cook: broccoli soup

There was so much food at my high school workplace: a chocolate chip coffee cake from our principal; a choose-your-own-cookies box from our parent-teacher organization; a Polynesian club pizza party; and my working day started with a Chinese egg custard from a colleague.

I was not hungry at all when I got home, but wanted to cook some kind of vegetable-forward dish for dinner. I had posted some days ago a picture of a huge head of broccoli from a late harvest, and in the meantime, Patrick kept asking me if he should give that broccoli away or in other words, when was I finally going to cook it? Last night! I thought of asking Cecilia if I could borrow her stick blender, but nah, I just tossed the cooked ingredients into the Vitamix blender. I was going to use a recipe from one of my favorite cooking blogs, Recipe Tin Eats, but decided to add a potato to the pot and because I actually had sodium citrate to emulsify cheddar cheese in my pantry drawer to use a food nerdier recipe from another favorite cooking blog, Serious Eats.  Per Lopez Alt, I chopped a yellow onion and broccoli stalks into small pieces and separated them from the florets. I later peeled and chopped a potato, celery, carrots, and thinly sliced garlic.

Per the recipe, I charred the florets and removed them to a bowl. And started a pot of chicken broth by mixing tablespoons of Better than Bouillon into hot water. I love the vibrant green of the charred florets and decided to reserve them for the very end of the soup.

I then sautéed the onions and then the broccoli stalk bits for 10 minutes and then added the garlic and the rest of the vegetables and knobs of butter for another 10 minutes. I started to add chicken broth and water as the bottom of the pot started looking dry and brown.

   

Once all the vegetables and aromatics were softened after 20 or so minutes of simmering in a bit of broth, I removed them from the pot and put them into the blender. Back into the Dutch oven along with the rest of the chicken broth to simmer and amalgamate flavors.

 

I added the charred broccoli heads, but was starving. I wasn't going to wait to add the milk, cream, and cheddar cheese and cook again and just decided to dig in

The soup was fucking delicious as is. Though the broccoli florets had a bit of a chew, I didn't care and ate my fill. I decanted the rest of the soup into a quart and 2 pint jars. I'll toss rustic cut cheddar with dried mustard and a tiny bit of sodium citrate as well as a mixture of low-fat milk and heavy whipping cream (what I got in the fridge) and some hot sauce when reheating the soup for tonight's dinner if I don't prepare brisket and mac 'n cheese instead in which case broccoli cheddar soup will be Sunday night supper. 

Today will be my last day of ceramics with my city's parks and recreation department. As much as I love the community, it annoys me to pay for 2 ceramic memberships and more galling to also have to search and then pay for parking at the city garage and stress when I get too lost in clay and forget to insert more money into the parking meter. I will honestly miss Jim Bob Blue glaze as well as Warm Green AND OF COURSE THE PEOPLE, but oh well.

cook: mezze meal with homemade pita

Baba ghanoush and hummus done.  Took an hour to boil the soaked garbanzo beans and broil the eggplants. While both beans and vegetables were cooking, I had crushed 6 garlic cloves in my mortar and pestle and had squeezed 1 Meyer lemon into the bowl of mashed garlic to soak. Another 30 minutes to purée the chickpeas with garlic and lemon juice and tahini as well as cumin and harissa and then peel and chop the eggplant and combine with said lemon juice and garlic and tahini. They looked very humble in their Pyrex serving bowls, but were honest to gosh delicious. Cecilia said best yet, to which I replied she always says that. However, it’s true. I don’t measure ingredients for hummus or baba ghanoush, but just add and adjust to taste, usually needing forgotten salt or just a few more sprinkles.

I normally buy pita bread whenever I cook hummus and baba ghanoush, but I’d been seeing TikToks of people making their own with the ingredient of yogurt added to the flour dough. Yogurt?!? Huh. Let me try that.

And lately I’ve been buying whole milk yogurt to eat with berries or I make tzatziki with Greek yogurt as an additional cucumber dip for my Mediterranean meals and decided to give the recipe for pitas I copied from Milk Street a go.            

And I borrowed the bread flour and whole wheat flour (which was actually a finely milled whole wheat flour for chapati) from my neighbors, Cecilia and Madhu.                               

