Kuri Curry Coconut Soup & A Day on the Farm

This pretty pumpkiny thing is a Kuri squash. I picked it right out of the patch with my own two hands along with the butternut and a whole bunch of onions. I'll get back to this.

Photographing pureed soups is just best left to the experts. I lacked the werewithal to come up with photo friendly garnish strategies because this soup was so damn good that I couldn't bear to let it sit around while I noodled around with what?...chives? fried shallots? squeeze bottle drizzle art? No. None of that because I realized that this soup was not about that particular destination. It's the farm to table journey that bears note.

I went to Sonoma last week to get my first gander at the Bi-Rite Farm. I did more than gander. I harvested. I traveled up the afternoon before with a small caravan of co-workers. We spent the night at my boss Sam's gorgeous weekend home, cooking a lovely meal together in a true chef's kitchen around a ginormous island. 

After our meal of chili & cornbread, a few beers and a round of Cards Against Humanity, we hit the sleeping bags and got out to the farm early the next morning.

I picked this crazy lemon cucumber.

This was really overgrown, at first I thought a melon snuck it's way into the cucumber patch. I'd never seen a lemon cucumber until last year when I started working at Bi-Rite. They are ready to harvest when they are the size of a fat lemon, speckly pale green with a blush of yellow. 

We picked the last of the red beans, then pulled up the plants and mashed them into the compost heap. Amaranth weeds were yanked and  fed to the cows next door, one of which was destined for our market shortly and carrot tops were fed through the fence to the donkeys at the other next door farm. There is virtually no waste here. The pretty stuff goes to the markets and the rest goes to the kitchens.

A new crop to the farm... hops. I was invited to tear into one of these buds and rub it around in my hands. It was like perfume. These are destined for a limited edition Bi-rite brew. I've renewed my love of beer since working at the market. I've had the opportunity and great good fortune to be able to taste a vast array of amazing small craft brews and after 15 years of bloaty beer banishment, I am back and truly in love with all manner of hoppy beers. IPA all the way.

I came home with a couple of squashes, a bunch of red torpedo spring onions and fistful of rosemary. I didn't want to get greedy, thinking of what I was capable of using soon and carrying along with my sleeping bag and other gear once we got back to the city.

The very next day I got this going:

I caramelized most of the onions & roasted up the kuri squash. The great thing about the kuri squash is that you can eat the skin. Here's how this all went down:

Kuri Curry Coconut Soup

1 medium Kuri squash cut into 1" cubes
3 spring onions-caramelized
1 teaspoon of Penzey's Sweet Curry Powder
1 teaspoon cumin
olive oil
salt & pepper
2 large cloves of garlic
4 cups water
1 heaped tablespoon Better than Bouillion Chicken broth base
1 can coconut milk

Cook down the onions first. In general it takes about an hour to get a good caramelization if you go with the low and slow method. These farm fresh onions took even longer because they were so juicy...not like the drier supermarket/produce market onions I'm used to that have been sitting around for god-knows-how-long. It took me a while to figure that out. I cooked the first batch within 8 hours of picking. I was seriously thinking "What is wrong with these onions? Why are they taking so long?" City girl. It was really hard to resist turning up the heat to get them to go faster. I refrained. I'm not sure what difference it would have made to the soup, but I like to think a world of...

Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees.

Toss the squash with big glug of olive oil, curry, cumin, salt and pepper. Spread onto parchment lined sheet pans, using as many as needed so as not to crowd the pan. Roast for 15 minutes, toss and roast for another 15 minutes.

I had caramelized the onions the night before, so I reheated them in the bottom of the pot with some chopped garlic. Heat up a pot of water and start a broth with the innards of the squash, cooking for about 30 minutes. Strain and add the chicken broth base and dissolve. Add more water if needed to reach 4 cups of broth. Bring to a boil. Add the roasted squash and...it wasn't until this moment that I realized I could have roasted a bunch of garlic with the squash...next time. Maybe. This soup turned out so great that I seriously had to resist over thinking it.

Anyhoo...let the soup simmer for 30 minutes. Puree (carefully-it's super hot). Return to the pot and stir in the coconut milk. Done and Delish!

