If soup could be sexy: Sweet Potato Coconut Soup with Indian Spices

If you're wondering why there are no photos in this blog, it was my conscious choice not to photograph my food. I see others doing this when I go out to eat. I don't understand how they can wait that long to taste their meals, and why they would want to lug around such big cameras. Add to that the facts that I don't have a good camera, and I'm not the best photographer. Factor in hunger to the equation, and you'll understand why photos are low on my list of priorities.

All of that said, this soup looks a lot like any orange baby food you'll find on the shelf. But it sure doesn't TASTE or smell like any baby food that I know of!

Garnet yams don’t sound as sexy as sweet potatoes, but that’s what I use. I like them better than starchy white sweet potatoes or purple-flesh Okinawan, u'ala or ube. I equate the glorious orange hue with health and nutrients. Some facts about sweet potatoes from the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture: http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/CFS-SP-1A.pdf

To start making your own bowl of sexy soup, microwave the yams in a couple of inches of water, covered, turning and repeating until just slightly soft. Cool, then peel.

• ½ large onion, diced
• 2 cups yams, cut into 1-in. chunks
• 1 - ½ Tbsp. curry paste
• 1-in. piece ginger, peeled
• 1 - ½ cups chicken broth
• ½ can coconut milk

Sauté onion in olive or canola oil until soft – about 3 to 4 minutes. Add yams, curry paste and ginger and stir, cooking another couple minutes. Add the chicken broth and heat through. Process with immersion blender until smooth, then stir in coconut milk and heat. Add salt and black pepper to taste and adjust spices. Serve with a wedge of lime and topped with cilantro.

A quick cucumber pickle

I couldn't resist a bag of shapely Asian cucumbers from the Blaisdell Wednesday Farmer's Market. PLUS, they were aquaponically grown! A short explanation of this is that fish are raised and the water used to hydroponically (without soil) grow vegetables.

Here's what I made:

Peel stripes from one large burpless cucumber and cut into 1/4 inch diagonal slices. Salt liberally and set aside. Sliver 2 T. sweet onion and add to cucumbers. Add more salt if necessary. If there's too much liquid, drain. If it's too salty, rinse a bit. Combine mild vinegar (I used the shiso vinegar I made here) with 1/2 to 3/4 tsp. sugar and stir into vegetables. Serve with a sprinkle of cilantro.

Update: also see JaJa Mein here and Panzanella.

Dinner of a previous night - Tomato Soup Variation

It probably sounds like I'm obsessed with tomato soup, but when they are ripe and there are just too many to eat out of hand, soup is a fine choice.

The other night, I made the soup from this post. The tomatoes I bought in Waialua must have gotten squished somehow. Even though they weren't fully ripe, several of them had soft spots, so they went into the soup along with a large ripe one I'd bought from Karen, who sells lovely produce on Fort Street Mall Tuesday, and at Blaisdell on Wednesday.

This time, I also added half a red bell pepper. What glorious color together with a large carrot! We ate this with spelt bread - also from Waialua.

There is just enough left over for someone to have a warming lunch...

Four Day Weekend and Waialua Farmers Market

Since I returned to working full-time at the end of March, this past weekend was the first where I had FOUR days off in a row! Wonderful!

On Saturday, we took the long drive up to the North Shore of Oahu, and the Waialua Farmers Market. In Waialua, the landmark is the old sugar mill, and the market has brought new life to this area. The library was closed, but the service station was busy - the price of gas has gone back down by fifty cents! Sadly, the Sugar Bar in the old Bank of Hawaii building has closed down. We have memories of gatherings of friends and music!

The market is held in the area fronting the mill, and most of the vendors sell produce. A couple sell Avon or Bath & Body Works; there is also a fellow with fresh fish, another tea drinks in packets, still another has sauces.

We picked up corn, tomatoes, papayas and bananas - the latter fruit at really good prices. We also came away with nice zucchini, and spelt bread and spelt cookies. Yes, spelt tastes different, but I do like the taste.

