Mary Makes Dinner

Parsnip & Spring Onion Pierogies

Every once in a while I find myself bewildered by an item in my CSA. Last week I was puzzled by parsnips. They are awfully funny looking, like weird white carrots with super long tails. They didn't seem too appealing, so it took me a little while to figure out exactly how to use them. I had heard about folks boiling and mashing them along with some potato. I figured once I'd gone that far I might as well put it all on the table and just make pierogies. 

Red Curry Sweet Potato Soup

I have a real thing for sweet potatoes. If they weren't so ugly, I'd probably have one tattooed on my body. Speaking of tattoos, I indulged my ink addiction recently at Bijou Studio here in Austin. It's a little over half-way done, with all of the line work, and a touch of color completed. I'll go back for another session some time next month.

One thing I love about getting inked up is the simultaneous mix of pleasure and pain. It hurts like a "b", but your body releases all these fun little endorphins and chemicals, making you feel a little loopy (in a good way). I also find some kind of weird satisfaction in gritting my teeth through the whole stingy business. I guess I like reminding myself that I'm tough,  and I don't have to let a little thing like pain stand in the way of getting what I want. 

So you might think this is a bit of an odd segway into a soup recipe, but I'm going to go for it anyway. While tattoos afford a blend of pain and pleasure, my favorite sweet potato recipes combine a mix of spicy and sweet flavor. My Chipotle Quinoa Casserole, for instance, blends sweet potatoes, creamy sauce, and spicy chile pepper. I delight in drowning my sweet potato fries in spicy sriracha mayo, and caking my roasted yams in blackened cajun spices. Sweet loves spicy, and I love playing match-maker.

I created this soup recipe with that kind of blend in mind. The hot red curry paste blends into the candy-sweet baked potato really nicely. I was tempted to add coconut milk, but I found that the coconut oil added plenty of aroma without making the soup overly rich. You can serve it garnished with scallions and cilantro, or even some crunchy rice crackers. You can also just guzzle it as-is. I made this recipe on the medium to mellow side. If you'd like more heat, just add a little more curry paste, or a squirt of sriracha sauce.

Red Curry Sweet Potato Soup
Makes about four to six servings

Ingredients

• 4 small to medium-sized sweet potatoes
• 2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil (or another cooking oil)
• 2 tablespoons red curry paste (canned is fine)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 quart vegetable stock
• salt & pepper to taste
• chopped fresh cilantro and scallion (optional)
• lime (optional)

Directions

1. Bake the sweet potatoes in the oven or microwave until they are nice and soft. This will take upwards of 30 to 50 minutes in a 425 degree oven, or about 5 - 10 minutes in a microwave. Poke some holes in the sweet potatoes with a fork before you cook them.
2. Combine the coconut oil and curry paste in a soup pot over medium heat. Stir them together, and let the paste fry for about three minutes. The paste should become fragrant as it sizzles.
3. Add the onions, and let them cook until they become soft and slightly clear. This should take between five and ten minutes.
4. Remove the sweet potato from their peels. I usually cut them in half, then scoop the meat out with a spoon. Add the peeled sweet potato to your soup pot, breaking it into chunks with a spoon.
5. Add the vegetable stock to the pot next, then stir it all together. 
6. Use an immersion or stick blender to puree the ingredients. Keep blending until they become nice and smooth. You can also use a regular blender or food processor for this step, but you might want to let it cool a little first. 
7. Bring the soup to a simmer, then reduce it to low heat. 
8. Taste the soup, and add salt to taste. If you want it to be spicier, try adding a squirt or two of sriracha sauce. 
9. Just before serving, squeeze in a little lime juice and sprinkle on some fresh herbs. 

Lately I've started turning all kinds of unsuitable foods into croutons. This soup wound up getting a dose of puffed rice cereal. Nothing crunchy is safe from my soup bowl. Is this is as weird a habit as I think it is, or does everyone do this? 

