Red Lentil Soup with Leftovers

Legumes.

They are healthy, they are delicious, they are full of fiber and minerals, they are really, really cheap (you should buy them dried by the bag), and yet many people here in the West have no idea how to prepare them, nor how to eat them on a regular basis.  Granted, that may be due to the fact that if you want your beans and chickpeas to taste really good, you don’t want them to come out of a can – you need to pre-soak and you need to boil them yourself.  So, while it is not difficult, that method does require thinking ahead.

But, not all legumes are created equal.  Lentils, especially the red ones, cook in minutes without any pre-soaking, and green peas these days are sold frozen in large inexpensive bags which are very easy to just store in your freezer for when you need them.  And thankfully, the Middle Eastern kitchens – Persian, Lebanese and many others – have long ago come up with a fantastic way to feed people based on those, cheaply and in a hurry.  Frugality and convenience attended to, the easiest way to incorporate legumes into your diet in a gloriously delicious way, is a lentil soup.  And you can then impress your friends with your creation, presenting it as a Mid-East inspired dish rather than “I have some leftovers in the fridge that we can probably do something with.”

Because red lentils cook so fast, and because legumes go with a huge range of savory seasonings, this soup pulls together in about half an hour, and it is a wonderful way to use up various leftovers looking sad and forlorn in the corners of your fridge.  Or freezer.  And the result is a warming, hearty soup that is thick and satisfying enough to serve as a large lunch, or even a dinner if served with some bread on the side.  And you can feel good for having done something great for your health in the process, to boot!

It can even be made vegetarian, or indeed, vegan, if you omit the bacon, and if needed, the dairy I like to garnish it with – and for all I am a definite carnivore, this soup will really be not much worse for the omissions.  Or if you have aging smoked lamb or pastrami, or ham, it can be sliced and tossed right in alongside with everything else to make the soup richer.  Though if you are skipping bacon, I would suggest a teaspoon of smoked paprika to add the smoky scent without the smoked-pig component.

And if you are cooking for yourself only, and are daunted by the prospect of having a large pot of soup, this both, keeps fine in the fridge for a few days, and freezes fantastically well if you have some of those plastic tubs handy.

There is no set-in-stone recipe for lentil soup, as it literally uses up whatever you have around your fridge, but there are a few simple guidelines.  It needs onions, it needs a good amount of greenery, and it needs enough fat to cook those onions.  The rest is honestly mutable.

You will need (this will make about 3L of soup):

• 1-1.25 cup (3 dl) red lentils
• 2-4 tablespoons cooking oil or bacon fat
• 2-3 onions, chopped
• 3-5 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped finely
• 1-2 dl green peas (frozen – if you have fresh, I’d just eat those fresh!)
• A couple of handfuls of frozen chopped spinach pellets
• Half or whole pack of bacon (75-150g), cut into small bits (can be omitted, or substituted with shredded cooked beef, chicken, smoked or roast lamb, pastrami, or whatever you have handy)
• Salt and black pepper and chili flakes to taste
• 1 very heaping tablespoon of curry powder, or Middle Eastern 7-spice (Baharat), or a thyme-based mix like Zaatar, or really whatever you have on hand and feel like – toss in that Italian pasta or salad seasoning, it will work just fine too.
• 1 teaspoon hot paprika or hot smoked paprika
• Leftovers:  in my case – a couple of aged salad onions, trimmed, but you can use up a slightly-mushy tomato, some root celery (peeled and chopped into small bits), green celery (sliced crosswise), a potato or two, and you get the idea.

• Extra virgin olive oil to drizzle on top – or you can be like me and use up herb-infused olive oil that some sun-dried tomatoes were sold in.
• Greek or Turkish yogurt or creme fraiche or sour cream to serve – optional, but really nice.

How to achieve soup in record time:

• Put a large pot (enough to fit 3+ Litres) on the stove and add 2 tablespoons of oil or bacon fat.  Start heating it on medium-low heat.  Put a non-stick frying pan on the stove, add 1 tablespoon of cooking oil or bacon fat and heat that to medium heat as well.
• Toss your chopped bacon into the frying pan, stir and allow to cook on medium heat while you add your “leftover” vegetables to the pot, and saute them gently in it.  Add your seasoning (curry, 7-spice, seasoning mix – but not the paprika), whatever the choice is.
• Once bacon is cooked, lift it from the pan and add to the pot with leftover vegetables.  Add your chopped onions to the pan, and fry them in bacon fat on medium heat until they turn golden and a little crispy on edges.
• While your onions are frying, rinse your lentils and add them to the pot.  Add approximately 2 L of water (the process is made faster if you boil it in your water boiler while at it), and bring soup to a slow simmer.
• When the onions are nearly done, move them a bit to the side, add a tablespoon of oil if needed, and toss the garlic into the pan.  Cook just until it goes bright white and fragrant, a few seconds – now this is ready to add to the pot, whatever stage that is at – soup is forgiving like that!
• Bring your soup to a bit higher boil (higher simmer?  We don’t want this at rolling boil, not really!), and cook for approximately 15 minutes until lentils are nearly cooked through (they will fluff out at edges and will be nearly soft to the bite).
• Add the frozen peas and spinach, and enough boiling water to make 3L of soup in total.  Add the teaspoon of paprika.
• Cook, stirring, until spinach pellets are completely dispersed and the soup is back at a low simmer.  If the lentils are not cooked through at this stage, give the soup another 3-5 minutes until they are.
• Season with salt and pepper and chili flakes to taste, and serve with yogurt or creme fraiche and a drizzle of olive oil.

