Cream of Asparagus Soup with Lemon

Springtime means asparagus. We won't have any local asparagus here in Colorado for a while yet. But, it's turning up at bargain prices in the supermarket (some weeks as low as $1.50/pound). We love asparagus roasted, steamed, and grilled. Here it is featured in a fresh-tasting soup. It gets some thickness from the potato, which means you don't need to use a lot of cream. The lemon keeps it bright and light.

I like to buy thick spears of asparagus and for this recipe, that is the best choice. You'll be peeling them and it's pretty dang hard to peel a skinny stalk of asparagus! If you don't peel the asparagus, you'll have a bunch of stringy fibers that don't purée well. If you have a really good blender, like a VitaMix (I don't, but I used them when I worked in restaurants), no worries. It can handle the peels. My blender isn't that effective, so I make sure to peel the stalks.

Cream of Asparagus Soup with Lemon
(serves 8)

1 ½ pounds asparagus

5 cups low-sodium chicken stock

4 medium shallots, peeled and minced

1 medium baking potato, peeled and cut into ½" dice

2 lemons

¾ cup heavy cream

salt and black pepper

Trim off about ½" of the bottom of the asparagus stalks. Peel the lower ⅔'s of each stalk. Cut off the tips and set aside. Cut the rest of the stalks into 1" lengths. Set aside in a bowl.

Zest the lemons and put the zest in the bowl with the asparagus stalk pieces. Add the shallots and the potato. Juice 1 lemon and set aside the juice.

In a medium soup pot, heat up the stock. Cook the asparagus tips in the stock for 2-3 minutes, until tender. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Add asparagus stalks, shallots, zest, and potato to the stock. Cook for 30 minutes until the potato and asparagus are very tender.

Blend the contents of the pot until smooth. You can use an immersion blender right in the soup pot or you can transfer the soup, in batches, to a blender. Return the puréed soup to the pot. Add the cream and reheat until hot but not boiling. Stir in the lemon juice, salt (how much will depend on your palate and the type of stock you use), and ¼ teaspoon black pepper.

Serve with the reserved asparagus tips as garnish.

Adapted from 300 Sensational Soups by Carla Snyder & Meredith Deeds, Robert Rose, Inc., 2008.

Photo Credit: By Frank Vincentz (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Pickled Salmon

This is a tried and true Passover recipe in my house but its popularity goes way beyond the Seder. This delicious salmon is so much better than the traditional gefilte fish. I know there are people who adore the yearly gefilte fish but I am not one of them.

The recipe makes quite a bit of pickled salmon so I suggest you make it for a dinner party or even a brunch. It will keep in the brine for about 4 days past when it is pickled (takes 3 days for the initial pickling) but I wouldn't push it much further than that.

I pulled this recipe out of the New York Times years ago. It's by Joyce Goldstein, one of the finest chefs out there. I wholeheartedly recommend her book Kitchen Conversations.

Joyce Goldstein's Pickled Salmon
(serves 12 as an appetizer)

2 cups white vinegar
1 ½ cups water
6 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons kosher salt
2 pounds salmon fillets, skin removed
2 Tablespoons pickling spices
6 bay leaves
2 white or yellow onions, sliced ¼" thick

Bring vinegar, water, sugar, and salt to a boil. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.

Cut salmon into 1" x 2" chunks. In a non-metallic bowl or crock, make a layer of  ⅓ of the salmon. Sprinkle on some of the pickling spice, a couple of bay leaves, and ⅓ of the onions. Build 2 more layers. Pour on the brine. Cover and refrigerate for 3 days. Serve cold with matzoh, crackers or a hearty dark or rye bread.

Chickpea Pancake

I made this for a neighbor's home-brew party. It seemed like an excellent beer food. And it was, based on how quickly it disappeared! The recipe is from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, though I tweaked it a little. Garbanzo bean (or chickpea) flour is easier to find in these gluten-free times. I found it in the natural food aisle of my local King Soopers among all the other more esoteric flours brought to you by Bob's Red Mill. It's a brand I love not for the gluten-free stuff, since I eat gluten with great relish, but because they carry lots of interesting things, like buckwheat flour, multigrain cereals, and polenta.

