Dispatches From Whitcomb Street

gingered beet soup

An easy one, for blustery weeknights and lazy Sundays, or when you need something cheerful.

Wash, peel, and cut three or four large beets and one tart apple into 1” pieces. Toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and set on a baking sheet in a 400F oven for 20 minutes or so, until the beets are starting to be tender and edged with caramel. 

Sweat a chopped onion and a clove of garlic with a tablespoon of oil in a deep saucepan. When they are translucent, add a 2” nut of ginger, cut into matchsticks, and two teaspoons of good Madras curry powder. Cook until the spices are fragrant.

Add the beets and a quart of chicken stock. Simmer for ten minutes (or until the beets are really good and tender) and then blitz with the immersion blender to your preferred degree of chunkiness.

Season (you might want to add a little honey, depending on how sweet your beets were) and eat, maybe with a dollop of yogurt and some cilantro.

minestrone template

Minestrone. The big soup. Infinitely adaptable to what’s in season, how much time you have, what you feel like eating. Always exactly right.

Minestrone is a good clean-out-the-fridge or tidy-up-the-garden soup. It tastes a little different every time, and a lot different from season to season. But the basic template is always the same. Serve with garlic-rubbed toasts, or Parm wafers, or just some hunks of bread. 

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fast chao ga

When I was very small, my mom would make a giant pot of plain juk, Korean rice porridge, whenever I got sick. It would make its way to my bed on a tray along with a tiny bowl of soy sauce. I’d dip my spoon in the soy sauce first—just the tip, please—and then take up a little bit of porridge. 

As I got better, bits of shredded nori or cooked egg would get added. Then some scallions. When I was judged almost fit enough to be up and about, a miniscule portion of poached meat, cooled and shredded with chopsticks, would appear on the tray. 

Rice porridge, juk, congee, okayu, chao—ultimate comfort food. 

Plain versions are a fun novelty for the first couple of meals, but you’re going to need protein and interesting flavors if you’re going to get better. So if you’re feeling under the weather, here is a quick-and-dirty version of Vietnamese rice porridge with chicken, or chao ga, that only takes 10 minutes of upright time. Stick it on the stove to cook and crawl back into bed.

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roasted tomato soup with rice

Tomato season, soup weather, and turn-of-the-year colds only intersect for so long. Go for it.

Actually, this is one tomato soup that is just fine with less-than-awesome tomatoes. It’s better, of course, with fantastic late-summer tomatoes, but the long roasting concentrates and magnifies the flavors of even the most insipid pink baseball. Even better: Roast good tomatoes now and freeze them to make this soup in the winter.

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faux pho ga

When you come in from the bar at 9:30 on a Sunday night, hungry because they roll up the sidewalks in your little town at nine o’clock, freezing cold because riding your bike is a brilliant idea at four but a terrible one once the sun has gone down, and grouchy because you have to go to work in the morning…you make faux pho. And then things are better.

In general I feel like pho from a good pho joint has a pretty high Good Value Index (cost::deliciousness…other things that have a high GVI include decent tacos, good Chicago dogs, and the prix fixe at Frasca in Boulder). I’ve made pho from scratch a couple times, mostly just to have the experience - fun, but not really a thing that makes sense to do on a regular basis.

Faux pho, on the other hand, always makes sense when you are cold and it’s late. You can put it together in ten minutes. It’s hot and soothing. It’s nowhere near as good as the simmered-for-hours real thing, but it’ll do. Ahhh.

Method after the jump.

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mu gook

Here’s a Very Korean dinner: mandu, rice, and mu gook.

Mu gook is soup (gook) made with Korean radish (mu). Mu is its own thing - not daikon, not turnip - it’s a giant green-and-white egg, with a mild, sweetly mellow flavor. Mu gook is the rare Korean dish that goes for minimalism, cooking the mu into sweet, crisp-tender slabs and infusing the broth with its soothing vegetal flavor.

Mu gook

Soak a small slab of flank steak in cool water for fifteen minutes. Rinse it, fill a pot with fresh cold water, and bring the steak to a bare simmer in it. Add two minced cloves of garlic, three slivered scallions, and a mu, peeled and cut into thin slabs.

Simmer for twenty minutes, until the beef is cooked and the mu is tender. Shred the beef with your fingertips. Skim the broth. Season with sesame oil, salt, pepper, and a very little soy sauce.

split pea soup

Old-school. Split pea soup and grilled cheese. The best.

I really, really like grilled cheese sandwiches. These were of a mild, creamy Pecorino on -T’s new pugliese, with a layer of snipped chive.

Split Pea Soup

This is a classic, bare-bones split pea soup recipe. Sometimes, sure, I get fancy with split pea soup, but fancier versions are just different, not really better. 

Brown a ham hock in a little oil in a deep stockpot (the deeper the better - it will spatter everywhere, of course). Add some minced onion and garlic; sweat them in the lard/oil.

Add a couple cups of split green peas, rinsed and picked over, and two quarts of water. Bring to a boil; simmer for at least an hour.

Fifteen minutes before you want to eat it, pull out the ham and let it cool slightly. Peel and dice some carrots; add them to the pot. Trim the ham and chop the meat; add back.

Salt liberally and add a very small squeeze of lemon if the flavors need brightening.

Eat with lots and lots of pepper.

Fancifications: Add an herb. Thyme and rosemary are both nice. Or add bay leaves. Swirl in some cream. Puree the soup and thin it out before adding very finely cut carrots for something more delicate. Use a smoked turkey leg, or a ham slice. Garnish with deeply caramelized shallots or onions, or some crisp pancetta, or pumpernickel croutons. Can’t go wrong.

simple duck soup

We have a bunch of skinless duck left over from confit adventures. Last night, I used one breast in a simple Asian-ish soup, mild and sweet and easy to eat.

I like fusion soups at home, though I’d usually balk at paying money for them. It’s easy to bung a bunch of things together and end up with something pretty fast and tasty. 

Recipe after the jump.

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simplest tomato soup

Tomato soup and grilled cheese, eaten on the floor while watching Gamera vs. Gyaos. A good February Wednesday.

I like all tomato soups, but I am especially fond of simple, clean ones in the winter. The summer seems closer somehow, that way.

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mushroom soup

It’s February; time for dinners that use dried things, canned things, frozen things unearthed from the frosty depths. Here is some mushroom soup, with little bechived pumpernickel toasts. I made the bread on Sunday to go with our borscht—it’s one of those fakey black breads that make people who bake real bread sniff, with its hundred dark ingredients and vinegar for sourness rather than a ferment. It makes good toast, though, especially when painted with chives and oil.

This soup’s luscious simplicity—dried and fresh mushrooms swimming in herby, garlicky olive oil—feels good and warm right through. Let the snow fall!

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