darn pretty. My little beet adventure ended pretty well, and I used the water left over from boiling the beets to make beet kvass, which was also delicious. I'm actually drinking some as I write this, though the borscht is long gone.

Borscht is supposed to be made with yogurt and sour cream, but I made mine with goat yogurt and vegan sour cream. If you're a bigger fan of cow's milk than I am, go ahead and make it the "real" way. If you're someone who was lucky enough to have tried some of this borscht I made and want it to taste exactly the same, follow the recipe.

Ingredients:

-2 lbs. beets, peeled and diced. I used a mixture of red and golden. The red ones will make everything so pink that it won't matter.
-2 cups chicken broth
-1 cup water reserved from boiling beets
-1 12oz container vegan sour cream (I use Tofuitti "better than sour cream"), reserve a little for serving
-1/2 cup goat yogurt
-juice of one lemon
-a splash of vinegar
-2 medium-sized cucumbers, chopped
-3 green onions, chopped
-lots of fresh dill; you'll need it for mixing as well as garnishing
-salt and pepper to taste.

Instructions:

Boil a large pot of water. Cook beets for about 25 minutes until tender. Strain the beets and let them cool, reserve about 1 cup of the water for the recipe, use the rest for kvass or to water your plants : )

Mix together beet liquid, chicken broth, yogurt, sour cream, vinegar and lemon juice until blended. Add remaining ingredients, reserving some sour cream, dill and green onion for garnishing. Let sit in the fridge for a couple hours or overnight. This is how other recipes tell you to do it, but I ate some immediately because I didn't want to wait. It was delicious, of course.

Garnish with sour cream, green onions, lots of fresh dill and don't forget to take a pretty picture of this crazy pink stuff.

Yellow Split Pea Soup with Cilantro, Walnut & Pecorino Pesto

Hello and happy summer, it's been a while I know.

Here's a question: Lentils and split peas, are they warm or cold weather food? There are good arguments in favor of both, but we've had a weird, indecisive month of June so far anyway here in the Bay Area, so here we go with some split pea soup.

For the soup:

-2 cups yellow split peas
-8 cups broth, vegetable or chicken
-1 small, diced onion
-2 colves garlic
-1 pinch saffron threads
-Optional: 1 Persian black dried lime (Omani), chopped
-Sumac for topping (optional but highly recommended)
-salt and pepper to taste

For the Pesto:
-1 bunch Cilantro
-1/4 cup olive oil
-1/2 cup chopped Pecorino cheese
-3/4 cup chopped walnuts
-3/4 cup water
-1 clove garlic, diced
-salt and pepper to taste

Make the soup:

Heat some olive oil in your soup pot, cook the onions until translucent, add the garlic until fragrant. Season with salt & pepper.

Pour in stock, stir and add split peas and black lime, if using. Cover, turn down heat and simmer for about 45 minutes.

Add saffron, cook more until done, about 10 more minutes. Taste and season if Needed.

Make the Pesto:

Blend all ingredients. Taste, season if needed, add more water if needed for texture.

Top soup with pesto and sprinkle with Sumac.

And of course, enjoy.

Cocido Madrileño

Cocido is a chickpea stew made from a collection of different meats. It's one of my favorite Spanish dishes. I can't think of anything more perfect that a hot plate of Cocido with some crusty bread on a rainy winter's day.
This is going to be a difficult recipe to write since the amounts of everything are all to taste. Apologies in advance if it's hard to follow, because I'm not going to write exact amounts at all. Basically, meat + stew vegetables + chickpeas=cocido. I hope you're good at math because that formula is key here.

you will need:

-cooked chickpeas
-chorizo
-chicken
-morcilla (blood sausage)
-fatty, streaked bacon in a block, or lard
-cured ham bones with some meat still attached
-sliced cabbage
-cubed potatoes
-cut carrots
-onion
-garlic
-salt
-pepper

cover meat in water in a large pot and cook slowly for about an hour. remove ham from bones.

add chickpeas, onions, and garlic. simmer for about 30 minutes and add vegetables. continue cooking until vegetables are done.

drain off all the broth. Save the broth or cook noodles in it to be served as the first course (as they do in restaurants here).

