Curried Carrot Soup

It's cold outside. I hear it's snowing somewhere.

Inside, it's warm. We made soup.

It's a riff on the rather ubiquitous curried squash soup, but I had a huge bag of carrots to use up, so in they went. Keeping with the whatever's-in-the-fridge theme, this is a water-based soup; we didn't have broth, and I've been busy enough that I was in no mood to make some.

I've made it three times. The first time, I used a bit of miso and some thai curry paste (from a jar, available at most grocery stores). Next, I switched it up and went Indian, with curry powder and cumin seeds. Both were great, both quite easy. I slightly preferred the Indian version, which I tweaked a bit for round three. That's the take I'm sharing today. It's a pure soup, one you likely can make with things you already have lying around. Onion, carrots, spices, water. Some coconut milk to bring things together. That's all, folks.

I've been trying out some self-portraiture recently, and I took one round of shots as I polished off the last of this soup. Here are a couple that came out alright:

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As you can see, I liked the soup a lot.

Stay warm and cuddly. I'll be back soon with an awesome (hot! alcoholic!) beverage.

Curried Carrot Soup

There is one ingredient in this soup that I didn't mention above: apple cider. I used it in round 3, and I liked the subtle sweetness it lent the soup. If you don't have apple cider on hand, though, feel free to substitute apple juice, or even just a fourth cup of water, and a tablespoon of honey if you still want that sweetness. Simplicity is the best thing about this soup. No need to go fishing around for ingredients; just use what you have on hand.

To wit: I served the soup with a swirl of watered-down yogurt and a bit of apple cider syrup, since I had some lying around from a drink-making experiment (yes, I know I'm not normal). You could serve this with a swirl of coconut milk, a drizzle of honey, or even just a simple sprig of parsley or cilantro. Again, flaunt what you've got.

2 tablespoons ghee, grapeseed oil, or other flavorless oil (vegetable or canola is fine) 1 large yellow onion, diced 1.5 teaspoons kosher salt 1.5 teaspoons curry powder 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 lb. carrots, peeled and sliced into 1-inch coins (no need to be precise here - you're blending the soup) 3 cups water 1 cup apple cider or apple juice (can also substitute water) 1 can light coconut milk

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. No need to wait for the oil to heat up; add onions and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, stir to combine, and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add curry powder, cinnamon, and cayenne; stir to combine. Add the carrots and the remaining teaspoon of salt, stir to combine, and cook for 1 or 2 minutes more. Add the apple cider (or 1 cup of water) and scrape the bottom of the pan to release any fond that has formed. Add the remaining water, stir everything together, cover, and cook until carrots are completely soft, 15-20 minutes.

Shake coconut milk very well, then add to the soup. Using an immersion or regular blender, puree the soup (in batches, if necessary) until completely smooth. Serve immediately, or transfer to a heat-safe container (I like to store it in mason jars) and reheat before serving. Soup keeps for at least a week, if it sticks around that long.

Mushroom Tacos with Tomatillo-Chipotle Sauce

I've been traveling a bunch for work, which has left our fridge less packed than usual. It's a bummer to open the fridge and so few bags of produce, but D gets positively gleeful about all the open space. O.C.D Organized people just love empty fridges, am I right?

With less time at home, I'm on the lookout for quick weeknight dinners that make use of whatever precious little food I've got in the fridge. Bonus points for dishes that aren't pasta, which is a fallback too often.

This week, I barely cooked at all. I only had one night in town when I wasn't working late, and our friend Abby was visiting from NY, so we met her at El Chucho, the new Mexican restaurant in Columbia Heights. It's got a dimly lit interior, tall tables and bar stools, and lots of bearded dudes in plaid shirts walking languidly around with plastic baskets in hand. Walk in, and you feel like you've walked into Brooklyn; Abby felt right at home. The food wasn't bad, the ambiance was fun, and margaritas were on tap. Of course. I bet we'll be back soon. Meanwhile, we're copying their dishes at home.