The bread in the photo that we ate it with, is a rye-blend folded cheese sourdough (I promise a recipe with stage-by-stage folding photos another day!), but this soup would go just as well with any – or none at all.

Roasted Tomato Soup to Curl Up on Sofa With

Tomato, the favorite vegetable of the West.

Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich.

If you don’t count potatoes, that is, but I don’t.  Those are starches, not vegetables to me.  No contraversy intended – simply put, it’s my nomenclature and I’m sticking to it.  But, this post is not about splitting hairs, or vegetables, so to speak – it’s about the absolutely easiest and delicious roasted tomato soup you can make at home with minumum of effort.  This is ridiculously easy, even for my lazy self – which is why I make it again and again when the weather is cold and gloomy, and I want simple (to make) and yummy comfort food.  This soup and a grilled cheese sandwich with a slice of dried ham (prosciutto, etc.) tucked in.

Roasting the vegetables mellows out the harshness of garlic and acidity of tomatoes, and concentrates the very tomatoiness of them into a wonderful, literally effortless soup.

What you need (makes about 2L of soup):

• 1kg tomatoes, approximately.  (I picked the nicest-looking fresh ripe vine tomatoes the supermarket had.  It’s November in Sweden, don’t expect me to regale you with stories of home-grown heirloom varieties!)
• 3-6 cloves of garlic, root tips cut off, peeled or unpeeled (Depending on how lazy you are – if very lazy, peel them.  Yes, I mean that and not the other way around).
• 1 large or 2 small onions, peeled and quartered
• 1 chili pepper, seeds removed, and cut into a few chunks  (Or half of one if you fear the heat, or a bit of red chili flakes to taste – but I think the fresh chili really shines in this preparation.)
• (Up to) 1/2 L stock – vegetable, chicken, or equivalent amount of water and some chicken or vegetable fond (stock concentrate).  I avoid bullion cubes on principle, but I don’t think one of those, or good-quality dry granules would do this soup too much harm either.
• 1-2 teaspoons dried oregano (optional).
• 3 -4 tablespoons olive oil + some to drizzle on vegetables
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste.
• Greek or Turkish yogurt, to serve
• Grilled cheese sandwiches.  To eat with.

Caution: Vegetables coming out of the oven will be hot. Steaming hot.

So how easy?  This is how easy!

• Preheat oven to 200°C.  Line a roasting tin with foil (for ease and cleanup, and no I hadn’t bothered but it may be nice), and drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil into it.  Smear about.
• Wash and dry tomatoes.  Halve, remove tough bits and then quarter.
• Pour tomatoes, quartered onions, peeled or unpeeled garlic and chili bits into the roasting tin.  Drizzle with a bit more oil, sprinkle very lightly with a pinch of salt.  Add oregano if using.
• Place in oven and roast for 40-60 minutes until onion tips start to char just a bit, and tomatoes have dried edges.
• Take the roasting dish out of the oven.  If you went for very lazy option, just pour it all into the goblet of a blender.  If you didn’t, pick out the garlic and squeeze the cloves out into the blender (to remove peel), then pour the rest of it into the blender, juices included.
• Blend the living daylights out of this, to pulverize it all, including the tomato skins.
• Pour the contents of the blender into a pot.  Rinse blender out with a small amount of stock or boiling water, and add to the pot (no need to waste the precious tomatoiness!).  Use enough stock or water to bring soup to desired consistency (which was about 2-3dl for me to be honest).
• Add fond or your bullion cube/granules here if you didn’t use stock.  Stir well.
• Turn heat up to medium, stir in 3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
• While this is heating through, make grilled cheese sandwiches.  Maybe in the same hot oven you used for the soup or in whatever sandwich-making contraption you own.
• When soup comes to a very gentle simmer, turn it off.
• Place 2-3 generous tablespoons of yogurt into your soup bowls (optional), and ladle the soup over it.

Curl up on sofa in a pile of cushions and throws, place warm bowl in lap, and slurp ungracefully.  Ok, you don’t have to do it that way, but trust me, on a dark, horrible, damp November evening, it rocks.

Gorgeous Roasted Garlic Soup With Black Salsify – Or Without!