(Your very own) Miso Soup

Ahh...Miso soup. That delicious, salty, mostly broth concoction that's (usually, and should be) free at every sushi bar. Seems like it would be a challenge to make it taste exactly the way your favorite restaurant makes it at home, right? Wrong, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. The best part about making Miso Soup at home is that you can make it more of a soup and less of a broth by adding whatever the heck ingredients you want, if that's your cup of tea (it's mine). I like to add a lot more "chunky stuff" to my miso than you would typically find at a restaurant. The soup pictured here contains mushrooms, yams, and tofu cut into my usual favorite right triangle shape.

The most satisfying part of what I'm about to post is the Dashi stock recipe. You can buy the stock pre-made, but it's so much more satisfying to make your own! Plus, it's not even that hard. If you don't count the water, my basic Miso soup is just 4 ingredients!

For the Dashi stock:
5 cups water
1 large piece of Kombu (4 inches or so), see below
1/2 cup Bonito Flakes, see below

To Make the stock into Miso Soup:
1/4 Cup Miso Paste
Soy Sauce

Bring water and kombu to a boil, simmer for 10 minutes. Add the Bonito flakes and simmer 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally to re-immerse the Bonito flakes if they float to the top. Turn off heat and let sit for 5-10. Strain out the Bonito and Kombu. I'm sure you can freeze the stock at this point if you want to save it for later, but mine is always eaten immediately =]

Return the pot of Dashi to a low flame and stir in the miso paste until dissolved. This is your Miso soup! Taste it and add small splashes of soy sauce, depending on how salty you want it. Be careful; soy sauce can quickly overwhelm the delicate Dashi and ruin your soup, but in my opinion it's this tiny amount of soy sauce that makes all the difference.

Now you can add whatever you want to it and make it "your" soup. remember, we're still mad scientists here! In case you're wondering, here's how I made mine.

Add 1 chopped yam and 1/2 block chopped tofu immediately, since the yam will take the longest to cook and we want to give the tofu time to soak up the flavors. Meanwhile, saute 3-4 sliced mushrooms in sesame oil about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and 1 tsp. sesame seeds to soup, simmer until yams can be easily stuck all the way through with a fork.

ON BONITO AND KOMBU:

Bonito flakes are dried fish flakes. You can get them at health food stores, but if there's a Japanese market nearby you should definitely get them there, it's much cheaper!

Kombu is a kelp-like seaweed that smells very strong. Again, you can get it at a health food store if you live in a place like Santa Cruz that doesn't have a Japanese market.

Carrot Ginger Soup

A recipe from my mom! The best thing about this creamy, delicious soup is its deliciousness. The second best thing about it is a secret: sssshhhhh! The problem with most cream soups is that they call for cream, and cream=tunz of fatz. I hate writing stuff like this because I don't want my blog to turn from curious girl screwing around in the kitchen to crazy calorie-counting monster woman, but this really is an amazing thing so I'm going to go ahead and flaunt it: my mom's secret is to use cauliflower instead of heavy cream. Sounds weird but I give you my word and my photo of said soup, and we all know how many words a picture is worth. Go ahead and call me a liar.

3 cups broth
2 pounds carrots, chopped up small
1 head cauliflower cut into florets
2 sticks celery, chopped
1 onion, diced
2-3 cloves chopped garlic, depending on how garlicky you like things to be
2 Tbsp. fresh grated ginger
1 Tbsp. curry powder
1 Tbsp. Olive oil
freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste
nutmeg, olive oil or creme fraiche to go on top

In a large pot, combine broth, carrots, and cauliflower. Bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oil and sautee the onions and celery until translucent, add garlic during last minute of cooking. Add to the pot along with the grated ginger. Remove pot from heat and puree with a handheld blender. If you don't have one, wait for the soup to cool a bit and use a regular blender. Stir in the curry power, add the salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a float of olive oil or creme fraiche and a dash of nutmeg.

Toni's Post-Session Stew

This stew has a few Japanese ingredients like seaweed, sake, and panko bread crumbs thrown into a pot with potatoes, crimini mushrooms and (!) chickpeas. This was another 'whatever's in the kitchen' experiment that became a cold weather favorite! It's very filling and satisfying, especially after mountain biking or surfing when I'm feeling hungry enough to eat my own leg.

