The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Soup365 #14needtofigurethisout. Scotch Broth (w/no actual Scotch)

So I've heard, here and there, that global warming is actually likely to manifest itself as "global weirding." And yeah, I do know the difference between "weather" and "climate," but good heavens we're having an annoyingly weird spring. It's rained every day except yesterday for like four weeks straight. My garden is sun-starving. My roof is dripping. And my soups are remaining in the "warm and nourishing" category rather than lapsing into the "languid and refreshing" category into which I thought they would have fallen by now.

Anyway, this hearty lamb soup certainly fit the nourishing bill. You could certainly vary the amount of barley used to make it thicker or thinner, and just about any fresh veggies you have sitting around would be excellent candidates. I bet it would be lovely in fall/winter with a whole bunch of root vegetables, too. The cabbage may not be a traditional addition, but everyone gave it a thumbs-up.

Do try to find some teeny-tiny "creamer" potatoes if you're making this soup. Their flavor and texture really complement the lamb's slight gaminess in a way that chunks of bigger russets just wouldn't.

Scotch Broth
Serves probably eight or ten; I made a bunch on purpose; it gets even better with age.

2 lamb shanks, 2 to 3 pounds total, trimmed of excess fat
Salt and pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil (or, for a full-on taste sensation, use bacon fat!)
One bouquet garni: several stems each of parsley and thyme, plus a couple of bay leaves, tied together or crammed into a tea ball
1/2 to 1 cup (I used 3/4 cup) pearl barley, rinsed, possibly soaked for a couple of hours in cold water if you have time and/or the inclination
Water to cover 
4 or 5 medium-sized carrots, scrubbed (peeled if they're particularly ugly, otherwise don't bother) and sliced
About 1/2 pound small white creamer potatoes, halved or otherwise cut down to bite-size
1/2 head green cabbage, shredded
2 Tbsp more olive oil (or, y'know, bacon fat)
1 large onion, chopped
2 or 3 ribs celery, likewise chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp to 1 Tbsp (Drunken Angel) hot sauce, optional but advised
Plenty of salt. Seriously. I probably ended up using about a tablespoon. Don't freak out; just go for it.
Freshly ground black pepper

Sprinkle lamb shanks with salt and pepper. Heat 2 Tbsp olive oil over medium heat in a large soup pot. Add the lamb shanks and cook, turning every few minutes, until well browned on all sides.

Add barley and bouquet garni; cover with cold water; bring to a simmer; cover and simmer over nice low heat for a long, long time. Two hours or so should do it. (You could also give this project 8 hours or so in the slow cooker.) Check periodically to make sure the water level hasn't dropped too low.

When barley is tender and lamb shanks are cooked through, remove bouquet garni and discard; remove lamb shanks and set aside to cool. Stir in carrots, potatoes and cabbage; return to a simmer and cook for another half hour or so, until carrots and potatoes are sufficiently tender. (If you're making this in the slow cooker, give it an couple hours or so on High.) Once lamb shanks are cool enough, shred off meat with fingers and reserve. Discard bones or feed them to a nearby dog, who will love you forever and ever as a result.

Heat remaining 2 Tbsp olive oil in a skillet. Add onion and celery; saute over medium heat until tender, about 7 minutes; add garlic and saute for 1 minute more. Scrape sauteed vegetables into soup and mix well. Simmer for a couple more minutes.

Stir meat back into soup and heat through. Whisk in hot sauce; taste and season generously with salt; grind in some pepper.

Serve with buttered whole-grain toast for that full-on hearty Highland experience.

Soup365 #123. Another late-night spectacular!

It was Angel's birthday--yes, that Angel, the Ladybug Lady, the creator of Drunken Angel Hot Sauce.

So we were out a little late, and maybe debauched a bit, and then Angel, Sarah and I all ended up back at our house ISO soup. Fortunately, we had a head start on deliciousness, because there were a few cups of presoaked chickpeas just kind of hanging out in the refrigerator doing their thing. And in honor of the birthday girl, something needed to be made with a bit of kick to it courtesy of her eponymous sauce.

As near as I can remember, this is how it came together:

Late-Night Spicy Chickpea-Tomato Soup
Serves... um, well, I'm not sure. Four? Six? Somewhere in that neighborhood.

