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Microwaveable Matzah Balls–Yes We Can!

Posted on March 31, 2021 by DebbieN

Microwave matzah ball in vegetarian not-chicken soup

Three years ago I tried out a couple of possibilities for making matzah balls in the microwave–mostly because I was cooking for just my husband and myself for the seder and because I hate waiting for a full stockpot to boil. Also just because. And it wasn’t a raving success–more like, “well…it was worth a try.” Or as I put it at the time, I try these things out so you don’t have to.

My conclusion then: you can’t microwave ordinary matzah balls the way you’d think, dolloping the mixture into boiling water and then heating with a lid, as I’d hoped. They’ll just start falling apart in the water and the ones that don’t will be awful and tough in the center and awful and gluey like undercooked oatmeal on the outsides, and in general not good and a complete waste of ingredients and your valuable effort.

At the time I also thought maybe I hadn’t used enough egg to make it work–because I only had one egg in the house for a cup of matzah meal, and the standard recipes for that amount called for two to four.

However, I discovered that a spinach-enhanced version would work okay, at least on a very small-batch basis, if I dolloped the mixture onto a plate and microwaved the dumplings that way, just to seal the surfaces and kind of steam them through to cook the egg and make them hold together, THEN put them in hot soup and let them sit a few minutes to absorb and fluff a little more. And…they were okay. Not fabulous. They still had a few corners on them.

But as a fairly dedicated microwave experimenter–I’m not quite up to claiming “maven” yet, that’s next week–that doesn’t really end the question for me, because I keep thinking, maybe I could possibly change something and make them work out after all? And wouldn’t that be cool? …I’m probably the only person I know who would answer “yes” on that, but too bad. Because, on take 3 1/2 or so, I finally think I’ve got it. And this time my husband actually agreed.

So picture me on Sunday afternoon, the first full day of Passover 5781 (aka 2021). Saturday evening we (meaning, mostly me) did manage to get all the kashering and cleaning and cooking done and ready for the first seder in reasonable time for the two of us, and we skipped soup and matzah balls because really, it was too much right then. Sunday, though, I decided I had time after lunch to make some not-chicken soup in the microwave and then–well, why not?–try a new tack on microwave matzah balls. Yet again.

This time I thought about those tough centers and decided what the matzah needed was a quick fluffing up before adding any other ingredients. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this idea should work decently for standard stovetop matzah balls as well. Might even let you get away with fewer eggs for the recipe and a little less time letting the mixture rest in the fridge.

So here I combined two tricks:

First, I poured boiling water on the matzah crumbs and let it all soak up for 15 minutes or so before adding the egg and oil and flavorings. Second, I used the same dollop-and-nuke-on-a-plate method I’d used last time Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, high-speed soup, holiday cooking, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes, soup | Tagged: food, Jewish holidays, microwave cooking, Passover recipes, recipes | Comments Off on Microwaveable Matzah Balls–Yes We Can!

Crème de X: Purslane and basil dress up a lighter velouté

Posted on November 4, 2020 by DebbieN

Purslane soup with purple basil garnish — Purslane plus purple basil flowers for that Crème-de-X factor

Sargent’s infamous ballroom portrait of Madame X is today’s inspiration for a soup that, like his subject, breaks a few stodgy rules and dares to produce an elegant but fresher, bolder, more nutritious–and certainly lighter–version of a classic French soup in a few minutes flat. It’s smooth but svelte. And it still keeps you in suspense.

So before we get to today’s featured mystery vegetable (herb? green? Let’s settle on green)–let’s talk about breaking the rules.

Most classic veloutés–vegetable-based cream soups–rely on thorough boiling-into-submission of the vegetables, generally mostly potatoes, to soften them for blending, which used to be done by hand through a mesh sieve back in Madame X’s and John Singer Sargent’s day. They also add a heavy dose of cream to mask any individual or strong flavors so nobody could possibly get upset that they can actually taste the vegetables.

All that cooking softens things but also breaks down most of the vitamins. Reliance on potatoes for bulk makes things starchier and blander as it crowds out the greens as the main ingredient. And I don’t have to tell you what I think about cream–you’re free to disagree but I take statins for a reason, and I’m an inveterate cheese freak. Also chocolate.

So I say save the high-ticket calories for something that packs a bigger punch tastewise even in small, expensive, memorable bites–goat cheese, bittersweet chocolate ganache. Not soup. Make it count.

Method counts too. The modernized French restaurant-approved cookbook methods for veloutés and blended soups in general are stupid, cumbersome and unsafe. There’s no good enough excuse anymore for telling inexperienced cooks–or any cooks–to boil up a vat of something and then try to pour it into a food processor or blender hot–very dangerous, and not the edge we’re seeking here. Scald marks are not chic. Nor is hot flying soup all over the kitchen walls.

In today’s world, you have a blender or food processor AND you probably have a microwave, no matter how many TV chefs may rail against it. You can do this smarter and safer and lighter and faster.