2 cups vegetable broth
3 red potatoes, cubed
1 can chickpeas
4 sliced crimini mushrooms
2 green onions, sliced
1/2 pound tofu, pressed (optional) not necessary to deliciousness but more filling if you have it
1 large carrot, sliced
1 cup sake
1/2 cup panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
1/8 cup shredded dried green seaweed
1/4 cup bonito (fish) flakes (optional)
2 tbsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. Asian chili oil (optional)
freshly ground black pepper

put a large pot of the veggie broth to a boil. add the potatoes and carrots. Meanwhile saute the mushrooms. after about 15 minutes add everything but the panko. simmer for about another 15. stir in the panko and serve.

serves 4-5

Plantain Soup

I tore this recipe out of a copy of Latina magazine at the doctor's office about 2 years ago and have just now tried making it. I was so overcome with grief over my entire life spent without this soup that I could barely eat it! Hopefully you're better about keeping the floodgates closed because really, it's delicious!
The article outlined three ways to make it: Traditional, healthy, and fast. I combined healthy and fast (traditional calls for frying the plantains instead of baking them, and fast just means buying pre-packaged soup base veggies and using a food processor instead of a mortar and pestle.

2 large ripe Plantains
1 tsp. vegetable oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, finely chopped
1 medium rib celery, finely chopped
(again, you can speed up the process if you buy pre-chopped "soup base" veggies. It includes all three of these)
Nonstick cooking spray
6 cups chicken or veggie broth
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 lime cut into wedges

Peel and thinly slice plantains. Place slices in a large bowl of cold, salted water for 30 minutes, then drain and pat dry.
warm vegetable oil and saute the veggies until the onion wilts, about 3 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350, spray a baking sheet and bake plantains about 20 minutes, turning them once halfway through. Mash them into a thick paste with a food processor or mortar and pestle.
In a large pot, heat broth over medium heat. Add the sauteed veggies, then stir in plantain paste gradually. Add salt and pepper and simmer until smooth and creamy.
Serve with a lime wedge and some salsa or hot sauce. The recipe doesn't say this, but I like to warm some flour tortillas for dipping.

Veggie-friendly chili with blueberry cornbread!

Good for those cold winter nights or anytime you need to get your chili on, which for me is all the time, year round! The blueberry cornbread idea comes from a restaurant I go to back home in Orange County called the Beach Pit BBQ. If you've never had blueberry cornbread, you're seriously missing out and need to make this right now! I don't actually know how to make cornbread, so I use the boxed kind and just add blueberries. I know, I know, not very mad science-ey of me, but now at least I feel like I HAVE to learn how to make it from scratch (future post!??!?!)
Also, I have never measured the spices I use to make this, so keep taste-testing it along the way to see if it needs more of anything)

CHILI
-1/2 of a large onion or 1 smaller onion, diced.
-3 cloves garlic, diced.
-1 large can tomatoes, or 4-5 itty bitty cans tomato sauce (run the tomatoes through the blender if you want it smooth)
-1 15 oz. can Kidney Beans
-1 1/2 cups water
-1/2 tube Soyrizo (fake chorizo available in the produce section of supermarkets or the fake meat section of trader joe's)
-2 Tbsp. Cumin
-3 Tbsp. Chili Powder
-1 Tbsp. Cayenne Pepper
-1 tsp. Red "hot" pepper
-1 Tbsp. Black Pepper
-1 tsp. Cinnamon
-1/2 tsp. Liquid Smoke (optional)
-1 block Mexican chocolate or 1 Hershey bar
-Salt to taste
-Oil for frying

Heat oil and fry onions for 3-4 minutes. Add garlic until brown. Pour in tomatoes/sauce and beans with juice and stir. Add Soyrizo and stir.
Bring mixture to a boil. Add spices and chocolate. Turn down heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to dissolve the chocolate. If it's too thick, add the water gradually until it's just right. If it's too soupy and you want it thicker, mix some corn starch or Masa flour with 1/2 cup water and stir into the chili.
Remove from heat and serve with shredded cheese, chives, sour cream, or anything that tastes good with chili. I've also tried this on top of baked potatoes and it's wonderful!



BLUEBERRY CORNBREAD
1 box cornbread mix (I use Jiffy, which asks for 1 egg and 1/3 cup milk They don't call it Jiffy for nothing!)
about 1 cup blueberries.

Prepare cornbread according to directions. Once batter is ready, stir in blueberries. Put into greased baking dish or muffin tin and bake. Voila!