The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

14. Chicken soup for the utterly exhausted soul

It's Camp Fire candy sales time again, which means the boys and Jim and I are doing an awful lot of standing around in grocery store atriums (atria?) asking strangers "Hello, would you like to help support Camp Fire?" And because I sort of accidentally volunteered to be our group's candy captain* again this year, that means I'm spending even more hours than the average hapless Camp Fire parent counting money, schlepping boxes, reading ingredients (yes! five out of six of our candy offerings are gluten free!) and generally spending more time thinking about candy than seems really necessary.

Tonight was the first night of our second weekend of sales. So in between wrangling reluctant little salespeople ("K., you need to stop sitting down on the floor. Let's do our best to remain vertical. Fisher, take your hands out of your pockets and stop scowling at people. Smiles sell candy, scowls don't."), loading and unloading candy and tables and banners and accoutrements in and out of the car, squelching your annoyance at people who are rude to your kids**, driving squintingly through the rain (did I mention I don't drive at night? or in the rain? or on the freeway? or, hell, ever, if I have the choice?)... yeah, I was almost too tired to make soup tonight.

"Almost" being the key word. Total prep time on this soup is about ten minutes, and then you have twenty minutes of simmering time during which to tidy the kitchen or make some guacamole or chug a beer or pop a Vicodin or whatever.*** And it smells good enough while cooking that it fills your heart with hope... hope that someday soon candy sales will be over. For another year, at least. And next year you're going to pass the candy captain torch on to some other foolio.

More or Less Mexican-Style Chicken Soup
Serves six, roughly, or thereabouts... I'm too damn tired to measure

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 fresh green chile (Anaheim or ancho) or 1 fresh jalapeno, seeded/stemmed/minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 Tbsp chile (or chili, whatever you've got) powder
A couple pinches of salt
Several grindings of black pepper
4 to 6 cups chicken broth (or part broth and part water), depending on how thick you want the soup
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes, undrained
1/2 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed and cut into 1" cubes
1/4 cup long-grain white rice
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Crumbled or shredded queso fresco (or feta) or Jack cheese, for serving

Heat olive oil in a soup pot. Add onion and chile and cook, stirring frequently, until onion softens (about 3 minutes). Add cumin, chili/chile powder, salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, about 3 more minutes. Add garlic; cook and stir 1 minute more.

Add diced tomatoes, chicken broth, chicken thighs and rice. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat and simmer until chicken is cooked through and rice is tender, about 20 minutes.

Stir in cilantro and serve with cheese on top. Mmm, delicious cheese. You will start to feel better almost immediately.

* You would think that for a position as thankless as this, I'd at least get a captain's hat. Where the hell is my captain's hat? With a cunning little anchor on the front?

** Observation from a candy-hawking mom: no one who looks like a hipster has ever bought anything from a child, ever. Apparently the ability to remember your none-too-long-ago days of shilling Camp Fire candy or Girl Scout Cookies or whatever completely vanishes when you turn 18 and doesn't return until you have kids of your own (whom you are probably having to help sell Camp Fire candy or Girl Scout cookies or whatever). It may have something to do with the skinny jeans cutting off circulation to the heart. Or maybe the ironic mustaches. Or the deep-rooted fear of losing one's street cred by being seen buying CANDY from a CHILD. Whatever street cred one can possibly have intact when one is leaving the Fred Meyer with a DiGiornio pizza under one's arm at 6 p.m. on a Friday night, anyway.

*** Two of which I did tonight. You guess which two. *sigh*

13. It sounds weird, but it's good. Cabbage-Tortellini Soup.

No, seriously. It's quite nomz, and it makes use of an unfairly maligned ingredient: the lowly cabbage/chou/kraut.

These ingredients are super-humble. Humble to the point of forelock-tugging, even. But the combination transcends their lowly origins and results in something that one would not be ashamed to serve to guests (as I was not ashamed to serve it to Fisher and Rhys' overnight guests W. and E. and their mom Anne tonight).

I may have had a glass or four of wine with Anne prior to preparing this soup, and another time I might not have been quite so generous with the hot sauce (though, really, it produces a most agreeable afterburn as made). This overzealousness has been corrected in the rendition given below.