Common sense says blend your veg of choice first, then heat it. If it isn’t soft enough raw to blend smooth before cooking, steam it through first with minimal water and a lid in the microwave for a couple of minutes or, failing that, in a nonstick frying pan or stockpot with a drizzle of water, maybe a quarter-inch off the bottom of the container or pan, and a lid, also for a few minutes. Take it off the heat, pulse a few times in your blender or food processor without most of the liquid to get it started, then add cold liquid gradually as it blends further until it gets to the consistency you’re aiming for. You’re a lot less likely to generate big steam and pop the lid that way.

Then pour it into a microwaveable container with a lid to cook or reheat the soup in a few minutes without destroying every possible vitamin or losing all the color. You won’t scald yourself and you won’t be furious and frustrated and wishing you’d never heard of it before you even get to taste it (this does happen, you know, and cookbooks never mention it)… You’ll be fabulously unruffled (well…at least for this) and ready to dine when it’s ready to eat.

So, enough with the cooking hock-I-mean-hack. What’s with the purslane? What is purslane, anyway?

You’ve been wading patiently through my diatribe, and the suspense is killing you (but a nice distraction from worrying about the election totals, yeah?)

Purslane–slightly wilted but still worth cooking. I can sympathize.

Purslane, or verdolagas in Spanish, is a slightly tart fresh herb that tastes like a lemony version of watercress or spinach–sorrel? Texture- and looks-wise, it’s a cross between a fresh green herb like basil and a succulent like…like…well, like a jade plant (despite the fact that jade plants are not edible, I’m pretty sure). That is, the leaves are smallish but sort of fleshier than normal herbs. At least when they’re at their peak freshness. Most people who buy and eat purslane put it into a fresh salad and eat it raw. Some stirfry it or chop it and put it into spinach-type dishes. And it’s pretty nutritious–high in vitamins A and C, potassium and other minerals, surprisingly for a vegetable, highish in omega-3 fatty acids if you’re still into those. Grows pretty much throughout the world.

After a week in the fridge, though, it loses a little of its puff and starts to wilt a bit–is it going bad? can you still do something with it?

Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, frugality, haute cuisine, high-speed soup, kitchen safety, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes, soup | Tagged: food, recipes, vegetarian | Comments Off on Crème de X: Purslane and basil dress up a lighter velouté

A Microwaveable Passover, 5778 (2018) edition

Posted on April 3, 2018 by DebbieN

No matter how many times I vow I’m not going to work too hard this year, I always end up cleaning the fridge some time in the small hours the night before Passover, swearing creatively to get all the vegetable bins and shelving back in the way they came out. Between packing out the unkasherable dishes and appliances like the toaster oven, shopping for the week, and kashering the silverware, dishes and pots for Passover, it always ends up about 5 to 6 or so in the evening before I can actually cook.

Passover started Friday night, and it was just us at home this time around for the first seder. So I didn’t have to make a huge menu, which was good. Because I did have to kasher the kitchen–starting after a 3-hour stint at the DMV (my third this month) to help my kid finally get her learner’s permit. Type I diabetes throws a monkey wrench into the proceedings and requires extra time, paperwork, and hocking to make sure one office actually sends the other office the fax within your lifetime…so it was a bit on the late side that I actually got to start, and by the time sunset rolled around, I was kind of wiped and ready to skip it. Not a great frame of mind for experimenting in the kitchen, certainly not that night. Although the fridge IS still astonishingly clean and sparkly.

We don’t always get fully past the rush to the enjoyment of the seder, especially those of us who are doing the cooking. But the first bite of parsley dipped in saltwater always signals the start of the holiday for me, and the first bite of matzah tastes like freedom. (The thirty-fifth bite or so, perhaps not so much…)

By now I’ve played around enough to have quite a number of simple Passover-worthy dishes that can be microwaved, some of them start to finish. That can be handy when you’re either short on cooking time after getting home from work on Friday or just short on patience and yet you still want to do a simple–but still nice–small seder. It might even provide a save at least for the side dishes if you’re doing a bigger one.

Some things you can’t help cooking on the stove–hard-boiled eggs for the seder plate and for the table of hungry guests. And some things like charoset take some hand work to chop if you don’t have a food processor around.

However.

Even if you’re serving something long-cooked like chicken or brisket as a main dish, a couple of easy microwaveable vegetable dishes, appetizers and desserts–even soup–might benefit from not having to compete for stovetop and oven space, particularly if a heat wave is headed your way. And microwaving reaps big benefits for reheating or supplementing leftovers quickly during the next several days if you keep kosher for Passover, or even if you don’t.

Vegetabalia

Fresh vegetables really matter for Passover. Salad, yes. It’s spring, after all (even though my mother said they were expecting another snowfall this week in Boston). And also cooked greens. I’m a big believer in microwaving them lightly and last-minute wherever possible, so that they’re just-cooked, fresh-tasting and still green when you serve them–at least, if they’re supposed to be green.

Lightly-microwaved asparagus stays green even the next day. It’s good either cold or reheated with light vinaigrette and a poached egg (regular or microwaved) and some basil or other spring herbs.

