Covid-19 Cooking: Pea Shoots Soup with Tomato Cream

I am not going to say growing your own shoots, harvesting them, and sieving the fibrous bits from the soup is a doddle in the park. It isn't. But I can say this soup from the first spoonful to the last packs a punch, albeit with a small but determined fist delivered via the combined flavour of the youngest, impossibly fresh peas more akin to green candy than a vegetable and the sweetest spinach without a bit of astringency though neither peas or spinach are included in the ingredients. Add ceps, garlic, thyme, a bit of cayenne or chili powder, butter, and cream, and you have a soup that slams the WOW-meter skywards. One caveat is that it needs to be eaten shortly after being made because its lush, herbaceous brightness fades into increasing and disappointing rankness.

This late winter, three beds of peas were planted thickly so to allow for an abundant pea shoots harvest. In the below photo, the pea seedlings have been thinned to about ten centimetres/four inches from each other leaving enough room for them to mature into pea-bearing plants.

Ingredients
makes four ample servings

• Pea shoots, fresh, 300 grams
• Ceps, dried, 2 small handfuls (a gowpen!) plus their sieved soaking liquor, 1.5 L
• Garlic, cloves, peeled, 2
• Butter, sweet, 2 T
• Flour, white, 2 T
• Thyme, dried, 1.5 tsp
• Pepper, cayenne, ground or chili powder, a large pinch
• Cream, 8 T
• Garnish: tomato paste, cream, and minced pea shoots
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Rinse the shoots well.

Put them on an old tea cloth and with another tea cloth on top, dry them until excess moisture is gone. They will look fluffy and be springy to the touch when sufficiently dry. Chop them fairly finely.

For hydration and separation of grit for the ceps: pour boiling water over the ceps in a bowl and let them steep until the water is coolish to the touch, about fifteen minutes. Work them in the bowl with your fingers and then pour the entire contents into a sieve positioned over a measuring jug. Put the ceps back into the bowl and cover with cool water from the tap. Repeat squishing, sieving, and covering with fresh water till the sieved water is much lighter in tone and you have one and half litres.

Mince them, and also the garlic. Add thyme and cayenne/chili powder. Measure out butter and flour.

Over medium low heat, melt butter. Saute garlic, ceps, thyme, and cayenne/chili powder for about five minutes until fragrant and somewhat softened.

Stir in the shoots. Keep stirring until they cook down significantly, about ten minutes. Stir in the flour. See that brown crust in the corner of my beloved cast-iron pot? Per the gentleman over at his youtube channel, Binging with Babish, that's the wondrous stuff of a chef's dreams, simply called fond.

Add the ceps' liquor which will deglaze the fond, bring to a simmer, and cover. Cook for about twenty minutes. Sieve. Pour back into pot, add cream, and salt & pepper to taste. Reheat if necessary.

Mix about two tablespoon of tomato paste with cream to make the mixture liquid enough for drizzling over a soup serving. In the below photo, it's too thick, but oh so good and would be perfect smeared on hot toast. I just added more cream until it poured from a spoon.

Splotch some tomato cream over a serving and top with a bit of minced pea shoots. I adore this soup. Let's just say this was the closest I ever felt to The Plant Kingdom, and that's coming from one who has been smitten with plants since toddlerhood. I can imagine Treebeard sipping a cup of this and smiling.

À la prochaine!

RELATED POSTS

Pea shoots & Sausage Couscous

Roasted Salmon & Spiced Rhubarb With Fresh Pea shoots

Cream of Mushroom Soup Redux

There's an old post with a recipe for cream of mushroom buried somewhere at the beginning of my seven years of blogging. Its tang came from crème fraîche, and it tasted good enough. However the consistency was not as pleasing especially after being defrosted which became watery and clumpy at the same time. A batch soup hostile to freezing isn't what batch cooking is all about. Through time, I conveniently forgot to make it. I always suspected the proportions of butter, flour, and stock was off hence the disappointing texture. After a little research, I tried different amounts of those ingredients which resulted in wonderful mushroomy flavour along with an equally wonderful creaminess that held up through defrosting.

