Showing posts with label Soup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Soup. Show all posts

February 6, 2019

Frankensoup

It's funny. And super dark if you think about it too hard
This weekend, everybody was talking about the Superbowl. Love it, hate it, or act warmly to it at social gatherings but then devastatingly leave it off of your holiday card list, the point is that it was on the minds of the people. Or at least the people who survived the cold, because last week was home to some fun new experiences for me, such as Chicago being colder than Antarctica. Given that nobody I know has access to roaring wood fires and teams of sled dogs, we all had to bear the elements as best we could in less traditional ways. Some people clung to their folding chairs, desperately waiting for neighbors to shovel out parking spots so that they could gleefully "claim dibs" on public property that they in no way own. Some people threw pots of boiling water outside at the snow, I'm guessing in some vain attempt to communally work towards raising the temperature. Me, I huddled for warmth in my apartment, desperately throwing blankets and clothing in front of drafty windows and turning the dwindling contents of my kitchen into increasingly interesting soups which I cooked and ate for every meal. When the winds of winter howl and the cold nights come, nothing warms you up as well and for as long as a good hot bowl of soup. Except maybe someone setting you on fire over a parking spot.

Ingredients:

1 standard-issue Onion
4 ribs Celery
3 large Carrots
2 Turnips
1 Parsnip
8 oz. Cremini Mushrooms
2 cloves Garlic
1 Lime
6 threads of Saffron
6 Hot Dogs
1/3 cup Coconut Milk
1/2 cup Peanut Butter (Creamy peanut butter, ideally. Crunchy peanut butter is great, but not so much for cooking with. The "butter" part absorbs in to your food, and then you're left with weird soggy peanut chunks. If a friend tells you to do that, they were never your real friend anyway)
2 tsp Sriracha
1.5 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
Oil for sauteing
Salt
Water

Yes, that is a big old list of ingredients. No, I wouldn't have thought to put some of them together. But when you're pretty sure that the only things alive outside are polar bears and the sentient snowmen from Frozen, you don't plan a trip to the market to get groceries. The market is gone. The bears ate the groceries. You make due with what you have on hand, and you make it work. And it totally ended up working. So let's get started with step one, which is to peel your onion and carrots and chop them into bite-sized bits. Now it's time for the exciting part: heating up a TBSP of oil in a pot over medium heat. Because the cold seeps in wherever it can, and if you're exposed enough to be chopping, you're probably going to need a minimum of one fire to stave off hypothermia. (If your landlord complains about the many fires you've lit around the place, just remind them that when the temperature drops below -15, we're legally in The Purge and you can do what you like). Toss your onion, carrots, and celery in the pot along with a pinch of salt, and saute them for 5 minutes, occasionally stirring and muttering under your breath about the cold. Take this time to clean your mushrooms and celery, to chop them up along with your hot dogs, and to contemplate a violent incursion into your neighbors' apartments to claim their blankets and foodstuffs as your own. Go back to your fire to warm up, and while you're there toss your hot dog bits, mushrooms, and celery into the pot along with another pinch of salt. Let that all cook together for 3 minutes before chopping up your garlic and adding it in to the party. Peel your turnips and parsnip, chop them in to medium-sized chunks, and throw them into your sauteing vegetables, along with your cumin, black pepper, saffron, and a medium-sized bear's pinch of salt. Stir that nonsense as it cooks for about a minute, ostensibly to let the flavors blend or something, but really just as an excuse to stand near the fire.

Not pictured: the three pairs of socks, two pairs of pants,
and flannel shirt I was wearing while eating this soup.
Now it's time to cover your food in a deluge of water, completely submerging everything underneath an inch of water, and in no way providing a perfect analog for the walls of your apartment which are closing in on you more and more as time goes by. Add in your sriracha, coconut milk, and peanut butter, and crank your heat up to high. Stir to combine everything together into beautiful homogeneity, and then taste it, adding in salt to your particular tastes. Let your burgeoning soup come to a boil before throwing a lid on it, turning the heat down to low, and cooking it at a simmer for about 25 minutes, so go find something to do. When you get back from setting more fires and pillaging the neighbors, turn the heat off, then add in the juice from your lime, and serve up your soup. It's hearty, tangy, spicy, and a whole lot of delicious. It tastes good enough that you'll almost forget the unspeakable things that you had to do to get that space heater from the people in apartment 3-F. Also, in addition to the deliciousness and the easing of your haunted mind, it will keep you warm and nourished so that you can survive the cold and fend off invaders. Happy apocalypse!


December 13, 2018

Changua

It's funny because it's true
Every now and again you stumble across a recipe that seems so simple and easy that it seems like it's legitimately suspicious. For instance, if a Tasty™ video starts off with them flattening a slice of white bread, I'm pretty sure it's going to end up with me going on a cross-country road trip to find the person who stole my identity. That said, sometimes delicious food is just simple. This is especially true of old cultural recipes passed down over generations. Most cultures have had some good times and some bad, and if a recipe has lasted throughout both, there's a decent chance that it's going to taste good, and that it's something you could reasonably whip up while on the run from various dangers like neighboring tribes, wild beasts, or slowly dying of dysentery. Notable exceptions are pretty much any traditional British or Australian foods, as these were developed as pranks for unsuspecting tourists.


Ingredients:

2 cups Milk
1.5 cups Water
4 Eggs (Chicken eggs for preference. You know, the things we all think of when somebody says "Eggs." Though I guess you could really use whatever bird eggs you have handy in a pinch. So if you're a creepy bird enthusiast you might have some options)
3 Green Onions
1/2 cup Cilantro
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
Salt

Changua is a traditional Columbian soup that's allegedly been passed down generation to generation amongst the native peoples of the Andes for...pretty much ever. It's typically eaten for breakfast, often on weekends, and is thought to be a pretty decent hangover cure, so it's easy to see why it has remained popular. The fact that it takes like 5 minutes to make and is super tasty doesn't hurt either. That said, the first thing you're going to do here is casually glorp together your milk and water in a pot along with your black pepper and a big pinch of salt. The kind of pinch that a professional athlete or circus performer might have. Add it in with your milk and water and crank up the heat. While you're waiting for that to boil, chop up your green onions and your cilantro. This should take you about a minute, which means you only have about 150 minutes left to go for your pot to boil. Or you can just get busy. Scientific research has shown that being too busy to deal with it can cause your food to heat up almost immediately. Once you've got your pot boiling, it's time to drop in your eggs like little paratroopers plummeting to their untimely egg deaths. So crack each egg into a bowl or cup and then gently pour it in to the boiling liquid. Don't rush or drop them from too high or else you'll end up with scrambled eggs inside of your soup. And probably some burns around your face and hands.