El Chucho had tacos de calabacitas on order, made with breaded fried squash. They were so addictive, we didn't miss the meat. When the weekend rolled around, I was hungry for more Mexican food but didn't have any squash on hand (it tends to be limp and sad in wintertime). I did have a bag of mushrooms that needed using, and a handful of tomatillos left over from the previous week's dinner party. I braced myself for a bit of fussing, figuring it was worth it - a craving is a craving, yes? But much to my surprise, dinner came together quite quickly. Corn tacos were heated. The mushrooms were tossed with a quick sauce of tomatillos and canned chipotles. Everything cooked through while I mashed up an avocado's worth of guacamole and opened a jar of the salsa I made this summer. We didn't have any queso at home, so I topped the tacos with a pinch of feta cheese, which in retrospect wasn't at all necessary. Done and done: dinner on the table in 20 minutes.

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What I like most about these mushrooms is their versatility. I can see stuffing them into burritos or enchiladas, folding them into short vermicelli for a Mexican riff on fideos, or even adding some to a handful of melty cheese, piling the mixture into a flour tortilla, and making a mean quesadilla. They can go on pretty much anything. Come to think of it, they're the sort of thing I'd make a big bowl of, then tuck in the fridge for a busy day's dinner. Cooked mushrooms are smaller than raw ones; everyone's happy.

Mushroom Tacos with Chipotle Serves 4

For the mushrooms: 2 tablespoon olive oil, divided 2 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped 1/2 lb. tomatillos, husked, rinsed, dried, and roughly chopped 1 canned chipotle, chopped, plus 1 tablespoon of the canning sauce (start with half a chipotle if you're sensitive to heat) juice of half a lime 1 lb. cremini mushrooms, wiped clean and sliced salt

For serving: a big pile of small corn tacos guacamole and salsa (purchased is fine) queso fresco or feta cheese, optional

Put a large frying pan over medium heat and add 1 tablespoon olive oil. When oil shimmers, add garlic. Stir around to distribute, and cook for 1 minute. Then add tomatillos, stir into the garlic, and cook until they break down slightly, 2 minutes. Add chopped chipotle, stir through to incorporate, and cook until the mixture softens and becomes mostly smooth, about 2-4 more minutes. Spoon the sauce into a bowl, taste, and add salt or pepper as needed.

Give the pan a rinse and wipe it dry, then return it to medium-high heat and add the other tablespoon of olive oil. When oil shimmers, add mushrooms. Toss to distribute evenly, and then let them sit there for a few minutes, until the mushrooms on the bottom of the pan develop some color. Every couple of minutes, give the pan a shake to move mushrooms from top to bottom and vice versa. After 5 minutes or so, the mushrooms will have emitted enough water to shrink slightly, and the pan will be less crowded. When this happens, spoon in the tomatillo-chipotle sauce, stir it around to coat the mushrooms, and cook 1 or 2 more minutes, until mushrooms are coated and browned. Squeeze the half a lime into the pan, stir to incorporate, and turn off the heat. Scrape the mushrooms into the bowl that held the tomatillo-chipotle sauce. Wipe the pan out a bit, and return it to the heat.

Heat corn tortillas one at a time by leaving them in the hot pan just until warmed through (or, if you're crazy as I am, until the bottom of the tortilla is a bit brown and crispy), then stack them on a plate as they finish warming. When you've warmed enough tortillas for either one or two per person (depending on preference: I like two per taco, D prefers one), put the tortillas on plates, spoon some of the mushroom mixture onto the tortillas, and top with guacamole, salsa, and/or cheese. Serve immediately.

Grape Leaf Pie

I'm having a bit of a moment with Asian food right now. If you follow me on twitter or instagram, you've seen this borne out in a series of slightly-obsessive photos of yam som-o, pomelo salad, which I am very, very close to perfecting (and then posting!). This, of course, is because we traveled to Vietnam and Thailand in December. D so anticipates these obsessive bouts when and after we travel that she doesn't even bother to roll her eyes anymore. She sees the packages of  rice, tamarind, bamboo steamers, and obscure Thai cookbooks, makes me promise I'll still make pasta sometimes, and lets it lie. Best wife ever.

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It just so happens that my Asian cooking moment has coincided with a period of self-imposed exile from Mediterranean food. You wouldn't know it from the number of recipes I've posted from Plenty and Jerusalem lately, but I've been taking a break from hummus, muhamarra,, and labneh. I ate too much of it in the fall, and I needed some time off.

