Recipes « (y)our food choices™

Have you ever seen “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown? Pedro Almodóvar’s classic film about a woman trying to tell her married man friend (he’s a bit too old to be a boyfriend) that she’s pregnant with his child? There’s a scene where the main character is making gazpacho and the colors are just so vibrant and so intense you can almost taste the tomatoes. When I think of gazpacho I think of that scene and when S. wanted to make gazpacho after watching an episode of Gourmet’s “Diary of a Foodie,” I was all for it.

The tomatoes are starting to arrive in our Capay Farms produce boxes and they’re beautiful! Fresh, vine-ripened in-season heirloom tomatoes are a summer starter and a welcome addition to our fresh pantry. Two of these interestingly shaped pieces of fruit arrived in this week’s delivery, “Black Prince” tomatoes – dark crimson and green beauties. The first tomato went to good use as a sliced-up topping to scrambled eggs and bacon on toast. Topped with a few crunchy crystals of gray sea salt, they’re very close to food perfection. The second tomato sat a few days before S. transformed it into a refreshing gazpacho.

After reviewing a dozen or so recipes for gazpacho, S. got the gist of it and went to work blending the fresh produce we had on hand including the tomato, a cucumber, a couple of chopped Gypsy peppers and a handful of left over green onion tops along with water softened bread (from a homemade loaf, of course), a little red wine vinegar, juice from half a lemon, a dash or four of Tabasco and a drizzle of olive oil. With salt and pepper to finish, the puree went into the refrigerator to chill while J. baked his tuna stuffed Gypsy peppers, an inspiration from one of our fellow students in a food writing course we took from Jeanette Ferrary at Stanford last year.

We served the chilled gazpacho in small glass bowls with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a turn of the black pepper grinder. The result? A delicious, refreshing summer soup that served as the perfect companion to the oven roasted tuna-stuffed peppers. Even with the cold summer San Francisco weather, gazpacho has now become a staple soup among our recipes. It has also made J. want to watch the movie again (time to move the movie up in the Netflix queue). The menu, complete with Spanish tapas of course, usually includes the tuna-stuffed peppers and gazpacho.

Ole!

Simple Soup Broccoli Soup

Soup is one of those essential foods – it’s easy to make, it’s comforting and if it’s made well, very satisfying. Vegetable soups are probably the easiest to make. When you think about what soup is it’s hard to imagine a simpler cooking method. Vegetables are chopped and cooked ‘till just right in some sort of liquid – water or broth – and maybe finished with some milk or butter or cream to add richness.

For the last couple of weeks, the CSA box we receive from Farm Fresh to You has arrived with some very large broccoli stems with very small florets. We could have simply chopped up the stems and sautéed them with a bit of garlic but these stems were big, really big, and so I thought instead of letting them rot in the fridge I would create another soup to freeze and eat at a later date. I can’t really say the recipe is another Bittman-inspired treat (I looked up his recipe when I was just about done) but his cream of broccoli soup recipe contains most of what I’ve included here. I keep his cookbook on our shelf for that “just in case” moment when I think I might need a recipe reminder.

The vegetable broth I made starts with the vegetable “scraps” I keep in the fridge. I’ve learned to save the odds and ends leftover from other recipes just for this purpose. “Waste not, want not” has been my motto for a while and in this economy it’s the perfect practice. Since I’m also working tonight it will be a great quick meal for S., along with a sandwich.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

Olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
1 pound of broccoli
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon flour
4-6 cups vegetable broth
1-2 cups whole milk or cream
Salt & pepper

Sauté the onion in olive oil in a heavy bottom stockpot until translucent, 4-5 minutes. Peel the broccoli stems and cut into small pieces, keep the florets separate. Add the chopped stems and cook another 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for about 30 seconds. Add the flour and cook again for about 1 minute. Add the vegetable broth and stir. Bring to simmer and cook until the vegetables are tender.

Remove from heat and puree the soup in a blender in batches. Add the soup back to the stockpot, add florets and allow the soup to cook a couple of minutes. Finally, add the milk or cream and finish with a little salt and pepper to taste.