an unlikely crush

So remember when I confessed to you my most recent infatuation?  With cilantro?  Honestly, I simply can't seem to get it out of my head.  I crave the sight, taste, smell, and feel of the herb (can you feel an herb?) more times a day than I care to admit.  I find it mildly amusing that, at this very moment, I have a laundry list of to-dos that seems to multiply by the minute, including a large stack of unopened mail, a full basket of dirty laundry, a lonely old camera that I've been meaning to learn how to use, thank you notes to write, weekly Sunday phone calls to make, and yet all I want to do is gush about cilantro. 

To you. 

Will you indulge me just this once?

I would send you a pot of this gorgeously spiced soup to show my gratitude if I could.  Truly I would!  Since I cannot (or at least not until edible teleportation is a reality), you'll have to take my word that it is divine, so easy to pull together, and the best part about it is that it tastes like it's been simmering away all day on the stove, but it only takes about thirty or forty minutes.  I love those kinds of soups.  Don't you?  Not to mention this is a year-round kind, and by that I mean you can of course use fresh peas when they're available but during all other months when peas are not in season you can use frozen.  They work beautifully.   

Spiced Pea Soup
adapted from Complete Indian Cooking

you'll need:
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil (the recipe calls for gheem which I had never heard of- vegetable oil was suggested as a substitute so this is what I used)
1 large onion, chopped coarsely
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 small potato, peeled and diced
1 inch piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and sliced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
3 1/2 cups vegetable stock
2 cups frozen green peas
1 Tablespoon or more fresh cilantro, chopped plus a few extra leaves for garnish
1 fresh green chile, seeded and diced
1 1/4 cups cream (or half milk, half cream)
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a large heavy saucepan.  Add the onion and garlic and saute over low heat until golden brown and soft, about five minutes or so.

Add the potato, ginger, cumin, and coriander and stir well, making sure the spices coat the potato nicely.  Continue cooking over low heat for two to three minutes.

Pour in the vegetable stock and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat, cover the pan, and let gently simmer for fifteen minutes.  Add the peas and green chile, and add salt and pepper to taste (1 1/2 teaspoons of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper was right on for me).  Continue to simmer for five minutes.

The next step is to blend.  I used a food processor, which worked fine, but if ever there was a time when I wished I owned an immersion blender, this was it.  I blended the liquid mixture in four different batches.  Twice.  Save yourself some time and blend each batch long enough to achieve a silky smooth consistency. 

Return the soup back to the pan, add the cream, and heat through.  Serve hot with a sprinkling of chopped cilantro leaves. 

*If you have a food processor I'm sure you already know how to use it, but I must mention that you should obey the liquid capacity rule and do not fill the container above the printed line.  I tell you this as someone who has scoffed at the line, done it my own way, and made a huge mess as a result.  Let me make the mistakes first and save you the trouble by sharing them and advising you to do the exact opposite.  Sound good?  Good.  Now hop to it and make this soup.  Your cilantro begs of you. 

     

my mushroom soup is shiny

So let me start off by saying that I meant to post this on Saturday. I blame the delay on the red wine I decided to let keep me company as I settled comfortably on the couch, cross legged, with high hopes that as a result of a slight buzz, creativity would flourish, and do so effortlessly, knowing no bounds, and leave me giggling in the afterglow of finally finishing a follow-up to the first entry I've been talking about posting so many months before I actually did. But, instead I wrote half of it, took a few photos with terrible lighting, ate the entire pot of the subject I would mention, and ended the experience dancing around my living room barefoot to king floyd's Choice Cuts album, half empty bottle of wine in hand. Buzz or no buzz, I hear the first bar of 'groove me' and I'm a goner. Ah well, I'm here now, and so is this. The soup, however, is not and to me, that's always a good sign.

The opening statement of my new favorite cook book is something I believe in wholeheartedly which is "if you cook nothing else, you could live exceptionally well on soups." This is truth. The list of options are endless, whether you decide to be imaginative or stick with the tried and true. I guess this goes for cooking in general and is a huge part of why I adore it so much. Comfort means different things to everyone, especially in food form. For me, the ultimate = soup. On a cold, wet, dreary day like this past Saturday, what I wanted above everything was something rich and steamy that would warm me from the inside out, something I could fill an oversized mug with and dip a perfectly rounded spoon into, all while wearing my pajamas no matter the time of day. As I leafed through all 200 and some pages of this book, I realized choosing just one was going to be more difficult than I originally thought. There wasn't a recipe that didn't get me going. But then again, this hardly comes as a surprise. The accompanying photos, so inviting, did not exactly help to narrow the list. As my mouth watered, I took yet another sip of wine and kept turning the pages...

As it so happened, I had mushrooms on my mind after a deliciously successful portobello risotto was made earlier that week (yes, this is cause for excitement). Thus, among all of the earmarked pages, the simple combination of creamy mushroom and tarragon seemed to rise above the rest. And it was pretty perfect, actually. I must tell you that as a kid, I loathed mushrooms with every fiber of my being. They were one of the many vegetables that I would eat as I practiced holding my breath while holding back tears. You know.......that bad. My dad did not take well to picky eaters and so we ate everything the adults ate. It was probably due to his determination to rid us of our pickiness that I got over this specific aversion and now I'm, well, a devoted fan. If you're smitten like me, I'm pretty confident that you'll fall in love all over again. Ideally at first slurp.





Creamy Mushroom & Tarragon Soup
adapted from soup bowl

3 T butter
1 onion, chopped
1 lb 9 oz button mushrooms, chopped roughly
3 1/2 cups stock (vegetable or as in my case, mushroom)
3 T chopped fresh tarragon, plus a bit extra for garnish
2/3 cup sour cream
salt and pepper

Melt half of the butter in a large saucepan. Add the onion and gently cook for 10 minutes, until soft and translucent. Add the remaining butter and all of the mushrooms. Cook for 5 minutes, or until the mushrooms are browned.

Stir in the stock and tarragon. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer gently for 20 minutes. Transfer the soup to a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Return the soup to the pan.

Add the sour cream, stirring in to combine, and add salt and pepper. Reheat the soup gently until steaming. Ladle into warmed serving bowls, garnish with chopped tarragon and a bit more sour cream, if desired.