Asparagus is traditional, and as long as you don’t abuse it the way my mother [probably] still does, by boiling the regulation seven minutes, shocking in ice water, and then letting it sit around in the cold water for ages until the stalks start shredding into floaty olive-green kelp-like bits, because she’s too busy with the soup, and dinner’s not for another whole hour…..skip all that and microwave the stalks instead for 2-3 minutes and you can be a winner.

Snaplock containers that are about the same size as the amount of vegetable you’re microwaving make it easy to prep ahead and store raw trimmed, washed asparagus, broccoli, brussels sprouts or other greens in the fridge, ready to nuke and go. When you’re ready for them, just add a drizzle of water, maybe a quarter-inch, to the container, put the lid back on, shake once or twice over the sink (in case of drips), and microwave them 2-3 minutes for a pound–you can let them sit a minute or so afterward and they’ll continue to steam. If you’re doing 2 pounds in one container, double the time, but stop and stir gently halfway through so the less-cooked ones on the bottom get moved to the top, and keep an eye on it the last minute or so–that is, stop the microwave again and check with a fork for doneness–so you don’t overcook.

Once the vegetables are just fork-tender and still green, drain them carefully and either serve right away or take the lid off and lay it back on loosely with an air gap–you can probably get away with letting it sit this way for 10 minutes or so without it cooling too much, and the veg will stay green. But obviously, it’s best to serve it fairly quickly.

Vegetables you plan to roast or pan-brown can get a very quick head start in the microwave before tossing quickly with olive oil, garlic and rosemary in a frying pan or, if you’ve already got it going anyway, the oven. The precooking definitely cuts down the browning time. Brussels sprouts, fresh fennel, new potatoes, carrots, and red squashes are easy to microwave with just a bit of water in the bottom of a covered container to help steam them quickly.

Not-Chicken Soups

Microwaveable not-chicken soups, good for a vegetarian, vegan, or fish dinner, can be made ahead in a couple of minutes (well, 5 to 15, including prep time) and reheated. They’re also good to have on hand if you’re doing a big meat dinner with the standard chicken soup in a stock pot but you also have a few vegetarian guests.

Basic not-chicken soup (about 2 1/2 quarts or 8-10 servings)

3-4 full-sized carrots
medium or large onion
4 long stalks of celery
drizzle/spoonful of olive oil
fat clove of garlic, minced, mashed or grated
handful of fresh dill or 1-2 T dry
12-20 black peppercorns
lemon juice and salt to taste at the table

Fill up a 2.5 quart microwaveable bowl or container nearly to the top with chopped (bite-size pieces) vegetables. Stir in a spoonful of olive oil, and microwave-wilt the veg for 5 minutes on HIGH with the lid on. Add a fat minced or grated clove of garlic, a handful of dill and a few black peppercorns, plus water to cover and reheat another 5-6 minutes or until steaming hot, then let it sit with the lid on. Your soup will be pretty flavorful after letting it steep half an hour, if possibly a bit sweet (just one of those leftover mongo onions from last week’s “gifting” weighed a full pound on average). A squeeze of lemon and a dash of salt–not Campbell’s or Lipton’s level salting, salt-shaker-at-the-diner’s-discretion salting–and a grinding of pepper will work it out.

Pan-browned not-chicken soup

The pan-browned minimal carrot-onion soup is a little more hands-on, but very convincing and full-bodied. The basic setup is the same as for plain, but after wilting, pan brown the veg in a nonstick frying pan until you see actual browning, about 10 minutes. Add a grated or minced fat clove of garlic, a sprig of thyme, and a splash of white wine, and cook it down to dry. Put the veg back in the microwave container, swirl a bit of water around the empty pan to pick up the browning (i.e., deglaze), add it to the veg, fill the container up to the top with water, and microwave 5-6 minutes to heat, then let it steep.

My current version (since I was gifted with celery as well last week) includes a couple of chopped stalks of celery with again, a very large onion. I also added in a bit of dill plus–chop ’em if you’ve got ’em–one or two finely-diced shiitake mushrooms, fresh or dried and soaked in half a cup of hot water, for added not-chicken potency.

A squeeze of lemon and a dash of salt and fresh ground pepper at the table makes it even better than actual chicken soup. And you never have to skim any scum.

If you want to surprise people, go with bok choy broth but skip the soy sauce (contains wheat) and add extra shiitakes and fresh brown mushrooms, plus scallions, garlic and ginger. Use apple cider vinegar. We think sesame oil is fine for Passover but a lot of people don’t; it’s okay even without it.

Whatever soup you offer, keep the vegetables in. I never really understand the appeal of throwing out good veg just to have a 1950s-style “clear consommé”.

Microwave matzah balls?!

You can, actually, but not the conventional way, at least not in water to cover, mimicking the usual stovetop boiling. I tried it one afternoon last week just to see, using the classic back-of-box recipe just to be sure (I try these things so you don’t have to…). Continue reading →

Filed under: high-speed soup, holiday cooking, Microwave tricks, Vegetabalia | Tagged: food, Jewish cooking, Passover, recipes, vegetarian | Comments Off on A Microwaveable Passover, 5778 (2018) edition

Faster Roasted Tomato Soup

Posted on March 7, 2016 by DebbieN

Yeah, I know, it’s early March, the winds and rain and snow and tornadoes are still doing their thing around much of the country and here in Pasadena the chill has set in…sort of, to about 75 degrees or so daytime. With actual rain last night.