Here we see the noble egg, playing dead to try and evade
the deadly predators native to its environment.
Once all of your eggs are cooking in the liquid, cover the pot. Let them continue to poach for 4-5 minutes, depending on how well-done you like your eggs. Use this time to prep your bowls. That sounds intense. Divide up your chopped onions and cilantro evenly between 4 bowls. That's all you actually need to do. Prep accomplished. Once your eggs are cooked to your liking, turn off the heat under your pot. Using a spoon, strainer, or your bare hands and grit that defy concerns like utensils, hygiene, and second degree burns, put one egg in the bottom of each of your bowls. Then top them off with your milky soup and enjoy! Traditionally, this soup is served with bread, or sometimes topped with more cilantro. You can totally do that if you'd like. Personally, I like some heat, so I added in a bit of sriracha straight in my broth. That's part of the fun of traditional recipes. They've been passed down for forever, and different people have totally developed their own versions over the centuries/millennia. As long as the core of the recipe is right and the food tastes good, there's not really a wrong way to do it. Unless you have dysentery. Then there's totally a wrong way to do it. Enjoy!

November 28, 2018

Cream of Mushroom Soup

A noble soup embiggens
the smallest man

So you managed to survive the many perils of Black Friday. The changing weather, the crazed drivers, the advertisers ripping families out of the back seats of cars and forcibly marching them into department stores. You've bested them all. All that's left is for you to enjoy the late Autumn weather, have some sort of festive holiday drink, and celebrate life. Unless you live in Chicago where, despite over a century of searching, nobody has been able to find the user manual and change the weather setting off of "random." We have snow on the ground, ice everywhere, and by the weekend it's supposed to be 50 and stormy. So going outside isn't the best idea right now. You're better off huddling for warmth in your home and waiting out the rest of the Holiday Season™ in the comfort of your home or survival bunker. In the even that you're forced to leave your home and venture out into the Elements® it's important to remember that you have delicious soup to warm you up at home. So either get to work on your vivid hallucinations, or make some soup.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Cremini Mushrooms
1 standard-issue Onion
5 cups Milk (Preferably milk from a cow of some kind)
2 cloves Garlic
1 TBSP Butter
1 TBSP Olive Oil
2 TSBP Flour
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Rubbed Sage
1/4 tsp Ground Cumin
Salt

Cream of mushroom soup has the distinguished honor of being one of the most readily available things you can grab in a can at any supermarket's soup aisle. If you've ever eaten those soups, you know they taste like gelatinous salt. And I'm not knocking gelatinous salt. At the very least, it would be an excellent name for a debut album in the 90s. But we're striving for something better with this recipe, so the first thing you'll need to do is forget everything you know about cream of mushroom soup. Other than the name, and the fact that you're about to make some. Those are important tidbits to hold on to. But forget everything else. Once your amnesia is complete, dice your onion. Saute it in your butter and oil over medium heat along with a standard-sized human's pinch of salt. Let your onions cook down, stirring occasionally, for about 6 minutes, during which you'll be cleaning and slicing your mushrooms. It doesn't really matter how big or small you cut your mushrooms as long as you're consistent, so it's down to what your preference is. But keep in mind that this is a soup, so ideally everything should be able to fit easily into a spoon.

Welcome to flavor country. US passport line to the left.
Once your onions are soft and golden, toss your mushrooms into the party along with your black pepper, sage, cumin, and another standard-sized human's pinch of salt. Let that whole mushroom butter onion nonsense cook together for about 4 minutes, or when the mushrooms get soft and the whole room starts to smell like deliciousness. Mix in your flour and wait for everything to get kind of gross and sludgy. You know, like you after Thanksgiving dinner. Now it's time to slowly add in your milk, stirring all the while so that all of your flour mix incorporates, and you don't end up with any sad lumps left in there. Heat that whole thing up and keep it stirring to get it to thicken, but be careful not to boil it. Then salt it to your taste, and guzzle it down while  you watch other suckers dealing with the snow, wind, hail, rain, and then snow again.

March 13, 2018

Red Lentil Stew

"Yes!"
Some tragedies in life are inescapable. Illness. War. Being forced to listen to some idiot droning on about their political opinions at a party that you didn't even want to come to in the first place. This comes to mind because I've been mildly sick for a while now. And sure, I'm glad that I'm not deathly ill. But there's something awful about being just a little bit sick. Sick enough that you feel like crap and don't want to go do anything, but not sick enough that you feel justified in canceling plans or calling in sick. So you slog through your life, make something hot and delicious to make yourself feel better, and keep on praying for the sweet release of, I don't know, a snow day or maybe a land war in one of the less populous states like Montana. But those lazy Canadians never deliver, and you're left to force a smile and pretend like you don't hate everyone around you. So pretty much like normal.

Ingredients:

1.25 cups Red Lentils
1/4 cup of Water
1 standard-issue Onion
5 Tomatoes
1 Jalapeño Pepper
5 cloves Garlic
1/2 of a Lemon
1 TBSP Grated Ginger
1 TBSP Olive Oil
1 tsp Ground Cumin
1 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/2 tsp Turmeric
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper 
5 Cardamom Pods
1 Cinnamon Stick
Salt


The first thing you're gonna need to do is wash your lentils. Like, a lot. More than you'd think you should have to. See, lentils are essentially just an uppity kind of split pea, and much like their split pea cousins, lentils have a love affair with dirt. They cling to dirt like their little lives depend on it, and it takes some effort to get them (the lentils) to just move on with their lives already. Once you've got that taken care of, choppity chop your onion up and then toss it in a pan along with your cinnamon, cardamom, your oil and a gentleman's pinch of salt over medium heat. Let that cook for a couple minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion starts to color a bit. Now it's time to add in your ginger and your jalapeño which you've hypothetically diced by now and, depending on how spicy you like things, either removed the seeds and membranes from the inside of or not. Add in another pinch of salt, and let it cook for another 2 minutes or so, when the jalapeño begins to soften and the entire kitchen starts to smell kind of incredible. Mince your garlic and add it in to the party along with your cumin, paprika, turmeric, and cayenne. This is the point in the recipe where everything starts to smell so good that your neighbors come try and hunt down the source of the deliciousness to guilt you in to giving them some. If any of them make it to your home, just sneeze and cough on them until they go away, or until you begrudgingly develop enough respect for their sneeze resistance to agree and feed them. 