It is said that some of the best recipes are created by accident.

Mmmmm... garlic!

And besides, who doesn’t love roasted garlic?!  Ok, those who don’t love garlic, some of them may not love it even roasted – but conversely, even among those who avoid the vegetable in its pungent raw form, some still love it once it has been mellowed out by the heat of the oven.

By the way, the post today was not going to be about roasted garlic, actually.  It was going to be about the elusive and rare black salsify, aka the ‘vegetable oyster’ – considered a delicacy in many nations because of its special, reputedly oyster-like flavor.  But, not all things which are planned, come to pass as they were, and so today’s post is about roasted garlic and roasted garlic soup.  Hope you don’t mind.

A very nice soup, at that!

Black salsify – Scorzonera hispanica, or as it is called in Swedish, svartrot (“black root”) is not difficult to find in Stockholm supermarkets.  It appears to mostly come from Holland and is available organic (ecological as it’s termed in Sweden) more often than not – and it tends to hide on a shelf somewhere in the veg department, in a cellophane bag.  I’ve long wondered about it, and finally, now that it’s come in season (and is thus fresh rather than aged and wrinkled), have decided to try it.

Black salsify aka Scorzonera hispanica aka svartrot

So I bought two 375g packs of it.  The part where I got two is important, but we’ll get to that in a while.  I’ve unpacked one of them for today’s lunch.  The soup I have based my soup on was a recipe from Eat Like A Girl, which I don’t blame for the result in the very least – no blame to be had, as I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, and besides, this is a truly excellent soup.  The aforementioned recipe attracted me since it uses red lentils, which are a favorite ingredient of mine.

And here we come to the crux of the matter, and that in all the tasting, and later happy eating of said soup, I couldn’t make out any oystery flavor, or any hint that I’d not, for example, used potatoes instead of the salsify.

So, since this soup doesn’t give any hints as to the oyster-vegetable mystery, the fate of the second pack of salsify thus becomes more important, as I will dig around and try another recipe for it that would perhaps clue me on to what all the oyster-flavor fuss is about.  We can hope!

But, in the meantime, forget the salsify – if you love, or even like garlic, you have got to make this soup!  With potatoes or parsnips, or indeed salsify if you have some on your hands for some reason.  Or else reserve the salsify for something where it’ll shine better, but do, do make this soup!

... and it uses up the leftover apple!

You’ve got to make it because it’s warmly aromatic, and it is mild and not at all sharp or burning the way raw garlic is, and it is really very healty and also really easy to make.  Oh, and it’s inexpensive to make (if you omit the not-so-cheap salsify and go with taters or parsnips instead).  And, also, it’s not even time-consuming, because you roast the garlic while you prep everything else.

What do you need for it: (serves 4, or 2 with leftovers to freeze)

• ~400g black salsify (weight is unpeeled, but you want to peel it and put it in acidified water to prevent browning), or peeled parsnips, or potatoes (scrubbed, I don’t bother peeling)
• 3 small yellow onions, peeled and chopped coarsely
• A leftover apple of any variety.  Mine came from the old fruit tree in the neighborhood (I do so practice what I preach!) – quartered, cored and sliced into 1-cm thick pieces
• 1 very large or 2 small garlic bulbs
• 1-2dl cream
• 1.5dl red lentils
• ~1.5L of boiling water
• 2 teaspoons of ground cumin
• Extra-virgin olive oil (for garlic and to garnish)
• Some tablespoons of refined cooking oil (I use rapeseed aka canola)
• Sea salt to taste
• Chili flakes, chopped parsley, grated hard cheese, olive oil – whatever you like to garnish with.  I am sure some bits of bacon will go just great with this too.

What to do:

(this was hard to get in order.  It’s a sort of make-it-all-at-same-time sort of prep – roast the garlic while boiling the root veg and lentils and caramelizing onions and apple – but as it’s all at the same time, it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to do it!)

• Preheat oven to 180°C.
• While oven is heating, cut the top off the garlic bulb as in above photo, place it in a little ovenproof dish and lightly drizzle the top with olive oil.
• Once oven is preheated, stick the garlic dish in it, and leave for 30-40 minutes.  How fast it cooks will depend on the size of bulbs and size of cloves inside them, so check on it after about 20 min have passed.

• Wash and scrub your root veggies.  If you are using salsify, note that it leaks tacky latex-ey juice, and will be sticky upon peeling.  So, after you have peeled it, plunge the roots into some acidified water (I used a spritz of vinegar into a bowl of water), and take them out one by one to cut up.  Then, spend a bit of time getting the sticky juice off your hands.  You may also want to cut the salsify on a piece of baking parchment over your board, to protect it (and you) from a lot of scrubbing later on.  Obviously if using potatoes and/or parsnips, just stick them into a bit of water so they don’t turn dark while you chop.
• Once done chopping, drain the veg and place them in a pot.  Add just enough water to cover them, and about 1 teaspoon of salt, bring to medium boil, and cook the chopped root vegetables until soft.
• Add lentils and another half-litre of water and cook until lentils are done and falling apart visibly.
• Once garlic is ready, remove it from oven and allow it to cool a little before squeezing it into the goblet of a blender.