And it’s tax season.

So what we really need is something to brighten the last dregs of winter. I was thinking tomato soup, myself.

Why was I thinking it? Because so many food articles in the past couple of weeks have mentioned slow-roasted tomatoes, charred tomatoes, and so on to improve the obviously lacking flavor of winter tomatoes and avoid using canned ones. One chef got flamed for suggesting in the New York Times food section that “local” is not the sane way to go with produce that simply isn’t producing in winter in the northeast, and that canned tomatoes are not the worst idea in the world after all. Shame! Shame!

Actually, I agree with her–and not just because I’m the original purple thumb when it comes to gardening. In a surreal reversal of my hideously lacking garden skills, I actually have three–count ’em, three–grape tomato plants in bloom and producing the occasional tomato-let as we speak. I even have basil and rosemary and mint and thyme that I haven’t killed through inattention and forgetting to water. But really, even so, there’s no way I’d set myself up as a homesteader on those flimsy credentials. We’d starve.

Tomatoes are one of those things–either you’ve got the Fresno specials (or something local and preferably from your own garden so you can brag) in the summer and they’re divine with nothing but a bit of olive oil and vinegar, or even just plain, or else it’s winter and you’ve got blah tomatoes that are kind of orange and grainy. Or you’ve got canned tomatoes, preferably no-salt Romas. Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with that in winter. Or any other time you’re making microwave marinara.

However…If your supermarket tomatoes will consent to ripen on a counter near a window for a couple of days, you might be able to eke out some actual tomato flavor from them. They may still not be fantastic, and one or two may start to develop soft spots, but it’s still worth doing anyway. Keep turning them gently every day to minimize the risk of spoilage and use them. They should at least redden.

And as mentioned above in the numerous food section articles, you can do the slow-roast-on-parchment-in-the-oven thing to them and they’ll be a bit more flavorful for sauces and tomato soup. But it takes about 45 minutes to an hour. And I’m impatient.

So today I rescued a couple of aging Roma tomatoes from my countertop and decided to try pan-roasting them, as in frying pan. Would they take on a char? Would they taste better? Would they make soup worth eating?

Bear in mind this is an experiment more than a proper recipe with specific quantities, but yes, it worked, and it only took about 10 minutes from start to finish. Maybe the flavor’s not as glorious as if I’d oven-roasted them for an hour, but the lack of waiting makes it reasonably good, and the garlic makes up for the rest of it. Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, frugality, high-speed soup, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: food, recipes, soups, tomatoes | Comments Off on Faster Roasted Tomato Soup

Losangelitis: ‘Tis the season for tisanes

Posted on December 27, 2013 by DebbieN

I didn’t want to be writing this post. I really didn’t. It’s 85 degrees outside, for crying out loud! And I have Losangelitis again anyway–the local sinus and cough misery that sometimes leads to laryngitis if you strain your voice yelling at your kid to practice piano while you have it. It’s got no agreed-on cause or cure, and absolutely no respect for sunshine and palm trees and tomato plants that are starting to bloom in my backyard (because Pasadena is weird, and for no better reason–I’m a purple thumb gardener at best, but if we get tomatoes out of this I’m good with it…)

I know the rest of the country is suffering worse than I am (and my husband; a coughing fit out of me at 3 a.m. is no joy for him either). I know it’s cold and snowy and icy and I don’t exactly miss it this time around.

But if you’re stuck at home with a cold and you want to lessen the misery a little without resorting to cold medicines and menthol-eucalyptus lozenges and other disorienting and/or sugary stuff, I actually have a few suggestions.

The first (if it’s definitely a cold virus and not a bacterial thing) is ibuprofen–helps shrink the sinus and upper airways inflammation so there’s less “production” to congest you. Also reduces pain–you might cough less and feel less sore and worn out. Always a plus.

The second is un- or very lightly sweetened (your option) tisanes, which you can make the regular boil-water-and-pour-over-herbs-etc-in-mug way or just microwave a mugful of water with the desired additions until hot (1-2 minutes depending on your microwave and mug of choice, make sure the handle doesn’t get too hot). You don’t have to pay for a box of exotic tea-like mixtures unless you happen to like them, in which case, go ahead.

Not everyone thinks tisanes should taste medicinal, and I’m with them generally. Why be weird for weirdness’ sake? But they give you the option of mixing reasonable flavors you might not otherwise consider.

Sweet-ish tisanes

I generally go for something aromatic and herbal and vaguely sweet plus maybe something “hot”–either ginger or clove–and something mildly citrus–a little lemon or orange or lime juice. I don’t want too much sweet or acid when I’m sick; I want a combination of soothing plus heat.