The turmeric in this thing stained the crap out of my hands.
I had turmeric stigmata for days.
 Dice up your tomatoes into little bits in anticipation of their joining the gang. But before you toss them in, now is a fairly good time to fish out your cinnamon stick and cardamom pods. You could leave them in there and they'd impart a little extra flavor to the dish, but they've really given up a fair amount of flavor already, and once everything is goopy and stew-like it'll be a lot harder to fish them out. Which essentially just means you run the risk of crunching down on some uncomfortable bites while you contemplate how this stew, the one thing that's supposed to make you feel better, has betrayed you. But really it was you who betrayed yourself. Anyhow, follow your heart. Regardless of what you choose, it's time to toss in your tomatoes along with your lentils, water, and a final pinch of salt. Bring your fledgling stew up to a boil before covering it and reducing the heat down to low. Let it cook down for about 25 minutes. Once the tomatoes lose their structural integrity and the lentils are cooked to your liking, you're pretty much good to go. Now it's time to eat, enjoy, feel better, wake up feeling like hot garbage spread on a cracker, and hope that you have some leftovers in the fridge. See you next week, assuming I haven't gone to Montana to start this thing on my own.


February 13, 2018

Blizzard Ramen with Meatballs

This is what it looks like when the plow has been by a couple
times, but it's still gonna keep snowing all night
Sometimes in life you get thrown a curveball. Sometimes that curveball is actually billions of snowflakes (actually more like quintillions, but billions is easier to wrap your head around) falling and covering everything in your immediate geographic area with a cold blanket of beauty and traffic collisions. Sometimes you spend hours cleaning off of your car and driving through treacherous conditions just to get to the store, only to find out that the store wasn't dumb enough to open in this weather. The point is, sometimes you have to make due with whatever disparate ingredients you have lying around, and try to make something tasty and nutritious. Or at least tasty and not poisonous. Or at least tasty and not immediately poisonous. Listen, tasty is the important part. Survive until the end of the snow and then you can go get all of the fancy medical attention you want.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Ground Beef
2 packs Ramen Noodle Soup
3 cups Water
1 cup assorted Frozen Vegetables
1 cup Seasoned Breadrumbs
1 Egg
1/2 an Onion
2 tsp Grated Ginger
2 tsp Soy Sauce
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1/2 tsp Onion Powder
1/2 tsp Toasted Sesame Oil
1/8 tsp Hot Sauce
1/8 tsp Crushed Red Pepper
Salt
Oil

Now, I know that's a daunting list of ingredients. It's in the double digits, and the world is ending outside, and you don't want to deal with this. You'd rather just order a pizza. There is no pizza. The pizza place exists outside of your apartment, a place that may-or-may-not even still exist at this point. And most of these ingredients are just spices anyway, so deal with it. Take a bowl and mix together your ground beef with your breadcrumbs, egg, onion powder, hot sauce, sesame oil, and half of your ginger, soy sauce, and garlic powder. Got all of that? Good. Once your hands are covered in meat goop, wash them off, using some form of witchcraft or yoga to actually turn on the faucet without touching it with your gross meat hands. Then thinly slice your onion half and sauté it in some oil along with a standard human's pinch of salt over medium heat until the onions start to soften and turn a little translucent. Form your meat goop into golf-ball sized balls and then crank the heat on your pan up to medium-high, and toss in your meatballs. Or gently place them in if you're a wuss who doesn't like grease burns. Don't stir them around a whole bunch. Give them time to brown before turning them and repeating on as many sides as time and geometry will allow you.

There's nothing quite like eating way too much food from the
comfort of your couch while watching the olympics
While your meatballs and onions are doing their thing, stir the seasoning packets from your ramen in to your water along with another pinch of salt, your crushed red pepper and the rest of your ginger, soy sauce, and garlic powder. Once your meatballs are sufficiently browned, add in this spiced murky water along with your frozen vegetables and use a wooden spoon to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of your pan. Bring the whole mess to a boil, then cover it and reduce it to a simmer for 10 minutes. If you live in a standard apartment building, it's about now that your neighbors will start sensing the presence of food, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, and start wandering the halls in a zombielike trance, trying to find its source. Don't be fooled into letting them in to your home. It's totally a trap. You might not all make it through this winter alive, and you want to make sure that you don't get killed and eaten. Anyhow, after your 10 minutes are up, take the solid bricks of noodles from your ramen and break them up into about 4 pieces each. Add them in to your pan and stir until they're tender. And that's it! You have food to make it through the storm possibly. Happy shoveling!



October 26, 2017

Vegetable Stew

Actual stew may or may not disco
Stew evokes strong emotions. Curling up on the couch with a blanket and a good movie. Cold winter nights with warm family gatherings. Hunting people and animals for sport in the woods in Maryland during the winter of '07. You know, hallmark stuff. The point is, that as the life cycle of our planet continues and everything around us dies, nothing beats a good stew to warm our hearts and bellies. And since the cold can make us lethargic which makes it harder to chase after animals, why not make it out of vegetables? I can count on one hand the number of times that a vegetable outran me when I was sober.

Ingredients:

6 Red Potatoes
4 ribs of Celery
3 Carrots
2 Chipotle Peppers
1 Onion
1 Sweet Potato
8 oz. Crimini Mushrooms
28 oz. Marinara
2 cups Vegetable Stock
1 cup chopped Malanga Root (This is a big, dense, starchy root vegetable. It looks weird, but it's got a nice earthy flavor, and is available in most produce stores so stop complaining)
1 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
Salt 
Oil

The first thing you're gonna need to do is channel the spirit of primitive people who tried to stave off the dark and cold of winter by preparing hearty stews in their shabby huts. So, pretty much you last February. Channel the spirit of you. Now that you've got the proper zen going on, chop up your onions, carrots, and celery, and get them sautéing in a pot with some oil and a standard human's pinch of salt. This is a stew, so you're going to want decent sized chunks of everything you're dumping in the pot so that they don't just fall apart. Vegetables, like people, hold up better when there's more of them there, pulling together and building community centers and whatnot. Let that mess cook down for about 4 minutes before adding in your mushrooms along with your chipotles and another pinch of salt. Let it cook for another couple minutes before you peel and chop your sweet potato and malanga and toss them in along with your cumin and black pepper. Your potatoes you can either peel or not depending on your preference, but if you're gonna have the peels stick around you should probably wash them at some point. The same is true for the rest of your vegetables. And, you know, everything else in life.

Actual nice bowl and countertop courtesy of cooking at
other people's houses.
Add in your potatoes along with your marinara and vegetable stock and bring that whole mess to a boil. Then reduce it to low heat, cover it, and let it sit for around an hour and a half while you busy yourself with wintery tasks like mowing the lawn probably, because winter was super mild last year. Then again, weather has taken out a large chunk of this and other countries lately, so you never know. After about a hour and a half of cooking, the malanga will pretty much have disintegrated which will thicken your stew. But if you were looking forward to specific chunks of malanga to eat, because who doesn't look forward to things they've probably never heard of, maybe take it off the heat a little earlier. Either way, you've got a hearty stew to take you through the dreary winter months and into the dreary summer months. Enjoy!