I could not, however, access the recipes for the flavored butters behind the paywall, but no matter, I'll find those recipes elsewhere. The directions for the bread were simple and straightforward.                   

I did also luckily have the 12” cast iron skillet, but my 10" cast iron pan would have worked too.                           

As I said earlier, I couldn’t access the garlic herb butter recipe, but I’m seeing herbs galore in the picture. And so the plan next time is to chop parsley, dill, thyme and marjoram and add harissa to garlic and butter to slather on the pitas.

Okay here are pics from last night’s stovetop baking.            

 

Oh my gosh, freshly "baked" pita is so much better than the dry disks in a bag that I buy at a store. And I can’t go back to those tasteless rounds when fresh pita has such a superior texture and taste. Oh! And my mezze plate that I also made for neighbors: hummus, baba ghanoush, roasted red bell pepper, cucumber and cherry tomatoes drizzled with Greek yogurt and dill, feta cheese, and zhoug. If I throw a party, then it'll be a loaded hummus with all the above ingredients but sauces on the side as well as kalamata and Castelvetrano olives.

clay: sunday afternoon handbuilding and evening throwing class

Still exhausted from Saturday night socializing at the parks and rec ceramic studio, I then went the next afternoon to the Clay Life studio for some hand building. I had started on a Friday night, a Christmas tree and added two more that Sunday afternoon. I still need to come in on an early weeknight to spackle on more clay and slip on cracks and perch stars on the other two trees. I love how they look, but they are humbling me with their drying too fast and cracking. I may be rolling the slabs too thin and cutting out the stars too close together. Or I may need to next time cut out fewer stars while building the cone. Yesterday at school, I made a bigger template for larger 🎄trees.

I had just managed to construct the trees before it was then time to go to my beginning throwing class for the trimming of pots thrown on the previous two Sundays. Most of my classmates had 8 pots to trim while I only had 5. I botched 2 and threw them in the trimmings bucket, but managed to somewhat successfully trim 2 bowls and a cup for which I constructed a handle and then inscribed with text. The plan is to just adhere black underglaze into the text and then dip the whole mug into gloss white and then decorate the shit out of it with floral decals.

The bonus of Sunday was bedtime when Patrick and I play the New York Times games before retiring for the evening. We found the pangram of Spelling Bee, Wordle was solved in three tries, Mini Crossword solved in 1:07 minutes, and we found the 2 words in Letter Boxed!

 

The previous nights of these puzzles were confounding, probably because it was too late or we were too tired for brain work. Okay so my husband doesn't travel with me, but I count this couple activity as a connecting win.

clay: winter wonderland popup

I carried a crockpot of black bean soup to our community's ceramics show and sale after Patrick picked a bunch of greenery on Meral's request for display of her pottery. There was enough soup leftover to fill a spaghetti jar, which I gave to Meral along with cheese, sour cream, pickled jalapenos and radish pico. And then I expended my social battery for the sale. I love Meral's face vases...

 

I ought to make one for my colleague, Michaela because she likes to construct huge arrangements of greenery in large vases.

And Patrick's plucked greenery enhanced this simple vase below. But I was exhausted by the end of the 3 and 1/2 hours and told Meral that I was going....at which she closed the show and everybody started packing up. Once home...

...I ate a Neapolitan mushroom and arugula pizza that Cecilia had made for Patrick--he ate one slice while I ate the other three slices. I had given Cecilia 00 flour and what a difference that dopio zero or finely milled flour made in her crust. And per the pharmacist's suggestion to build up the gut bacteria while on my antibiotic regime, I ate yogurt, which I normally detest. But oh my goodness, blueberries and raspberries in French vanilla yogurt has become my favorite dessert. That yogurt was so delicious that I'm going to buy even more French yogurt served in cute little terra cotta or glass pots.

cook: chorizo and chipotle black bean soup (and korean beef tacos for lunch)

I had a jar of black beans in my refrigerator that I had soaked and boiled a week before for my night of slow sewing and chili, and this time the beans were going into a black bean soup for my ceramics community at the parks and rec. I also had a bunch of tomatoes and chili peppers from the garden which got chopped up with a yellow onion. 

