Keyword: Soup

Luscious Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Luscious Curried Butternut Squash Soup

This deeply satisfying soup is super simple to make. Please use the full-fat coconut milk — don’t use the “light/lite” unless you want this to taste meh. I also love this recipe because I nearly always have every ingredient on hand, especially in the fall when the butternut squash are in season. The curry powder is from Savory Spice — it’s called Mild Curry Powder (link below). But I call it the “Hippy Curry Powder” because it tastes like every curry I ever had from “vegetarian restaurants” versus actual Indian restaurants. It’s just pretty much a generic, run of the mill Americanized curry powder.

Putting Up Tomatoes

Putting Up Tomatoes

When I was really young my mom would spend hours every August blanching, peeling, de-seeding and then canning mountains of tomatoes in our oh-so humid Missouri home. Her unruly curly hair would be pinned back with multiple bobby pins as she carefully lowered the tomatoes into the massive black tin stock pot water with the Ball canning jar insert. Not sure what happened, but after a few years she stopped canning and started just putting whole tomatoes in panty hose in the freezer. Each tomato was knotted off from the other, sausage link style, to apparently prevent bruising. It was always a little alarming to open the freezer to see the frozen red globes bound by old pairs of L’eggs pantyhose, but it worked for her. In 1994 I got Marcella Hazan’s, Essentials of Italian Cooking and started making her to-die-for classic sauce Tomato Sauce and Onion and Butter in batches to freeze. After one mid-winter visit where we served my mom the sauce three different ways: over pasta, as tomato soup and the base for our grilled pizzas, she never went back to her old ways of preserving tomatoes.

I generally have two ways I put up tomatoes for the winter: whole cherry tomatoes and pureed sauce. I don’t believe in taking the skin off or de-seeding, as I think it adds to the overall flavor.

Classic Gazpacho with Smoked Paprika Oil

Classic Gazpacho with Smoked Paprika Oil

If you have about 15 minutes and a kitchen full of summer produce, you will love this gazpacho. It’s silky smooth and bursting with flavor. One key is to make it the day before to let it sit in the fridge overnight so those flavors can develop and be able to serve it super chilled. For those gluten-phobes out there, this one is for you. Yes, I know a lot of gazpacho is made with stale bread, but you won’t miss it in this version.
The Smoked Paprika Oil is a recent find from my favorite cooking mag, Milk Street. Ever since I started making it a few weeks ago, I have been drizzling it on everything from hummus to avocado toast to grilled/roasted veggies and more. It’s downright addictive!

White Bean and Winter Vegetable Soup

White Bean and Winter Vegetable Soup

Super simple, dead-of-winter soup. My husband always calls this kind of soup: A Bowl of Health. And he’s right. You can’t go wrong with onions/garlic, kale, sweet potatoes and a handful of beans when trying to keep ahead of whatever virus is circulating or nourish yourself when you are sick.

The other thing thatI love about this soup is remembering basically how to make it: 1 cup dried beans, 1 onion, 1 sweet potato, 1 bunch of kale, 1 teaspoon thyme, 1 Tablespoon miso…