October 11, 2017

Apple Parsnip Soup

The apples clutch their purses a little tighter when walking
through parsnip-town. Racist apples. 
If the rain, wind, and gloom outside for the past couple days are any indication, it might not be summer any more. Then again, I live in Chicago, so this is about the third time that I've thought that since August. But this time is different. This time there's also "pumpkin spiced" garbage all throughout every store, and the spiderwebs that I carelessly walk into outside are starting to feel store-bought. So I'm fairly certain that Winter is coming to kill us all, but first we get to ease into it by always being slightly too hot or too cold, and being forced to clean up after dying trees. So it's time to grab all of the root vegetables we can, make some delicious soup, and start waiting for May.

Ingredients:

6 Parsnips
4 Granny Smith Apples
2 Onions
5 Cups Vegetable Stock
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
1/2 tsp Coriander
Salt
Oil

So there are a lot of different kinds of apples out there, and they all have misleading names. Red delicious apples, for instance, while very red on the outside, are actually garbage on the inside. Granny Smith apples are kind of weird and tart. I didn't know the Smith matriarch myself, but if I had to guess I'd say she probably was super sweet and straight laced, in the sort of apologetically racist way that movies depict protagonists in the 40s and 50s. But I digress. The first thing you're gonna need to do is chop up your onions and sauté them in some oil (In a pot of some kind, for preferencewith a standard-issue-human's pinch of salt. Let them cook down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally as an excuse to go smell delicious cooking onions. Then add in your parsnips, which you've prudently taken this time to peel and chop. Once you realize you forgot to do this and you haphazardly do it as fast as possible, add in another pinch of salt and let that whole mess cook down for another 5 minutes.

Apple slices added in futile attempt to distract from the
beige-ness of delicious soup.
Now it's time to peel your apples. Why not earlier? Because apples hate the air, and while I'm not usually one to kowtow to whining vegetation, hate-filled apples turn brown and gross. And sure, you could just squeeze lemon juice in their whiny faces and they'd get over it, but then this soup would taste like lemons which wasn't the idea. So we coddle the apples until the last moment, when we strike. Kind of like an evil witch. Once your apples have seen your true nature we don't have a lot of time, so quickly chop the flesh off their cores, and then toss them in the pot along with the rest of your ingredients. Bring that sucker to a boil and then simmer it for 45 minutes. Blend it until it's smooth, and enjoy. It tastes savory, peppery, mildly sweet, and a little tart, which is perfect for pretending the world isn't dying outside. Some of you may be thinking about the colors of parsnips and peeled apples and wondering "is this another aggressively beige soup that you're making?" And to them I say: see you next week!

September 7, 2017

Vegan Chili

Say hello to my sister. This is all her fault. Unless it turns out
great, in which case this is all my fault.
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Then again, they also say that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, which is ludicrous because the relative value of a bird doesn't change just because it's in a bush. I mean, sure, maybe if it was in some super hard-to-reach bush on top of a mountain, but that was never specified. And there are pretty much bushes everywhere. But I digress. The point is that I had a great need, and thus needed to invent. Specifically, my sister is in town, and she doesn't eat a lot of the basic foods that make up deliciousness and joy. And sure, she claims that while she's here she'll eat whatever you give her and won't be picky, but she says it with the same look in her eyes that the animals have in those over the top ASPCA commercials with the ridiculous Sarah Mclachlan music. So I needed to make something without red meat, processed sugar, flour, and probably a bunch of other things that I'm forgetting. And somehow I needed to make it taste good. And by coincidence, lately it's been kind of chilly in Chicago. And so, just like every major marketing campaign ever, inspiration was born from a stupid pun.

Ingredients:

2 standard issue Onions
3 ribs of Celery
3 largish Carrots
1 lb. Crimini Mushrooms
5 cloves Garlic
32 oz. can of Diced Tomatoes
15 oz. Black Beans (Personally, I used canned beans because I didn't have the time to deal with dried beans and their endless drama this week. But if you do, soak your beans for 6-8 hours, then replace the water and boil them for another 45 minutes in salted water. Same thing you do with communists.)
15 oz. Kidney Beans (Ditto)
1 Green Pepper
1 Poblano Pepper
1 Jalapeño Pepper
6 oz. Tomato Paste
2 cups Vegetable Stock (That you totally had left if you made my empanadas from last week. And it turns out that I made the empanadas that I made last week, so that worked out for me.)
1.5 TBSP Cumin
1.5 TBSP Dried Oregano
2 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
2 Bay Leaves
Olive Oil
Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is prepare yourself. Not in an overly dramatic, "prepare yourself for destruction" sort of way, although that couldn't hurt either. But there are a fair number of ingredients here, and it doesn't hurt to get them ready in advance so that you don't have to worry about preparing your next ingredient in time before the fire burns everything (especially your pride and insurance premiums) to a crisp. So, if you've got the wherewithal, spend some time now cleaning and dicing your vegetables and rinsing your beans. For the rest of you who thrive on the constant thrill of possibly burning your dinner and/or neighborhood, feel free to twiddle your thumbs while you wait for the rest of us to finish prepping. Alright, now coat a pan with oil, and sauté your diced onions and celery over medium-high heat along with a standard pinch of salt. Cook it until the onions start to get some color before adding in your mushrooms and another pinch of salt. When you sauté mushrooms, they release a whole bunch of liquid, shrink, and start smelling kind of nutty and awesome. When this happens, add in your assorted peppers and garlic. Cook for another minute or so before adding in your tomato paste, cumin, oregano, paprika, black pepper, and cayenne.

Pro-tip: For the best results put your reddish chili in a red
bowl, and then photograph it under orangish light.
Pretty much all forms of canned tomatoes that I've encountered suffer from the same problem that diet coke does. Namely, they taste like cans. But cooking them down with the rest of your ingredients helps soften that metallic taste a lot (I haven't checked to see if this also works for diet coke, but I feel like it probably does). So cook your vegetable-tomato sludge down for a couple minutes before adding in your diced tomatoes and another pinch of salt. Let it keep cooking for another minute or two, at which point your entire home should smell delicious [or possibly smoky and ashy, depending on how successful you were at chopping as you go. I didn't burn my house down (this time)]. Throw that whole mess into a slow cooker/crock pot along with your carrots, vegetable stock, beans, and bay leaves. Cook it on the high setting for 2 hours, and then on the low setting for another 2-4 hours. Then remove your bay leaves and eat it. Like, all of it. Because this sucker isn't just "good for being gluten free," or "good for being vegan," both of which are code phrases for "bad, but maybe it could have been worse." It's just good for being food.