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The vacation was also a vacation from grape leaves, which I generally love but basically O.D.ed on back in November. After a not-particularly-successful attempt at making my own, I cut myself off. We ate a lot of pasta in December, and then we went to Asia. Now we're back, and while I could eat pad thai for probably 2 weeks straight before needing a break, D has had enough Asian noodles to last her a lifetime. It was time to get back on the Mediterranean bandwagon.

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A long-time lover of stuffed grape leaves, I was thrilled to find a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty for Grape Leaf, Herb, and Yogurt Pie. It's basically a deconstructed stuffed grape leaf, but with crispy, crunchy bread crumbs sprinkled overtop. The other genius this about this recipe is that instead of calling for rice, which you'd have to cook and cool in order to use, Ottolenghi has you bring the filling together with rice flour. Brilliant.  If you used GF breadcrumbs, this whole dish could be gluten free.

I ate this and was excited to eat more; I guess I'm back onto Mediterranean food.

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Grape Leaf PieAdapted from Plenty

When I first made this, I thought it would be a perfect vegetarian main course. Now that we've tried it, I think it's more like a side. It'd make a fantastic dish as part of a meal like this, where basically everything is a side. If you wanted to make it more substantial, you could probably double the recipe (grape leaves and filling) and put it in a deeper, larger dish. You'd also need to cook it for probably 20 minutes longer.

I changed a bunch of things here. First, Ottolenghi calls for 5 1/2 tablespoons of fat, but you don't need it all. I cut to 4 (3 olive oil, 1 butter) and found that to be, er, plenty. I also added currants, which gave this pie much needed bits of sweet to contrast all its tartness. For me, the currants made the dish. Use raisins if you don't have or can't find currants. I also skipped the yogurt garnish. This whole pie tastes like yogurt; adding more on top was overkill. If you really want to finish the dish, you might warm a few tablespoons of honey and drizzle that overtop. That would be really lovely. Do leave a comment if you try it.

The last thing I changed was the instruction on how to fold the grape leaves over the pie. At first, I followed Ottolenghi's instructions to fold the overhanging leaves back over first, then pile the remaining leaves overtop. (That's what you see in the picture above.) On second thought, I undid this, put down the remaining leaves first, and then folded in the overhang. That way, the overhanging leaves envelop the whole pie, and it's much easier to cut.

Special ingredient alert: it's not every day you leave the grocery store with a jar of grape leaves and a bag of rice flour. I get it. Grape leaves are available at some Whole Foods and Mediterranean markets. Rice flour is available at WF, as well as at many health food stores, and increasingly at regular grocery stores, with the explosion of GF diets. Happy shopping!

20 to 25 grape leaves (fresh or from a jar) 4 shallots, finely chopped 1/4 cup currants or raisins 3 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp unsalted butter, melted 1 cup Greek yogurt 1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted 1/2 tbsp finely chopped tarragon 2 tbsp finely chopped parsley 3 tbsp finely chopped dill 4 tbsp finely chopped mint grated zest of 1 lemon 1 tbsp lemon juice salt and black pepper 1/2 cup rice flour 3 tbsp dried breadcrumbs (preferably panko)

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Place the grape leaves in a shallow bowl, cover with boiling water and leave for 10 minutes. Then remove the leaves from the water and dry them well with a tea towel. Use scissors to trim off and discard the bit of hard stem at the base of each leaf.

Sauté the shallots in 1 tablespoon of the oil for about 8 minutes, or until light brown. Add the currants and 1 tablespoon of water, stir to combine with the shallots, and leave to cool down.

Take a round and shallow ovenproof dish that is roughly 8 inches in diameter, and cover its bottom and sides with grape leaves, slightly overlapping them and allowing the leaves to hang over the rim of the dish. Mix the melted butter with 1 tablespoons of olive oil; use about two-thirds of this to generously brush the leaves lining the dish.

Mix together in a bowl the shallots and currants, yogurt, pine nuts, chopped herbs, and lemon zest and juice, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Then add in the rice flour and mix until everything is combined and uniform. Spread the mixture evenly in the baking dish, using an offset spatula or the back of a spoon to nudge the mixture into the dish without disturbing the grape leaves.

