I have learned about a new cooking ingredient called Red Palm Oil. It is a super food AND the taste is really nice. I needed to use this in order to make a new soup from the 1000 Foods to Eat Before you Die called Efo Riro. Every recipe I could find says you had to have the palm oil AND dried shrimp or crawfish to make this dish so I found both (I picked the dried shrimp). This dish is a traditional Nigerian Spinach Stew. It is made with lots of meat-in this case-beef, chicken legs and shrimp. Each item is cooked with the Red Palm Oil and then mixed together with spices and spinach. Do I think you should make Efo Riro? Well, the red palm oil is an interesting oil. It has two different cooking levels-not cooking at all or splattering red goblets all over the kitchen. I feel as if this is another miss. I threw out the rest of the red palm oil.
Today I took Caldo Gallego to the Clopine’s for Soup Night. Caldo Gallego is a Spanish soup made from turnips and turnip greens. It typically has some kind of pork-I used spicy andouille sausage and a bean- I used cannelloni beans. I know it sounds simple but it was so delicious. It is, of course, one of the 1000 Foods to Eat Before you Die. I know I have said this so many times, I don’t always get why something is in the book. In this case, I get it. It is a simple soup that doesn’t take any special ingredients but it has an amazing flavor that comes from the browned onions and garlic along with the actual turnips. If you look on-line, there are many a way to make it. I used All Recipes but didn’t put in potatoes since Ivan can’t eat them and really wanted it to be a bit spicy so I used the andouille sausage. Need a quick soup? Give this one a shot.
So this is one of the 1000 things that really sound horrible BUT is really delicious. The Danes eat a cold buttermilk soup (Koldskal) that they sprinkle with berries and a type of Danish biscuit/cookie made with oats, lemon and cardamon (Kammerjunker). I used the recipes from the website Danish Food and Living. It has been so very hot here and I can say, this cold soup served for lunch is really refreshing.
Today we pretended to be French again. I made Bourride which is a French version of cioppino, and a food listed on the 1000 Things to Eat Before you Die. It is made with fennel, leeks and carrots and aioli is added to the broth in which halibut is poached. We sat outside and drank pastis and enjoyed the sun. Pastis, I must say, is not one of my favorite drinks but you add water to the alcohol and it turns cloudy-with an anise taste-is much like ouzo. While it is not my favorite, it does pair really nicely with the aioli. More than anything, the color of the dish is nice. I’m still not French, but I did feel pretty French today.
So one good thing about being about the virus is that there is time in the evening when I am not commuting home to make soup. Alot has been written about the goodness of soup and I do think much of that is deserved and some is overated. A chef who was born in the 1800’s and lived in France said:
Soup puts the heart at ease, calms down the violence of hunger, eliminates the tension of the day, and awakens and refines the appetite.
Auguste Escoffier
On the whole, I am not much of a soup fan-I had to make every week for my mom while she lived with me as she ate soup every day and at some point I ran out of ideas for soup. Unfortunately, there are several soups on the Mimi Sheraton 1000 Foods to Eat before you Die so this week I made three from the list.
Soup number 1 is Indian Mulligatawny soup. I have had this many a time in the Bengal lounge of the Empress Hotel in Victoria-I loved that lounge and I loved their Mulligatawny soup. A nice mix of veggies and chicken flavored with curry… I love madras curry so used that in place of traditional curry to make it spicy. The version I used was made used the recipe from Simple Recipes.
Soup number 2 is Chinese West Lake Soup. This is an upscale version an egg drop soup and can be made with either beef or fish. With Elena a pescatarian, I made it with cod. So just as egg drop soup is pretty boring, so is West Lake Soup but just with protein. Hmmm. I used the Serious Eats recipe. I also dosed it with siracha (absolutely not in the recipe but I did think it reduced the boringness of the soup.
Finally, Soup number 3 is Solyanka or Russian Pickle Soup. So I know this sounds horrible but I promise, this was the winner. It is creamy and salty and the mix of carrots, potatoes and pickles with sour cream and a host of spices did the trip. The recipe I used came from The Noble Pig website. I haven’ cooked anything from this site before but the recipe was fabulous so I’m looking there again.
I am now on a soup kick. Haven’t tried these but am going to work myself through a few more from around the world…
18 Classic Soups to Try from Around the World