Soups, Stocks + Sauces – Page 4 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Mark Bittman’s Pea Dip

Mark Bittman’s pea dip recipe was such a big hit with our friends, I’m posting our revised version up. This is smoother and less chunkier which made it just right on top of grilled slices of bread and as a side to a perfectly cooked leg of lamb.

Ingredients:
1 box of frozen peas
1 cup vegetable stock, or as needed
3 tbsps pine nuts, toasted, then roughly chopped
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
4 cloves of garlic, minced
a handful of mint leaves, chopped
lemon juice
oil, salt, pepper

1. Put peas in a pan with just enough stock to come half way up their height. Cook for about 3 minutes, or until peas are bright green and tender. Put cooked peas in a food processor or blender, and add just enough cooking liquid to start purée.
2. When purée is relatively smooth, add pine nuts, cheese, garlic, mint and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Purée some more. Taste and adjust seasoning, then thin with more liquid if necessary. Squirt some lemon juice before serving.

Cabbage Soup with White Beans and Sausage

I’ve only seen two episodes of Top Chef Masters on Bravo but I’m already hooked. It’s obvious that the participants are real chefs because they all get along and act professionally under pressure. Their demeanors separate them from the whiney amateurs of Top Chef. During the first episode, chef Michael Schlow sweated his way through the Quickfire Challenge in an airy stainless steel-filled handsome kitchen, but effortlessly turned out a soup of cabbage with white beans in a dorm room. I made note that the next time it rains and I want to eat some soup, I would replicate his dish.

Well, it’s been raining in New York City almost non-stop for the last two weeks. I finally got some alone time to concentrate in the kitchen and cook without anyone bothering me. There weren’t any ham hocks in my Harlem supermarket–I know, right? That’s like running out of ground pork in a Filipino store–so I ended up using the last of the sausages from La Tienda. The pimiento flavor gave the soup a hint of red-orange and made an otherwise white and pale bowl of soup colorful.

Ingredients:
1 cabbage, cut in half then sliced into strips
1 cup of white beans, soaked in water for at least an hour
1 pimento sausage, sliced
1 carrot, chopped
4 stalks of celery, chopped
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 sprigs of thyme
1 small red onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
vegetable broth
oil, salt, pepper

1. Heat some oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add sausage slices and sauté until brown around edges, about 5 minutes. Add cabbage; sauté 2 minutes. Transfer to a bowl.
2. Add some more oil to same pot. Saué garlic until golden brown and onions until translucent. Add carrots and celery and sauté until soft, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Return the sausage and cabbage mixture. Add herbs, beans and broth and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are tender, covered, about 1 hour. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Carrot Top Soup

The last bunch of carrots I bought from the market came with very fresh tops. Usually, they’re too wet and limp from over-spritzing, but this time I couldn’t just chop and throw them away.

I remember a time when I was growing up in Manila and cooking. My Uncle Tony was quietly watching me slice some tomatoes. I sliced off the top, where the stem was, and then the bottom and discarded those parts. He asked me if they had gone bad and I said no. Why did you throw them out then? he retorted. Why did I throw them out? I think just because they were “ends”. From that day on, I have used an entire tomato as long as no part of it was too bruised to eat. I also string fresh beans diligently to avoid just chopping off the ends and wasting some flesh and I roast Brussels sprouts whole to keep all the leaves intact, leaving guests to remove the hard ends themselves while eating.

Eat the tops with the carrot and you won’t just get your dose of beta carotene: carrot tops are a great source of chlorophyll that contain cleansing properties to purify the blood, lymph nodes and adrenal glands and in turn clear tumors from our bodies. See? There was always a good reason why Bugs Bunny ate the entire thing.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of carrots, including the green tops, chopped
1/2 cup cooked rice
3 cups chicken stock or vegetable stock
a few sprigs of thyme
1 small red onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
oil, salt, pepper

1. In a small saucepan, heat some oil and sauté garlic until brown and onions until soft. Add the carrots and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the carrot tops with the thyme and cook until tops are wilted. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Add stock and let simmer, halfway covered, for up to 20 minutes or until carrots are tender. During the last 3 minutes, stir in cooked rice. Adjust taste with a few more sprinkles of salt and pepper.