Cabbage-Tortellini Soup
Serves four hungry children, one adult who wants seconds, one adult who is fine with one bowl and one adult who is going to eat whatever is left when he gets home.

4 thick slices good bacon*, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped
8 cups beef broth (or 4 cups double-strength broth and 4 cups water, which is what I used)
About a third of a decent-sized head of cabbage, cored, outer leaves removed, shredded
1 large carrot, peeled and sliced
A few good pinches of salt
1/2 tsp red chile flakes
8 ounces tortellini
1 cup fusilli or other short pasta (You could also use 1 lb tortellini, which is what the original recipe called for, but honestly I think that might have been a bit much)
1 tsp or thereabouts thick hot sauce, such as Drunken Angel Hot Sauce
Grated Monterey Jack cheese, for serving

In a soup pot, cook bacon over medium heat until just browned and crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon; pour off all but about 2 Tbsp fat.

Return pot to medium heat. Add onion; cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent. Add garlic and parsley; cook, stirring, 1 minute more.

Add broth, cabbage, carrot, salt, chile flakes and reserved bacon. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes.

Stir in tortellini and/or other pasta. Return to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes more.

Serve with Jack cheese sprinkled over each bowl. Nom nom nomz.

*I am starting to think I should start a separate category of soups tagged simply "Bacon." What say you?

12. Seriously? Lentil soup?

You know what's boring? Lentils. You know what you can make out of them that's boring? Lentil soup.

I have never been a big fan of these sad, frankly weak, frankly pedestrian little legumes.* Jim loves 'em, the boys happily eat 'em up, and I'm kind of "... lentils... meh."

So this soup is supposed to be a game-changer. At least according to me. Just look at the list of yummy stuff that goes alongside to complement lentils' undeniably robust and hearty character!

Actually, it's pretty damn good.** Eat up with gusto. 170 calories a serving, or thereabouts; but don't tell your proud-to-eat-too-much significant other.

Adapted from Gourmet Every Day: Over 200 Quick and Easy Recipes for Dinner, brought to you by the late lamented Gourmet magazine.

Lentil Soup with Spinach and Tomato
Makes a bunch. Cut it in half if you like. Freezes well, though, so you might as well make the whole thing.

1/2 cup lentils
4 cups water
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp curry powder (or a homemade curry spice mix, which is usually what I use, but I was feeling lazy tonight)
1 package frozen chopped spinach, or 1 bunch spinach, washed/stemmed/chopped fine
2 cups canned crushed tomatoes
3 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1/2 cup sherry
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp (or more!) red wine vinegar
Plenty of salt
Plenty of pepper

Combine lentils and water in a soup pot. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer until lentils are tender (about 20 minutes).

In a medium skillet, heat olive oil over medium-low heat. Add onions; cook, stirring frequently, until translucent. Add curry powder and garlic; cook, stirring, 1 minute more.

Add onion mixture, spinach, tomatoes, broth, sherry, sugar, red pepper flakes and 1 tsp salt to lentils. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in parsley and vinegar.

Check for seasoning. Does it need more salt? Lentils without salt are like flowers without sunshine. Droopy and lame. Add a little hot sauce if you like. Pepper generously before serving.

There you go. Let me know if it changes your mind (for the better) about lentils, 'cause that would be awesome.

*I was going to say "don't tell me if they're not legumes," but I guess that would be a good thing to know for the sake of, y'know, one's trove of useless knowledge.

**So far, Fisher and Rhys have gobbled up two bowls each.

Sexual wakey-wakey: a non-soup post

So I just downloaded a bunch of Bee Gees tunes, all of which can be found on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. And it just occurred to me, as I was looking at the album cover, that the first time I can remember having those tingly ladyparts feelings is when I was probably six or seven, looking at John Travolta on that selfsame album cover.

How about you? Were you precocious? Delayed? Just right? And was your "awakening" (ahem) related to someone in real life, in the media, otherwise?

PS: in case you're wondering, John Travolta hasn't really done it for me since, oh, Saturday Night Fever or so. Well, except for Pulp Fiction.

11. Unapologetic, take-no-prisoners Bean and Bacon Soup

So apparently not everyone in the world loves soup.