The cloves, once cooled a little, are really easy to squeeze out of peel

• In the meantime, heat a non-stick frying pan and add 2-3 tbsp of cooking oil (I use refined rapeseed).  Once pan is heated, add the onions and cook on medium heat until soft and beginning to color.
• Move aside and add the apples and cook until apples are heated through and beginning to go soft (a few minutes), then place in the goblet of the blender on top of the garlic (order matters little here, put batches in as they become ready).
• Pour the veg and lentil mix into a bowl, add about 1/3 of it to the garlic, apple, and onion mix, top up with a bit of water, and puree until smooth.  Pour back in the pot, and repeat with the remaining root veg and lentils.
• Place the pot of soup on low heat, and add cream and enough water to achieve the consistency you like – I did not add any at this point as I love my soups pretty thick.
• Season with salt to taste, and mix in the 2 teaspoons of cumin, sprinkling it to avoid clumping in the thick soup.
• Heat through and serve, with any or all of the garnishes suggested.

I went with the cheese and olive oil – and some chili flakes later on as an afterthought.  Black pepper would work equally well in my opinion.

The lentils give this a very good dose of trace minerals and fibre, making this a full-meal soup that packs a lot of satisfaction (you won’t be running for a snack anytime after a bowl of this!), and the roasted garlic smell with the warmth of cumin… yum!

As to the other pack of salsify?  Sooner or later, I’ll figure out what to do with it and whether it really tastes like oysters at all.  Naturally, I’ll keep you posted!

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup (neither artichoke, nor from Jerusalem)

I dislike the name “Jerusalem artichoke”.

Helianus tuberosis - aka topinambour - soup

I don’t dislike the so-named vegetable at all, but the name irks me.  No, not enough to say that I hate it with a passion, but it does bother me in several discrete ways – from the botanical (the plant is in no way related to artichokes – or no more so than it is related to all other asters, which is to say, they both belong to the largest family of flowering plants), to the geographical (it is a North American plant, and comes from nowhere near actual Jerusalem), and then also semantically, because the words, in my view, should at least relate to the same part of the plant being eaten, if not a related plant – but no.  The real artichoke, in terms of what part of plant it is, is a flower.  This one, is a tuber.

It’s almost like someone tried to see how they could name this plant several different things it’s not, and I guess I ought to be thankful they haven’t tacked on something like “mushroom” to it, just for the heck of it.  I guess I’ll stick with the French name for it (topinambour), because it sounds better than the alternative English one (sunchoke), and so be it.

You’d wonder why I am writing about this vegetable if it irritates me so much, except I’ve already said it.  The name irritates me.  The vegetable itself, however, is one of my favorite root vegetables to eat, and while there are several different ways to prepare it, the topinambour soup, to me, overshadows them all.

So, for those who have never met a topinambour – or have, but never realised what it was – what is it like?  Well, it looks a bit like a ginger root, and comes in cream, purplish and ivory colors.  It has a raw texture similar to a water chestnut or a raw potato, and a scent and flavor reminiscent of artichokes.  It cooks to a beautiful light-cream color, especially if you bother peeling it.  I don’t – I just scrub it really well with the rough side of my dish sponge, and cut off the end bits if needed.  Pureeing this results in a lightly textured soup with a slightly flecked appearance that looks a bit rustic and which I don’t mind at all.  It has an amazing, almost herbal aroma and in my view, goes amazingly well with most autumn flavors you could think of.

My favorite combination is a very simple one, as I make it with sauteed onions and a bit of  garlic, cream and a single potato (latter added based on some very good advice found on Chocolate and Zucchini), with a good dash of white wine or sherry at the end of cooking.  I garnish it with a generous grinding of a hard cheese (Gran Moravia is the flavor of the month, i.e. what’s living in the back of the fridge until it’s eaten), some bacon bits if I have any bacon on hand, and a bit of chopped parsley.  In the fall, when the topinambours come into season, and the weather cools, I eat this stuff in quantity, I eat it happily and with gusto.

Which brings me to another matter which should be mentioned when discussing topinambours.  The tubers store most of their carbohydrate content in a largely-indigestible (to humans) polysaccharide named inulin.  Which means, they are incredibly good for diabetics and people on LCHF-type diets, since the carbohydrate is of the unavailable sort.  The flipside of this fact, however, is that consuming large amounts of inulin causes some (not all) people some gastric disturbance of the windy sort – due to the action of gastric flora breaking down the inulin which we, ourselves, can’t.

In my experience, it is not a very large disturbance, but there are certain steps I take to minimize it when cooking topinambours that you can take, too.