Chicken Tinola, Filipino Chicken Ginger Soup

Tinola, or Filipino chicken ginger soup, is one dish that I don’t make often. When I was growing up in Manila in the, ahem, 80s, my father brought the farm from his hometown of Ilocos Sur with him. We had a backyard with a small fish pond and a chicken coop. Each week, we would either have paksiw, or fish soup with ginger, or tinola. Every Sunday, our family lunch consisted of a freshly-slaughtered chicken, all innards included, in a big pot of steaming soup.

Traditionally, tinola uses green papaya and the leaves from a Thai chili plant. For the sake of making it easier here in New York, I use chayote, which is readily available in Harlem, and watercress, which is plentiful in Chinatown. I’ve given you a recipe that calls for fish sauce, but salt will do just fine especially if your mother is allergic to fish. You can also use spinach salad leaves instead of watercress.

We still stay in that house whenever we go back to the motherland, but it has changed so much I can’t imagine that it used to have a guava tree and a large mango trunk out back, too. Twenty or so years later, the spirit that comes with eating tinola with the family is still there, no matter what vegetable I substitute.

Ingredients:
4 pieces of chicken back, some with skin on
2 finger-size gingers, peeled, sliced
3 chayotes, peeled, seeded, cubed
2 bunches watercress
1 small onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
fish sauce
oil

1. In a large Dutch oven, heat some oil. Brown chicken pieces, about 4 minutes per side. Remove from pot and set aside.
2. In the same pot, add a little more oil. Sauté garlic until light brown, ginger until fragrant and onions until soft. Add the chicken pieces back and add a few jiggers of fish sauce. Cook for 3 minutes or enough for the chicken to absorb the fish sauce essence.
3. Add 3 cups of water with the chayote and simmer, covered, for 25 minutes, or until chicken is cooked and chayotes are tender. Season with a few more jiggers of fish sauce. The broth should be gingery with a little bit of saltiness to it. Turn off the heat when done and submerge the watercress. The remaining heat should be enough to cook the watercress.

Porcini Mushroom and Somen Noodle Soup

I haven’t been in the mood to cook even though I’ve been spending a lot of time at home. But while inside the Grand Central Terminal Market earlier, I was inspired to go back to the kitchen after I saw a small container of really fragrant dried porcini mushrooms on sale for $3.50. I turned to soup-making after assessing the contents of the cupboard, and whadayaknow, I had a porcini-flavored dried salami in stock: I chopped a few small slivers and used them as extra topping to this very earthy broth.

Ingredients:
1/4 lb dried porcini mushrooms
half a bundle of somen noodles
3 small potatoes, cubed
1 red onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 sprigs of rosemary, finely chopped
2 sprigs of thyme
a small knob of Piave cheese
salt, oil

1. Soak dried porcini mushrooms in 2 cups of lukewarm water for about 20 minutes, or until they are soft. Drain and save the water. Roughly chop soaked mushrooms and set aside.
2. In a large Dutch oven, heat some oil. Sauté garlic until brown and onions until soft. Add potatoes, rosemary and thyme and cook until potatoes are browning.
3. Add the mushrooms and the mushroom-flavored water and simmer for 10 minutes. Add 2 to 3 more cups of water, depending on how much broth you want. Season liberally with salt because the broth will be bland, but the salt will bring out the mushroom’s earthy flavor. Keep in low simmer until potatoes are cooked and all the flavors are incorporated.
4. Throw in somen and stir for 3 minutes; this will quickly cook the noodles. Turn off heat and let remaining warmth finish cooking the noodles. Ladle in bowls and shave cheese on top before serving.