Ginger Garlic Tofu Recipe

People, I can not stop eating this. Every week I tell myself to skip the tofu section. When that fails, I try to convince myself to try a new marinade, something different, maybe something tomato-based, or possibly lemongrass-inspired. Finally, when it comes to it, and the jiggly, wiggly block of vauge off-whiteness is sitting before me on my kitchen counter, I crumble.

Out comes the soy sauce, the ginger, the garlic, the hot red pepper, and the toasted sesame oil. In goes the tofu, where it will marinate overnight, and eventually wind up in my cast iron pan, browned and lovely, slightly firm, but still soft and spongy beneath its outer layer. I'll inevitably eat it over a bowl of brown basmati rice, my other current favorite. Something green, like Hilah Cooking's Garlic Sesame Kale or Quick Pickled Bok Choy Salad will find its way into the bowl too. I'll sit down, breath deeply, then dig in.

How to Make Vegan Dashi

If you ask me, a soup can only ever be as good as its stock. Homemade stock has a way of elevating even the simplest broth to something spectacular. They understand this in Japan, so plenty of attention is given to making the very best stock (called "dashi" in Japanese cooking) possible. A classic dashi invariably contains fresh or dried bonito, a deliciously pungent fish responsible for much of what makes Japanese food delicious. Other ingredients vary with each house recipe. You can find anything from pork bones to shrimp heads stuffed into a Japanese dashi pot. Momofuku in New York is known to make a dashi with bacon. The commonality you might be noticing here is a heavy reliance on fish and meat for flavor.

When you make a vegetarian or vegan dashi, you have to rustle up your best plant-based savory and umami ingredients. It's also important to include an element of the sea. You might think that's impossible for a vegan soup, but not so! Kombu, a thick, rubbery dried seaweed is excellent way to "fish up" your vegan dashi. It carries a decidedly fishy, ocean-like aroma, and has a way of making dashi taste heavier and richer than it would be with out. I also like to use plenty of stinky mushrooms. Shitake are my favorite, dry or fresh, but any shroom will do.

To make the broth a little more interesting I add some leek. Leek has a light onion taste, sort of like scallion, but it's much sturdier, making it better choice for dashi-making. When working with leeks, it's really important to peel them completely apart and rinse out every crevasse. They tend to horde soil between their leaves, so it isn't unusual to find sand buried all the way in the center of the stalk. I usually cut the bottom of the leek off, then slice it down its center. After that, fill the sink with cold water, and dunk the leek inside. Take the leek completely apart, washing each piece carefully, then drain and rinse them.

So what do you do with dashi once you've got it? Dashi is the base for a huge range of soups and sauces. Miso soup is the simplest way to enjoy it. Just heat 1 cup of dashi, mix in a teaspoon of miso paste, add diced tofu, sliced scallions, and a few pieces of dry wakame seaweed. A dash of soy sauce or a pinch of salt can be added for extra flavor. I use Dashi as a base for tempura sauce, udon noodle soup, ramen, and homemade teriyaki sauce.

Vegan Dashi
Makes about 4 quarts

Ingredients

• 2 cups fresh shitake mushrooms (or 1 cup dried)
• 4 strips of dried kombu
• 1 - 2 leeks, washed and separated
• 4 quarts cold water

Directions

Combine the solid ingredients in a large stock pot, then cover with cold water. Bring the pot to just under a boil on high heat, then reduce to low. Simmer for 60 minutes. Allow the stock to cool enough for handling, then strain it through cheesecloth or fine mesh. 

Herb-alicious Tomato & Dill Bisque Recipe

I spent my last Friday night at home with Scott Bobleo, fantisizing about classic cars we'll probably never own, and cruising the internet for geeky memes. Later, we had a tickle fight, ate noodles, and went to bed. It's funny how something so normal as a quite evening with your husband can be filled with so many unique little moments. Sure, it's boring, but it's a special blend of boring that is exclusively yours. 