• First, when you buy the tubers, make sure they are firm, not squishy.  Squishy tubers mean they are old, and you want them as fresh as possible.  Why?  Isn’t wanting your produce to be fresh good enough reason for you?  Well, apparently, according to several sources, aforementioned gastric disturbance is worse if they aren’t fresh, so there’s your other good reason.
• Second, you want to soak the tubers in some cold water while you cut them up.  This achieves two things – prevents them from oxidation and thus going dark while you chop, and helps dissolve and remove some of the inulin which is the cause of said disturbance.
• Third, after you are done chopping, drain the tubers and rinse them well under running water, then, like I do with beans, cook them in 2-3 changes of water:  put them into cold water, bring to a boil, boil under 5 minutes and drain, then replace water.  You will notice that original soaking water would have colored pale yellow-green which disappears in successive water changes.  I usually drain the two first boils, then salt the third one and allow it to cook until the sliced topinambours can be pierced with a fork without too much effort.
• Fourth, I add a single potato to the soup, on the above-mentioned advice from Chocolate and Zucchini.  I don’t know if it’s the enzyme action which helps, or just the dilution of the topinambours with simple starch, but either way, it does help some, and it tastes really really good.

So, what do you need?  (Makes approximately 1.5-2L of soup, depending on how thick you like yours)

• A blender or food processor to puree the soup (unlike the winter squash soup, this one cannot be mashed with a fork very well at all).
• 500g topinambours (Locally, at ICA, they often come pre-packed in half-kilo bags, which is convenient, but check that they are fresh inside the bag by feel)
• 1 medium potato
• 1 small white onion or 2-3 shallots
• 4-5 garlic cloves
• ~500ml chicken stock, but if you don’t have any, a tablespoon of chicken fond and some boiled water do fine too, as topinambour flavor is very strong, and capable of smoothing over our cooking indiscretions – all the more reason to love them!
• 2-3dl heavy cream
• ~125g (1 pack) of bacon rashers (sliced) or lardons (optional, if not using, you’ll need a bit of butter or vegetable oil to fry the onions)
• A handful of parsley, chopped (optional – I use flat-leaf and if I buy/chop too much, I freeze leftovers in plastic bags for later use)
• As much hard cheese as you like in your soup, shredded finely.  I like loads.
• Sea salt and black pepper to taste

What to do:

• Wash, scrub, slice and soak while slicing the potato and topinambours.  When done, rinse and replace in the pot, adding fresh cold water.  Bring to a boil, drain, rinse, and repeat.
• After draining the second set of boiling water, add fresh cold water and 2 teaspoons of salt, and bring the pot to a boil.  Lower heat so it doesn’t boil out, but leave it boiling pretty hard for 10-15 minutes, until the topinambours can be pierced with a fork.
• In the meantime (while the water boils 3x times, and the vegetables cook), heat a non-stick frying pan to medium-high heat and fry the bacon until crispy.  Remove bacon onto a plate and keep warm.
• Lower heat in frying pan slightly and add onions or shallots.  Saute them gently until they are translucent and begin to color, then push aside and add the slightly smashed but not chopped garlic cloves.  Fry those until they turn slightly golden, then move the onions, garlic and any fat remaining in the pan into the goblet of a blender or food processor.
• Once topinambours are cooked, drain them and add 1/2 to the blender alongside the onions and garlic.  Pour in enough chicken stock or boiled water to just about cover them, and puree until it’s pureed enough for your taste (the cycle and speeds will depend on your appliance – I use a regular smoothie blender, so I do two cycles of speed 1-2-3 then 1-2-3 again for about a minute at each speed.  No, my blender isn’t very fancy, I am sure some of them would do a much faster job).  Pour the puree back into soup pot (you may have to rinse it if it has residue on the sides), and repeat with second batch.
• If you used water and not chicken stock, add your 1 tablespoon of chicken fond or stock concentrate, and the cream (adjust its amount to your taste, but I like quite a bit).  Mix the cream in, then add enough water or stock to bring soup to your desired consistency.
• Turn the heat to medium, cover the pot and heat the soup through to a lightest hint of a simmer (do not allow to come to hard boil).   Taste and add salt if needed (this depends on how salty your chicken stock/concentrate was).
• Once soup is heated, ladle it into bowls, and garnish them with the chopped parsley, bacon, cheese, black pepper or any or all or none of the above.

It tastes like September.

Of Celery Root Soup And Forgotten Vegetables

Soup as a main lunch or supper dish has fallen out of popularity in the recent decades – and, in my opinion, entirely unfairly and rather counterproductively so – whether you mean in terms of health, kitchen economy or downright gastronomic enjoyment.