Mint leaves–fresh is much better than dried–are an obvious choice for tea and tisanes, especially for when you have a cold. A good couple of stalks in a mug of boiling water and let steep a minute or so. A squeeze of lemon works fine. A quarter-to-half teaspoon of sugar will keep the leaves greener if you’re microwaving, but it’s optional. Moroccans and plenty of others require black tea and a lot more sugar (I’ve heard “three handfuls per pot” as a boast, and I’ve tasted it, and my teeth still haven’t forgiven me). If you’re skipping the caffeine or theophylline (the tea version of caffeine), leave it out. Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, Diabetes, frugality, high-speed soup, Microwave tricks, soup | Tagged: cough remedies, flu season, herbal teas, microwaving, quick soups, sinusitis, tisanes, vegetable broth | Comments Off on Losangelitis: ‘Tis the season for tisanes

The Carmen Maura special

Posted on August 31, 2013 by DebbieN

(The gazpacho edition)

My gazpacho has some extra ingredients like herbs and chile flakes–but nothing from the medicine cabinet!

So okay, five or six posts in a row–all summer long, in fact–with no recipes. Oy. I’m sure that says something about my summer between my daughter’s bat mitzvah in late June and the day she started back to school.

Contrary to the impression of no cooking, no cooking, especially in 100 degree heat (a sane approach to life if ever there were one) I have actually done some cooking, just not a lot of new dishes. So this post is just to catch up in summary form…

The bat mitzvah Saturday night dance party for instance–I made the cake for it, a huge monster of a Sacher torte. And yes, it was Duncan Hines devil’s food cake made with applesauce instead of oil for the layers, because it’s still better than from scratch, and a lot faster. None of my friends cook at all, I’m sorry to discover, and they were all bizarrely impressed that I didn’t get my cake from Costco, so despite how dismayed and embarrassed I was that they were fawning over a box mix cake, I took it as graciously as I could and didn’t tell them. It was actually a good cake, but huge. Four, count ’em four, boxes worth of DH for a very large 4-layer cake. Way too much. Apricot fruit spread between layers, killer chocolate ganache–from scratch, but easy–on top (another post will be dedicated to the shocking true story of ganache and its many creative uses, but it’ll have to wait until it cools down out here), plus a little creative decorating with strawberries and grapes by two friends when the upper layer split on the way to the forum, right before I could frost it, and I didn’t have the brains to just flip the whole thing over.

You know how that goes: you’ve rushed over to get there before the guests arrive, you’re wearing your grubbiest can-get-chocolate-frosting-on-and-no-one-notices black teeshirt and brown pants, you’ve forgotten your party clothes and your camera. Your friends see you looking harried and sweaty in the back kitchen, wielding a tub of ganache at a cracked cake and the chocolate fumes just get to them. They rush around sticking fruit on top like it’s kindergarten craft time again. They’re hard to stop once they get going, to tell you the truth. People really liked the cake anyway, and we had leftovers for the next 10 DAYS…still working it off.

TIP: don’t stick green grapes on top of chocolate ganache, they really don’t go all that well tastewise even if they looked fun at the time.

What else in the way of summer cooking? A bowl of dough in the fridge, turned into pitas and calzones (once the sun went down far enough that I could stand to turn the oven on for 20 minutes at a hop). Did that several times.

Frittatas–omelets for the three of us with mushrooms, onions, marinated artichoke hearts and feta, or spinach and feta, or just feta and feta…a lot of those, this summer, with about half the yolks removed and not missed at all. Makes a 10-minute supper, and you get your Julia Child mojo on when you go to flip it. You get to tell everybody to give you some room and keep the cat out of egg flippin’ range. Very impressive.

What else? Hummus–yet again, I know. Although I’ve made two batches this summer using chickpea flour instead of actual cooked chickpeas. Chickpea flour is raw, so you have to mix it up with water to a thick batter and then microwave it a couple of minutes, until it’s cooked through–it’ll be pretty thick, maybe even solid, but it’ll have lost the raw-bean taste when it’s done. Then I blended it in a food processor with water, garlic, lemon juice, cumin and tehina–which was fine, actually, and very smooth…until I packed it into the fridge and took it out the next day. It had set up like tofu, sliceable and slightly gelatinous! A little weird, no doubt about it. But still edible! and quick, dammit, very quick.

Other things–eggplant parmigiana, twice or three times, and really good. No apologies necessary.

Extra eggplant slices with a surprisingly good low-sodium chipotle salsa from Trader Joe’s and some low-fat mozzarella, microwaved and slid onto toasted ciabatta or fingerbread. Worth doing again, maybe even in casserole form–half salsa, half marinara, kind of a smoky parmigiana? Could be all right.

But it’s summer, you say. Where is all the fruit? You’re not wrong. Nectarines, plums of all shapes and colors, a few apricots, a few cherries, strawberries, and figs…all of them, eaten raw. But in the way of cooking (minimally, anyhow) I made a fantastic “raw blueberry pie” a week ago, cutting back a little on the sugar in the recipe I had from the San Jose Mercury News from years back, and using the microwave to cook the “jam” part (water, potato or cornstarch, sugar, 1 cup of blueberries, stirring madly every 30 seconds to avoid the starch turning into a rubber lump, and lime juice after the fact, once it thickened) before mixing in the other 3-4 cups of blueberries raw and sticking the whole thing in a graham cracker crust and chilling it.