I had also assembled an arsenal of spices I would need for this spicy soup as well as the beans (an extra can of black beans in case the jar I had boiled already and a container of chopped tomatoes just in case there was not enough prepared and fresh) and hot sauces.

 

I hunted in the freezer for the soyrizo and thawed that too. And decanted my olive oil into my new ceramic dispenser I had bought from Food 52 Black Friday sales because I'm trying to use less plastic.

 

I had sautéed the aromatics, which were quite chunky, and so I decided to puree the sofrito in the blender. While I was at it, I thought I might as well blend some of the black beans too to release some of its starches and thicken the soup.

 

But I would keep some of the black beans whole so that one would know what kind of soup they were eating and it all went into the pot to cook down.

I didn't think there were enough black beans in the soup, and so I boiled another cup of dried beans in another pot for a couple hours more.

 

And because I had those couple hours before leaving with my finished soup to the ceramics studio, I fed myself Korean tacos for lunch. Here's how: I took leftover bulgogi beef from our bibimbap dinner a few nights before and layered the meat atop shredded jack cheese and chopped green onions and cilantro on street taco size flour tortillas.

And squirted sauce on top because I now keep a bottle of my own Got Chu which is gochuchang, miso paste, sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds, sugar, light soy sauce, rice vinegar, and garlic. I want to prepare these Korean tacos in the future for potlucks by assembling them ahead of time and having the sauce on hand for people to squirt to their spicy liking.

cook: hotpot to cure cough + congestion

Ugh, coughing fits and lack of sleep yesterday had me calling in sick today. And so dinner plans for hotpot turned into lunch to cure my cold. I had gone a bit nuts the day before at the Asian grocery, buying my favorite Chinese greens, oyster mushrooms, wood ear mushrooms, fish sauce, Maggi sauce, and thinly sliced pork shoulder. The bonus of buying so many ingredients or spending nearly 30 bucks was a $2 coupon to use at the Chinese kitchen bar where I bought chow fun noodles for dinner. I slept fitfully and late, and when I woke, it was already almost lunchtime. And so I got to washing the greens for soup and finding the meat protein in the fridge while Cecilia prepared the soup broth.

 

Between spinning my greens dry, I opened packages to turn my kitchen counter into a hotpot bar.

 

I also wanted a condiment bar of sorts, and so I mashed a bunch of garlic and then added miso and sesame oil and sriracha into the alium and remembered too to add light soy sauce. 

 

Condiment bowl done. Every ingredient into bowls for presentation like the noodle element of chicken and cilantro wontons.

For nutrition and color, a green and yellow vegetable of chrysanthemum greens and yellow squash. 

 

I always have to eat onions, and so I chopped scallions and remembered the Chinese sweet sausage in my fridge.

I also remembered the fried tofu in my fridge and made a note to self to buy tofu skins the next time I was at Ranch 99. The mushrooms looked glorious.

Too happy with my soup bowl that I immediately dug in and didn't take a pic. Hotpot will be on repeat because I've still lots of chrysanthemum greens and mushrooms still. Must remember to add a hard boiled egg to my next bowl.

Patrick went to the garden and returned home with a huge head of broccoli. I will likely cook a broccoli and cheddar soup with it.

 

And because I got a notification of exposure to pertussis, I emailed my doctor who prescribed me an antibiotic, which I picked up and was told by the pharmacist to eat yogurt to build up some gut bacteria to counteract effects of the medication. I wonder if frozen yogurt works, but I suppose I'll buy some fancy jars of French yogurt like Oui or La Fermiere and some blueberries and raspberries just to get more antioxidants into my diet while I'm at it. And I was already coughing a lot less and decided to go to Clay Life, and this sgraffito platter was on the bisque shelves.

Oops, I shouldn't have put white space in between the branches of the pomegranates. Or carved away the background of the fruit too. Oh well. I still like it and can do it again. I also attempted to make a Christmas tree to put over a tea light, but I've a feeling it will contain enough cracks tomorrow that I'll have to reclaim it. Again oh well. I'll just make the holiday light again tomorrow morning.