Years ago, when Annalena was a vegetarian (the late 70s, through the early 90s), it was not that easy to find sources for cooking GOOD vegetarian cooking. And if you keep in mind that GOOD is a relative term, one book that we all used, was "Laurel's Kitchen." This book came out of the time when books of this type included very heartfelt, well written essays on why the writers had become vegetarian, what their philosophy was, etc. You could take all of it, or part of it, and you always had the recipes.
For Annalena, the book was somewhat sanctimonious about the sacred nature of the home, and how women should consider giving up careers for something much more important: sustaining their families. Indeed, many of Laurel's recipes involved agonizing amounts of time. For heaven's sake, she made her own FUCKING PHYLLO. And she thought nothing about searching for an hour, two hours, etc, to get whole wheat pasta. SHE MADE HER OWN FUCKING FIG NEWTONS. Now, again, this could get very intimidating and scary for the beginning chef, but there is an honesty, and a "heart" to the recipes, which led you back, time and time again. Ok, so maybe you did NOT want to make the Indian "desam" starter which took three weeks of daily care, and maybe the tin foil did melt on the fruit cake which aged for four months, but there were other recipes that were either starters to more adventuresome cooking, or were end points with very good dishes. For example, Annalena learned how to make "chilaquiles" from this book. When she ate chilaquiles in an authentic Mexican restaurant, Annalena learned that the ones she made, were related as second or third cousins of the real thing, but at least there was a leg up in learning how to make them.
And there WERE recipes which did NOT involve tremendous amounts of time. And Annalena goes back to Laurel, over and over. This soup is based on one in the book, called "gumbo soup." It mentions, early on, that some may not consider this "gumbo." Indeed, Annalena does not. There is some sentiment that says any dish which has okra in it, is "gumbo." Others feel that naming any dish other than the complex creole "file' gumbo" as gumbo, is sacrilege. So Annalena gives you several names for this dish.
Also, because many of you will turn your nose up to okra, Annalena suggests two things. First, get to know okra better. Annalena knows why you avoid it. It's slimy. And indeed, it CAN be. It does not HAVE to be. There are tricks, which Annalena will outline in this recipe. Or, if you like the idea of this soup, make changes. Substitute the okra with something else. Annalena did that with a vegetable which revolts her: lima beans. Soup making is very much like that. As Laurel says "all you really need is vegetables, an onion and water." We'll use water and onion, but we will use much more than that. And here we go.
There IS a somewhat intimidating list of ingredients, but when you go through them, you probably have most of them, or can get them very easily. Here's pics of all of them:
In the first photo, you will see a large onion, chopped, three gloves of garlic, also chopped, five peeled and chopped plum tomatoes, and a serrano chili , cut in half lengthwise.
The tomatoes are fresh. If all you have are canned, use them. Drain the liquid and use it for your stock, and chop up the tomatoes until you get a good two cups. The serrano is optional. Don't use it, use a jalapeno, or use nothing.
The second photo contains the kernels from two ears of fresh corn, a chopped green pepper, and two cups of peeled fava beans. Those fava beans were supposed to be lima beans. Nope. Not on Annalena's watch. She had favas, and in they went. If you don't have favas or lima beans, think about the two options and find something similar. You can do it. (maybe canellini beans?)
And finally:
This soup was actually motivated by Annalena finding some beautiful organic okra and bringing it home, thinking she'd do something with it.
Now, we start cooking. We begin by sauteeing the onion, in two tablespoons of oil - any kind. Annalena added half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. You don't have to:
After two minutes, toss in the garlic, and cook it for another two minutes. Now, add the green pepper, the serrano if you are using it,
, and the tomatoes
You want to add a teaspoon or so of salt, and cook these at low heat, for about five minutes. You'll see the tomatoes begin to disintegrate into a small amount of juice.
NOW, and ONLY NOW, cut the okra into circles. Start by getting rid of the blossom end at the top, and cut small circles. You don't need the point either. You want about two cups of the stuff:
While you are slicing the okra, you may feel a bit of the sliminess. You won't get too much of it (By the way, that sliminess is something called a "saponin." These molecules are in the same family as are soaps).
So after the five minutes of the pepper/tomato mixture cooking, you add the corn, the beans, and the okra:
That looks good, doesn't it? We add another teaspoon of salt, and cook this gently, for about ten minutes. All of these vegetables contain a great deal of water, and we're releasing it.
Now, we add six cups of plain old water to the mix:
If you can lower your heat even more, do so, and let the stuff cook for another 10-15 minutes. At that point, your soup is ready:
What you will find is that that "sliminess you expect from okra, has instead transformed this soup into something thicker, and silky. You can eat this now, or you can let it sit, and it will thicken even more, to form almost a stew.
Annalena will serve this with popovers. If you want to do that, check your search engine on this blog. Annalena gave you a recipe. Popovers are rich, but go back and review: there are two tablespoons of oil in this recipe, which produced three quarts of soup for Annalena. She thinks you can have a rich side dish with this.
Annalena will see you in two weeks, maybe with more recipes. Hopefully so. Now, she asks you all to go out, and cook. And let her know how it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment