My Love Affair Continues, or Tomato Soup Redux

When we were growing up, tomato soup from a can was not a part of our diet. There was condensed chicken noodle, alphabet vegetable and sometimes - gasp! - Manhattan clam chowder. (The red one.) Of course, there was always cream of mushroom - and I DID wonder how they got cream from mushrooms, until I learned better! - and cream of chicken for cooking. All of these in those familiar red and white cans.

But the fact is, I have NEVER tasted tomato soup from a can! The only memorable tomato soup in my recent experience was from Nico's Pier 38, a diner right by the fish auction house. Nico is French, and I actually dream of his plate lunches with fresh, fresh fish and beautiful greens. The tomato bisque was full of real tomato flavor, and the only caveat is it was also full of rice, albeit blended as the thickener, instead of cream. Lovely taste, though. Today's soup is ginger saffron chicken, which is probably delicious. I also recall a seafood chowder, unfortunately less memorable.

What do you do when your tomatoes are beginning to look a bit tired, and feel a little soft? Back about 6 weeks ago, I made a tomato soup that we ate greedily, that was even better than the entree. I'd found other tomato soup recipes, which sounded yummy, but I was in too much of a hurry to look for them. So I made this tomato soup by instinct, and by vaguely recalling those other recipes.

Even MORE delicious Tomato Soup

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 small onion, in chunks
• 1/2 large carrot, in chunks
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3 large tomatoes - about 4 cups, roughly chopped
• 1 cup chicken broth plus 1/2 cup (see below)
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
• 1-inch cube fresh ginger
• 1/2 package powdered coconut milk, dissolved in 1/2 cup chicken broth

Process the onion, carrot and garlic in food processor until fine. If you don't have a food processor, you can dice the vegetables, and mince the garlic by hand. Saute these in the butter for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and spices and cook for 3 to 5 minutes. Add the chicken broth and ginger, stir and heat through. Add the broth with coconut milk until heated. Carefully blend with immersion blender. Add salt, adjust spices and thin if necessary. Enjoy with lots of cilantro.

It may be that all you'll need is some crusty bread and butter to complete the meal. And a glass of wine!

A former coworker has been to culinary school,  and has worked as a cook. I asked him whether he made soup. Rather dismissively, he told me that good soup is based on good stock. Like a friend's husband who also went to cooking school, they believe in cooking the heck out of a chicken, beef bones or vegetables for hours for stock. But home cooks like us can't afford to throw away the now-tasteless chicken and vegetables. I believe you don't need to do this, and have made delicious soups from water, wine, fresh vegetables, even leftovers. If your ingredients are fresh and wonderful, your soup will be!

Soup Of The Evening
Lewis Carroll, from Alice in Wonderland

Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Soo - oop of the e - e - evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two p
ennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Soo - oop of the e - e - evening,

Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

I LOVE soup! Tell me what soup you love or make?

Sunday dinner when you've had a one-day weekend

About those one-day weekends? There are 2 to 3 of them per month for me, in this new job situation. So, I find myself playing catch-up with household chores, and having less time to prepare healthy vegetables for salads and entrees.

Still, when the cooking is done, we start to eat, and the DH says: "This is good!" I mumble, "What is?" He replies: "ALL of it." That sure makes things right! Here is what we ate that inspired it:

Tasty Black Beans

• One small or 1/2 large onion, diced
• 1/2 can diced tomatoes with juices
• One tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• Garlic salt to taste
• 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• One can black beans, drained

Saute the onion in olive or canola oil, until soft. Add the tomatoes, spices and garlic salt and stir until fragrant. Stir in beans and heat through. Taste and adjust seasonings.

Pork Fajitas

• One pound lean pork
• One small or ½ large onion, sliced
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• One teaspoon oregano
• ½ to ¾ teaspoon cumin
• ½ to ¾ teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons orange juice
• Hot sauce or cayenne pepper

Slice pork into thin strips and marinate in the garlic, spices, salt, orange juice and hot sauce or cayenne for at least 15 minutes. Heat oil and sauté pork strips (but not marinade) until almost cooked. Add onions and cook until softened, then add marinade and heat through. If you have bell peppers, add them at this point and cook until soft.

Serve with flour tortillas and any or all of these: salsa, shredded cheese or sour cream.