Celery Root Soup

I have written about making basic bouillion or bone stock before, and about chicken soup specifically, and those are amazing either on their own, or as a base for another dish, but they do take time to prepare.   Pureed vegetable soups, on the other hand, are quick, easy and reasonably fail-proof (like anything, they can be ruined – but the directions are really, really simple), and so eminently suitable as a quick lunch or supper dish for the busy cook.  Better yet, the main ingredients for these are usually either long-term storage-friendly like root vegetables, or freezer-compatible (like spinach for example).  And, did I mention they are delicious?

Actually, now that I think of it, I have mentioned it before.  On the other hand, there are so many interesting vegetables out there, and so many amazing recipes, that there is absolutely no reason not to mention it again.  And again and again in the future.

The flavor of pureed vegetable soup can be made as complex or as minimalist as you like, which is great for both, experienced chefs and beginners – since you can make it foolproof by only using one vegetable and minimal seasoning, and if you’ve picked a vegetable you like, then you will have a soup you like.  Then of course there are classic pairings like pumpkin and ginger, or carrot and coriander (which I personally cannot abide, but that may be my aversion to cooked carrots), potato and Jerusalem artichoke, or sweet potato and parsnip.  And, obviously, for those who are better at improvising, things can be blended together in new and exciting ways.

Which brings us to the star of today’s lunch and the latter part of the post title.  Celery root or celeriac is one of those vegetables that are commonly found in nearly every supermarket, but that many people wouldn’t know the name of off the top of their head, left alone what they taste like or used for.  Though I have to give credit to Swedes – they are far better than, for example, the British, in the use of the various vegetables which have been traditional before the introduction of tomato and potato – such as turnips, beets, their namesake the swedes (aka rutabagas), and even black salsify (svartrot) – and so those all can be found in a decent Swedish supermarket.  The main reason for the fact that a lot of these vegetables were forgotten, is that they are for the most part harder to grow, have lower starch content, and are less versatile than the potato.  On the other hand, many of these have very good nutrient profile and – compared to the potato – a lower caloric density and lower GI load.  And, obviously, there is also the fact that all of these have their own interesting and varied flavors.

So – lower in calories and carbs, higher in minerals and vitamins, and quite often tastier than potatoes?  What’s not to like?  Nothing, actually.  And, considering what I’ve mentioned about these vegetables being storage-friendly, they make a wonderful standby dish.

I don’t actually make any low-calorie claims for the soup itself, as I tend to use butter and cream very generously in my root vegetable soups.  But as that doesn’t make it at all LCHF-unfriendly, I don’t actually tend to mind it.  Besides, adding heavy cream to soup instantly creates a gourmet nirvana.  Who am I to argue with that?

Very basically, a root vegetable soup contains said root vegetable, salt, stock or water and cream.  For more flavor, garlic, onion, and spices can be added, but they are both, optional and interchangeable within reason.  Of course, I believe in butter, cheese, bacon bits and other garnishes to make it just that little bit more special, so the recipe given below goes a little further than the above summary.

What you need for a 3L pot of soup (feeds several people once or two people several times):

• 1 medium or 3/4 large celeriac root, peeled and cut into 1-2cm long bits about 5mm thick.  (A large celeriac root is >15cm in diameter.)
• 1 small or 1/2 large onion, peeled and chopped
• 2-3 spring onions or scallions – sliced, whites and green parts separated (optional – greens are used for garnish)
• 1L chicken stock or 1 tablespoon good-quality chicken stock concentrate (such as Touch of Taste or Marks&Spencer stock concentrate for example).  I use Touch of Taste (it’s what’s commonly available in Sweden), as I tend to use any chicken stock I have for clear soups, and it is more than good enough for pureed soups.
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed, or 1 teaspoon dried garlic granules
• 2 bay leaves
• 50g butter
• 2 tbsp refined rapeseed or peanut oil
• 2dl heavy (36% – 40% fat) cream
• a pinch of dried red chili flakes
• Sea salt and pepper to taste
• Finely shaved parmesan, romano, gran moravia or grana padano cheese to garnish

What to do:

• Preheat a non-stick frying pan on medium-high heat and add 1 tablespoon of oil and about as much butter.  When butter foams up, add about half to 1/3 of the chopped celery root, and fry gently until just beginning to color.
• Transfer each batch to the soup pot.
• Repeat the above steps 1-2 more times with remaining celery root and butter.
• Add the stock or 1tbsp of concentrate and some boiled water, and turn to medium-low heat.
• Add a little more oil to the pan and fry the onions (including white parts of spring onions if using those) until soft and beginning to color.  Add the garlic clove if using, and fry a few seconds until aromatic.  Add the above to the pot with the celery and deglaze the frying pan with a bit of water, pouring that into the pot as well.
• Add 2 bay leaves, the pinch of chili flakes, and the garlic granules (if using) to the pot.
• Stir and add enough water to cover the vegetables.  Bring to a low boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes.
• Remove the bay leaves and puree the soup in batches, adding water as necessary to make blending possible.  Return the pureed soup to the pot.
• Add 2-3dl cream and enough boiling water to dilute soup to desired consistency.  Season with salt to taste.  Note:  salt takes a while to dissolve in pureed soup – start with a small amount, add, allow it to dissolve, stir and then taste before adding more.
• Lower the heat and bring the soup to a very gentle simmer.  Do not allow to come to a hard boil.  Simmer for 5 minutes.
• While the soup is simmering, shred the cheese and cut up the green parts of the scallions (spring onions – if using).
• Ladle soup into bowls, season with freshly-ground black pepper, garnish with sliced scallions and shredded cheese and serve on its own or with some lightly-buttered rye crispbread.