Use the remaining grape leaves to cover the top of the pie, making sure to cover the middle if you don't have enough to cover the entire surface. Then fold the overhanging grape leaves back over the top of the pie. Brush with the rest of the butter and oil mix. Finally, scatter the breadcrumbs over the top and drizzle over the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil.

Bake for 40 minutes, or until the leaves crisp up and the breadcrumbs turn golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to rest for at least 10 minutes. Use a very sharp or (preferably) serrated knife to cut into wedges and serve warmish or at room temperature.

Fasolakia: Greek Braised Green Beans

Well clearly, it's January. I got to the gym yesterday morning and my god was it crowded! You can practically taste the hope in the air. So much ambition, so many plans. Resolutions abound.

It's the second week of January, so I trust we've moved past the "I only eat raw vegetables" phase and are drifting back to real life. By real life, I mean "it's 6:30 and I just got home and I'm hungry enough that if I don't eat actual dinner right now I'm gonna go medieval on the chocolate bar in the drawer." That kind of real life.

For days like those, consider this fasolakia. Faso-what? It's a Greek dish of  green beans braised in tomato sauce. It's healthy. It's easy. Not only can you make it in advance, you should; it gets better with time.  And - here's something you can't say about that many dishes made of green beans - it's addictive. It's also gluten-free and can be vegan very easily. What other boxes can I check?

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I've no clue what's traditional - stovetop or oven. What I can tell you is that both work very well: the trick is to go low and slow. Gentle heat coaxes these green beans into velvety, sweet submission. The dish starts with onions and some herbs and spices, but tomatoes do a lot of the work here, transforming into a mellow, luscious sauce for the beans with just a few soft pieces left whole.  I'm guessing the Greek way is to serve this atop rice, which soaks up the sauce. I just serve it as a vegetable alongside fish or a savory tart.

If I'm being honest, I should call these not-strictly-Greek green beans. My brother spent last year in Ankara, Turkey, and he brought me back a huge bag of the best urfa biber I've ever had. It's sweet and smokey, redolent of chocolate and berries. I've been putting it on everything, and these green beans were no exception. I love how it made an ordinary can of chopped tomatoes taste really special. If you don't have or can't find urfa biber, you can use any sweet-smelling chile or paprika. You may want to cut the quantity, though, if your chile is spicy; my urfa is pretty mild.

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On serving them vegan: the first time I made these green beans, I forgot that I'd set aside some feta to sprinkle overtop. No one noticed, and the beans didn't suffer one little bit. They're so flavorful as is, they don't even need the cheese.

And while I'm dispensing tips, make a double batch, or even a triple. You can keep the beans in the fridge for at least a week with no problem, and they freeze beautifully as well. Hello, new favorite weekday lunch.

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Fasolakia: Greek Braised Green Beans

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 large red onion, diced 3 cloves garlic, smashed and then chopped 2 tablespoons urfa biber or other very fragrant mild chile flakes (less if using something spicy) 1 1/2 lbs. green beans, trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces 1 28-oz. can diced tomatoes or, if you'd like a more irregular texture (which I do), canned whole tomatoes that you cut or tear yourself 1 teaspoon dried oregano 1/2 cup chopped parsley 1/2 cup chopped dill 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese, optional

If using the oven, preheat to 285 degrees. If planning to cook on the stove, no need to preheat the oven.

In a large pot or deep pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat until it shimmers. Add onion and a big pinch of salt, and cook until soft, about 7 minutes. Add garlic and chile flakes, stir to combine, and cook another minute or so.

Add green beans, tomatoes, oregano, another big pinch of salt, and a few grinds of the pepper mill, and stir a few times until everything is well mixed. Bring to a very gentle simmer over medium heat.

At this point, cover the pot, and either turn the heat down as low as it'll go, or stick the pot into your preheated oven, and cook the green beans until soft an velvety, about 1 hour. When the green beans are cooked, taste and adjust seasoning, adding more salt, pepper, or chile, to taste. To serve, reheat green beans to a very gentle simmer, then stir in parsley and dill, reserving a bit of each to sprinkle overtop. Finish with the rest of the fresh herbs and a sprinkle of feta, if using, and serve hot.

If not serving immediately, store green beans either at room temperature (for up to a few hours) or in the refrigerator (for several days). These green beans also freeze very well.