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped fairly fine
1 to 2 tsp Drunken Angel Hot Sauce (accept no substitutes!)
2 tsp Montreal steak seasoning
2 cups chickpeas, soaked overnight (then left to sit in the fridge for a couple days if that works for you--you could also make it with unsoaked chickpeas, but it will take probably about 20-30 minutes longer to cook. You could also use canned/rinsed/drained chickpeas, but I refuse to take responsibility for the results.)
1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes with chiles
5 cups vegetable broth
2 smallish zucchini, unpeeled, chopped
Juice of 1/2 lemon

 Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat; add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent, about 7 minutes. Stir in hot sauce and Montreal steak seasoning and cook, stirring, one minute more.

Add chickpeas, undrained tomatoes and broth. Bring just to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer until chickpeas are tender but not quite done. This is best done by repairing to another part of the house with your friends and forgetting about them for a while (30 to 40 minutes? It really depends on the chickpeas).

Stir in zucchini, replace cover and simmer until zucchini is tender, about 10 more minutes. Stir in lemon juice; taste and adjust seasoning; serve forth to ravenous tipsy friends.

Soup365 #116. Sorry about the whole vegan thing...

...and also about the split peas, which also didn't make it into this rendition of Veganomicon 's Double Pea Soup with Roasted Red Peppers.

Red lentils took their place, also bacon.

Never having eaten the original, I can't say whether or not this was definitely an improvement, but my suspicions are that yes.

(I do love me some split peas, and I had every intention of using them, but they weren't around, so oh well. Mess of pottage it was instead.)

Non-Vegan Non-Double Pea Soup (at least the roasted red peppers made it in there...)
Serves six-ish, or eight-ish, or somethin'-ish

4 slices good bacon, diced small
1/2 large onion, diced
1 or 2 jalapeno peppers, unseeded, minced
1 2" piece of ginger, cut in cute little wee slivers
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
A couple sprigs of fresh thyme
1-1/2 cups dried red lentils, rinsed and picked through
5 to 6 cups vegetable or chicken broth
2 medium red bell peppers
Half a 16-ounce bag of frozen green peas
1 tsp or so thick hot sauce, preferably Drunken Angel Hot Sauce

Cook the bacon in a cold soup pot over medium heat until crisp; remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels; reserve. Pour off all but 2 Tbsp fat from the pot and return it to the stove over medium heat.

Add the onion and jalapeno; cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is translucent, about 7 minutes. Add ginger, cumin and coriander; cook, stirring, 1 minute more.

Add thyme, lentils and broth. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat and simmer until lentils are getting pretty darn tender and starting to fall apart, about 1/2 hour. Meanwhile, roast the peppers: Place them on a foil-lined baking sheet and broil, turning every few minutes, until blistered/blackened on all sides. Remove from the broiler and put in a bowl, then cover the bowl with a plate. Let stand, steaming, for a few minutes; then strip off the skins, pull out the stems and dice the peppery flesh.

Add diced peppers, reserved bacon and frozen peas to soup. Return to a simmer and cook for another 20 minutes or thereabouts.

Taste for salt and pepper; make adjustments accordingly; serve forth, piping hot and decidedly non-vegan.

83. Out of the mouths of babes: Coconut-Red Lentil Stew

So when people hear about the Soup365 project, the first question they ask is usually: "Are you crazy?"

And the second one is generally "What does your family think about eating all that soup?"

Now, honestly, I've been waiting for some Julie and Julia-style drama in which my family rebels against our new weird year-long eating pattern and I have to respond with tears or threats and then they respond with bitterness and alienation and then finally we all band together for the final stretch of the project and there's tender reconciliation and a triumphant emotional celebration and then ROLL CREDITS. But, somewhat anticlimactically, no one has objected to soup yet. (The year is, however, still young. Stay tuned.)

In fact, the other day Fisher sent me this e-mail:

FROM: Fisher [e-mail address redacted]
TO: Mama

SUBJECT: Here's a soup.