But summer is mostly about tomatoes. Even in California, it is really, really HARD to get good tomatoes at the supermarkets, even in summertime (don’t even ask about corn, the prices are a disgrace to the nation). Unless you go to the Armenian corner grocery (where I’m headed yet again in about 5 minutes) to pick up bags and bags of huge, ripe Fresno tomatoes for salads. For about six or seven dollars, I can get ten or even more large beefsteak-style tomatoes…and these actually taste like something. They’re not the ones that go to the supermarket, because they just don’t last. They go to the small ethnic markets because they’re too ripe, and everyone knows that the regulars don’t shop small when it comes to tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and so on. They’ll get snatched up, no problem.

So what do you do when you get a couple of tomatoes that were pretty seriously ripe to begin with and are starting to split or get poked by the stems of the other tomatoes only a couple of days later?

I make gazpacho, because it’s a 5-second soup, it’s cold, it only takes what I have in the fridge, and I know I can eat half a cup at lunch every day this coming week and feel full for hours, especially in this heat. It’s the perfect diet food.

Well that, plus the fact that it makes me feel (momentarily, anyhow) like Carmen Maura in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. It’s probably the most famous (mis-)use of gazpacho at the movies, and very funny. Continue reading →

Filed under: appetizers, cooking, DASH Diet, frugality, high-speed soup, movies, soup, Vegetabalia | Tagged: Carmen Maura, food, gazpacho, soups, tomatoes | Comments Off on The Carmen Maura special

Not Stone Soup

Posted on February 11, 2011 by DebbieN

Stone Soup Foodworks of Ottawa, which also uses the slogan "Slow Food. Fast"--what can you do?

If you’ve come to Slow Food Fast looking for the little green Ottawa soup truck, I have bad news and good–I’m not them. (Don’t know whether that’s good or bad, but I’m in Los Angeles, so it’d be a bit of a schlep.)

The good news is that I have found the link to Stone Soup Foodworks for the lost and hungry Canadians among you and it looks pretty good. Like David Ansel of The Soup Peddler in Austin, Texas, Stone Soup’s Jacqueline Jolliffe is getting on a roll with “soupscriptions” as well as on-the-spot takeout soups, salads, etc. made of real ingredients, mostly local and organic.

Why soup? Because soup made from real ingredients, not packets and cans, is more than most people want to tackle at home, I think. Good soup, as both Ansel and Jolliffe say, takes time to develop. And especially in winter, a cup of real soup at lunch helps you push aside the irritations of the day for awhile.

Both Ansel and Jolliffe are doing something entirely different from what I do here on Slow Food Fast–they cook complex and difficult soups in large batches and sell them to subscribing and loyal customers who only have to pay for takeout by the cup or heat up a delivered quart of soup to have something good. That’s their idea of “slow food, fast.”

My idea of slow food fast is to cook a week’s worth, say perhaps 8-10 servings’ worth, of decent, inexpensive, from-scratch vegetable or bean soup in as little time as possible, preferably in less than 20 minutes all told, with as much help as a microwave oven can reasonably give (which turns out to be a surprising amount, so why not) and without relying on salt to build flavor. And I want it to taste good.

Mostly, I want you to be able to do that yourself at home without feeling like it’s too much work or time and too many steps to cook and eat fresh real food–particularly fresh, inexpensive bulk vegetables–on a regular basis.

If you like to cook slow (say, on the weekend), you can do the artisanal thing at the stovetop for an hour or two. But if you want to get done in a hurry without having to babysit your pots and pans, microwaving is a pretty good, mostly safe, and comparatively very energy-efficient way to go, if you play to its strengths. You can let the flavors develop overnight in the refrigerator (and they generally will) instead of cooking and cooking and cooking just to get to the point where the vegetables are cooked through and then cooking some more to get the flavors to meld.

Case in point: Jolliffe makes a Thai butternut squash soup for Stone Soup Foodworks that looks delicious on the newsroom interview–but she has to cook her onion base down for 40 minutes, and either roasts the butternut squash for an hour in a conventional oven or–this is what she did on camera–buys sacks of precooked and puréed organic winter squash from a local farm. Granted you can do that–in the US, we’d probably just open a can of packed pumpkin, which you can now get organic fairly cheaply in most places, especially after last year’s shortages at Libby’s.

butternut squash ready to microwave

I guess the decision rests on her storage accommodations for the soup truck. But if she were to use a microwave, she could cook a fresh butternut squash–a big one–in about 10-12 minutes and then decide whether to purée or chunk the flesh for her soups, maybe pan-roast Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, DASH Diet, Eating out, frugality, haute cuisine, high-speed soup, Microwave tricks, nutrition, Revised recipes, soup, Vegetabalia | Tagged: butternut squash, David Ansel, food trucks, Jacqueline Jolliffe, microwave cooking, slow food, Slow Food Fast, Soup Peddler, soups, Stone Soup Foodworks | Comments Off on Not Stone Soup

Bok Choy Broth

Posted on December 18, 2010 by DebbieN

Bok choy-based hot and sour

Usually when I get home from traveling I’m in a state where I don’t really want to cook, but I want real food, and I’m sick of the bread-and-cheese-sticks-and-carrots-and-nuts we bring on the plane in self-defense. The other thing I really want right away is vegetabalia–restaurants, particularly hotel restaurants, seem reluctant to put any on the plate. Microwaved fresh vegetable soup is an easy and satisfying answer–15 minutes and you don’t have to go shopping for anything fancy.