I know, right? What's going on here, people? How can one not love a class of foods as versatile and nourishing and adaptable and downright kicky as soup?

Apparently, once again, soup is not "hearty" enough for some people. These are probably the sort of people who happily describe themselves as "meat and potatoes" eaters, which I can respect--I'll say yes to a nice rare hanger steak and a Rhode Island-sized dollop of mashed potatoes pretty much any time. But just 'cause you love the one doesn't mean you can't mess around with the other.

This is a soup for convincing non-soup eaters. It's big, hearty, flavorful and extremely satisfying. (Especially when served, as we did, with crostini smeared with Brie. Why the heck not? This meal already wasn't winning any low-fat prizes... might as well take it all the way.) And, of course, if you're already a committed soup eater, this soup is just a nice rich scrumptious wintertime bonus. If you're a vegetarian, though, this is pretty much right out... sorry. More veg options coming soon.

Bean and Bacon Soup
Serves six, generously

1/2 pound small white beans (navy beans)
5 cups water
1/2 pound high-quality, thick-sliced, nitrate-free bacon--since basically the whole soup's going to taste like bacon, this is not the place to cheap out with that vile Farmhouse 3-for-$5 Safeway special--tidily diced into 1/4" cubes
2 medium onions, chopped
2 large stalks of celery, chopped--if you like, save the leaves for the optional bouquet garni
Optional Bouquet Garni: a few sprigs of parsley, a few celery leaves if you don't have fresh thyme or bay leaves on hand, which I didn't for some reason, and perhaps one or two small dried chiles, tied together in a bit of cheesecloth or a bit of string
4 cups chicken broth
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1 tsp salt (to start)
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp Drunken Angel hot sauce or other thick hot sauce of your choice--optional but highly recommended
1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

Soak the beans: Combine beans and 5 cups water in a soup pot. Bring to a boil. Cover, remove from heat, and let stand 1 hour before draining. (I don't usually soak beans, per Mark Bittman, but since the beans need to get ultra-soft in this soup, I made an exception in this case.)

In a different soup pot, or the same one, cook bacon over medium-low heat to desired degree of crispness. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain thoroughly on absorbent paper. Pour off all but 2 Tbsp of bacon fat.

Heat bacon fat over medium heat. Add onion and celery and cook, stirring, until onion is translucent. Add broth, tomato sauce, two-thirds of bacon, salt and optional bouquet garni. Bring just to a boil. Cover, turn down heat as low as it will go and simmer for two full hours. Your house will begin to smell delectable during this time (as if the delectable smell of frying bacon weren't enough).

When beans are very, very tender, remove soup from heat. Fish out the bouquet garni, which will look seriously sad and tired at this point. Using an immersion blender, puree half the soup (you can do this effectively in the pot--just go until the soup looks about half-blended). Or, transfer half the solids and a cup or so of broth to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth; return puree to pot.

Whisk black pepper and hot sauce into soup. Heat through. Taste and correct seasoning--if you're not using a very salty bacon, it may well need more salt. Undersalted beans are not fit food for anyone.

Stir in parsley and serve garnished with reserved crispy bacon cubelets.

10. ZOMG Potage Crécy

It is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, that anything this simple could taste this good.

This is apparently the second in a series of Monday night soups--soups that can be prepared at a late hour (though tonight's 10:00 was rather easier than last week's 1:15), feed plenty of people and deliver rich, punchy, unapologetic flavor.

And you get to say "Potage Crécy" instead of "carrot soup." Fancy-freakin-pants.

I was inspired to make this soup by recipes from two cookbooks: Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book (which deserves its own post or two) and Vegan with a Vengeance. But I made it with no book before me, and hence it is more or less my own.

Potage Crécy
Serves six

2 Tbsp butter
One medium onion, chopped
5 medium carrots, peeled and roughly chopped (really, size/shape don't much matter here)
1 smallish potato, peeled and diced
2 Tbsp rice
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup half-and-half (or, better yet, heavy cream)
1/4 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp flour
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

Heat butter in a soup pot; add onion and saute until translucent and beginning to brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Add carrots, potato and rice; cook, stirring, for one minute.