[recipe attached]

...Terse, perhaps, but this Mama will take validation wherever she can get it. Last night, validation took the form of each kid eating two large (!) bowls of this soup and then being enthusiastic about having it again today. (Sorry, kids; it has to go to work with your father for his dinner. You get something new and different instead! Maybe pappa al pomodoro.)

(BTW: Coconut milk is my New Best Thing in soups. It's not coconutty in that weird fake-though-it's-real way that shredded/flaked coconut is. In fact, it's quite mellow and backgroundy here, providing enough delicious delicious saturated fat to effectively carry the flavors of the spices without asserting itself and shoving the delicate character of the red lentils offstage.)

Coconut-Red Lentil Stew
Serves six-ish, maybe eight-ish? How hungry are you?
Adapted from this recipe at Epicurious

1 cup yellow split peas
1 cup red lentils
7 cups water or vegetable broth (I used half-strength veg broth)
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
3 Tbsp grated/minced fresh ginger, divided
2 Tbsp curry powder
2 Tbsp butter, ghee or olive oil
6 scallions, thinly sliced, divided
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 small can tomato paste
1 tsp to 1 Tbsp Drunken Angel or other thick hot sauce
1 14-ounce can coconut milk, well shaken
1 to 2 tsp salt
Chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Rinse the split peas and lentils under cool water until rinse water runs clear. Place in a soup pot with water or vegetable broth. Bring to a boil over high heat; when it reaches a boil, add carrots and 1 Tbsp grated ginger. Cover, reduce heat and simmer until split peas are tender, about 30 minutes.

Place a small, dry skillet over medium-high heat. Add curry powder and cook, stirring constantly, until toasted and very fragrant. It will deepen a couple of shades in color, but don't let it brown. As soon as it's sufficiently toasted, pour it out of the skillet into a small bowl or plate and set aside.

Heat butter or oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add half of scallions, raisins and remaining ginger; cook, stirring constantly, for two minutes. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly and vigorously, one minute more. Remove from heat; stir in curry powder and hot sauce.

When split peas are tender, whisk curry mixture into soup, stirring until very smooth. Add coconut milk and 1 tsp. salt. Simmer uncovered about 15 to 20 minutes, or until flavors are well blended and soup is sufficiently thickened for your liking. Taste and add more salt if needed.

Serve with reserved scallions and plenty of cilantro sprinkled over each bowl.

79. Eric's Birthday Black Bean Soup

I am assuming that this was a good soup--it disappeared before I really got a chance to eat it. We brought it (in the Crock-Pot, natch) to our friend Eric's birthday celebration on Saturday night. A few folks asked for the recipe. Here 'tis. (And happy birthday, dear Eric, happy birthday to you!)

Eric's Birthday Black Bean Soup
Serves... er, well, I'm not really sure. Nice in small portions, paired with Eric's terrific pasta salad.

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 small-to-medium carrots, halved lengthwise and sliced
A whole bunch of black beans--probably four cups? Five, even? Cooked-from-dried, as ever, is best, and you might actually want to cook them past the point of tenderness and unto the point of falling completely apart.
3 cups vegetable broth
1 pint thick homemade chili sauce--you probably don't have this sitting around, and here I cannot help you. If you want to approximate it, I would use one of the Subsidiary Recipes below. The first recipe is pretty much exactly what went into my chili sauce, less the Seasoning of Time (i.e., sitting on my basement pantry shelf for six months).
1 Tbsp hot sauce--Drunken Angel, of course!
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a soup pot; add onion and carrots; cook, stirring frequently, until glazed and tender, about 7 minutes.

Combine sauteed vegetables and all other ingredients, either in said soup pot or in a Crock-Pot. Cook at a low simmer until you're ready to eat--at least 30 minutes on the stovetop, probably at least 2 hours on Low in the Crock-Pot, at which point you can switch it to Keep Warm and go from there.

Subsidiary Chili Sauce Recipe I: The Good Stuff
You'll need to start it ahead of time and let it simmer a long long while 'til it gets thick. You might as well double or triple or quadruple this recipe and keep some sitting around--you can can it, of course, or just keep it in the fridge.