Instead of bell peppers, I prepared beet tops by having the DH wash them well, cut the stems into one-inch pieces and the leaves into 2x4-inch pieces. I zapped the stems in the microwave, half-covered, for 3 minutes, stirring once, then I added the leaves for another minute. Poured off most of the water, splashed with a little extra virgin olive oil and some garlic salt.

I also served a prepared salsa mixed with half a chopped orange. And served it with long-grain white rice. And it was all yum!

There were enough leftovers for lunch for both of us the next day, and the remaining pork may become a soup with long squash in the next days. 

~Soos dreams of soup~

Is this any way to eat your vegetables?

I rarely go to Jamba juice. Probably because I seldom drink smoothies. My idea of a good smoothie is a lot of frozen fruit and some juice and maybe sorbet. A local indie shop makes some excellent examples, one with berries and another with pineapple. I won't name it for now, as I can't find their current address - I know they've moved. Yes, the sorbet makes it sweet, therefore a treat, and a sometimes indulgence, not for every day or even every week.

I just got this announcement via email, about smoothies "packed with a full serving of vegetables and two full servings of fruit". When you read the ingredients in two out of three of these, they include bell peppers and kale, among other things. I love bell peppers, folks, but NOT in a smoothie. And I DO NOT EAT KALE - cooked or raw. Here, I am admitting to my paranoia because at least two people who have eaten similar raw leafy vegetables have been rendered comatose in Hawaii, and others were sickened from an organism that causes rat lungworm disease. They thought they were eating healthier by not cooking their green leafy vegetables, but they became seriously ill.

I'm not planning to join them! And READ CAREFULLY: I am NOT saying you will get sick from drinking these, I am saying I don't like veggies in my smoothies. I am also saying I now avoid buying and eating certain vegetables. Heck, I no longer buy/eat lettuce or spinach. Most of the veggies I eat are scrubbable, like tomatoes, potatoes, onions, broccoli and more.Yes, just call me paranoid.

So, do you drink smoothies, and would you drink the Apple 'n Greens or Berry upBEET™?

Vegetable love: broccoli salad and curried ratatouille

Now that I'm back at work 8 to 5, I find myself making 2 salads or vegetable dishes on one of my days off. Those vegetables require so much peeling, chopping and slicing. Two days off in a row are rare, too.

I'm trying - and often failing - to resist the temptation of picking up food to eat outdoors. The weather has been SO beautiful. Yesterday after work, I thought the DH would want to eat his usual tantan ramen from Goma Tei, but he had pho for lunch, so he was open to takeout from Kakaako Kitchen or Kua Aina. We decided on the latter, with a bacon burger with Monterey jack for him, cheeseburger with cheddar from me. We had a small order of fries and coleslaw with that.

We made it through hideous traffic - Ala Moana Blvd. narrowed to 2 lanes on the way to Ward, one lane after that! - to the waterfront park. Breezes were soft and westerly, the sea was rather flat, picnickers were grilling, people were walking pets, children, bicycling and just ENJOYING. On days like that, I know I'm fortunate to live in a beautiful city and state. To have a job I love, and a husband who indulges me.

We ate our burgers, greasy fries, and wished we had more coleslaw! Well, DH ate all of his, I took half of mine home!

Tonight, there's a modest piece of salmon waiting to be sauteed, but I've already made a broccoli salad and a large batch of curried ratatouille. I may cook some whole wheat pasta or quinoa for a change from 12-grain rice.


Larry's Broccoli Salad

Larry is Ted’s cigar friend. He got this recipe from a cookbook, and it originated with Denise O. See my modifications.

• Head of broccoli cut into 1-in. florets, peel and slice stems, too
• 6+ slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled (I use turkey bacon)
• ¼ cup red onion, thinly sliced
• ½ cup sunflower seeds (I used pine nuts, but slivered almonds would be good, too)
• ½ cup raisins or craisins (I prefer the latter)

Combine the above ingredients, and toss lightly with the dressing below. Stir together:

• ¾ to 1 cup mayonnaise (I use light mayo)
• 1 to 4 tablespoons sugar (I think 2 is plenty!)
• 2+ tablespoons vinegar (I use rice vinegar)

Please adjust dressing to your taste. You may want to add a pinch of salt to the dressing. I added some freshly ground black pepper, too. Note: better to use less dressing than more!