There was also a woman selling Indonesian food: fish with tomatoes, beef rendang (with curry and coconut milk) and shrimp. Plates of the latter two with rice and mixed vegetables and a gingery topping were lunch!

We ate these at Haleiwa beach park. No turtles this time - it was low tide - but a chicken flew across the road to escape a chasing dog. The people at a nearby picnic table had their cats on leashes, but not their dogs. Go figure!

The dogs were VERY interested in our food. And rightly so - it was delicious!

Dinner a couple nights ago was SO humble, yet SO good!

As is often the case, I did not feel like cooking. Instead, I sliced some beautiful beefsteak tomatoes and made egg salad with mayo, relish, minced onion and sea salt. I mixed a tiny amount of balsamic vinegar with some extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. I sliced some Ba-Le kalamata olive bread - yum! - and toasted it.

We ate the above by putting some olive oil on a piece of toast, adding a thick slice of tomato and a sprinkle of sea salt. Open mouth. Eat. Savor!

Top another toast with egg salad. Eat and repeat.

The DH supplemented the meal with some leftover ahi poke, but toast and toppings were more than enough for me!

Update: I was talking to a colleague about this dinner, and she said SHE would love to eat it! The talk moved on to soup, and I told her about my spiced Garnet yam soup with coconut milk, and her eyes lit up! I've made this twice already, and the DH has happily eaten it with gusto, but I discovered that I haven't written it down. I will SOON!

OMB! A bevy of food trucks!

What a Monday! Late morning, I looked out the library window and saw FOUR - count 'em - FOUR! food trucks parked on the street outside the library. First in line was the truck that's usually there. I've looked at their menu, but so far, nothing has appealed to me - it looks like the usual Hawaii plate lunch offerings.

Next in line was XTREME Tacos, and right behind them was Fairycakes. I told Melissa, "Come, look!" Imagine, if you can, two librarians peering out the multi-paned windows at the array of lunch wagons! Right away, she said she was headed out, and I asked her to tell me if the taco truck had a special. She came back to report that she'd bought a chocolate Whoopie pie!

I went out soon after her, and ordered an XTREME Tacos Baja fish taco. While waiting for that, I went to the Fairycakes truck. It was my intention to buy ONE thing, but I ended up with THREE! Later this night, we split both the lilikoi (passion fruit) cupcake and the red velvet Whoopie pie. Both were light and tasty, and I'd eat them again. We're saving the massive brownie for another night (or two!)

I ate the taco for lunch, and it would not satisfy a hungry man. OK, I'd brought some Lightning Salad to eat with my leftovers, so that with the taco was enough. It was about 3-1/2 inches of battered fried fish in two flour tacos with chopped tomato and onion. The X sauce was watery and NOT X. The XX sauce was tickly hot and tasty -good!

I will try something else next time - I hope they come back! Now I know to go straight to XX and even try XT!

Hamakua Alii mushrooms turn zucchini into a star!

I don't even remember the leftovers we ate, because this vegetable side dish was the star of the dinner table. The zucchini was looking a little sad, so I cooked it as follows:

2 tablespoons butter
2 small zucchini, sliced lengthwise into halves or quarters, then into 1/4 inch slices
1/4 large onion, diced
2-3 ounces Hamakua Alii mushrooms, caps sliced and stems chopped into thin slices
One small tomato, chopped
Shoyu, to taste - one to 2 tablespoons
Garlic salt

Saute the zucchini in butter on medium high heat for 2 minutes, then add the onion. Cook until both are slightly browned and softened. Add shoyu, mushrooms, tomato and garlic salt and cook another 2 minutes. Adjust seasonings.

The mushrooms are especially luscious!

Why the butter and shoyu (soy sauce)? I remember reading a Nadine Kam restaurant review about some vegetable prepared with those ingredients being one of the best things she ate. And filed it somewhere in my brain where those things sometimes pop up when it comes time to prepare dinner.

Tonight, as we were eating teriyaki beef (a rare occasion, the price was right!), 12-grain rice and Lightning Salad, I thought of what I could make with the other half of the cauliflower. Any ideas?

Sesame oil or balsamic vinegar came to mind...