2 cups chopped cored peeled tomatoes
1 onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp packed brown sugar
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp horseradish, drained (optional)
1/2 tsp EACH: celery salt, mustard seeds, salt
1/4 tsp EACH: ground allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves

Combine everything except the last four spices in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently; simmer, stirring occasionally, until it gets thick, about 1 hour. Add final four spices. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for about another 30 minutes, until mixture mounds on a spoon. Look! Chili sauce!

Subsidiary Recipe II: The Quick Stuff
Makes just enough for this recipe, about.

2 15-ounce cans diced tomatoes
1 (small) can tomato paste
1 red bell pepper, diced small
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp brown sugar
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp EACH: ground allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves

Add the above ingredients to the soup when you add the black beans and everything else.

71. Spanish Squash & Bean Soup (and it's vegan!)

"What are you, smokin' paprika?"

Not sure if smoking paprika has any discernible effect (aside from red, irritated lungs), but smoked paprika can take a dish from that's-OK to tastebud-party with just a few sprinkles. Great way for vegetarians to get in some of that smoky quasi-bacony love, too.

I'm still looking for a local source for Hungarian smoked paprika, not that I'm sure I'd be able to tell it from the Spanish variety that I already have.

As I discovered yesterday, hot smoked paprika is also nice dusted over deviled eggs. Though the eggs, which I brought to Miss Angel's brunch, definitely also owed some of their pleasantly sweet kick to Drunken Angel Hot Sauce. (No, I'm not getting paid for mentioning that. I probably should be.)

Honestly, I wasn't crazy about the half-pureed, half-whole bean thing I did here. I think were I to make it again, I would puree the whole thing and then top it with some quickly fried sage leaves and strips of red bell peppers. Now that sounds good. Might have to sneak it into the schedule somewhere...

This recipe reflects what I shoulda oughtta have done, rather than exactly what I did.

Spanish Squash and Bean Soup
Serves eight, or four with seconds, or two with fourths, or...

A pinch (probably 1/2 tsp?) saffron
2 Tbsp hot water
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium-to-large onion, diced
2 tsp to 1 Tbsp paprika, preferably smoked
1/2 to 1 tsp red pepper flakes
A goodly pinch of salt
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium butternut squash, peeled, and chopped into smallish pieces*
5 cups vegetable or chicken broth
2 cups cooked white beans (from dried = best; one can, drained/rinsed, also = OK)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large red bell pepper, seeded and cut into thin strips
2 sage leaves per serving, rolled and sliced into thin ribbons
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt & pepper to taste

Combine saffron and water in a small bowl; set aside and let steep.

Heat 2 Tbsp olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add onion; cook, stirring regularly, about 5 minutes, until onion begins to soften. Add paprika, pepper flakes and salt; cook, stirring regularly, about 3 minutes more, until onion is quite tender (it will also be translucent, but you won't be able to tell, because it will be covered with paprika). Add garlic and cook, stirring constantly, 1 minute more.

Add squash and stir briefly to coat with oil/spices. Add broth and saffron with its water; bring just to a boil; cover, reduce heat and simmer until squash is very tender, about 20 minutes. Add beans and simmer briefly to heat through.

Remove soup from the heat; cool slightly. Puree with an immersion blender, if you have one tough enough to handle the job (mine conked out, much to my annoyance). Otherwise, puree in batches in a food processor until quite smooth. Return to pot; return to low heat; allow to simmer away contentedly while you make the garnish.

Heat remaining 2 Tbsp olive oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add bell pepper strips and cook, stirring very much, until peppers are slightly softened and nice and hot. Remove peppers with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Add sage leaves to hot oil and cook, stirring only occasionally, until leaves are well fried and beginning to brown around the edges. Remove to a separate paper towel to drain; they should crisp up nicely.

Stir lemon juice into soup. Taste and correct seasoning. Serve with a festive garnish of sage and peppers atop each serving.

* A note about shopping for butternut squash: Look for squash with long, thick necks and fairly small bulbous ends. You'll get a lot more usable squash and a lot less seedy pulpy gunk.

70. But-My-Kids-Hate-Vegetables White Bean, Spinach & Red Pepper Soup

Apparently it is written somewhere in the Bylaws of Childhood that one must be a hater of vegetables. Green things--ew! Orange things--yuck! Purple things--weird!