Enjoy the nutty, delicately flavored and oh-so-good for you soup.  Resist cold-weather blues.  As a bonus, this also freezes very well and can then be reheated on-demand in a pot or a microwave on a day when you feel particularly soup-needy and not in any shape to do kitchen gymnastics to feed yourself.  You know, we all have those days.

Sometimes, Oranger Is Better (Winter Squash Soup)

August weather has turned unexpectedly rainy today, starting with a rain and then a thunderstorm, and following with a cold wind which dried up the puddles but did nothing for the chill that set in earlier.  And so, when I have wandered into my kitchen in search of the meaning of life, or, failing that, of weather-appropriate food, it came to be that I emerged from the fridge holding a rather large chunk of Long Island Cheese squash (similar to pumpkin) puchased as an impulse buy a week or so ago because I simply could not resist its luridly-orange color, and a leftover piece of Butternut squash which had been aging in the back of my fridge for far longer than that.  (Not that the latter suffered any from it – wrapped in cling film, it keeps nearly forever – or well, for weeks at least! – in the fridge.)

Gorgeous, isn't it?

With such happy-colored start, it is difficult not to make something perky and summery and beautiful.  I’d first considered a salad with roast slices of squash, but in the end, I succumbed to the desire for comfort food, and thus, in this case, soup.

Pumpkin or winter squash (not to be confused with zucchini or yellow squash – aka summer squash) soup is a very, very easy to make dish, and the full-flavored and warmingly-spicy result is oh so rewarding.  The natural sweetness of the squash can take quite a bit of heat added to it (if you like that), or stands quite well on its own seasoned with just the cumin and a bit of salt for a very rich-flavored, satisfying meal.

What you need:

• A blender OR a potato masher (in a pinch, a fork and some attitude will do)
• A large soup pot

• A chunk of squash (like the one pictured) or a medium-sized butternut squash.
• 1 onion
• 4-8 cloves of garlic (depending on size of cloves and how well you like garlic)
• 1 red chili, seeded and chopped or a flat teaspoon of red chili flakes (I’d not go for more, but you can use less if you are sensitive to hot spices)
• 2 teaspoons salt (or more to taste)
• 1 teaspoon of ground cumin
• Freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
• ~500ml boiling water (+ more to desired consistency)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, AND
• 2 more tablespoons vegetable oil or bacon fat

To serve:

• 1 pack cubed bacon or pancetta, fried, drained and kept warm
• 10-17% fat yogurt or creme fraiche
• Freshly shaved parmesan or other hard cheese
• A pinch of dried oregano, or if you have some on hand, a handful of chopped green herbs of your choice
• Slices of hearty rye or wheat bread

Orange!

What to do:

• Preheat oven to 200°C (if fan oven, use 180°C) and line a baking tin or dish with a bit of foil
• Scrape seeds out of your squash, then peel it (careful, it is far harder than potato), and chop into manageable chunks.
• Put chopped squash into a bowl, add 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, season with black pepper and mix to coat.
• Pour onto the baking dish and roast for ~45 minutes or a bit longer, until squash is fork-tender.
• In meantime, cut the root tips off garlic cloves and smash them gently, but do not peel.  Wrap the cloves in a piece of aluminium foil to make a small packet, and add that to the oven, near the squash.
• Peel and chop onion, and heat up a nonstick frying pan on medium-high heat with the other 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil or bacon fat in it.
• Fry onion until it turns translucent and add chili or chili flakes, then take off heat.
• When squash is about ready, remove garlic foil-packet from oven carefully, unwrap it, and squeeze garlic cloves out of their papery shells.
• Once the squash is fork-tender,  place squash, roast garlic cloves and onion-chili mix and oil from it in a blender with a bit of water and puree until smooth.  Alternatively, omit water and put it all in a potato masher and mash into the pot.  Or, place it all in the pot, omit the water, and mash violently with a fork until it is mashed. (Latter approach results in an obviously less smooth but still very delicioius soup).
• If using blender, transfer puree to the pot and rinse blender goblet with a bit more water, adding that to the pot.  If using one of the other two methods, dilute the puree in the pot with boiling water to desired consistency.  Turn heat up to medium.
• Season with salt to taste, adding little by little and mixing well with each addition.
• Add cumin and further season with pepper as desired.
• Slowly warm the soup up until nearly boiling, then turn heat down and allow the soup to barely simmer for about 10 minutes – this will allow it time to thicken itself naturally.
• Place a heaping tablespoon of yogurt or creme fraiche in the bottom of each bowl and ladle the soup over it.
• Sprinkle soup with bacon bits, parmesan shavings and herbs and serve with bread.