Ingredients
around four to six servings, recipe can be doubled

• Mushrooms, fresh,  554 g (1 pound) I added a small handful of rehydrated porcini
• Onion, large, chopped
• Thyme, fresh leaves, 1/2 T
• Broth, chicken or veggie or dried porcini 'liquor' (I used a mix of half chicken broth and half porcini 'liquor'), 946 ml (32 fluid oz/1 quart)
• Flour, all-purpose, 5 T plus 1 tsp
• Butter, unsalted, 90 g (6 T)
• Heavy cream, 237 ml (8 fluid oz)
• Dry sherry or unsweetened apple juice (which I used), 4 T
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Garnish: a few fresh mushrooms and crumbled blue cheese (I used Bleu d'Auvergne)

If using porcini whether for a mixture or the total amount of stock, pour boiling water over the porcini in a small bowl to submerge. Let sit around twenty minutes. Via a sieve placed over a large mixing jug, drain well. Put the porcini back in the small bowl and cover with fresh cool water. Sieve and drain again. Repeat until water runs mostly clear, making sure the sediment is caught in the sieve. Reserve the amount of the dark 'liquor' needed before its runs clear. Clean the fresh mushrooms by wiping them with a paper towel to get rid of any compost flakes. Usually there's enough moisture on the mushrooms so most likely the paper towel won't need to be slightly moistened. 'Srooms quickly absorb moisture, diluting their flavour so no running them under a free-flowing faucet. Thinly slice the fresh mushrooms. If large, halve them first and then slice the halves. For decades I use to go to the trouble of finely mincing them because a certain cookbook insisted on doing that for best flavour. They are actually more tasty when sliced.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pot, preferably a cast-iron one. Saute the chopped onion for around ten minutes or until soft, yellow, transparent, and fragrant. Add sliced mushrooms and the porcini if using. Sprinkle some salt and pepper, stirring from time to time for ten minutes. Add flour while stirring well until it is all incorporated. Pour in the sherry or apple juice and give it a good stir. Add the stock and the thyme and bring to a boil. Reduce flame and let simmer, partially covered, for twenty minutes.

Remove half the soup and blend smooth (I used a stick mixer). Pour the blended soup back into the pot and add the cream. Adjust seasonings. Reheat gently.

Slice some mushrooms thinly and float a few in each bowl. Top the slices with crumbled blue cheese. Don't tell the older recipe languishing forgotten in the dusty archives that this one is much better.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

Health benefits and nutritional content of mushrooms

Late Summer: Harvest's Lead Into Autumn & Recipes

Though The Calm One prefers his raspberries sugared and smothered with whipped cream, these fresh-from-the-garden berries are pretty good on their own. After the first raspberry crop came in about late June which were born on previous season's canes, the patch was weeded, fertilised, mulched, and faithfully watered to encourage a copious second cropping on new canes. There are probably two more bowls to be had before harvesting will be complete. The tops of these canes will be pruned, leaving the rest of them to overwinter so they can produce berries for the first crop come next June.

The carrot crop promises to be abundant though it will be at least a couple of weeks before it will be ready to harvest. Until then, the rows which were thickly sowed will be thinned to provide some lovely baby carrots. These can be be trimmed, scrubbed, and simmered whole with some butter in a covered skillet.

Beefsteak tomatoes and romas continue to be harvested. About 36 kg (80 pounds) so far! Since we have a large freezer, all I have to do to keep on top of this red deluge is to wash and dry them, then to throw them into large ziplock freezer bags. Once frozen, if run under cold water, the skins can be rubbed off with your hands. Most of them will be made into concentrate (for soup) and sauce (See related links below for recipes).

The beet harvest is done and processed. They were scrubbed, tops trimmed, tails left on, boiled till tender, placed under cold running water so their skins, tops & tails could be rubbed off with my hands, and packed into ziplock freezer bags. An easy and simple way to serve both tomatoes and beets is to place slices, thin or thick (we like ours thick!) on a bed of couscous and then top with tuna/shrimp/chicken salad. For tuna salad served with beets, crème fraîche is a much better 'lubricant' than mayonnaise because beets and sour cream is a match made in heaven. Your favourite dressing and spices/herbs could be sprinkled over the salads.