It’s also the answer when it’s cold and rainy and everyone in the house has been down with the crud (aka “Losangelitis”). Today, I wanted something with greens in it like minestrone, but tasting more like hot and sour soup, to cut through the fog that had condensed in my head, and I did NOT want to work hard (also because of said mental/temporal fog). I had the basics for a vegetable broth–an onion, some celery stalks, a handful or so of “baby cut” carrots more usually reserved for my daughter’s school lunches. A fat clove of garlic. Half a bunch of bok choy that was still in decent shape from two days ago when I microwaved it as a side to stretch leftover Chinese takeout. And in the cupboard, miraculously, I still had three dried shiitake mushrooms in a plastic bag.

Bok choy is one of the Cheap Vegetables ™–usually below a dollar a pound, even in big-chain supermarkets. Not baby bok choy, which is cute and pretty and mild; stores charge three times as much for that. I like the full-grown, poetically dark-leaved, white-stalked bok choy, the kind sumi-e masters choose for their still lives.

Sometimes for a vegetable at dinner (as mentioned above) I just nuke a cleaned and trimmed head of bok choy whole for a couple of minutes in a longish lidded container with a little water in the bottom, cut it up and serve it as-is or drizzled with a little soy sauce and sesame oil. You don’t need anything else to dress it up (and of course, I have pretty low standards for presentation). Its fresh, radishy flavor mellows into something richer and more aromatic as it cooks down and produces its pale-green pot liquor. You don’t want to waste that; it’s a perfect addition to a vegetarian consommé, especially when you’re going light on salt or calories.

I sometimes even skip the onion-carrot-celery-garlic vegetable stock base and make a really simple broth by just microwaving the bok choy all by itself with water to cover–especially when my head and stomach aren’t cooperating with me or with anything else. But that’s a little on the purist side of things, when I’m feeling so miserable all I want is something hot, clean-tasting and fresh with no distractions. For better times, I want a real soup with a bit more richness and variety, and bok choy definitely plays well with others.

Back to the hot-and-sour scenario, for example:

Shiitake mushrooms are expensive fresh at your local Whole Foods, about $13/lb. But a package of 15 or so dried caps sells for $3.50 in the Asian or International Foods section of your local supermarket, and the dried mushrooms are so much better for infusing a broth with pungent richness. They’re easiest to soak up in a microwave–a few minutes rather than half an hour.

Between those and the carrot-onion-celery aromatics, plus of course garlic, you’re set. Especially if you have a little container of z’khug (hot pepper-garlic-cilantro paste) in the freezer and can saw off a chunk to spice up your soup. Toasted sesame oil, vinegar, and low-sodium soy sauce–all optional. Ginger? You could. Ginseng? According to a friend from a Cantonese family, only if your mother insists. Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, DASH Diet, frugality, high-speed soup, Microwave tricks, Vegetabalia | Tagged: bok choy, Chinese cooking, hot and sour soup, low-sodium cooking, microwave cooking, soups, vegetable broth, vegetarian cooking | Comments Off on Bok Choy Broth

Portobello season–so good it’s a shame

Posted on September 23, 2010 by DebbieN

Giant portobello mushrooms ready to broil with herbs, garlic and mozzarella

My local supermarket surprised me this week with a half-price deal on giant portobello mushrooms–4 huge caps for $3, so of course I decided to get double that and just find odd spaces to tuck them all into the fridge. I love mushrooms but I haven’t bought them much in the past few years because they’ve gotten pricey and because my daughter didn’t start liking them until this year. Why make the kid the arbiter? No great reason, really, but it seems like a waste to make an expensive but not particularly nutritious treat as part of dinner and then have your kid turn her nose up at it. If I had to choose, broccoli or cauliflower or tomatoes were usually going to win out.

But this year my daughter’s finally old enough to appreciate mushrooms (and of course, so’s my husband). So when they came home for dinner after sunset at the end of Yom Kippur services, I took a pair of these hubcaps and threw together a quick appetizer–something I almost never bother with just for us, but I might be tempted to do it more often now, because it’s too simple to be so good.

Half a giant portobello cap should be a decent appetizer serving if you have to split, or serve a whole one per person as a side dish if you have enough. Smaller mushrooms would work too, but the big ones are meaty and impressive-looking. The grater gets a workout on this one unless you already have some pesto handy, but it’s still only about a minute’s worth of work.

