This recipe couldn’t have come at a better time. Over the last week, my youngest stepson, Julian, and I have had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time together. A few days ago, I took him to the gym with me. Instead of a daycare center that most gyms have, the gym on post simply has a “Family Room” – a room full of treadmills and elipticals with a chunk of the room cordoned off for the kiddos to play. The floors and walls of this stark white room are padded for the childrens’ safety making it seem much more like an asylum rather than a “Family Room”, but I digress…

Another mommy was there with her daughter whose nasal floodgates were wide open. Wouldn’t you know it, the only child we came into contact with was sick, and consequently, we both woke up the next morning with puffy eyes and sniffles.

At that moment I knew exactly what we were having for dinner.

Little Julian who is only 18 months old couldn’t eat the broth from this soup on his own, but, to my surprise, he ate a ton of the veggies all by himself. I fed him the broth, and it seemed he couldn’t get enough.

The Jewish mommy in me can’t help but believe that this soup is the reason he didn’t get much more than a little cranky and a runny nose.

Yes, this recipe is simple and not super flashy. But, when you don’t feel good and nothing sounds good to eat, this soup tastes like a big, cozy hug from Mom.

CABBAGE POTATO SOUP
makes three to four servings
If you are making this soup from the leftover chicken for the chicken experiment, please remove the meat from one of the breasts as you will be using it for the final chicken recipe.

2 Tbs. mild-flavored oil, such as rapeseed, canola, or grapeseed
1 onion, chopped
5 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
2 carrots, diced
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 roasted chicken carcass, butterflied and cut into 2 pieces
8-10 cups water
1 tsp. dried thyme, or 1 Tbs. fresh thyme
6 cups chopped green cabbage
2 Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces
lots of salt and pepper

1. Heat the oil in a stock pot over high heat. When it is hot, add the onion, garlic, 1 carrot, and the celery.
2. When the veggies are browned, add the chicken pieces in an even-ish layer across the bottom of the pot, and deglaze the pan with the water. Add the thyme and season very, very well with salt and pepper.
3. Bring the soup just to a boil, reduce the heat, and allow to simmer, covered, for 2-3 hours.
4. When the soup has a super yummy, chicken-y flavor, remove the pot from the heat, strain, and return the stock to the pot. Set the chicken and veggies aside. Return the stock to the stove, and bring it back up to a simmer over medium high heat.
5. Add the potatoes and remaining carrot. Cook for about 5 minutes and add the cabbage.
6. While the veggies are cooking, remove the chicken meat from strained chicken and veggies. Shred the meat and add it to the soup when the veggies are just cooked through.
7. Taste for seasoning. It will probably need a lot more salt. If it tastes bland, it just needs more salt.
8. Grab some crackers and serve.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been nursing a very sick kitty. My little Simon (and by little, I mean 23 pounds!) apparently has an affinity for elastic hair ties and decided to consume a boat load of them. Twenty (give or take…) trips the veterinarian and $1500 later, he seems to be on the road to recovery. And, interestingly enough, the whole experience has confirmed a very important lesson that I try to instill in all of my clients, friends and family – and myself: Be conscious of what you put in your body because you will pay for it in the future.

There are moments when it’s so easy to justify scarfing down stuff like big slabs of gluten-y, milky, eggy cake. Sometimes I start thinking things like, “Oh, I’ll be fine. I won’t get that sick. It looks so good. Once in a while can’t hurt, right?” But the truth is that once I let myself go, I can’t just stick to ‘once in a while’. I slowly start to allow myself pieces of crusty baguette in restaurants, gelato date nights, and cheesy enchiladas. Before I know it I’m sleeping 12 hours a night and in a constant state of not-okay-ness.

So, taking note from Simon’s painful indulgence, I decided that instead of choosing an instantly gratifiying, but ultimately destructive meal, I would eat something that would nourish me and help me feel like a million bucks for more than five minutes.

This dish is packed full of all kinds of incredible foods. Wakame, kombu, and spinach, are all known to alkalize your body and provide huge loads of trace minerals and calcium. Miso and tamari are both fermented soy products that are also great for alkalization and helping the ol’ digestive tract stay in tip-top shape. When I make this dish for myself, I replace the soba noodles with rice noodles since most soba noodles still contain wheat flour.