There's enough in the freezer for borscht with scrumptious beef and onion dumplings all year round. Detailed instructions to make this fabulously satisfying meal in a bowl can be found here (some of the photos got corrupted in this ancient post, but the text remains intact). Though it takes two days to make it, there is plenty left over which can be frozen for many a meal. However, to lessen the work involved, canned beef broth can be used along with minced beef instead of homemade broth and simmered stewing beef.

Stir in a bit of crème fraîche for a ravishing raspberry-pink colour punch. Its slight sourness is a nice foil to the natural sweetness of the beets.

A couple of months ago, Daifla variety of potatoes, looked like this:

When their haulms (above ground foliage) are completely spent, they are ready to harvest.

This variety may be a prolific flowerer and a high yielder but the actual taters are not pretty. But what texture, flavour, and colour! These potatoes, made into a simple soup . . .

. . . shimmer with a golden glow as if a certain percentage of their flesh contains cream. They are exceedingly delicious with a smooth, rich texture.

Here are basic instructions to make this soup: A large potato per person should suffice (I usually make enough for eight servings). Saute a minced onion till soft, translucent, and yellow, which takes about 5 minutes. Add cubed potatoes. Barely cover with boiling water (an electric tea kettle is perfect for this) or with water right from the tap and bring to a boil, and then a simmer till potatoes are fork tender, about twenty minutes. Remove half of them and reserve. Using a stick mixer, blend smooth right in the pot. Add milk to get desired consistency. A couple of heaping tablespoons of crème fraîche ups the creamy quotient. Return the reserved potatoes to the pot. Salt to taste. Unabashedly plop some chunks of Bleu d'Auvergne into the serving bowls. Soup will keep in the fridge for several days, but can not be frozen as freezing changes the texture of the potatoes into something unrecognisable. 

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

Have lots of tomatoes? Make estratto (tomato paste)! Second paragraph includes links to instructions for making tomato-sausage sauce and stewed tomatoes.

You Grow Food To Process . . . (Harvest 2017), includes instructions to make tomato concentrate to be used in soups

Bearded Irises, Tulips, Rosebuds, Asparagus Recipes & Eli the Kitten!

The Bearded Irises have started their wave of violet-blue that eventually will progress down a side of the central garden path.

The vanguard as they get the most sun

Many blooms are yet to come.

They resemble a shoal of minnows!

Days are sunny enough to warrant wearing a straw hat. This one which The Calm One was given at a community event fits snugly unlike the tattered one it replaced. That old companion often went flying into the wind with me running after it, but regardless served me well for six years. There's lots of work at hand presently and a simple pleasure of wearing a bonny hat puts me in the right mood. Seven of the annual veggie beds have been planted with just four more to do (tomatoes, shelling beans, parsnips, and kale).

Onion, newly planted potato, and pea beds

To make sure that the laundry doesn't act like my old straw hat, the washing is secured with many a clothespin.

Roses unfortunately are subject to blackspot, a fungal disease which rapidly defoliates them. Since a few spots have appeared, our ten bushes have been sprayed the first windless day of the season.

Triumph tulips bloom in midseason along with Darwin Hybrids, that is, before lily-flowered, fringed, and parrot tulips.

Candytuft ground cover and tulips

Miss Elegance gleams like the finest porcelain with delicate tinting of white and pink.  Their stunning blooms are an excellent choice for cut flowers.

Though a creamy, pureed asparagus soup is wonderful, so is a clear one made with a broth from simmering the woody ends and trimmings in water for twenty minutes. Strain, boil some egg noodles in it, stir in a beaten egg or two, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and top with asparagus tips/Parmesan cheese.

Just as delicious is buttering some cooked spears, topping with poached eggs and Parmesan, then seasoning the whole lot with salt and freshly ground black pepper. A sprinkling of breadcrumbs would be nice also.

Butter, egg yolks, and cheese combine to make a sauce as you eat

Eli the Kitten greeted the new straw hat with eager curiosity. Yes, his eyes are that fabulous: topaz with an emerald circle surrounding his pupils. Going on five months old, he still energetically rushes Dirac the Cat so they get together only when we are in the room with them, otherwise they are kept apart for Eli's safety and Dirac's peace of mind.

