3 nourishing soup recipes to revive you - The Washington Post

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3 nourishing soup recipes to revive you - The Washington Post

3 nourishing soup recipes to revive you - The Washington Post

Posted: 07 Jan 2021 07:30 AM PST

For Olga Massov, that looks like a fragrant, restorative chicken-and-rice soup; G. Daniela Galarza shared a version of Italian wedding soup; and I developed a recipe for an easy farro-and-kale soup with peanut butter and a hint of spice.

Each brings all of the warmth, comfort and flavor you might desire this time of year without leaving you feeling weighed down and ready for a nap immediately after eating. So if you are looking for a recipe or three to help kick things off on the right foot, soup's on.

Restorative Chicken and Rice Soup

As a Russian immigrant, I grew up with a familiar collection of Eastern European and Ashkenazi Jewish recipes: latkes, sharlotka, borscht. But it's the chicken soup, a.k.a. Jewish penicillin, that I remember most vividly from my sick days as a child (and I got sick a lot). Eating the soup made me feel like I was slowly being brought back to life.

A few years ago, I was working as an editor at Phaidon, and my boss asked me to edit a manuscript from Elizabeth Street Cafe, the popular Vietnamese-inspired restaurant in Austin. One of the recipes was a comforting, congee-like chicken-and-rice breakfast soup. Eating it made me feel nourished and restored. I made it over and over, tweaking here and there, and finally creating my own version, an amalgamation of the Eastern European and Asian traditions: looser, brothier, but still every bit as aromatic as the original.

Visually, the soup is a feast for the eyes: bright green leaves of aromatic Thai basil and cilantro, as well as thin rings of chile, crunchy mung bean sprouts, bright white slivers of onion and deep red dots of sambal oelek. Fish sauce and brown sugar form a strong umami backbone, making you crave another spoonful even before you've swallowed your first. At home, we jokingly call this soup "the corpse reviver," and for good reason. Whatever ails you, a bowl of this elixir — heady broth, aromatic with ginger, star anise, clove and cinnamon, thickened with glutinous rice, and fortified with pieces of chicken — instantly makes you feel revived and nourished.

Italian Wedding Soup

Nothing, it seems, about the dish we call Italian wedding soup is straightforward. Not its name, which is an imperfect translation of "minestra maritata," meant to refer to the careful marriage of its ingredients — not its place on a wedding menu. And not its ingredients and preparation, which vary widely from region to region in Italy. In the United States, it's best known, and well-loved, as a soup of greens, tiny pasta and meatballs, flavorful and fortifying.

As a child, it was a soup my babysitter, whose family came from Southern Italy, made for me and my brother on cold winter nights when my parents worked late. I remember helping shape the meatballs, tucking the squishy meat into my cupped palms. I remember the sound of her chopping crunchy greens and tender herbs and the smells that filled the kitchen, pungent and rich: garlic and pork and a tickle of spice. There would always be sausage in the soup, too, but I'd count the tiny meatballs in each bowl, pick around the greens and ask for extra cheese to sprinkle on top. Mostly, I remember it being a warming comfort, as all great soups should be.

This recipe is dedicated to those memories. There are several steps, but they lead to a satisfying soup that can be on the table in under an hour. While the broth simmers with spicy sausage, carrots and celery, mix up the meatballs, then roast them; tiny meatballs cook quickly. When they're done they go into the soup along with tiny pasta — orzo or ditalini or whatever you'd like — and lots of chopped leafy greens. Escarole is traditional, but kale, spinach, chard, collards or any dark leafy vegetable works well. Lemon zest and juice perk up the dense, meaty broth. I like to serve each bowl topped with chopped herbs and lots of grated cheese.

Farro, Kale and Peanut Butter Soup

This is my first recipe for Voraciously, so I developed a dish that is very representative of my style — not too many ingredients, straightforward instructions, and flavors that intrigue and excite.

I tend to think of recipes more as guidelines than prescriptions. While, yes, everything that I publish should work and taste delicious as written, you know your tastes better than I do, and you should make adjustments as you see fit. Salt and spice are two components that first come to mind in this regard, but this idea extends to the remaining ingredients, where I will try to point out ideas for substitutions, as appropriate, that can help you make use of whatever you already have on hand, what is more easily accessible or what aligns more with your palate. In the style of Tabitha Brown, it's your business.

Back to this particular dish: The ingredients listed in the recipe title do the bulk of the work in flavoring this soup, while a handful of pantry basics, along with a lone jalapeño, round everything out and add a hint of background heat. The result is simple, comforting and full of nutritious grains and dark, leafy greens. (This soup also happens to be meat- and dairy-free for anyone who is looking for vegan recipes.) And though you might be skeptical of putting peanut butter in your soup, I'm sure you'll turn into a believer after your first spoonful.