I used a 12" cast-iron griddle - the one in the photo - but Bittman says you can use a 12" skillet or pizza pan with a raised edge because the batter is quite thin. Make sure it's well-seasoned or non-stick to avoid sticking.

Chickpea Pancake
(serves 4-6 as a side dish, 12 as an nibble with beer)

1 cup chickpea flour
1 ½ cups warm water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
4 Tablespoons tasty olive oil
½ a small onion, thinly sliced
½ to 1 Tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

Place water in a medium bowl. Sift in chickpea flour (it tends to be lumpy) and whisk. Add salt, black pepper, and 2 Tablespoons olive oil. Cover with a towel and let sit for 30 minutes or up to 12 hours.

Preheat oven to 450°F. Put 2 Tablespoons olive oil in the skillet and brush or swirl it around to cover entire bottom. Add onions and rosemary to batter and mix. Pour into the skillet. Bake for 20 minutes until set. You can bake it another 5-10 minutes to brown it or you can stick it under the broiler to brown, if you skillet can take broiler temps.

Adventures with Bison Liver: Mushroom and Liver Pate

A dear friend of mine has an unusual perk at her place of employment: access to bison meat. Because I have room in my freezer, I have a bit of it stashed in my chest freezer, including a heart and a tongue. The liver was in there too, but I saw a recipe for a wild mushroom-liver paté and I had to break into the liver. I had picked some wild mushrooms (don't worry - you don't need to pick your own wild mushrooms to make this) which would be perfect for mushroom-liver paté. I've never used bison liver but how different could it be from beef liver? Actually, it's even better than beef or calves liver,  mild and sweet. Now, I don't expect you to find a bison liver either. This recipe will work with any type of liver, including chicken livers. The mushrooms mellow the liver-y flavor. It's rich and delicious. The recipe makes quite a bit, so it's best made for a party. Unless you plan on eating it on everything. I'll be posting a recipe I created to use up some of this paté soon.

Mushroom and Liver Paté
(makes about 2 cups)

Kimchee Quesadilla

In July, I visited Montreal, Quebec, a wonderful, charming, multi-cultural city north of the border. I wrote about my experience on this blog; go read it if you have plans to visit Montreal (and you definitely should make plans). One of the most fun things I ate while there was a kimchee quesadilla. I saw it advertised on a sign outside of a Korean restaurant near our B&B and I just had to try it. After a long day of exploring the city, I dragged my three friends in, and made them watch while I ate it. Actually, they helped eat it too.

It was quite tasty and very easy, provided you can get kimchee. That's not so very hard. I saw it for sale in a small supermarket in Ithaca, New York recently. If they have it, I bet you can find it almost everywhere now. My kimchee came from Pacific Ocean Marketplace in Broomfield, CO. POM, as we call it, is a supermarket-sized Asian full-service grocery store. They cover nearly all Asian cuisines: Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Japanese, Korean and more. They have locally made kimchee. It's garlicky, and spicy, and not too, too funky. Also rather addictive. It was perfect for my homemade kimchee quesadilla.

Kimchee Quesadilla
(serves 1-2 as an entree, 4 as a snack or appetizer)

Fun with Eggplant

Eggplant was on sale this week. I wanted to make some baba ghanoush but I bought enough to make more than that. So, here are 2 recipes that use eggplant. In fact, they both start with eggplant broiled whole but after that, they go in totally different directions. There are no pictures of the dishes because neither of them looks all that interesting. But, they taste so good, each in their own way.

Baba ghanoush is a Middle Eastern eggplant dip enhanced with tahini and lemon juice. It retains the delicious smokiness that comes from getting the eggplant skin well-charred.

The other recipe is Indian, using a plethora of fragrant spices to transform the eggplant into something special. It's called Creamed Eggplant but the cream isn't that key to the dish. You could leave it out and it would still be awesome. The original recipe called for vegetable oil. I used butter instead and I do think it adds a depth of flavor. Use vegetable oil if you prefer. There is enough flavor here even if you use a neutral oil.

Both recipes came from Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking. I have added additional instructions on broiling the eggplants. She says to rinse them after peeling but I feel that is not necessary. Just be careful about removing all the skin because it would add a lot of bitterness, seeing as it's burned totally by the time it's done. It does take a while to cook the eggplant but it's worth it. The long broiling develops the smoky flavor that enhances both recipes.