À la prochaine!

Asparagus & Green Onion Soup

Our asparagus patch is going great guns. So much so that a soup is in order. Felicity Cloake's recipe intensifies the asparagus flavour by using a broth made from the woody ends and trimmings of the spears instead of the more usual chicken broth while safeguarding that potency by adding just a smattering of cream and flour. An even more of a jolt of taste and colour is provided by including green onions. The result is Spring in a bowl.

Garnished with asparagus tips and crumbled bleu d'Auvergne

Ingredients
makes 2 ample or 4 smaller servings

• Asparagus, green, 500g
• Butter, 50g
• Spring onions/scallions, 6
• Flour, white, 1 T
• Cream, 2 T
• Asparagus tips and bleu cheese for garnishing

Rinse the spears.

Wash, trim, and chop the green onions.

Onions were planted thickly last autumn so as to allow thinning and harvesting of the young'uns

Snap off the woody bits and chop them coarsely. Slice the tips off and cut the tender stalks into chunks.

Put the woody ends/trimmings along with 1 litre of water in a pot. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain and reserve. Discard the ends/trimmings.

Simmer the tips with water to cover for about 3 minutes. Reserve.

Melt the butter and soften the green onions for a minute or two. Stir in the flour.

Add slowly the asparagus water while stirring. Toss in the chunked, tender stalks and cook for 8 minutes. Puree with a stick mixer or blender. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Add cream and garnish.

C'est parfait! Silky but with enough body so that the incomparable flavour which makes asparagus so delectable baths your tastebuds long enough for you to realise that life is good. And that tending a potager is worth the effort.

Some dark rye topped with thinly sliced ham and hard-boiled eggs would work a treat with this soup.

À la prochaine!

Late Winter Warmers: Rich Spicy Broth with Pork Slivers & Tagliatelle . . . and coffee ice cream affogato

My having roasted a rack of pork for our Christmas dinner allowed reserving the bones for stock. The rest of the Médoc wine along with a bouquet garni, black peppercorns, onions, and mushroom stems—the caps were braised and served with the pork—were tossed into the pot. The scrumptious result was strained, reduced, and then frozen only to be thawed recently when a chilly, windy day became the perfect time to do so. As there also was homemade chicken stock in the freezer, that got added along with strips of left-over pork, red pepper flakes, minced ginger, crushed garlic, and broken-up tagliatelle. All were simmered until the pasta was tender which takes about fifteen minutes.

Its exquisite shade of burnt umber comes from 'room stems & lush red wine

An earthy soup such like this can easily sport the sun in the form of a poached egg.

The garlic was harvested from our potager last summer

If you love eggs like I do, then you have an inexpensive and delicious way of boosting your nutritive intake by topping grain dishes, soups, and toast with poached beauties. Decades of our ignoring the dire health claims made against them have been vindicated. In this case, an egg was poached in a small amount of broth, the raggedy bits trimmed, and added to a bowl of steaming goodness.

I eventually will sample eggs other than chicken like duck & quail

Now you would be right in doubting the warming effect of ice cream, but then you would be underestimating affogato's flair. Though usually it's made with vanilla ice cream, the earth-coloured theme can continue along with a double dose of coffee by subbing coffee ice cream.

Purists insist that affogato is a beverage and not a dessert. I say just drink it after the meal! And what an adaptable drink it is. For summer, put more ice cream than coffee, for winter, more coffee, less ice cream. Make expresso or very strong coffee in which your favourite coffee liqueur could be added. Put the ice cream into a chalice or a cup and pour on very hot coffee. The melting ice cream will cool down the coffee just enough so you can imbibe the creamy warm beverage with ease. A spoon can assist in securing a few extant lumps of ice cream.

Don't tell anyone I used freeze-dried coffee!

À la prochaine!

RELATED POSTS

Making chicken stock (some photos have become corrupted in this old post, but the info remains correct.)
Broth with chicken, pasta, greens, Parmesan, poached egg & bread crumbs

RELATED LINKS

How to make your own coffee liqueur