This soup is killer with a grilled cheese sandwich to dunk into it.

carrot soup with lemon tahini drizzle and toasted chickpeas

carrot soup with lemon tahini drizzle and toasted chickpeas, originally uploaded by riptideredsf.

I woke up the other morning to find the food blogosphere all about chickpeas and carrots. These are just s few of the recipes I latched onto:

smitten kitchens latest carrot soup- I've made this twice last week-it's sooooo simple!

101 cookbooks morrocan carrot soup-I haven't made this yet but it's on the queue for Le Weekend

Amateur Gourmet's Anything Goes Salad-I've made this wonderful chopped salad a few times now. It's a great work salad because it's perfectly fine in the refrigerator for a couple of days, so I can make a lot.

The Smitten Kitchen Carrot Soup appeared first and there was absolutely no reason not to jump right into this because I had all of the ingredients on hand-the usual bunch of carrots, just waiting for their greater purpose, the questionable dregs of a jar of tahini (does tahini have a shelf life? he jar says nothing!),  a near empty jar of dried chickpeas and a newly purchased bag of za'atar (an new stranger to the little kitchen inspired The Amateur Gourmet salad up above).

I had to laugh when I read Deb's comment about her self-imposed carrot soup challenge, as it sounded very akin to my own evolution with most vegetables.

The soup is sooooo simple and flavorful on its own, but the addition of the tahini & lemon added that little kick of brightness. My drizzle work needs some finessing and it's far too fussy a finish for a simple carrot soup, but couldn't help myself after I'd poured that vibrant bowl of orange. The soupy canvas seemed to call to my squeeze bottle.

An equally inspiring discovery was the toasted chickpea. I've never toasted chickpeas before and when I pulled them out of the oven and tasted them I was blown away by how good they were...salty & spicy with a touch of crunch...just a brilliant snack all on their own.

Carrot soups collided today. A new cooking school recently popped up on my  radar.

Scanning their website, I discovered they were having an open house today. I pedaled by to check it out. It was inspiring and enlightening.

They demonstrated 4 recipes including a curry carrot soup. It was good. Thick and spicy...but not as good as this. A lot of curry and a lot of milk and cream. Not that there's anything wrong with that. If I hadn't just made this, I probably would have been singing the praises of that curry carrot soup. It was a tad more work (roasting carrots-and I looooovvvve roasted anything) than this super simple SK soup (everything gets tossed into the pot and sauteed-add stock-cook until carrots are soft-puree-done). 

Something I took particular note of: the chef/instructor said never to garnish a soup wth something that was not already a component of the soup. Hmmnnn...What am I to make of that? I loved the tahini swirl and toasted chickpea croutons.

Nevertheless, the carrot soup is definitely a keeper and I shall roast the carrots next time.

white bean soup with chive oil

white bean soup with chive oil, originally uploaded by riptideredsf.

I can already tell that this is going to be a  favorite and much repeated  recipe in the little kitchen. It's Kim Severson's recipe from CookFight, the Kid's Party Challenge. In spite of some questionably old white beans, the soup would have been remarkable just on it's own with all of it's flavorful components,

but the real souper-star is the brilliant bonus of the Chive Oil. Not only because it turned my bowl of soup into a work of art and tastes wonderful, it's a great refrigerator rescue solution to any herb teetering on the brink of the trash can. I shall never ever ever again throw away dead chives! I can't recall a single time I ever managed to use an entire bunch of chives.

You just blanche a bunch of chives (30 seconds in the boiling water-then plunge into the ice bath), pat dry, throw them in the blender with some olive oil, strain the oil through a mesh strainer, pour into your squeeze bottle and drizzle away!
Here's a great interview that came up the other day on the Amateur Gourmet which might give you an idea of  the experience of being in the presence of these two ladies.

Yellow Split Pea Soup

Split Pea Soup, originally uploaded by riptideredsf.

Every now and again I have a little kitchen epiphany, those moments when I surprise and delight myself by veering out of my comfort zone, fueled by curiosity, imagination, instinct and persistence, landing somewhere strange, wonderful and unexpected. 

This was not one of those moments.

Sometimes it's just dumb luck, boredom or desperation.

It started here:

 

 

Sometime last year. Somewhere over at Rainbow, my local natural foods co-op and my happy place for bulk shopping, I found myself particularly mezmerized by legumes.