Broiled Portobello Caps

2-3 giant (or any sized) portobello mushroom caps, stem end trimmed, rinsed lightly all over to get any dirt off without peeling the skin or losing any gills
clove of garlic (or more, if you need to scale up)
1/8 or so red or yellow onion
~1 t. butter
pinches of shredded fresh or crumbled dry Italian herbs–basil or thyme for preference, dill or marjoram or sage are ok too
~1 oz. mozzarella or baby swiss cheese
grating or pinch of nutmeg

EASY OPTION: the mushrooms plus pesto plus the cheese and nutmeg

Wash and trim the mushroom caps and place them gill-side up on foil-lined tray (toaster oven works for this if you have only 2-3 caps). If you have the stems and want to do something with them, trim a thin slice off the cut end and either broil them alongside or chop them with some of the onion, then fry or nuke the mixture half a minute and add it to the caps before the cheese.

In a small bowl or saucer grate the garlic and about a spoonful of onion on the fine holes of a grater. Grate a spoonful or so of butter on top, add the herbs and mash together. Smear some of the mixture (or the pesto, if you’re using that) on the gills of each mushroom cap, then grate the cheese over each and finally sprinkle or grate a little pinch of nutmeg on each one (don’t overdo this, but a little is really good). Broil in a toaster oven or bake in a regular oven at about 350 for 10-15 minutes or until the caps are cooked through and rendering liquid.

* * * * *

There’s one other incredibly quick and simple thing to do with a big portobello mushroom–it makes a surprisingly good microwave soup-for-one with nothing but the sliced-up mushroom nuked for a minute in a bowl or mug to catch the juices, then some milk added to it and heated again. A scraping of nutmeg and garlic is worthwhile, so’s a tiny crumble of sage or marjoram.

But the mushrooms and milk are flavorful enough on their own, too, especially when it’s just you and you’re in the mood for simplicity and have decided you’ve earned it. It’s been a week like that, so I can only hope the supermarket special is still on.

Filed under: appetizers, cooking, DASH Diet, high-speed soup, Vegetabalia | Tagged: appetizers, portobello mushrooms, vegetarian cooking | Comments Off on Portobello season–so good it’s a shame

Jazzing up Creamed Spinach

Posted on November 23, 2009 by DebbieN

Passing by the refrigerated prepared-foods shelves in the produce section of my local Whole Foods a few days ago, I couldn’t help noticing a 24-oz tub of creamed spinach…for $8.99. Six dollars a pound. Given that most of their deli and salad bar foods are about $8/lb., maybe that’s a comparative bargain, but still. You could buy six 1-lb. bags of frozen spinach from the Trader Joe’s for that. At my local Latino supermarket, you could get at least six and maybe twelve bunches of spinach, turnip greens, mustard greens, kale, maybe chard or beet greens too. Of course then you’d have to wash it all. And chop it, and cook it. But you’d also get to decide how.

Standard creamed spinach is one of the easier and frankly quicker side dishes to put together. If you want the plain-o, Norman Rockwell version, go to an older American cookbook such as Joy of Cooking or even the Victory Garden Cookbook. Basically you sauté fresh chopped or thawed frozen spinach in a little butter, stir in a spoonful or so of flour until the white flecks disappear, add cream or milk and heat it up until the flour thickens it. Sprinkle salt and pepper and maybe grate some nutmeg over it.

But gawd, is it bland. Rich maybe, but bland.

I’m not a huge butter-and-cream fan, more because I can’t really stomach large amounts of it personally than for any particular virtues of character. If I’m going to have calories, I want them to come from a knockout dessert, not the spinach. So rich isn’t enough. I want it to taste like something.

Of course, I’m also speaking from the perspective of someone who grew up wondering “If there’s no garlic, is it really food?” No, don’t just laugh at me–think about it: most of Nigella Lawson’s recipes work precisely because she adds a clove of garlic to old-standard British stodge. You know–garlic smashed potatoes. Magic! If just adding a clove of garlic to a batch of boiled potatoes was such a big revelation, it’s no wonder the Brits fell so hard for Indian food. And Italian. And Greek. Of course, I’ve fallen hard for them too.

So of course the first thing to add to spinach is garlic. To my mind the second necessity is lemon, and the third is herbs or spices. And possibly some kind of white fresh cheese. Here are a couple of possibilities that taste satisfying without relying on heavy cream or butter, and they can be done either on the stove or in a microwave. Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, Dairy, DASH Diet, frugality, high-speed soup, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: artichoke hearts, microwave cooking, palak paneer, recipes, soups, spanakopita, spinach, vegetables | Comments Off on Jazzing up Creamed Spinach

Slow Food Fast

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Microwaveable Matzah Balls–Yes We Can!

Crème de X: Purslane and basil dress up a lighter velouté

A Microwaveable Passover, 5778 (2018) edition

Faster Roasted Tomato Soup

Losangelitis: ‘Tis the season for tisanes

The Carmen Maura special

(The gazpacho edition)

Not Stone Soup

Bok Choy Broth

Portobello season–so good it’s a shame

Jazzing up Creamed Spinach

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Pyrex Warning

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About Slow Food Fast

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