For more information on the benefits of including seaweed in your diet, check out these articles:
Eating Seaweed May Help Keep Your Boobies Healthy
Seaweed Keeps Ya Svelt
A Seaweed Primer
Elise’s Yummy Seaweed Recipe

MISO NOODLE SOUP WITH WAKAME AND SPINACH
serves two

Call me crazy, but to me this is the ultimate comfort food. Filling, satisfying and yet so light you don’t feel weighed down and sleepy afterward. In fact, I usually feel supercharged. Kombu, wakame, and bonito flakes should easily be found on the Asian aisle of any well stocked grocery store. Bonito flakes are not vegetarian, so to make this dish vegan, use a light vegetable stock in place of the dashi.

For the Dashi:
1 cup bonito flakes
6 cups water
2 pieces kombu

1. Combine water and kombu in a medium sized pot. Bring almost to a boil. Add bonito, remove the pot from the heat, cover and let sit 30-45 minutes. Strain.

For the Miso Broth:
3 cups dashi
1 Tbs. white miso
1 Tbs. red miso
2 Tbs. wheat-free tamari, or to taste
1 scallion, thinly sliced

1/3 pkg. (4 oz.) soba noodles or Asian rice noodles, cooked according to package instructions
4 oz tofu, pressed and cut into 1/2″ cubes
2 Tbs. dried wakame, rehydrated according to package instructions
2 handfuls fresh baby spinach

1. Combine miso and tamari in 1/4 cup of the Dashi. Heat remaining heat the dashi over low heat. Whisk the miso mixture into the heated dashi. Add tofu and half of the scallions. Add spinach, stir and cover to wilt.

2. Place half of the noodles into each warmed bowl and ladle the soup over the noodles. Top with the wakame and remaining scallions. Add tamari as needed.

Oops.

It’s not that I had anything in particular against making a fish soup, it’s just the…um, fervor with which she went about handling the seafood. It kind of grossed me out. But, by the end of the episode she had this beautiful bowl of soup that looked so tasty. I was jazzed about the final product, but I wanted to make it a little less, how shall I put it, rustic. I didn’t want to deal with fish bones and other messy things that come with making her version of Bouillabaisse, so with a little help from my favorite stash of tried and true recipes, I created this fancy adaptation that takes the dirty out of making a delicious fish soup.

ORANGE SAFFRON BOUILLABAISSE WITH GLUTEN FREE RED PEPPER ROUILLE
serves two
recipe created with a little help from Cook’s Illustrated

The great thing about Bouillabaise is that it is very healthy and totally adaptable. You can use pretty much any kind of seafood you have on hand. Mussels, lobster, calamari or almost any fin fish would be perfect, but I would probably save the crabmeat for another dish.

For the Orange-Saffron Fish Stock:
2 Tbs. olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 leek, washed and thinly sliced
10 garlic cloves, smashed
1 cup dry white wine
3 (8oz.) bottles clam juice
3 cups water
8 sprigs parsley
5 sprigs thyme
1/2 lemon, juiced
orange zest, removed in long strips using a vegetable peeler
1/2 tsp. saffron
freshly ground pepper, to taste

For the Seafood and Marinade:
10 medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
4 sea scallops, muscles removed and each scallop cut in half lengthwise
6 oz. fish fillet, skinned and cut into 1 inch pieces (I used Salmon because I happened to have some on hand. Typically something like red snapper, monkfish, or sea bass would work better.)
pinch red pepper flakes
2 garlic cloves, minced
a pinch saffron threads, crumbled
4 basil leaves, chiffonade
a few Tbs. olive oil
a splash of dry white wine

10 littleneck clams, scrubbed

For the Rouille:
1 red bell pepper, roasted, peeled, stemmed and seeded, cut into large pieces
2 slices Gluten-Free bread
1 large garlic clove
pinch cayenne pepper, or to taste
1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
sea salt, to taste

For the Garlicky Toasted Bread:
2 slices Gluten-Free Bread
1 garlic clove, peeled and cut in half
olive oil spray

1. For the Seafood and Marinade: Combine everything in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Stick in the refrigerator for at least an hour while you are getting everything else ready.

2. For the Rouille: In the bowl of a food processor, combine the red bell pepper, bread, garlic, cayenne, a dash of salt, and a few tablespoons of the olive oil. Process this mixture until combined, and with the machine running, drizzle in the remaining olive oil until it is the consistency of mayonnaise. Season and transfer to a small bowl. Cover with plastic and set aside.