Tomato soup is kind of like that. Everyone makes this classic recipe with their own method, peppering it with special ingredients, and serving it up with an equally original side dish. Some go for salad, others prefer grilled cheese or sesame breadsticks. In China they are likely to stick a catfish in there. 

Sure, there is always the basic Campbell's style straight tomato, but who wants that? That's like a quiet evening at home spent detailing a coffee-maker. In other words, Snores-ville. Live a little. Put some cheese on it. Kick the heat up a little with some hot pepper. Try something new!

I like to experiment with my tomato soup. Sometimes I go Chinese, adding ginger, garlic, and red chile. Other times I sprinkle in some chipotle pepper and avocado. Today, my inspiration was dill. I saw a photo recently picturing a sprig of dill sitting on a bowl of rich, red soup. Since then, the combination of dill and tomato has been haunting my dreams. It gives the soup a really bright, fresh flavor. To me, it seems like the flavor of dill picks up on the greener notes in the tomato, highlighting it's herbaceous nature. Have you ever smelled a tomato leaf? If you pay close attention, you'll notice that the same smell is present in the fruit of the tomato, but it's a lot more subtle. 

Black Bean Soup Recipe

When I was a kid, I couldn't think of any food more bland or revolting than soup. To say that I hated soup, would be a bit of an overstatement. Soup had never personally offended me. It had never kidnapped my family, insulted my mother, or called me names. I just didn't care much for it. To an eight year old me, eating soup was about as exciting or pleasurable as spending an afternoon following my Dad around CompUSA. In other words, lame city. Bereft of other options, I might go for a can of spaghettios, but other than that, soup was not part of the short list of things that Kid Mary would eat.

Kid Mary was actually pretty darn picky. While everyone else ate garden salads I would stick to a bowl of tomato and cucumber. Ordering pizza? Plain cheese for Kid Mary. I wonder how many grown-up food lovers started out as picky children? Was it an early sign of my discerning pallet, or was I just a royal brat? 

Anyway, back to soup. My contempt for soup continued on into young adulthood. I suspect that being raised as a vegetarian had something to do with it. That, and the fact that most soup I had ever encountered came out of a can. By the time I was a teenager I was known to partake in the occasional New England Clam Chowder, mostly using it as a sad substitute for the only soup I had ever truly enjoyed, that being my father's lobster bisque.

It was Fish Head Soup, of all things, that actually opened my mind to how good soup could be. The fatty, tender neck and fin meat of butchered salmon and bonito finally made a soup-eater out of me.  This "soup" was actually the first stage of the house dashi made in my first Japanese restaurant. That stock was used in countless sauces and recipes, but most often in the miso soup and clear soup that we served with every entree.

When I went to culinary school, and began making soups of my own, I really fell in love. It turns out that it wasn't soup that I disliked so much, just bad soup. These days, soup is one of my very favorite things to make and eat. While I still find canned soup to be utterly repugnant, there is almost nothing that I enjoy more than a bowl of homemade.

Almost every week you'll find at least one type of soup simmering in my kitchen. Sometimes it's creamy, other times brothy. They almost always have a starchy surprise inside, like noodles, barley, or potatoes. The soups that I make most often are minestrone, butternut squash, and black bean. These are recipes that I have made so many times, that it's almost difficult to nail down a recipe that does the real thing justice. Black bean is the first to make the transition to my satisfaction. 

Meyer Lemon and Pomegranate Ceviche Recipe

I tell ya, it's good to have food-crazy friends. Kristina, of Girl Gone Grits, lives just a hop, skip, and a jump from me. That would be a nice thing no matter what, since she's a lot of fun to hang out with, but it just so happens that Kristina's house is also home to a very prolific meyer lemon tree. Straight from her lips I heard a figure of 500+ lemons coming from that crazy tree this year. Can you imagine that? What's a gal to do with so many dang lemons? There's only so much Limoncello one can make, so Kristina decided to share her bounty.

Creamy Vegan Broccoli Soup Recipe

A rich, hearty soup made with cashews, vegetable stock, and fresh broccoli. 