July 25, 2017

Garlic Fennel Soup

Fennel sits proudly atop the corpses of its vanquished foes
I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush here, but anybody who doesn't like garlic is a filthy communist who deserves, at the very least, to be launched off of a tall cliff via trebuchet. Garlic is one of the few things that makes life worth the hassle of putting on pants in the morning. If they made a cologne that smelled like sautéing onions and garlic, I would buy a lifetime supply. Not only because that's pretty much the best smell imaginable, but also because it would be the perfect litmus test for everybody I meet to determine whether I can be friends with them or I need to break out my trebuchet (or both). The point is that garlic makes everything better. And when you mix it with fennel and onions there's pretty much no point in trying to get anything else accomplished, because your day will be filled up with eating that mess, and then with talking about it to anybody who'll listen.

Ingredients:

3 Fennel Bulbs 
2 Standard-Issue Onions
10-12 Cups Vegetable Stock (Pro-tip: For extra deliciousness, take the stalks off the top of your fennel, and toss them in with your vegetable stock when you make it. Extra Pro-tip: Make you own vegetable stock)
5 Cloves of Garlic
5 Yukon Gold Potatoes (You want a potato that's gonna hold together while cooked, and not fall apart like the second act of a student film. If you like red potatoes, that's fine. If you like russet potatoes, get used to disappointment. Delicious delicious disappointment.
Olive Oil
Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is choppity-chop your onion and fennel into little, easily manageable bits. Nobody has ever actually told me that it's a good idea to peel off the outer layer of fennel, like I do with onions, but nobody ever actually told me to go to Ireland, and that worked out pretty well. I'm pretty sure that applies here too. That's how logic works. Anyway, once your onions and fennel are chopped, sauté them in some oil, in a pot over medium-high heat along with a standard-issue pinch of salt. Let that awesomeness cook together for about 5 minutes, when it starts smelling ridiculously good. Then peel and mince your garlic until your hands, cutting board, kitchen, and school districts all smell sufficiently garlicky. Throw it in with your onions and fennel and cook that sucker until it starts to smell so good that you seriously contemplate forgetting this soup altogether, and just shoving your head into that burning-hot pile of delicious face first. About one minute.

Pistachios haphazardly strewn about to distract from the
featureless surface of this bowl of insane flavor.
Slice your potatoes and add them into the party just to get all of the flavors acquainted with each other, then drown them, along with everybody else still in the pot, in a raging torrent of vegetable stock. Bring your stormy sea of fledgling soup to a boil and then slam a lid on it to keep anybody from escaping. Turn the heat down to low and let it cook for about 25 minutes, when the potatoes are soft and cooked through, but still have some shape to them. And now you have insanely delicious soup! That's also....very very beige. Of all the food I've ever made, it's probably the most beige. And I once made apple sauce. If you're cool with this, eat and enjoy. If eating monochromatic food tears at your soul because you can't dissociate external beauty with intrinsic value, the chop up something pretty to garnish the top. Like chives, or pistachios, or a rare painting you stole from a rich collector years ago, and haven't found a use for that lives up to its value and beauty until now. You know, whatever you have lying around.

March 6, 2017

Lokshen Milk

Welcome to the exciting, fast-paced world of eating way too
much dairy. Currently unincorporated
Everyone grew up eating something. For some people that something was unreasonably large amounts of fast food. For others it was cheap ingredients, coerced against their natures into delicious home-cooked meals designed to stretch a struggling family’s income. And for some it was...I don't know…chicken? What do nondescript people eat? I'm sticking with chicken. Chicken and asparagus. Some people ate chicken and asparagus. Today however, we’re focusing on the second category of food, and specifically on a dish that I remember fondly from my youth. It’s easy to make, tastes good, and is a great way to feed a family for about two dollars and some change. And the recipe has been in my family for generations. Two generations, as far as I know, but it still counts.

Ingredients:

½ gallon Milk
½ lb. Pasta (traditionally, growing up, my family was fairly specific about the pasta used. Upon growing up I've come to realize that it doesn't really matter, and my mother won't actually barge into my apartment and stop me from using the “wrong noodles.” Because I won't buzz her up.)
1.5 TBSP Butter
Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is channel your inner poor immigrant of vaguely eastern-European descent. Got it? Cool, let’s get started. The name Lokshen Milk, loosely translated, means noodle milk. Which sounds super gross, especially given the propensity these days for weird alternative forms of milk. But what it actually is, essentially, is a soup. Maybe even a stew, depending on the proportions of the ingredients (which I guess is technically true of most things), but I'm gonna play it safe and stick with the soup version. Anyhow, take your pasta and throw it in some boiling water until it's al dente (a curious Italian phrase I may have mocked at one time or another, that means “to the tooth.” Which essentially means that it [the pasta] is cooked, but still offers resistance when bitten. Like a sleeping person on a beach).

It looks exactly like what it is. A bowl full of milk and pasta.
It tastes awesome though.
Once your pasta is cooked to my liking, drain it and then throw it right back into the pot again. Add in your butter and milk, along with salt to taste, and bring that sucker up to...well, not quite a boil. Boiling milk is generally frowned upon. People say it burns super easily and that it kills the nutrients. This may be true. What's definitely true is that it makes a crazy mess. So bring your milk up to just under a boil. Then serve it up to your squalling family by the bowlful. And I know that some of you are undoubtedly sitting with your hands eagerly raised, begging to ask how a giant bowl of milk, butter, pasta, and salt can possibly be healthy for you. Well, I promised it'd be cheap, easy, and delicious. I also may have promised through insinuation that it wouldn't be chicken and asparagus. I never said anything about healthy.


July 26, 2016

Tomato Soup

Tomatoes, pictured here in a rare mating display
The tomato gets a rough deal. Traditionally, it's the thing we throw at people to tell them they're terrible at life, and should get off the stage. Or, alternatively, we'll mash it up with about 1,000 other things into a sauce so you can barely even tell it's there, and then combine that sauce with the things we really want to eat, like pasta, or chicken, or the still-beating hearts of our enemies, or fries (Though some tomato sauces do rise to the occasion). Rarely do we let the tomato be the star of the show. Tomato soup is no exception. It's pretty much used as a condiment for grilled cheese sandwiches. Which is reasonable. Grilled cheese is delicious, and can help make anything taste awesome. But if you make it right, the tomato doesn't necessarily need a crutch. It may suck, but it will not get off the stage. Just like me at my 5th grade talent show.