Perhaps that handbook was passed out in Cub Scouts or Sunday School or a D.A.R.E. assembly, because my kids never seemed to get a copy. (Fisher had a personal problem with asparagus for a while, but, fortunately, he seems to have gotten over it.) Last night we had two young friends as overnight guests, and I guess they must have missed that memo too--they ate this soup right up without complaint. No requests for seconds, but I think that was probably more due to their having eaten roughly 37 Parmesan-garlic cheese straws each (honestly, the four kids managed to devour two whole batches between them) before dinner time.

Admittedly, this was a little bit of a funky greenish-brown. Also admittedly, my hopes were not super-high for it... until I tasted it, with a bit of garlic toast dunked in, and then I was perfectly happy to sit back and eat my veggies and watch The Wire. (No, not with the kids. They were watching School of Rock upstairs. Importance of family dinner be damned--there was quality television at stake!)

I would definitely recommend cooking the beans from dried for this soup, rather than using their pallid cousins from a can. Make a big batch and you'll have plenty to last the week--and they take only an hour or so to cook, max, so it's not like you're making a huge time commitment up front. Pull them off the heat when they're just tender so they won't fall to pieces in the soup.

White Bean, Spinach and Roasted Red Pepper Soup
Serves eight to ten, probably

2 Tbsp olive oil
One good-sized onion, diced
4 to 5 cloves garlic, minced
6 to 8 cups vegetable or chicken broth (I used veggie Better than Bouillon, which is better than canned veggie broth [ecch] but not quite as good as either homemade veggie broth or chicken Better than Bouillon.)
3 cups cooked small white (navy) beans
1 ten-ounce package frozen spinach OR about 6 cups fresh spinach, roughly chopped
2 red, orange or yellow bell peppers, roasted, peeled and diced*
4 or 5 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp salt
1 to 2 tsp hot sauce (Drunken Angel!)
1/2 cup half-and-half or cream (optional, but nice)
Salt and pepper to taste
Several leaves fresh basil, sliced into very thin ribbons

Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat; add the onion; cook, stirring occasionally, until tender/translucent, about 7 minutes. Add garlic; cook and stir one minute more.

Add vegetable broth, beans, spinach, peppers, parsley, bay leaves and salt. Bring to a boil; cover; reduce heat; simmer, stirring occasionally to break up spinach, until everything is cooked through and flavors are, if not married, at least decently engaged.

Partially puree soup with an immersion blender (or by scooping out one-third to one-half of it, pureeing it in a blender or food processor, then stirring it back into the pot). Don't forget to take the bay leaves (and maybe the parsley) out first. I forgot I used two bay leaves and ended up having to warn everybody to watch out for partially-liquefied throat-scratching seasonings.

Add hot sauce and cream; heat through very gently; taste and correct seasoning. Sprinkle each soup with basil (and maybe a little grated Parmesan, if you're so inclined) and serve forth, accompanied by chunky slices of garlic toast.

* To roast the peppers: Preheat your broiler. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Place the peppers on the baking sheet, slide it into the oven and broil away. Check every few minutes; when the peppers are nice and blackened and blistered on the top, turn them carefully, using tongs, 90 degrees and return to heat. Repeat until peppers are well-roasted all the way around (blackness is your friend here). Take peppers out and immediately pop them into a paper bag. Fold down the top of the paper bag to close and let the peppers steam 10 minutes or so to further loosen the skins. Remove when just cool enough to handle; pull skins off with your fingers; cut out cores, seed (if you like) and chop.

66. Humble Potato Soup with Arrogant Garlic Cream

Like most Americans, or so it seems, I like Thanksgiving better than any other holiday. Cook cook cook! Eat eat eat! Particularly easy to divorce from any tiresome ideological contexts! Oh, and pie... and mashed potatoes!

Like more Americans than you'd suspect, I like mashed potatoes better than any other food. Creamy dairy goodness! Artery-exploding amounts of butter! Fluffy potato cloudiness! Oh... and gravy! And often garlic!

The mashers we had at our last family Thanksgiving, celebrated right here in Portland, were particularly scrumptious. Gleaned from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, they featured copious amounts of garlic. Not sauteed... not roasted... but seethed in butter and turned, instead, into a delectable, unctuous cream that married fantastically well with the mountains of potatoes.