Add broth; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 15 to 20 minutes, or until carrot and potato are meltingly tender.

With a slotted spoon, remove solids to a blender or food processor. Add a cup or so of cooking liquid. Puree until fairly smooth. Return to pot.

Whisk together sour cream and flour until there is no visible powdery flour residue. Add salt, pepper, half-and-half and sour cream mixture to pot; whisk until smooth. Heat over very gentle flame until soup reaches serving temperature; do not boil. Stir in dill and serve.

Nutritional information, because I found a calculator online--this in no way means I'm going to start doing this regularly--and thought it would be fun: 122 calories per serving, 6.4 g fat, 137% of your vitamin A for the day.

We had this with toasted, buttered halves of cinnamon-raisin English muffins, which I grabbed at first because I couldn't find any bread and then thought made really an ideal complement. Raisins and carrots, man. One cannot successfully mess with success.

9. Pineapple Express: Cambodian Sweet-and-Sour Soup

"Cambodian food? Really?"

I was in Goodwill with a passel of friends a couple of weeks ago, browsing the cookbook section, when Jeff Smith's The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors caught my eye.

Lately, I've been thinking quite a bit about how "eating seasonally" in the Pacific Northwest differs from eating seasonally in, say, California's Central Valley (where I grew up) or Florida (where the abomination that is the winter tomato hails from, largely produced by slave labor) and how it's probably much more akin to eating seasonally in somewhere like Germany or the Czech Republic.So I figured this book (about which I'd heard good things) might prove a good resource for some nice, hearty, peasanty, Eastern European-type dishes.

To my surprise, Jeff Smith's definition of "immigrant ancestors" spanned an amazingly diverse range: Armenian, Lebanese, Ethiopian, Latvian and more--including Cambodian. And I was forced to realize that although I grew up in a city with a very high number of Cambodian immigrants, I had lots of school friends from Cambodian families, and my mother taught for years at an elementary school with a majority Cambodian population... I really didn't know the first thing about Cambodian food.

Jeff Smith's take on Cambodian cooking is that it tends to produce sweeter, gentler, substantially less fiery food than other Southeast Asian cuisines. With some ingredients and techniques dating back to the Khmer Empire, it's also a very ancient--or medieval, really, which is right up my alley--cuisine. After tasting this deceptively simple soup, with its many layers of flavor and hint of sweetness, I'm excited about trying more foods from this often-overlooked corner of the world.

A bonus: I got to learn how to peel and devein shrimp today, which I've somehow gone 34 years without knowing how to do. It's not hard. Just time-consuming. And this soup could easily be made with shrimp bought already peeled and deveined; I thought it would be a character-building experience to do it myself.

And a second bonus: now I have a bunch of shrimp shells hanging out in my freezer, waiting to be rendered into stock.

Cambodian Sweet-and-Sour Soup
Serves six to eight

Part the First
6 cups chicken stock or broth
3 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed thoroughly of fat and cut into thin julienne strips (this is much easier to do if you freeze the meat for half an hour or so first)
1 cup fresh cored, chopped pineapple (apparently you can use canned, but I can't abide canned pineapple... ecch)
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce (the recipe called for a fresh tomato cut into wedges, but see above note about winter tomatoes)
1 large zucchini (or 2 small ones), halved lengthwise and cut into 1/4" slices
3 Tbsp distilled white vinegar
3 Tbsp nam pla or nuoc mam fish sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

Part the Second
1/2 pound medium to large shrimp, peeled and deveined (and cut into chunks if they're fairly large)
1/4 pound lump crabmeat, flaked with a fork (quality is important here--I would recommend ponying up for fresh crab rather than settling for the canned stuff)
A dash of ground pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Combine all Part the First ingredients in a soup pot. Bring just to a boil; cover; reduce heat to as low as your stove can go and simmer, covered, for one hour.

After an hour of simmering, mix in shrimp, crab and pepper. Increase heat ever so slightly and cook, uncovered, just until shrimp turn pink and soup is heated through. This should take only three or four minutes.

Stir in half the cilantro; ladle into bowls; sprinkle remaining cilantro attractively overtop.