Why You Should Follow the Recipe - The New York Times

Posted: 06 Jan 2021 07:30 AM PST

Good morning. I spend a lot of time telling you recipes don't matter. I know that if you're cooking a lot and you're confident and you understand triangulations of sweet, salt, acid and heat that you don't even need recipes, just prompts. We call those prompts no-recipe recipes, and in a couple of months you'll see them collected in an exciting new cookbook (pre-order today!). Improvisational cooking can be a blast.

But my going on about that every week doesn't mean that recipes aren't important, doesn't mean that they don't tell particular stories, doesn't mean that you shouldn't ever follow them exactly when you cook. That's the argument of our Genevieve Ko, anyway, who has made a resolution to do just that this year: "to follow recipes exactly as written," she wrote for The Times this week, "to get to know their creators without altering the dishes to match my own experiences or tastes."

This is an exciting way to cook, as it happens, a chance really to learn new flavors and techniques, not just to approximate them. "The more nuanced reward," Genevieve continues, "is challenging my culinary framework, to keep moving toward a more expansive and equitable worldview. And my hope is that this form of cooking with empathy, if enough people adopt it, can lead to greater unity and understanding even beyond the kitchen."

I think that's right. I know I'll keep cooking without recipes sometimes. But when I do cook with them this year, I'm going to try to follow Genevieve's lead. Won't you join us?

Genevieve suggests you give it a shot with carne con chile rojo, with dulce de leche chocoflan, with coconut chicken curry.

I'll add Yewande Komolafe's recipe for jollof rice, and Vallery Lomas's recipe for shrimp Creole (above), and Yotam Ottolenghi's recipe for an eggplant, lamb and yogurt casserole. Make Gabrielle Hamilton's cold candied oranges as if you were building a model airplane. You'll experience the cooking differently than if you simply shrugged and omitted ingredients or changed how you use them according to experience or whim. Walk in the shoes of the recipe's creator. You'll learn something every time.

Other recipes to follow exactly this week or very soon: coconut curry chicken noodle soup; mapo tofu spaghetti; vegan mushroom and leek rolls; the greenest green salad; salmon with sesame and herbs.

And there are thousands more waiting for you on NYT Cooking. Go look around the site and apps and see what you discover: Pierre Franey's linguine with lemon sauce, say, or David Tanis's spicy meatballs with chickpeas. You can save the recipes you like. And rate the ones you've made.

(Yes, you need to be a subscriber to do that. Subscriptions are the lifeblood of NYT Cooking. They support the work that we love to do. Please, if you are able, I hope you will subscribe to NYT Cooking today.)

We will meanwhile be standing by to help, should anything go sideways in your kitchen or our technology. Just send up a flare: cookingcare@nytimes.com. Someone will get back to you, I promise.

Now, it's nothing to do with quinces or duck breasts, but if you're in the market for new subscriptions, Rusty Foster's "Today in Tabs" has returned, on Substack. And Jim Knipfel, with whom I worked at NYPress back when that newspaper was in the downtown trenches fighting the good fight against the Village Voice, has brought his "Slackjaw" column back, on Patreon.

James Wood on Beethoven in the London Review of Books is very good.

So, too, is this conversation between Gilbert Cruz, the culture editor of The Times, and Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic.

Finally, you should spend some time with this Times article about the pandemic experiences of essential workers on the American food supply chain, with interviews by Mahira Rivers, Rachel Wharton and Aidan Gardiner. It's revealing. Do that and I'll be back on Friday.

TODAY’s top 10 recipes of 2020 - TODAY

Posted: 31 Dec 2020 11:39 AM PST

2020 has been an unprecedented year. And often, in times of turmoil, it's not uncommon to turn to the comfort of cooking. With more time spent at home than ever before, it's given us all a chance to get better acquainted with our inner chef. From the homemade sourdough sensation to the banana bread boom to the whirlwind of whipped coffee posts popping up on social media, this was the year to get creative in the kitchen. We took a look at back at the most popular recipes in TODAY Food's recipe library to see what our readers were whipping up in 2020. These dishes run the gamut from minimalist modern foods to old favorites. Here are the top 10 recipes:

1. Dolly Parton's Milk Gravy
Dolly Parton's Milk Gravy

Terri Peters / TODAY

Legendary country singer Dolly Parton makes creamy gravy with only 4 ingredients in just 5 minutes. "Every now and then I'll make my husband, Carl, an extra special breakfast. Some of our favorites are Southern staples like sausage patties and flaky biscuits, and this creamy milk gravy is the perfect topping," Parton told TODAY in December.