So last night, confronted with tiredness and a sparsely populated kitchen, I thought potato soup would be good. But maybe a little boring. Maybe I should jazz it up with some roasted garlic. But I didn't really want to hang around all day waiting for the garlic to roast, then squeezing the pulp out of each little clove.

Then it occurred to me that perhaps the garlic cream used for Julia's mashed potatoes would do well stirred into soup. I think it was definitely worth a do--and honestly, I can't think of many "cream of" veggie soups that couldn't benefit from a healthy dollop of this not-particularly-"healthy" stuff.

I'm splitting the soup recipe in two so that you can have access to the garlic cream no matter what sort of soup you want to make.

Humble Potato Soup (mostly after Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone )
Serves six

2 Tbsp olive oil or butter (I used one Tbsp each)
Two medium onions, diced
Three bay leaves
Two pounds potatoes--you could use russets or boiling potatoes; I wanted the potatoes to fall apart easily, so I used russets--peeled, quartered lengthwise and thinly sliced (you can do the slicing while the onions cook)
1-1/2 tsp salt
1 cup water
5 to 6 cups vegetable or chicken broth, depending on how thick you want the soup
One recipe Garlic Cream (see below)
1 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped
Perhaps a teaspoon or so of (Drunken Angel) hot sauce
Minced chives, for garnish

Heat the olive oil &/or butter in a soup pot over medium-low heat. Add onions and bay leaves; cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are translucent and tender, about 7 minutes.

Add potatoes; increase heat to medium-high; cook, stirring frequently, until potatoes are glazed and moisture is mostly evaporated, about 5 to 7 minutes more.

Add salt and water; stir furiously to deglaze, scraping bottom of pot with spoon. Add broth; bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are extremely tender and tending to fall apart, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat.

At this point, you may either mash the potatoes with a potato masher, for a brothy/chunky soup, or you may puree the soup with an immersion blender, for a thick/creamy soup. (I did the latter, after being annoyed at the continuing brothiness of the former.) Either way, take out the bay leaves first.

Return to heat. Whisk in Garlic Cream and parsley; heat to a gentle simmer; taste and season with additional salt, pepper, and/or hot sauce, as you see fit.

Serve with chives strewn over each bowl, and with bread or crackers for that true carbo-load experience.

Arrogant Garlic Cream
Quantities given here are half those given in the original recipe; you could certainly make/include the larger quantity, and the soup would be none the worse for it.

15 medium cloves garlic, unpeeled
A small amount of boiling water--2 cups should do it
2 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp flour
1/2 cup hot milk
Salt and pepper to taste

Put the cloves of garlic in boiling water; boil for two minutes. Remove, cool slightly (you can run cold water over them to speed up this process) and peel.

In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium-low heat. Add garlic, cover and reduce heat to low. Cook until garlic is very tender but not browned, about 20 minutes. (Or so says the original recipe. My garlic browned a little, but it tasted fine. And it didn't take quite 20 minutes--more like 15.)

Uncover saucepan; increase heat to medium; whisk in flour and cook, stirring, two minutes or until flour loses its raw look/taste. Whisk in hot milk; simmer, stirring, two minutes; season with salt and pepper.

Remove from heat and rub through a fine-meshed sieve (huzzah! another good use for that sieve!) into a bowl. Set aside until needed. (Go ahead and taste it, though. You need your eyes to roll back in your head today, don't you?)

60. Mulliga-whatnow?

Someday I will do a week full of soups with funny names (Cock-a-Leekie, anyone?). But now I've gone and used up one of the primest candidates for such a category: Mulligatawny.

This is not a quick and simple soup; it took the better part of a couple of hours (though plenty of that was simmering time). It's also a good choice if you have someone to help you with cleanup (or, better yet, do it for you), since it dirties up a plethora of pans and other utensils.

That said, I thought Jim's eyes were going to roll back in his head from pure pleasure. This is a truly awesome-tasting soup. Sophisticated, a little exotic, with a warm nubbly flavor/texture from the homemade almond milk... seriously, if you have a not-too-much-going-on sort of a day coming up, block out a little time and give this one a try.

