I was going to call this recipe “Kitchen Sink Soup,” since the standard household equipment is a common way of describing anything that could be anything in the way of food. Kitchen Sink pizza, salad, pasta — we’ve heard it before. But you know what? “Kitchen sink” just doesn’t conjure very appetizing images to me. I’ll admit something’s not right with my drain these days. It’s probably clogged up with all those random foods I’ve been tossing on pizzas.
Okay, it’s not summer anymore, and Indian summer has not yet arrived. Instead, this is about the time of year people start taking flu shots, and sweaters and scarfs out from hibernation boxes and changing their sheets to flannel. I do all these things minus the flu shots. But I do have a good way to boost the immune — fresh veggies and bloody, bloody, antioxidant-rich beets. To keep that blood pumping.
They don’t grow in the ground, like potatoes, and they’re not stone fruit, like cherries, so why the deceptive name? They also share more semblance in taste to citrus rather than cherry or grape tomatoes, whose appearance they’re strikingly similar to, at least once their tomatillo-like husks are stripped. Which might leave one to throw their hands up and exclaim, what is this fruit/vegetable/freaky plant? At least it doesn’t have a stray animal in its name, gooseberry.
Note: This is not a recipe. Ceci n’est pas une recette. It is more a suggestion, and as so many traditional peasant dishes are, a great way to use up leftovers. Like chilaquiles, a common breakfast in Mexico. Now, whenever there’s a bag of stale tortilla chips leftover from some party, it’s a common breakfast for me, too. Alright, and midnight snack. Dinner? Why not. And seconds, please.
Do you like seafood? Goes the childhood tease. Yes, and you “see” an open mouthful of chewed-up food. I hope you like seafood, but I’m not going to show you that. I had meant to show you a whole fish here, a nice, fat, single person-portion sardine. Sardines are the poorman’s seafood, and I thought that was very “me.” They have a fragile little pane of bones that you have to pick around, hence them being more work to eat. … Read More
“I’m not really a cheese person,” I told Nick Suarez a month or so ago, when he mentioned that the next Brooklyn Food Experiment would be based on cheese. That might be a problem, we nodded. And it’s been my lifelong Achilles’ heel as a foodie. Pungent blue cheese makes my face contort as I strain to complete the task of getting it down. Fluid, stinky cheese like Camembert can stay out of my range. I’ll blame it on my … Read More
So much to cook… so little time. September is a busy time of year! While the farmers may be slowing down for the first time since March, we’re stuck with everything they’ve thrown at us — and peppers are coming out of my ears. “Oh, I’m just going to roast them,” I told a friend, who laughed at the leftover pepperage after the Hapa Kitchen Luau. (Admittedly, I’d bought too many peppers from Garden of Eve; fifteen pounds doesn’t sound like a lot … Read More
I never did like candy corn. But this ice cream, at first lick, tastes a bit like the Halloween haunt. Perhaps I just got a heavy drizzle of honey stuck on my tongue with it (a main ingredient in candy corn). Then afterward, instead of a slightly sick feeling from the cloying, over-sweetness and gritty mouthfeel, the spoonful burst with the taste of fresh corn and pure creaminess. Sweet corn, sweet cream and sweet, wildflower honey. That’s my kind of … Read More
They say money can’t buy you friends, but I’ll be darned if food can’t. Who can resist a juicy beefsteak tomato, or a handful of yellow sungolds? It’s like an offering of sunshine. Much more personal, in my opinion, than a grimy gray bill.
Some of you guys are gonna say off the bat, I don’t like eggplant. And hey, that’s okay. They’re squishy, mushy, weird and hard to pinpoint the taste of. But I’ll bet if I gave you this soup and didn’t tell you what was in it (roasted eggplant), you’d slurp it to no satisfaction’s end. It’s smooth, creamy, cold and intensely flavorful. And sometimes, a little mystery only helps the effect.