2. Easy Egg Bite Muffins
Easy Egg Bite Muffins

Ghazalle Badiozamani / Instant Loss Eat Real, Lose Weight: How I Lost 125 Pounds--Includes 100+ Recipes

Make sure to bake a double batch of Brittany Williams' easy egg bites. Serve some for breakfast and freeze the rest for busy mornings. They're a great way to start the day with a healthy and filling meal, especially if you're always in a hurry. In addition to being nutritious and time saving, they are also completely customizable. Leave out the cheese to ditch the dairy, swap in the family's favorite veggies or add ham or bacon for an extra protein boost. This is a great base recipe, so don't be afraid to change it up and get creative.

Related

3. Siri Daly's Sticky Ham Sandwiches
Siri Daly's Sticky Ham Sandwiches

Nathan R. Congleton / TODAY

TODAY contributor Siri Daly learned to make these sensational sliders from her friend's mom who made these sweet and savory sandwiches famous in her hometown. "This delicious, crowd-pleasing sandwich is truly the perfect game-day snack. I like to use disposable baking dishes for easy clean up, and for the fact that I am almost always transporting these sandwiches to some sort of football tailgate," Daly told TODAY back in 2016.

4. Kourtney Kardashian's 3-Ingredient Avocado Pudding
Kourtney Kardashian's 3-Ingredient Avocado Pudding

Samantha Okazaki / TODAY

Kourtney Kardashian calls this "a power meal in a cup" — and this recipe has been powering through as one of TODAY's favorites since 2016. Try it for breakfast or a satisfying snack. It only takes about a minute to make and there's no cooking needed. Just blitz all the ingredients in a blender and enjoy.

5. One-Pot Mexican Rice with Black Beans and Corn
One-Pot Mexican Rice with Black Beans and Corn

Maggie Shi

This delicious dinner recipe from 2016 is the very definition of a one-pot wonder. The main ingredients are pantry and freezer staples, it's family friendly, quick to prepare and keeps cleanup easy. Even though it's a vegetarian dish, it can easily adapt to be vegan-friendly or accommodate meat eaters.

6. Ina Garten's Shortbread Hearts
Ina Garten's Shortbread Hearts

Image Source / Getty Images stock

This is Ina Garten's go-to shortbread recipe. "These cookies are the quintessence of shortbread and have been my all-time favorite cookie since the first time I tried one, over fifteen years ago," Garten told TODAY earlier this month. She also uses the dough for lots of variations on this recipe — Linzer cookies, pecan shortbread and even raspberry tarts.

7. Sour Cream Rhubarb Cookies
Sour Cream Rhubarb Cookies

Maggie Shi / TODAY

Bright pink bits of rhubarb peek out from these pretty cookies, which are tangy, tart and lightly sweet all at once. The sour cream adds a smoothness that makes each bite a pleasure. With their soft, light-as-air texture, they practically melt in your mouth. They're perfect for special occasions but easy enough for an everyday treat.

8. Patti LaBelle's Sweet Potato Pie
Patti LaBelle's Sweet Potato Pie

Courtesy of Broadway Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC.

Singer Patti LaBelle learned this pie recipe from her best friend and hairstylist Norma Gordon Harris. "This sweet potato pie has a thin layer of brown sugar on the bottom crust. This 'black bottom' doesn't just add flavor, it also helps keep the filling from making the crust soggy. The recipe makes a good amount of the delicious filling — this isn't one of those skimpy sweet potato pies. It tastes like sweet potatoes, not pineapple or raisins or other fillers that some people stick in their pies," LaBelle told TODAY back in 2018. Serve slices of this perfect pie as is or with a dollop of whipped cream on top.

9. Rao's Meatballs with Marinara Sauce
Rao's Meatballs with Marinara Sauce

Courtesy of Rao's Restaurant

If you're looking for a hot and cozy fall recipe, look no further than these amazing meatballs from Rao's restaurant in New York City. Rao's has been serving up authentic Italian food since 1896. They recommend making these mouthwatering meatballs using only the freshest and best quality products. Their secret to a juicy and tender meatball is to bake or fry them and then simmer them for a good, long while in flavorful tomato sauce.

10. Thin-Cut 'Minute' Pork Chops
Thin-Cut 'Minute' Pork Chops

Nathan Congleton / TODAY

Calling these "minute" pork chops is only a bit of stretch. Thin-cut chops need to cook for just a couple of minutes on each side. This quick dinner gets its bold taste from a combination of salty soy sauce, rich butter and tangy balsamic vinegar. The flavor trifecta amps up the natural umami essence of the pork and makes it easy to pair with a wide range of sides.

5 Super Easy Slow Cooker Recipes With Just 2 Ingredients - Real Simple

Posted: 06 Jan 2021 02:21 PM PST

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