We had this with steamed rice with butter and soy sauce, and after we'd eaten all the chunky bits from our bowls we stirred the rice into the remaining broth--it was delicious.

This is definitely one of the nicest, as well as the most unusual, soups I've made so far. It sounds a bit weird, but it's fo-sho worth making for yourself anyway.

8. I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Not-Vegan Vegan Chili

Tonight was the grand gala opening/unveiling of Jim's show at the Ladybug, and of course I couldn't attend such an event without food in tow. This vegan chili (vegan, anyway, until you sprinkle cheese overtop) was the dish of choice.

Should have doubled it. It was gone before 50% of the guest list had arrived. Whoops!

You can tell I'm not vegan because I think the ultimate compliment for a vegan dish is "Whoa, I had no idea this was vegan." Which I heard more than once tonight. Take that as you will--preferably with a sprinkling of flavorful dairy products.

I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Not-Vegan Vegan Chili
Served not nearly enough in tonight's iteration, so I'm doubling the quantities for you. This would freeze beautifully, were there to be enough left over to warrant freezing.

3 Tbsp olive oil
2 small onions, chopped
2 small red bell peppers, chopped
1 ancho chile, seeded, ribbed (or de-ribbed, whatev, see yesterday's post) and chopped
2 Tbsp ancho chile powder, which is different from "chili powder"* and is probably available for very little money in the "Hispanic Foods" aisle of your local megalomart
1 Tbsp cumin
1-1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
Either 4 cups cooked beans, OR (which will actually be better): 2 cans EACH pinto beans, rinsed and drained AND S&W Southwest Style beans (with corn and seasoned sauce), undrained--if you can't find these, which you may well not be able to, use "chili beans," undrained
2 cans EACH regular diced tomatoes AND diced tomatoes with chiles

Garnishes, not all of which are (duh) vegan: shredded cheddar or jack cheese (better yet: crumbled queso fresco); diced avocado; crisp-cooked and crumbled corn tortillas; chopped fresh cilantro

Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot. Add the onions, bell peppers and ancho chile and cook, stirring occasionally** until onions are translucent. Add chile powder, cumin, salt and pepper; reduce heat and cook, stirring frequently, a few minutes more, or until everything smells toasty and delicious and looks sort of dry. Add garlic; cook, stirring, 30 seconds to 1 minute more. Don't let the garlic burn. You've worked too hard to arrive at this point to let something as preventable as scorched garlic stop you now.

Add beans and tomatoes. Bring just to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook, partially covered, stirring up from the bottom occasionally, for about an hour.

At this point you can either serve the chili forth with your choice of garnishes, or you can do as I did. Dump it into a Crock-Pot (or slow cooker of your choice), set it to "Keep Warm," and let your guests serve themselves as they like. Any leftovers can be cooled, frozen and served on some day that you don't feel like making soup. What sort of a day would that be? I have no idea. I am totally in this for the long haul.

* The short version: "Chili powder" is made of a variety of dried, powdered chiles, plus additional seasonings (usually cumin) and salt. "Chile powder" is made of dried, powdered chiles, either singly or in tandem.

** Here, I really do mean "occasionally" and not "constantly." Leaving the aromatics to their own devices for awhile allows them to brown a bit and develop a gorgeous gutsy depth of flavor.

7. Comfort food, squared: Tomato, Beef & Pasta Soup

So amongst the few people I've told about this insane endeavor, the second most common reaction (after "Every day for a year? Are you crazy?") is: "Awww, soup! I love soup!"

This is a soup that captures those warm fuzzy feelings pretty well and transmogrifies them into bowl-friendly edible form. It's not fancy, it's not complex and it doesn't even simmer all day. Still: worthwhile.

The one technique that really sets this soup apart is the browning of the tomato paste after the other aromatics are sauteed. This is a pretty common classical French technique (as in sauce espagnole) and creates an absolutely divine smell while cooking. The paste also thickens the soup up to more of a stew-like consistency--this is not at all a brothy soup.

