Three Excellent Soup Recipes
Our CFO John Vigeland’s pozole has been a bit of an elusive beast ever since I started working at East Fork. Everyone who’s experienced eating it has not only mentioned it to me, but waxed poetic about its deliciousness. I finally made it and I have to agree, this recipe is spectacular, and feels as close to sitting by a fire in an open desert as you can get in a bowl. It is bright, punchy, smoky, spicy, and it will fill you up perfectly well. Fair warning, this recipe makes A LOT of soup so feel free to cut it down to a quarter if you’re feeding yourself and just a couple others.
Recipe:
Pozole
4 lb. dry pinto beans
75 oz canned hominy
2 chipotle peppers in adobo or more, to taste
20 to 30 poblanos
20 to 30 tomatillos
12 limes
6 bunches cilantro
5 large red onion
2 quarts vegetable stock
Rice
10 to 15 cups white rice
5 onions
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 to 4 limes
Soak the pintos overnight and then get them boiling, first thing. Turn down to a simmer. They'll take an hour or so. Roast the poblanos directly on a gas range (bonus if you roast them over your campfire of gnarled desert juniper boughs) until their skin is blackened, but not ash grey. Cover and let them sweat a bit.
Meanwhile, take the papery skins off the tomatillos and rinse away their stickiness. Quarter them and the onions and sauté them together for 5 minutes on medium heat, until the onions become translucent and the tomatillos are a bright green.
With your hands, wipe off the blackened skin of the soft poblanos and pull out the seeds and stem. In a large food processor or blender, puree the following: poblanos, the sautéed tomatillos-onion mix, chipotles, cilantro. Add vegetable stock as needed to keep things flowing. Pour the mixture back into a big stock pot. Add hominy and pintos and bring it all back up to a gentle simmer.
Squeeze in the lime and salt to taste.
Make the rice. Begin by caramelizing onions with whole cumin seeds in butter. In a big roasting pan, combine the caramelized onions and the dry rice and stir to coat. Add water (or stock if you've got it), tomato paste, and more butter. Cover and steam it in the oven at 350. When the rice is done, fluff it up and squeeze on some lime and salt to taste.
Serve the pozole over rice. Garnish with sour cream or grated cheddar.
Serves: 30
Adapted from Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking by Toni Tipton-Martin
Jubilee has been a joy to cook through over the last year. Every recipe is delicious, but this one hit my nostalgia bone so hard, I had to try it. My mother is a Marylander, and a Cancer, so crab is her favorite food, and crabbing is one of our favorite activities to do together. Every Christmas Eve, she makes a she-crab bisque that will make you forget about Santa and whatever is on his sleigh. This soup is a brighter and lighter version that is extremely satisfying any time of the year, although I still kept some elements from my mother’s recipe to take it home.
Recipe:
2 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels (about 4 ears)
5 cups vegetable stock
4 tablespoons butter, or ¼ pound salt pork, or 8 slices bacon
â…” cup diced onion
2 ½ teaspoons minced garlic (about 5 cloves)
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups peeled and diced russet potatoes (1 large)
¾ cup diced carrot
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, minced
1 ½ teaspoons salt, or to taste
1 cup milk that has been blended with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and left to thicken
¼ cup sherry vinegar
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ pound lump crab meat
A pinch of nutmeg
Paprika for garnish
1. Puree half the corn kernels with about 1 cup of the vegetable stock.
2. In a large saucepan, melt the butter. (Or, use the fat left in the pan from cooking the salt pork or bacon here.) Add the onion and cook, stirring a few times in the ten minutes or so that it should take until the onions are soft. Do not let them brown.
3. Add the garlic and cook and stir for about 30 seconds then add the flour as you stir for another minute or two. Add the potato, carrot, thyme, and salt. Saute for 2 minutes, stirring. Stir in the rest of the stock, corn kernels and the corn puree. Bring to a boil then turn down to a simmer and leave it there for 30 minutes or until the soup has thickened a bit and the potatoes are cooked.
4. Before turning off the heat, add the milk, pepper, sherry vinegar and crab, stir and cook until all the ingredients are evenly heated, perhaps another minute or two. Add a pinch of nutmeg. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
5. Divide the soup into bowls, sprinkle with paprika, and serve immediately.
Adapted from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan
Dear reader, you must know, at East Fork, Marcella Hazan is an almost papal figure. We hang onto her writing like love letters, and see her tomes as testament. She has a perfect balance of straightforwardness and poetics that make us feel like we can really trust in her, and this recipe is no exception. The ingredients speak for themselves, so my suggestion is get the highest quality of these things that you can. It’s a humble soup with a lot of soul warming possibilities.
Recipe:
Ingredients
2 tablespoons Extra Virgin olive oil, plus more for finishing
¼ pound bacon chopped very fine
½ cup chopped onion
2 teaspoons chopped garlic
â…“ cup chopped celery
4 tablespoons chopped parsley
â…“ cup peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes OR canned italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
1 cup dried lentils
1 quart beef stock, ground fresh from the mill
1 ½ cups short, tubular soup pasta
¼ cup freshly grated romano or fiore sardo or cacciotta (use slightly more cheese if you opt for one of these substitutions)
1. In a large sauce pan put 2 tablespoons olive oil, the chopped bacon, onion, garlic, celery and parsley. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the vegetables become deeply colored, about 15 minutes. Add the chopped tomato, stirring well, and cook for a few more minutes.
2. Add the lentils, stirring well to coat them well, then cover with one inch of beef stock. Turn heat down to a simmer and cook for about 25 minutes or until lentils are tender, about 25 to 30 minutes. Keep the liquid level consistent: you may need to add more during cooking.
3. Add salt and pepper to taste then, add the pasta and bring to a boil, then lower the heat. If necessary, add water so you have enough to cook the pasta to al dente. The liquid should be more thick than thin so let it gently cook off if you need to reduce it somewhat. Add more salt and pepper if it needs it, then the grated cheese and a splash of olive oil. Stir well, remove from heat and serve at once.