Ingredients:

28 oz. can of Crushed Tomatoes
3 standard-issue Tomatoes
1 standard-issue Onion
3 Carrots
2 cups Vegetable Stock
1 cup Water
2 cloves Garlic
2 TBSP Olive Oil
1 TBSP chopped Rosemary 
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper 
An unspecified amount of Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is chop up your onion and carrots. You don't need to worry about getting them into tiny uniform bits, because we're gonna blend the crap out of the thing later, but if the demons in your head tell you otherwise, go nuts. Heat up your oil in a pot, and sauté your chopped up onion and carrots along with a gentlemen's pinch of salt. While that's cooking, it's a good time to get to know your tomatoes way better than you want to. You're gonna cut out the core and the seeds. Those of you who have seen the inside of a tomato before might be wondering "how?" The answer is "messily." Because tomatoes are goopy nonsense on the inside, and at the slightest pressure they'll squirt their insides all over the place. Kind of like people. Once you're done, and you can't un-see the things you've seen, chop what's left of your tomatoes into chunks. For those of you who read this before starting to cook, let your onions and carrots cook for about 6 minutes over medium heat before adding in your tomatoes along with another pinch of salt. For those of you cooking along as you read it, you probably should have added in your tomatoes a long time ago. Also, your kitchen, and other important parts of your household, may be on fire
The rosemary sprig is optional, unless you happen to be
classy as hell, like me. 

Let that whole mess cook down for another 3 minutes before adding in your rosemary, along with the garlic which you've taken the time to chop into itty bits. Cook for another minute before adding in the rest of your ingredients. Bring the whole thing up to a boil, cover it so it can't escape, and then simmer it for 1/2 an hour. Now it's time to blend it. I prefer lightly blending it so you've got a slightly chunky texture. But if you decide you know better than me, go nuts and follow your heart. I'm sure you won't regret this decision forever. And that's all there is to it! Delicious, mildly spicy tomato soup. So the next time you feel like throwing tomatoes at some hack comedian, make a pot of this soup, and throw that at him instead. 

July 12, 2016

Chilled Avocado Soup

Psychic's depiction: seconds before my death
Well, it's official. Summer is back. You can tell from the longer days, the watermelons in the supermarket, and the sticky parentless children running around everywhere. Oh, and the sun is trying to kill us again. Last year I was living in LA, so the sun attacking me was annoying but manageable. But I made the dumb mistake of moving to Chicago, which was originally swampland that some idiots built huts on. Not much has changed. So nowadays when I say that the sun is trying to kill me,  it's more like the sun, along with his homicidal buddies the lake and the air, are all conspiring to kill me so they can live in my apartment and throw parties. The point is, we're gonna need refreshment. Which usually means something fruity and sweet. But you can only do so much fruity and sweet on a hot day before you start to feel all of that sugar melting into a caramel inside your stomach, and that's not as much fun as it sounds. The answer is avocados. Granted, I've lived in southern California for years, so, legally, I'm required to solve every problem with avocados, but this time it actually makes things better.


Ingredients:

2 Avocados
1 Lime
1/2 a Red Onion
1/3 cup Milk (Thanks to hipsters and their ilk, there are WAY too many options of weird nonsense milks to choose from. So don't. Just get actual milk. The kind that comes from a cow, and has some fat in it. You know, milk.)
1/4 cup Vegetable Stock
1 tsp Kosher Salt
1/4 tsp Cumin
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
An unspecified amount of Sour Cream and Cilantro

The first thing you're gonna need to do is chastise your avocados. Because once you cut them, avocados turn brown and gross. Surprisingly fast, too. It's pretty much their national pastime to wreck your day. So let your avocados know in a firm, but caring tone of voice, that you're not gonna be putting up with their crap today. Keep lecturing until you feel like you've really gotten through to your avocados and made a difference in their lives. Then, like any good parent, start preparing for when they inevitably try to betray you. Once you've gotten that taken care of, choppity chop chop your red onion into tiny bits until no one can identify its remains. Add in the cumin and cayenne, and set it aside. Peel and slice your avocados, and throw them in a bowl along with your kosher salt, and mash them with a fork. The large grains of salt you get with the kosher stuff will help punch through the avocado and break it down into a delicious goop. This is where your avocados will stab you in the back, despite all of the progress we made together. So add in the juice from your lime to keep things in check. Avocados may love turning brown, but citrus is having none of that nonsense. Citrus doesn't deal well with change. This party started off green, and as far as citrus is concerned, it's gonna end up green.

That's good enough to almost make up for the heat. Almost.
Now it's time to add your spiced onions in with the avocado mixture, along with your milk and vegetable stock. Stir that nonsense together, cover it, and throw it in the fridge to think about what it's done. Let it sit there for at least a couple hours, but overnight would be even better. Then, whenever the sun is pulling that "95 degrees with 80% humidity" nonsense, go to your fridge and pull out your avocado sludge. Throw it in a bowl and top it with a tablespoon of sour cream, and some chopped cilantro. Or don't, because it's super hot and you don't even have the energy to produce fully fledged thoughts, let alone add crap on top of your soup. Either way. The point is, even though the air around you is hot and sticky, that doesn't mean you have to be. Well, maybe it does, but you don't have to feel like it. Instead you can feel cool, and refreshed, and full of avocados. Like a conquistador, minus all of the rape and murder!

April 26, 2016

Matzah Balls

They bled yer mama, bled yer papa, but they won't bleed you
Matzah Balls are kind of interesting. They're, by Hollywood's dumb standards anyway, the quintessential Jewish foodstuff. They taste awesome, aren't particularly hard to make, and still, pretty much the only time any of us has any is when we're at a jewish holiday meal in the certified home of a genuine Jewish grandmother. And I, for one, am sick and tired of hiding in their attics hoping for a scraps (The creepiest thing I've typed on this blog to date, ladies and gentlemen. Let's see if we can beat that record.)


Ingredients:

1 Cup Matzah Meal (For the "differently Jewish" among you, Matzah is a terrible terrible cracker Jews consume for religious reasons during Passover. Matzah Meal is what happens if you crush it into itty bitty pieces over and over, so that you never have to see its stupid matzah face again.)
4 Eggs
2.5 TBSP Schmaltz (As I've mentioned before, schmaltz is rendered chicken fat. For an inauthentic version of how to achieve this, demonstrated by a woman who is clearly writing a novel in her free time in which she murders absolutely everybody she knows, click here!)
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Ground Ginger
1 Average Sized Human's pinch of White Pepper
Chicken Stock!
Water!

The first thing you're gonna need to do is channel your inner Jewish grandmother. This mostly involves hinting to every relative you have that they really should call and visit more often unless of course they want you to sit alone and forgotten in your big empty house, and dropping the hint that they'll die of a wasting sickness if they don't start eating more. Also some light housework. Once it's all done, collect your eggs together, tearfully explain to them what they're about to go through, and then beat them until their insides are all mixed together. Add in your matzah meal, schmaltz, salt, ginger, and pepper, and stir to combine. Then cover that weird glop, shove it in the fridge, and let it think about what it's done for at least 15 minutes.