Suzanne’s Curried Ratatouille
Based on one from norecipes.com

Sauté the following in oil in a medium-hot pan: 

• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 tsp. garam masala
• ½ tsp. black mustard seeds
• 1 tsp. turmeric
• 12-15 curry leaves - optional but a delicious addition

Cover with a lid to contain spattering. Quickly add:

• 1 chopped medium onion
• 2 minced large cloves of garlic

Stir and sauté until soft, then add the following ingredients – all chopped into 3/8 inch dice – in the following order:

• One medium zucchini
• Yellow or orange bell pepper
• 2 medium long eggplants
• One medium tomato

Add oil as necessary. Finish with salt to taste. Serve with chickpeas with tomatoes. Leftovers make a great omelet or grilled sandwich filling. Or serve with poached or lightly fried eggs.

Fast, tasty and filling on a week night work night

It pays to rummage through the freezer!

Thursday night, on my last shift at the reference desk, it suddenly occurred to me that I had the fixings for a quick dinner. When I got home, I pulled out what was half a package of frozen, commercially-prepared kalua pork.

Kalua means roasted underground, and the real, homemade version involves digging an imu - a pit in your backyard (I don't have a yard!), making a fire and piling igneous rocks into the pit, covering it with banana stumps, then lining that with ti leaves, putting in your whole pig, turkeys, whatever else you want to cook, covering that with more ti leaves and burlap, then shoveling a lot of dirt over that and leaving it for at least 6 or more hours.

The pig meat that comes out is falling off the bone and smoky flavored. You shred it and remove bone and fat and put the skin aside for those who like it. Season with alae salt (Hawaiian salt made by evaporating sea water in coastal ponds) and serve. Try hard not to smack your lips.

You can make a decent version at home in the microwave with a pork butt, using liquid smoke, shoyu or ginger or all of those. Better, of course, if you can wrap with a couple of ti leaves. Or you can use the commercial product. Back on topic, to the recipe!

Easy pulled-pork fajitas

I had the DH take the tops off half a Costco package of mini peppers and slice those in half. I sliced a small onion and minced 3 cloves of garlic. Sauteed the onion and garlic, added the peppers and pork. Then mixed in a sauce of 1/4 cup wine vinegar (you could use cider or regular vinegar), one Tbsp sugar, 1-1/2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce and 1/2 tsp salt and heated through.

I warmed some flour tortillas, topped them with a couple of Tbsps of leftover 12-grain rice. Piled on some pork/pepper mixture and a sprinkling of shredded cheese. Sliced avocado or chopped tomatoes would be good, too, but by this time my brain had stopped working from lack of food. I would have added sour cream, but it had gone the way of old dairy...

Fast, tasty and filling, and a bit leftover, too.

Note: I use leftover kalua pig in a sauce that reminds me of a venison ragu over homemade noodles that I ate in a wonderful restaurant in Portland, OR.

Another convert to raw beets

I was in the lunchroom, eating leftovers of lentils with carrots, 12-grain rice and sliced raw beet salad. I shared samples with an old friend and a new one. Today, the new friend told me she'd made a similar salad, and her husband loved it. You can't go wrong when you start with terrific ingredients.

Since I've gone back to work recently, I have less time to be creative in the kitchen. I'd peeled and sliced beets for a raw salad, and put the tops and stems aside for later. When I needed a vegetable side, I washed and chopped them - stems in 1-inch pieces, tops in 1-inch shreds. I sliced a quarter of an onion and a handful of oyster mushrooms and put those in a pan of heated olive oil - 1/2 tablespoon. After 5 minutes or so, I added 1/2 tablespoon of butter and the beet tops and sauteed until they started to soften. Added 2 glugs of wine and sprinkled generously with garlic salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Beach Bum Cafe redux

Now that I'm working downtown, I can pop into Beach Bum Cafe for some caffeine!

I did some errands at lunch time, and it was one of those Hawaiian days that feels like summer - hot and humid - and just makes you thirstier. I headed for the Cafe and an iced Americano from Dennis, the friendly owner.

He was serving a gentleman who was already seated, and a woman waited for his attention. After me, he had a third customer, then a fourth - it's great that so many folks want to drink good coffee!

When my coffee was ready, I asked if it was OK to sit and eat my lunch - some naan bread with Havarti, capicolla and soppressata. I had to eat much too quickly, but enjoyed the time I spent watching good coffee being made, and the wonderful aromas.