Soup
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Dorie’s Perfect Corn Chowder
It’s early February, and snow has covered the ground for weeks. Bundled up in scarves, hats, gloves, and snow boots, it’s hard to remember the feel of those late summer days when I first made this chowder, when the wind howled against the window, rain poured down, and I cuddled up with a book and a cup of tea. While those days just at the end of corn season are perfect for corn chowder, this recipe makes a hearty and comforting meal at any time of year. So let’s enjoy corn chowder as it gets colder and colder (and colder), since I don’t want to wait half a year to share it with you. (This recipe works great with frozen corn, so it really is perfect for the whole year – including these ice-cold January days.)
I’ve always loved all kinds of chowder, although clam chowder is a no-go for me (I’m allergic to clams). I comfort myself with lobster bisque, fish stew, and, of course, this delicious corn chowder. The source of its deliciousness is bacon, so for those who don’t eat pork, skip this recipe. (Please don’t try to make it vegetarian – it just won’t sing in the same way.) Though it’s not a topic I want to know more about, I am going to use this post to discuss pork production in the US.
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Sweet Potatoes, Lentils, and Spinach Red Curry
All of a sudden, summer has arrived in Chicago, along with a sense that we are returning to some semblance of normalcy. Instead of walking dates, there are dinners inside and out as we reunite with people we haven’t seen since before the pandemic began. There is a part of me that can’t believe this can resume: being unmasked inside when everyone is fully vaccinated, returning to travel, going out to dinner again.
While Covid has shown just how unpredictable the future can be, the need to cook meals each week remains constant. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been going into the office again, which means I need to make lunches in advance. This sweet potato curry is a go-to recipe for lunch – it travels well, heats up easily, and makes a filling meal. While this is really more of a winter stew (I intended to post it back in February, when it was still dark and cold outside…whoops), it’s good enough to eat at any time of year.
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Red Lentil and Split Pea Soup
Back over the summer, I had big plans for posting about Thanksgiving foods. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and I was going to embrace it like never before. I was planning to ask a friend for her recipe for bourbon-chocolate-pecan pie, post my favorite stuffing recipe (with hot Italian sausage and maple syrup), and look into the supply chain of cranberries. Unfortunately, none of that happened. (Things like work, Covid-19, and the election got in the way.) But I’m back, planning to post more regularly again, and wanted to restart with a warm soup for the cold December evenings.
I don’t know when I first made this soup, but it puts all other lentil soups to shame. I once made it for my friend Drew, who liked it so much that years later he still mentions it when we talk. (He also went out and bought lentils to make the soup – pounds and pounds of lentils. Two years later the remains of these lentils had started to sprout…but we made the soup and it tasted just fine with sprouted lentils.) What I’m trying to say is that if you are looking for a cozy pandemic soup, this is it.
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Chilled Cucumber Soup
As August turns to September, I am trying to hold onto summer as much as possible. The pandemic summer has meant long walks and, more importantly, lots and lots of picnics. With picnics the new norm for social events, the type of food I want to eat has expanded. Pre-pandemic, I likely would not have given this recipe a second glance. But the pandemic has made me more adventurous. I have learned to love food processors, appreciate anchovies, and have rethought what portable picnic food includes. Perfect for a picnic or hot night, this recipe is creamy and a little bit spicy, while the corn adds a sweetness to it that matches the cucumber and dairy base. If you’ve spent the summer eating gazpacho and need a new cold soup for September picnics, try this.
This soup, with its yogurt base, is the perfect opportunity to discuss dairy production, including the less appetizing parts of it. (Warning: this post is a bit manure-heavy. Consider reading this at a time when you are not eating.) There are many problems related to dairy production: the low price paid for milk (which squeezes smaller farmers and leads to increased “efficiency,” i.e. larger factory farms), the cycle of breeding cows for dairy production, dairy farming’s environmental impacts, and the low wages paid to a primarily immigrant workforce. While I wish I had space to discuss all of these issues, this post focuses on the environmental impacts – specifically the production of greenhouse gases and the threat of contaminated groundwater from manure.
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Gazpacho
Gazpacho is one of the true joys of summer, along with picnics in the park and reading on the beach. As July begins and real summer hits Chicago – hot and humid, and miraculously, this year perfectly sunny – it’s time for gazpacho. For years my mother made this recipe and I always loved it. When I finally asked her for it, I realized just how simple it is. You chop up some vegetables and mix them together with liquid, and then wait for the soup to get cold. That’s it. But despite its simplicity, there’s something special about it – especially when you add the crunch of the croutons to it.
I’ll stop raving about the gazpacho and get to the main ingredient: tomatoes. I know that I’ve already written about tomatoes and that there are a lot of ingredients I haven’t yet discussed. But it’s the middle of summer and a great time for socially distanced picnics, so I want everyone to be able to enjoy this recipe. For this post, I focus on tomatoes from Italy, which is a large producer of processed tomatoes. In 2018 Italy exported 1.74 billion Euros worth of processed tomatoes – 53 percent canned tomatoes, 35 percent tomato paste, and the remaining 12 percent of tomato sauce.
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Mediterranean Fish Stew
At some point during my childhood, fish stew became the dish that my father and I cooked together. This was always an extensive process: we’d buy or make fish stock, which was either bland or way too fishy; we’d cook bacon, chop up all the vegetables, add everything to the pot; and then we’d step back and wait. We’d taste it, realize it was all wrong (often too fishy), and separate the whole thing out into two pots and more or less start over. Somehow it always ended up tasting good in the end, although I still don’t understand how.
More recently, we’ve cooked various Mediterranean-style fish stews. This recipe is the most recent and, in my view, by far the best. I’ve simplified the original recipe so it can be made with household spices, added raisins to contrast with the saltiness from the anchovies, and chosen to use chicken stock instead of water, which some may see as sacrilegious. I don’t care; it’s my kind of fish stew. (I’ve also added shrimp, because what’s a fish stew without shrimp.)
Cod is the center of this stew. A bottom-dwelling fish, cod was once everywhere in the Atlantic; it’s said that you used to be able to walk across the ocean on the backs of cod. But after centuries of fishing, by the 1990s the stock on the North American side of the Atlantic had been drastically reduced – off Canada down to 1 percent of its former level, while on the US side down to around 3 or 4 percent.
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Thai-Inspired Shrimp and Vegetable Soup
I stumbled across this soup during the early days of the pandemic and instantly fell in love with it. I was cooking it while on Zoom with friends one Saturday night when, from off screen, they heard a “yummmmm, wow!” as I stirred and tasted it. Still, even as I was tasting it, I realized it was missing something – vegetables. And so, the spinach and peas made their way into the soup, never to leave. Without these vegetables, it’s a good soup with a warm, rich broth – and shrimp! But with them, it’s a full and filling meal (plus it’s helped to convince my mother that I do, in fact, eat vegetables). Because I was cooking this during the pandemic with limited grocery shopping, I never did add the cilantro. I assume it tastes great here and would certainly add it if I had any.
While I could write about coconut milk or garlic or some other ingredient, for this first post I want to focus on the soup’s focal point: shrimp. I love shrimp. Shrimp with cocktail sauce, in linguine, in soup, really in and with anything and everything. And I’m not alone. On average, Americans eat 4.4 pounds of shrimp per year. Although canned tuna used to be the seafood most eaten by Americans, 2001 shrimp took the lead and has held that title ever since. We often think of shrimp as something fancy and upscale. In reality it has become a staple of the American diet, in large part based on cheap – and often sketchy – imports.