Thanksgiving Pizza Recipe

How did you spend your Black Friday? Were you crushed in a crowd of feral consumers, pawing your way toward deal after deal? Maybe you were lazing around the house, trying to recover from your food coma. Perhaps you were trying to bring back the old magic with food coma number two?

Me? I spent Friday evening make an ass of myself on the internets. What started out as a completely respectable online cook-off quickly spun out of control into a full-on hangout party. There were spontaneous cocktails, bad jokes, even chicken dancing. Amidst the mayhem, our three competitors, Amy, Lindsay, and myself, managed to make some pretty yummy dishes.

The challenge was to use leftovers as main ingredients. Each of us totally interpreted that in our own way. Amy created a beautiful breakfast recipe featuring eggs benedict, shredded turkey, and potato latkes. Lindsay's dish was purely vegetarian. She made a beautiful southwestern style chowder, and a mouth-watering sweet potato souffle. 

My entry was a little less classy. I went for the fat kid special, taking all of my favorite Thanksgiving leftovers and putting them on a pizza. This is HONESTLY my favorite way to eat leftovers from Thanksgiving. I'll even make this pizza when it's not Thanksgiving. That's how much I love it. It can easily be made meaty, vegetarian, or vegan, depending on your toppings, so if you want to impress your favorite person on a special diet, make them this pizza. 

Thanksgiving Pizza

Makes one medium-sized pizza 

Ingredients (necessary)

• 1 medium whole wheat pizza crust
• 1/2 cup cranberry sauce
• 1/2 cup - 1 cup mashed potatoes
• 1 cup stuffing, squished into balls

Ingredients (optional, but highly suggested)

• 1/4 - 1/2 cup gravy
• 1/2 cup shredded/chopped turkey or tofurkey
• 1/2 cup monteray jack and/or cheddar cheese

Ingredients (more topping ideas)

• crumbled bacon or sausage (or faken bacon)
• sweet potatoes
• creamed spinach
• green bean casserole
• fried onions

Directions

1. Start by pulling/rolling/coaxing the dough into a large round shape.
2. Top it first with the cranberry sauce, making sure to get a nice thick coating across the whole pie. Next, plop on some dollops of mashed potatoes, followed by the stuffing balls, and the turkey (if you are using it). 
3. Drizzle some gravy over everything, than sprinkle on the cheese. 
4. You can incorporate any other Thanksgiving leftovers you like at this point as well. Try to make sure that everything is distributed in such a way that every slice will get a little of everything. 
5. Bake the pizza in a super hot oven (450 degrees or more), using a pizza stone or a pizza pan if you have one. If not, just use a baking sheet. We use our outdoor grill to give the pizza a real brick-oven taste. Baking times vary, so keep an eye on your pie, and take it out when the crust puffs up, browns on the bottom, and the cheese and toppings are thoroughly heated and melted. I like my pizza a little "well done", so if you are like me, you can leave it in a few extra minutes. 

Don't forget to vote!

Here's the hangout video in its entirety. Settle in for some serious silliness, then cast a vote for your favorite here. I want to send a big THANK YOU to Will Burdette of No Satiation (an awesome food-themed podcast) for hosting the hangout. Will played time-keeper, and helped inspire much of the silliness I mentioned before. Wath him doing gravy shooters around 30:10.

Thank you also to Google Austin for sponsoring the event. Google provided tech help, moral support, and some great prizes for the winner of our challenge!

Sweets n' Grits with Garlic Collard Greens Recipe

So have you all heard about the new grocery store that opened up on Manor Road in Austin? Even if you don't live nearby, you might find it very interesting. In.gredients is the U.S.A.'s first (so far as I know) zero-packaging grocery store. This hip little spot is more like a corner shop than an all-out mega grocery. You won't find sixty flavors of salad dressing here, but you will find a variety of fresh local produce, carefully selected dry goods, and craft kombucha on tap. Though the space is itty-bitty, the business model represents a huge shift in our relationship with food, waste, and consumerism.