(Very orange) squah soup with cumin.

I find that for a dark, gloomy day, few things are as hearteningly bright and happy as this.  And yes, it tastes even better and warmer than it looks.  Honest!

Chicken Soup, Revisited

I know I have previously written about making stock and bone broth, but really, chicken soup deserves its own place of worship and praise in my gastronomic pantheon.

I have felt under the weather for a couple of weeks now as Tobias and I have been recovering from a bout of bronchitis, while trying to move me in, unpack my things, put together new furniture (together, we need decidedly much more book shelf space than he did alone!), and not run ourselves into the ground from exhaustion.  And so, chicken soup appeared like the necessary prescription, especially given the conveniently available leftovers from dinner last night.

Many people my age, and younger (perhaps those older as well, but I have not asked many – it seems I should) haven’t ever tasted proper chicken soup – or not tasted it recently enough or in their adult life to remember.  I blame that on the supermarket proliferation of boxes of (often boneless/skinless) chicken portions, or the standardized broiler chickens: young birds of a meat-production variety which are fattened up for roasting rather than tougher old birds which used to be occasionally found in shops.

The fate of the bird when it arrives in the kitchen is thus changed, from a cheap purchase to be made something of (and requiring a long boiling/stewing process to achieve that end), to a cherished crisp and tender dinner centerpiece in form of roast chicken.  There is no harm in that as and in of itself, roast chicken is possibly one of my favourite things to eat when I am feeling slightly under the weather and want something comforting rather than my usual pick of the elegant-and-spicy.  The sad thing is, as I’ve mentioned before, when the breasts and legs of the roast chicken are eaten, the carcass is often discarded, and no chicken soup comes into existence.

The other side to this is that a lot of the people I have spoken to, have said that they do not like chicken soup.  When questioned further, however, many of those say that they haven’t ever really had it (see above), and what they don’t like turns out to be concoctions made on the base of bullion cubes, or canned “chicken and noodle” soups and the like, universally revolting in my not at all humble opinion, and bearing little or no resemblance to the real thing in all its golden and aromatic fat-glistening-surfaced glory.

The two factors together with people generally having less time to cook these days than in the days of our grandparents, contribute to the drop in the popularity of chicken soup, and that is a true shame.  For comfort in the cold part of the year, or when you feel ill or fragile, few things compare to it, in any of its incarnations – from the very plain French bouillion and the somewhat traditional (for me) matzo ball chicken soup, to the ginger-and-anise scented Chinese recipe with shiitake mushrooms, or the chili-and-coriander Mexican version, and the Thai chicken and coconut soup.  Or, like in this case, a plain broth made from oregano-and-garlic roast chicken (half the bird-thighs and legs intact-and all the bones), eaten greedily out of the bowl right off the kitchen counter – I had gone to taste the soup for readiness and decided to not walk away from it before I had some, with just a couple of thin crunchy rosemary-scented strips of Vilma’s crispbread on the side.

Mmmm.  Cold-weather food heaven.

But whatever your persuasion, my point is that the ease of preparation and the ultimately glorious payoff, along with the fact that whole chickens (especially if you buy a whole frozen bird and defrost it yourself) are relatively inexpensive, are reason enough to try.

The basic instructions, as mentioned before, are here.  For this specific batch, I have not only used the carcass, but all the leftovers from the roast chicken that Tobias and I had for dinner last night:  essentially all but the generously-cut breasts of the bird, the garlic cloves and herb sprigs it baked with, and all the onions it baked on.  I have also saved the juices and dripping (I hate gravy with a passion), and poured that into the pot alongside the chicken leftovers.  I have added a scrubbed and cut-up carrot and later, 1 large bay leaf and 5-8 peppercorns about an hour before doneness.

I have since (since the plate pictured above was devoured in a tongue-searing hurry) drained the soup through a colander to get the chicken bits and bones out of it, replaced the carrots and garlic back in the soup, and left the chicken to cool before I pick it apart for meat.  Not sure what that will be used for, but stock-cooked chicken meat is universal enough to be a lovely freezer staple – for a future risotto, pasta, or heated up in a bit of butter and seasoned, and tossed into a salad.

Regardless, it was time well-spent not doing a whole lot and letting the soup cook for about 3 hours as I lazily and occasionally checked it after skimming while reading and socializing.  And now dinner is ready (and some of it eaten) and I can relax, read, write, and perhaps wander over to the kitchen for another bowl of gorgeously aromatic, searing-hot liquid gold.