Tomato, Beef & Pasta Soup
Serves four

1/2 pound ground round or ground beef
1 smallish white onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded, ribbed (or de-ribbed?) and chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 ounces (half a small can--or go ahead and use more, if you're just going to throw away the excess) tomato paste
1 Tbsp mixed dried herbs: oregano, basil and sage, in any proportion
Salt and pepper to taste (start with about 1/2 tsp salt)
1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes
4 cups beef broth or water
1 cup dried pasta, in the small shape of your choice--I used fusilli
Ricotta cheese, preferably whole-milk, for serving; mix it with a bit of chopped flat-leaf parsley if you like

In a soup pot, combine the ground round, onion and pepper. Cook over medium heat, breaking beef up with a spoon, until beef is well browned. Add garlic; cook one minute more. Drain thoroughly.

Add tomato paste, mixed herbs, salt and pepper and return to heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until tomato paste turns a rusty color and smells delicious. This should take no more than two or three minutes.

Add tomatoes and broth or water. Increase heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Immediately stir in pasta, reduce heat slightly and simmer, covered, until pasta is al dente--this should take about 15 minutes, depending on the pasta. Taste and correct seasoning if needed.

Ladle into bowls and plop a generous scoop of ricotta on top of each. Snuggle down and prepare to fend off a cold winter's night.

6. Spinach-Potato Soup for Cheaters

Well, for a cheater, that cheater being me.

Because I am going to make a soup tonight, but I haven't made it yet, and I have a feeling I will be too ding-dong tired to blog it when I have done it. (And that is quite enough with the Anne of Green Gables-style italics.)

This soup is my favorite. I've been making it for close to 20 years (!) and have yet to encounter anyone who doesn't like it. In fact, it made it into the collection of family recipes we put together for my mom a few years back. Serious nomz, and super-duper easy if you have an immersion blender (and only a little harder if you don't have one).

From the sadly out-of-print (but seriously worth hunting down) Fast Vegetarian Feasts by Martha Rose Shulman. My much-loved, much-abused copy is falling apart; I think I need to take it down to FedExOfficeSpaceKinkoZone or whatever they're calling it now and have it spiral-bound. In fact, the page with this recipe is missing altogether, and I'm reconstructing the recipe entirely from memory.*

This is vaguely Greek-ish, what with the lemon and the yogurt. And it can be quite lowfat, too, though since we switched to non-nonfat dairy products, we're not riding that particular train of nutritional misery much anymore here at the Newman household.

Spinach-Potato Soup
Serves six, roughly.

2 Tbsp butter or olive oil
1 large sweet onion
3 cloves garlic (or more), minced/pressed/rendered into wee bits
4 largish potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
4 cups vegetable broth**
1 generous bunch spinach, cleaned, stemmed and roughly chopped (or 1 bag baby spinach, prewashed and ready to go--why work for it if you don't have to?)
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup milk
1 cup plain yogurt
Plenty of salt and pepper
A bit of grated nutmeg, if you like (I like)
Parmesan cheese, transfigured into fluffy curls with the aid of a Microplane grater , for serving

Melt the butter or heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add onion and saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and saute 1 minute more, stirring constantly.

Add potatoes and vegetable broth. Bring to a boil; reduce heat; simmer, covered, until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Add spinach; cook until just wilted, about 3 minutes,

Remove soup from heat. Either puree it with an immersion blender or remove solids and puree with a little of the liquid (carefully! I've burned myself badly making this selfsame soup) in a regular blender. Return puree to pot.

Over very low heat, whisk in lemon juice, milk and yogurt. Heat through gently; don't let it boil. Salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste. (Nutmeg can too be a verb.) This soup needs fairly generous salting, depending on the saltiness of your vegetable broth to begin with.

Garnish with lovely fluffs of Parmesan and serve it forth. Enjoy the green creamy deliciousness! Especially with baguette slices, lightly buttered, for dunking.

* I should mention that all my recipes are "reconstructed from memory," in that I never copy anything out of a cookbook to post here; I don't even post with the cookbook at hand. Instead, I try to recall exactly what I did, in what order, with which ingredients and in which amounts, so that I (a) accurately reflect my recipe-inspired-but-not-usually-adherent cooking style, and (b) don't violate any hardworking (or otherwise) cookbook authors' copyrights.

** or chicken, I guess, if you're a determined non-vegetarian