Finding tiny bits of beauty

To be fair, I did warn you. I said that I could live on soup through fall and I wasn’t lying. As I also seem to have come down with the latest strain of the plague making its rounds of my office (why are students so germy? even college students, eesh), I was craving a soup flavorful enough that I could have some chance of actually tasting it.

For about a year lentil soup was my shoot-I-forgot-my-lunch lunch from a little Mediterranean kinda-fast-food-but-not-really joint: a cup of lentil soup, a fresh pita, and three falafels for under $5. I was so sad when the place closed, and still haven’t found a good cheap-and-reasonably-healthy lunch replacement. This lentil soup is nothing like theirs, except for the hit of lemon at the end, but it’s delicious in a totally different way. (I don’t think there were enough hyphenates in that paragraph so here’s an I-need-another-hyphen hyphen: – )

This soup is creamy (without any cream), rich (with a minimum of butter and oil), so packed with flavor I can still taste it with a compromised olfactory system (thanks onion, garlic, and curry powder), and just so simple (all the ingredients were in my cupboard). Perfect.

Can I stop for a second and point out how beautiful French lentils are? Indulge your inner child, scoop up a handful, and really look closely–tiny saucers of deep olive green with blue-black speckles, stripes, swirls remind me of pictures of Jupiter and its whirlpool of clouds or the jar of spotted, striated river stones my mom keeps in a glass jar on a shelf.

Just gorgeous. How can you not love food and cooking when it involves tiny bits of beauty like this?

I also love that this soup gives me an excuse to use a lot of really good curry powder, breaking one of the cardinal rules of cooking in an apartment: no seafood or curry if it’s too cold to open a window.

Oh well, I can’t smell anything right now anyways, and my neighbors can just indulge me for a day.

Soup season, take two

And so begins the Week of All Food, Thanksgiving week. The only holiday dedicated solely to cooking and eating (and appreciating the people you cook and eat with) is on Thursday and, as you would expect, I’m super excited and have all sorts of capital-P Plans. But since I know the latter half of this week will be overflowing with treats in all forms, savory and sweet, better to start the week with something light.

I’ve already mentioned that soup is one of my favorite dishes this time of year, and this particular one is just so good for so many occasions. Feeling like you’ve over-indulged in all that fall and winter have to offer (or know you’re about to)? This is substantial enough to satisfy, but won’t make you feel like taking a four hour nap after one bowl. Coming down with a bug and not in the mood for chicken soup? Copious amounts of ginger, garlic, and carrot are all fantastic for fighting whatever ails you. Or simply feeling especially virtuous? You will feel like a saint when you pull this out of your bag for lunch.

And now, a bit of a diversion–I was lucky enough to meet Deb Perelman who writes the Smitten Kitchen food blog (the source for this particular recipe) on Sunday, and it was amazing. Rare, perfect mid-November weather in Chicago, one of my favorite neighborhoods, awesome indie bookstore, and great company with the friend who introduced me to the Smitten Kitchen blog (thank you again Katherine!). Could it get much better? Turns out, yes!

Deb was, as expected, incredibly kind and generous to the huge crowd of people anxious to meet her, taking a few minutes to talk to everyone. And personally, when I mentioned that she inspired me to set up shop in this little corner of the internet and told her the name of the blog, she asked if I commented on her site because the name sounded familiar. Oh yes. This blog sounded familiar to Deb Perelman. Shut the doors, turn off the lights, we’re done here because it can’t get better than that.

Hugs in a bowl

Fair warning–if I had to pick one type of dish to eat for the next four months, it would be soup, hands down.

Soup is so much more than the sum of its parts: water; bits and pieces of vegetables and herbs; maybe a little meat for flavor and richness; maybe some grains, beans, or noodles for heft. Those are the basic ingredients, but the end result is soul-satisfying like no other: it’s curling under a blanket with a warm bowl in your hands, inhaling the rising steam while the wind howls past the window; it’s dipping the golden corner of a gooey grilled cheese into the unmistakable reddish-orange creaminess of tomato soup; it’s essentially a big hug in a bowl.