Vegetarian Mulligatawny
Serves eight
Taken almost directly from Splendid Soups by James Peterson

1 cup blanched almonds, whole or slivered
1 cup water
3 Tbsp ghee or unsalted butter
2 medium onions, diced
2 carrots, peeled and chopped (they'll be pureed, so don't freak out too much about even size/shape)
2 waxy (like Yellow Finn) potatoes, peeled, quartered and thinly sliced
6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 tsp salt
About half a bunch of spinach, washed, stems trimmed, roughly chopped
2 Tbsp ghee or unsalted butter
About 1-1/2 tbsp curry powder and/or garam masala (I used 3 tsp curry powder and 2 tsp garam masala)
1 tsp (Drunken Angel) hot sauce, if your curry powder is not very spicy
1/2 cup cream or coconut milk
About 1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro

Any time during the day before you make the soup: Heat oven to 350. Spread almonds on a baking sheet. Roast, stirring every 5 minutes or so, until toasted to an even light brown, probably 10-15 minutes. (This will smell A.MAZING.)

Allow almonds to cool slightly. Combine in a blender jar with 1 cup water (plus maybe 1 or 2 Tbsp more water). Blend for a long time until extremely smooth. Seriously. Just switch the blender on and walk away for 2 or 3 minutes.

Pour mixture through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl. This will produce your Almond Milk. Set it aside until you need it.

Heat ghee or butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add onions, carrots and potatoes. Cook, stirring frequently, until veggies are becoming tender and onions are translucent, about 7 minutes. Add broth and salt; bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are completely tender and can be crushed against the side of the pot with a spoon, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat remaining 2 Tbsp in a small skillet. Add curry powder and/or garam masala and fry for just a couple of minutes, until spices are very fragrant. Remove from heat and set aside.

Puree soup in batches in a blender (remember! only half-full! and hold a towel over the top!) until very smooth. Return to pot.

Over medium-low heat, whisk in almond milk, curry/garam masala mixture, and hot sauce, if you're using it. Bring soup to a barest simmer. Whisk in cream and cilantro. Taste; correct salt and pepper; serve it forth.

If you have some extra roasted almonds, they would look darn purty sprinkled over the top of this soup; but if you don't, no problem. Enjoy.

59. Fo' Sho' Faux Pho

I bought some top sirloin with the express intent of making pho, and then last night I realized I (a) didn't have a recipe to hand, (b) wasn't sure exactly which ingredients to use, and (c) kind of felt like flying by the seat of my pants anyway.

This was the result.

Vernie, our friend who has to be coaxed (sometimes violently) to eat anything, had a teeny-weeny bowl for politeness' sake. And then a (substantially larger) second bowl, because as he said, "This is [freaking] amazing."

(Yes, I know a real pho would have noodles in. I didn't have any. But if you had rice sticks or even some fresh udon or something, that would not be a bad addition at all. This was pretty darn brothy as made and some noodles would substantify it a bit.)

Faux Pho
Serves five

1/2 pound top sirloin roast/steak, about 1-1/2" thick
1 Tbsp flavorless vegetable oil, such as peanut or grapeseed
A 2" piece of fresh ginger, peeled and Microplaned
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp hot sauce (Drunken Angel, if you're me)
6 cups strong chicken broth
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1 Tbsp Thai fish sauce
Plenty of fresh cilantro (I think I used about 1/2 cup of chopped leaves)

Cut the sirloin in half latitudinally so that you have two pieces about 3/4" thick. Set pieces on a plate and put them in the freezer.

Heat oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add ginger and garlic and stir frantically for about 1 minute; add red pepper flakes and salt and stir frantically for 30 seconds more.

Add hot sauce, chicken broth, scallions and fish sauce. Bring to a boil; turn down to a simmer and simmer, partly covered, about 20 minutes.

After about 15 minutes of simmering time, remove sirloin from freezer. Slice as thinly as possible (my slices were a little under 1/4" thick).

Add sliced beef to soup. Immediately cover and turn off the heat. Let stand for five minutes.

Stir in cilantro and serve.

(If you're using noodles, be sure they are some sort that will cook very quickly and toss them in for the last few minutes of simmering. If you're using fresh udon, just wait and throw them in with the beef.)