Let me back up a bit though. The first time I ever walked in there I was transformed. For this, I have to thank Heidi at 101 Cookbooks, another inspiration to the little kitchen. The intro to her cookbook, Super Natural Cooking Everyday, described this Oz-like food shopping experience.   

I feel all fuzzy, warm and virtuous whenever I shop there, always curious & inspired by the amazing towers of beans, lentils, grains, nuts and bins of obscure flours. It excites me more and scares me less now, but at first I was truly overwhelmed by it's strangeness,

I bought bags and bags of colorful split peas, lentils and beans imagining exploration out of my black/refried bean comfort zone, but mostly, I envisioned them pretty-ing up the pantry shelves in my new Ikea glass jars.

 

One year later:

 

The impetus to finally open the jars and consult numerous cookery books and blogs, was more out of neccessity than anything else.

 

 



The sporadic employment of a free-lance artist creates adapting to feast or famine. I've been doing this all my working life. The upside to the downside is the creative juices surge in the lean times.

Last week I found myself in the pantry, looking for a project that would keep me busy and out of the store. Is it just me? I can't leave the house, even for a walk around the corner to the library without returning $20 poorer.

Anyhoo...this is what I made. Yellow split peas making their little kitchen debut in this brilliant soup. This was my epiphany: Split Peas?!? Why did I not know about this?!?

Thanks again to Heidi at 101 Cookbooks for this gorgeous recipe. My only deviation was to puree the entire batch. I started, as instructed, with an emersion blender, leaving some texture in there, but some of the peas seemed undercooked to me. I wasn't sure if this is just a characteristic of split peas in general or the fact that my peas were so old...I had also mixed two diffferent batches of dried peas...but once I tossed it into the blender this really came together perfectly. Sweet and creamy and the dollop of cucumber riata  finished off the soup beautifully.

corn chowder with chiles

corn chowder with chiles, originally uploaded by riptideredsf.

I'm currently obsessed with corn chowder. The tex-mex restaurant where I tend bar on the weekends makes an amazing chicken corn chowder which is only prepared for Sunday brunch. I love that soup. I harrassed the chef for the recipe and scribbled down the pertinent ingredients that stood out from the other dozen recipes that I had stock-piled. Namely fresh jalepenos, poblanos, fresh lime juice and cilantro. That recipe also starts with their tortilla soup base made from fresh home made chicken stock. The math overwhelmed.

I decided this recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks was the best place to start. It starts with bacon. 'Nuf said.
I try reallyreallyreally hard, when making a recipe for the first time, to follow it verbatim, before I start tweaking. It's hard. I was proud of my restraint from adding the potatoes and chunks of cooked chicken breast I had sitting there eager to be a part of this soup. "Next time. Next time." I kept telling myself. There will definitely be a next time with this and it was damn perfect outta the gate. It starts with bacon. I said that right?

Ok...a few tiiiinnnny tweaks. I subbed the chicken stock for corn stock I made with the fresh shaved cobs. I never buy boxed  or canned chicken stock. The decent ones are too pricey for the little kitchen and I just can't justify that when I can buy a whole chicken for six bucks. I buy a powdered "fake" chicken broth seasoning in bulk from Whole Foods or Rainbow, which I added to the corn stock.  I also toasted the corn kernals, after slicing them off the cob, in a dry non-stick skillet, deglazed with lots of fresh lime juice and I also added one extra chipotle pepper. That was it.

Here's what went into this corn stock:

6 cups of water
6 corn cobs
one onion cut into 8 chunks
3 smallish carrots scrubbed and cut into chunks
3-4 celery stalks cut into chunks
about a 2 teaspoons of whole black pepper corns
about a teaspoon of whole coriander
about a teaspoon of cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary
a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme
1 tablespoon of dried tarragon (my new favorite herb)
3 serrano peppers
2 teaspoons of kosher salt
6 tablespoons of "fake" chicken seasoning

Once it's come to a boil I let it simmer for an hour. Scoop out the big chunks of vegetables with a slotted spoon, then strain the rest through a clean tea towel. I add the powdered seasoning after  straining. At this point you'll want to taste it and add more salt if you need it.