I love making a huge pot of steamy, simmering delicousness on Sunday and not having to think about cooking dinner or packing a lunch for at least three days. I love how soup warms me up from the inside out; allows me to satisfy my carb cravings with a hefty slice of bread and salty butter, fluffy dumplings, or a perfect grilled cheese; keeps my hands toasty warm as I wrap my fingers around the bowl. No other single dish can do all of those things the way soup can.

I have two soups in the queue to share, the first stick-to-your-ribs rich, the other equally satisfying but a perfect prescription for when I start to feel like I’ve over-indulged a bit and need a reset.

This first soup is one of those great freezer-clearing recipes that uses up whatever vegetable odds and ens you have around, adds some incredibly flavorful but inexpensive cuts of meat, and finishes by cooking the grains in the broth, leading to a soup that’s creamy and pretty much defines stick-to-your-ribs. It makes enough to satisfy a crowd but the ingredients are about as humble as they get.

So with the first snow in Chicago appearing this week, I’m grabbing my favorite cozy blanket, my biggest stock pot, and cooking up some comfort in a bowl–how about you?

Greens ‘n things

So I hear the east coast is having some weather (much weather! 30 Rock fans? Shall we conversation? No?) Has anyone else heard this? Rain and wind, I think they said. Maybe the news will spend a minute discussing it or I’ll see if I can find it mentioned on the Internets somewhere, we’ll see.

Sarcasm aside, I hope all resolves itself soon, bad weather sucks and is making me dread thinking about the other four-letter “s” word that’s coming sooner than I’d like. But in the meantime, I’m making salad with the last of the really beautiful lettuce I picked up over the weekend.

Lettuce seems like such an insignificant thing to get excited about. It’s usually relegated to the ubiquitous side salad, pale green and lacking flavor, or added as an afterthought to a burger just to get peeled off after it’s warm and soggy. What a sin.

Spicing things up

Six years ago, spices were not something that would have really been a big deal to me–spices come from the grocery store in their little plastic jars to add to pasta sauce, some cinnamon and vanilla extract for baking, maybe some dried mustard for baked beans, that’s about it. Then I smelled a real spice shop, and I haven’t looked back. The flavors are the difference between a black and white picture and a technicolor 3D video with surround sound, they just aren’t even in the same league. And the variety–my cupboards are a victim of the variety. Sweet, savory, multi-purpose, single ingredients, blends, mixes from every corner of the world.

Fall in five senses

I’m not ashamed to admit it–this time of year, I will let out my inner five-year-old and happily high-kick my way through a pile of leaves as they crunch under my feet. Out of all four seasons, the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations of fall are my favorites. I’ve made it pretty clear that I love summer, but there is something about the way fall hits all of my senses at once that gets me every time.

The sound of dry leaves skipping down the street in the wind is so unique and only comes this time of year for a few short weeks. The colors make me want to climb a tree and live in the sun-bright yellow, pumpkin-orange, cranberry-red leaves clinging to nut-brown branches, which match the colors flooding the market during its last few weeks outdoors. The smells–burning leaf piles (not as much in the city, but something I remember distinctly growing up), the earthy scent of wet leaves as they start to decompose back into the soil, getting ready for spring–fill the air.

Tians, and squash, and breadcrumbs, oh my

I’ve been dipping my toes into fall the past two weeks, trying to let my body and brain know what’s coming before I stand on the edge and cannonball in. This means a few jackets, leather boots, lots of scarves (…I might have a problem with scarves. Help me.). Salads topped with roasted root vegetables and candied nuts, a soup or two, even a casserole…excuse me, a tian topped with enough fresh herbs to resist feeling mid-winter heavy.

Fall feels pretty good right about now.

‘Tis the season for apple pancakes

Pancakes have been one of my favorite Sunday breakfasts ever since I was little–but not really the pancakes you get at restaurants, the perfectly round, thin, puffy, evenly golden circles. No, my favorite pancakes are the ones that are (or so it always seemed to me) unique to my family and so steeped in memories.

The line between summer and fall

This time of year always seems like it’s in the midst of an identity crisis: it’s 80 degrees and sunny, then it’s 50 and rainy and dark; strawberries are still at the market, right next to winter squash, apples, and pears; I’m running a fan during the day and curling under a blanket at night.