Not pictured: thousands of years of persecution, soup
While your gunk is in the fridge getting to know itself, heat up a pot full of chicken stock until it boils. Fill up a cup with water, and set it to the side. Take your matzah sludge out of the fridge (Assuming it's been at least as long as I told you to wait. Don't be using that statement as an excuse to ignore my instructions and still blame me for your inevitable demise. I'm looking at you, the entire nation of Zambia). Dip your hands into the water that you totally didn't forget to set aside, and form your matzah goop into balls about the size of a golf ball. Let them sit for a minute to get a false sense of security, and then dump those suckers right into your boiling chicken stock. Cover them and let them boil for about an hour, when they've doubled in size, are soft and fluffy throughout, and are no longer calling out for help or whistling. And that's it! Serve them in delicious soup if you're authentic. Serve them on their own if you're trying way too hard. The point is, you're not gonna have any leftovers. Also, regardless of who you are, you're like one eight more Jewish now. You're welcome.

January 26, 2016

French Onion Soup Sandwich

No before shot this week folks. Just jumped right
in there and got cooking. Also, I forgot.
Every so often, and idea hits your brain like lightning hitting a hairless cat. It's sudden, there's a lot of commotion (but still not as much as you'd expect), and you largely stop paying attention to what anybody else is saying at the dinner party. That's what happened to me Friday night when somebody mentioned in passing the concept of a French Onion Soup Sandwich. And, much like the hypothetical cat, I was struck. I started planning it out in my head, and before long I had formulated a plan, and I got to work on making some awesome and delicious food. That I didn't share with anybody because whatever cold or flu or bubonic plague I've got is clinging to me like its life depends on it. Which I guess it does, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. The point is, I'm not spreading it to the populace at large, so nobody else gets to try my delicious food. Leftovers are the only perk of being sick. Well, that and having an excuse to take a long shower in the California drought. #BankingOnElNinoGettingItsCrapTogether

Ingredients:

6 Standard Issue Onions
4 Cups Of Vegetable Stock
2 Cups of Water
1 Clove Of Garlic
2 Slices Of Sourdough Bread
2 TBSP Olive Oil
1 TBSP Butter
2 oz. Fontina Cheese
1 average human sized pinch of Black Pepper
An unspecified amount of Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is chop the crap out of all of your onions using any technique you'd like. You don't need to go crazy and get tiny bits, because you want larger slices and/or chunks. Heat up your Oil, and half of your Butter in pan over medium heat, add in your Onions and one large human sized pinch of Salt (like the type of Salt pinch you'd expect from a Basketball player, or Neil Flynn) and sauté the crap out of those onions for approximately 3 lifetimes. You want them soft, brown, and delicious. Then mince your Garlic, add it in, and sauté for another minute. Add in your Water, Vegetable Stock, Black Pepper, and another pinch of Salt, bring the whole mess to a boil, and then simmer it for 30 minutes.

Yeah, you won't find that sucker...anywhere probably. Which
is a shame, because it's cuh-razy awesome.
Take the rest of your Butter, and melt it in a pan over medium-high heat. Cook your Sourdough Bread for about a minute, until it's brown and crispy, then flip it. Add your Cheese to one slice, and some onions you fished out of the soup to the other slice. Cook it until the cheese starts to get a little melty. Be careful not to burn the bottom of the bread. Combing the two pieces of bread into one awesome sandwich and keep it on the heat, flipping as necessary, until the cheese melts it into one cohesive unit of sandwich-ness. Then dip that sucker in your soup, and eat the crap out of it. Repeat as necessary until you run out of soup. Or sandwiches. Or sick days.


January 12, 2016

Top Ramen Soup

All the best foods come in dried prepackaged rectangles.
This week is a little bit different from what I've done before. Normally, I make some awesome nonsense from scratch, and try to teach you all how to make it, all while taking no sass at all from the voices in my head. This week, I'm gonna show you how to take some super cheap, pretty crappy nonsense (dried rectangles of ramen noodle soup), and combine it with some other simple ingredients to make something pretty damn incredible. Because sometimes nothing's open, and you have to make do with what's lying around, or what you can buy at some sort of Kwik E Mart. And sometimes you get home from your trip to Ireland at midnight in the middle of the only legit cold-snap since you've moved to LA, you find out that your heat is broken, and you have to figure out some way to warm up with delicious food even though you're too tired to go to the store, because your flight was delayed 2 hours and then you had to sit on the tarmac for an hour after landing, so you try and find a way to utilize only things that have been sitting in your pantry or freezer for the last month or so. You know, hypothetically.

Ingredients:

2 Rectangles of Ramen Noodle Soup
4 Cups Water
1 Standard Issue Onion
1.5 Cups Frozen Peas and Carrots
2 Cloves of Garlic
2 Average Sized Human Pinches of Salt
2 Average Sized Human Pinches of Ground Ginger
1 Average Sized Human Pinch of Black Pepper
1.5 tsp Olive Oil

The first thing you're gonna need to do is forget 80% of what you know about those packages of Ramen noodles. If you never went to college or lived alone in your early 20s, you'll probably be ahead of the curve on this one. The next thing you're gonna need to do is mildly chop up your onion. You're looking for smallish chunks, but nothing too fine. If you were an onion serial killer, this would be like your sloppy early work. The stuff that the police eventually look back at years later to finally gather substantial evidence and catch you. Heat up your Olive Oil over medium heat, and sauté the crap out of your Onion along with half your Salt, half your Ginger, and all of your Black Pepper. Let it cook down, stirring occasionally, for about 6 minutes, or until the onions start to get slightly brown and smell awesome. Add in your frozen Vegetables, along with the rest of your Salt, and sauté until they're very definitely defrosted, and the whole mess starts to smell...well, even more incredible than before. During this time choppity chop up your Garlic, like a well-oiled garlic-mincing machine. Nobody's solving any garlic murders from these cloves. Add them in, and sauté for another minute.

Noodles, vegetables, flavor, and crunchy bits. You're welcome
Now it's time to deal with your noodles, and how much you're supposed to forget about what you no longer know about them because your forgot it. Got it? Me either. Which is the point, I think. Anyhow, take a knife, and chop each dried noodle-loaf into 5 equal slices. Some crumbly bits are gonna break off from the slices. Don't worry, you haven't ruined everything. This time. Yet. Take your crumbly bits and put them in a bowl for later. Add your Water, along with the slices of Ramen, and all but one pinch of the accompanying Ramen "seasoning packets" in with your Vegetables and bring the heat up to high. Cook it for about 4 minutes, when the noodles soften. Take your crumbly extra bits of noodles and toss them with your reserved pinch of Ramen seasoning and the rest of your Ginger. Serve yourself up a bowlful of soup, top it with your spiced crumblies, and enjoy! I'm sure the memory of it will continue to keep you warm as you sleep in your cold apartment, waiting until it's day out so you can call and get your heat fixed. Hypothetically.

December 29, 2015

Chamomile Potato Soup

For best results, use only fresh-chopped Chamomile
I'm finally back from all of my crazy random world travels! And, the first post I'm making now that I'm back is a post for some Chamomile Potato Soup. That's right! It's another soup recipe. Pretty soon after the last one, and you might be getting sick of delicious soups, or just delicious warm things in general (last week was Hot Whiskey). Fortunately, I don't care right now! My heat's out, and it's so much winter right now that it's even winter in LA, so shut it. Shut your face and other bits. You don't like it, go start your own blog. But first make this weirdly awesome soup. Then regret all of the mistrust that you had in me, my soup, and the process we've implicitly agreed to whereby I snarkily teach you how to make awesome food, and you put a sock in it about me posting another soup recipe.

Ingredients:

6 stalks Celery
5 average sized Potatoes
1 Onion
1 bulb o' Fennel
2 quarts Chamomile Tea 
2 cloves Garlic
2 TBSP Butter
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
An unspecified amount of Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do, is have a whole bunch of leftover chamomile tea sitting around your freezing apartment. Or you can make some chamomile tea. Whichever. The point is to let it steep all up in there for a good bit to get some thick Chamomile flavor up in that tea. Otherwise passing British people will scoff at you, and then we'll have to start a war to save face over your weak weak tea. Once you've averted international incidents by not brewing terribly inferior tea, chop your Celery, Onions, and Fennel. It doesn't have to be tiny. You'll be blending the bejeezus out of it later anyhows. Melt your butter in a pot over medium heat. Add in your chopped vegetation along with an average human's pinch of salt (it was pointed out to me by my brother-in-law, that he didn't know how much an average pinch was. I'll give you the same advice I gave him: have everybody in the house pinch a pinch of salt, and form a salt pile. Then evenly divide it by the number of pinchers. Asked and answered!), and sauté for about 7 minutes. Then choppity chop up your Garlic, and add it in for another minute. Finally, roughly chop your Potatoes, and add them in along with another democratically average pinch of Salt, and your Black Pepper. Stir it around for a minute or so to let everything start to meld together. In flavor, that is.

Croutons added for reasons of awesomeness
Now it's time to fight every urge your body is telling you, and dump that tea all up on top of them there vegetables. I know, it feels wrong. It feels like you're going to ruin your vegetables, and ruin your tea, all in one swoop. What will the fictional British passers-by say then? I don't know, but I bet it'll be sardonic. But don't worry. It'll be ok. The Fennel and the Chamomile will form some complex sweetness and deep savoriness that'll make everything awesome. And if it doesn't, you can always drink some more hot whiskey until you think it does. But it totally will. Probably. Almost definitely. It did for me. The point is, pour the tea in the pot, add in another one of the People's Pinches of Salt, bring it all to a boil, and then simmer it for about 20 minutes, until everything inside is cooked, tender, and delicious. Then blend that sucker with a whirry stick of knifiness until it can't see straight anymore. Serve with something crunchy, and a smug sense of satisfaction watching your guests who questioned your soup choice licking their bowls. Welcome back to me blogging on a computer, y'all! I got the ability to post links, and I'm not afraid to use it. Even if I'm sending you somewhere super super weird, but still awesome. See you next week! Not literally! Unless you're stalking me, in which case I'll probably see you sooner than that. Or at least you'll see me. Either way.

December 8, 2015

Kubbeh Soup

So, I'm adventuring around a bunch of countries for the next couple weeks, and right now I'm in Israel. Which, it turns out, is awesome. The people are friendly, the country is beautiful, and they seem blissfully unaware of just how creepy their advertisements for eyeglasses are. 

I'm pretty sure this couple just finished feasting on the souls and flesh of the living before posing for this picture in their lensless glasses. But that's not really the point. The point, which you may have guessed by now, is that my sister made some crazy awesome soup for me over the weekend. And I managed to weasel it out of her (read: politely asked her for it). It's got pretty much everything I look for in a soup. Awesome flavor, variety of texture, and dumplings. Because dumplings are awesome. Seriously you guys. Dumplings. 

Ingredients:

3 Large Onions
1 lb. of lean ground meat (my sister used turkey, which was awesome. I wouldn't say no to ground beef though. Because beef.)
1 28 oz. can of Crushed Tomatoes
7 Carrots 
3 Sweet Potatoes
1 lb. Semolina (traditionally kubbeh is made with bulgur. But that's not how my sister made it. And also, traditionally it's not made into soup. So shut it)
2.5 TBSP Smoked Paprika 
1 TBSP Olive Oil
1 tsp Black Pepper
The juice from 1/2 a Lemon
An unspecified amount of Salt
A huge, but still unspecified, amount of Water

The first things you're gonna need to do is to gather all of your vaguely middle eastern friends. Then ask them, preferably from a distance, how to spell and/or pronounce Kubbeh. Then watch the ensuing chaos with malicious glee. And popcorn. Because it seems like every family calls it's something different. But whether you're making Kubeh, Kubbeh, Kubbah, Kibbe, Kibbeh, Quibe, or any other weird variant, it's all the same. So heat up 1/2 your Olive Oil over medium heat, finely chop 2 of your Onions, add in a normal human pinch of salt, and sauté until they're golden and awesome smelling. Then add in your Ground Meat and half of your Black Pepper, and continue to cook it until the meat's cooked through. This is easy to spot, because the drool in your mouth will get to the point where it actually impedes your speech. Turn off the fire, and set your meat mixture aside. 

Heat up the rest of your oil, again over medium heat, in a large pot. Choppity chop your last remaining onion, crushing his tiny hopes that he wouldn't share the fate of his fallen brothers. Sauté it with another pinch o' salt until it yellows and smells awesome. Chop your Carrots and Sweet Potatoes into bite-sized chunks, and add them in along with your Crushed Tomatoes, Paprika, Lemon Juice, the rest of your Pepper, and about 2 TBSP of Salt. Let it cook together for about a minute before adding in...just a ton of water. Picture all the water in the world. Then picture that you took about 12 cups of water out of it. That much water (the 12 cups, not the rest of the water in the world). Crank the heat to high, and bring that sucker to a boil. 

While you're waiting the approximate 1 lifetime for your pot to boil, make your dough. Combine your Semolina with an average human's pinch of salt, and 1.5 cups of water. Take a small handful of this goopy nonsense, and roll it into a ball. Gently use your finger to daintily from a divet in your dough. Then roughly cram as much of your meat mixture (remember your meat mixture? It was like 12 paragraphs ago.) into your divet, and stretch the dough around it to form a meat filled dough ball. Repeat as needed until you run out of meat, dough, or patience. Drop your fledgling Kubbehs in your boiling pot, and let them cook for a 1/2 hour. And there you have it! Delicious soup filled with awesomeness and grammar-based sectarian violence! 
And that's what I've learned so far in Israel. That, and how to haggle with cab drivers. And with everybody else.