3. For the Stock: Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over high heat. Add the onion, carrot, celery, leek and garlic and saute until the veggies are well browned. Deglaze the pan with the white wine and scrape up the bits of fond on the bottom of the pan. Cook off all of the alcohol in the wine and add the clam juice and water. Add the herbs and lemon juice and bring the stock to a simmer. Cover the pot and allow this to simmer over medium-low heat for about 45 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and add the orange zest and saffron. Cover and steep these flavors into the stock for about 15 minutes. Strain the soup using a fine mesh strainer and return the stock to the pot over medium high heat.

4. To Finish the Soup: Bring the soup up to a boil and allow it to reduce down for about 5 minutes. Add the marinated seafood and the clams to the pot and cover. Allow the soup to simmer for about 5-7 minutes or until the seafood is cooked through and the clams have opened. Discard any clams that do not open after 10 minutes of cooking.

5. To Make the Garlicky Bread: Heat the broiler to high and place an oven rack about 3 inches from the broiler. Spray both sides of the bread with olive oil spray and place the slices on a sheet pan. Place under the broiler for just a few minutes until it is browned. Watch it very, very closely. Remove the pan from the broiler and rub the browned side of the bread with the garlic clove. Flip the bread over and put it back under the broiler to brown the other side. Remove when browned and set aside.

6. To serve: Ladle the soup into warmed soup bowls, dividing the seafood evenly into the two bowls. Serve the Garlicky bread on the side with a big dollop of the Rouille on top. Once you dig in, feel free to spread the Rouille all over the bread or add some of it to the soup. Yum!

Oh, and P.S., as soon as this posts I am getting started on Julia’s autobiography called “My Life in France”. I’ve heard so many great things about it – I can’t wait to tear into it. Have you read it?

The grueling Texas summer heat begins to subside to a mild 90 degrees or so. The produce shelves are loaded with bizarre gourds and, as Luke and I saw yesterday, a few Prize-Winning Pumpkins weighing at least 50 pounds a piece, I kid you not. I love this time of year so much, I even bought some yummy Vanilla Chai lotion to fill my nose with the scents of cinnamon and clove all day long.

The changing season is a reminder that the best times of the year are just around the corner – the days when sweaters get pulled out from the furthest reaches of the closet, fuzzy boots get pulled on over cushy toe socks, and, of course, the mother of all food feasts appears at the end of November. So, in celebration of Autumn, I made my first (and most likely favorite) pureed soup of the season.

ANCHO ROASTED BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP
serves four

One thing I love about this recipe is that while most pureed soups are finished with a considerable amount of heavy cream, this one doesn’t even need it. In fact, the only “dairy” products in the whole dish are just used as a garnish. If you are really watching the calories, you can omit the white creamy stuff entirely and it is just as delicious.

2 Tbs. olive oil
1 large shallot, minced
2 garlic cloves
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
2 tsp. sea salt, or to taste
1 tsp. cumin
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock, preferably homemade
1 large butternut squash
2 dried Ancho chiles, soaked, seeded, and stemmed
1/2 cup frozen corn
a few Tbs. heavy cream, goat yogurt, or thin yogurt of your choosing (lowfat or soy)
small handful of Pepitas, for garnish
a few sprigs of cilantro, for garnish

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a sheet pan with foil. Slice the butternut squash in half, lengthwise, and lie it, cut side down, on the lined sheet pan. Pop it in the oven and bake for about 40 minutes or until the squash is very soft. Pull it out of the oven and allow it to cool while you start the soup.

2. In a large pot, heat the olive oil over high heat. Add the shallot, garlic, carrot, and celery and saute until the veggies are a bit browned and beginning to soften. Season with about 1 tsp. of sea salt and cumin, and add the chicken or veggie stock.

3. While the soup is coming up to a simmer, scoop the seeds from the squash into the trash (or the compost bin:)) and scoop the meat of the squash into the soup. Toss the skins of the squash into the compost bin. Tear the softened chiles into pieces and add them to the pot. Stir in the corn, cover the pot, and lower the heat to a simmer for about 10 minutes, or until all of the veggies are very soft.

4. When all of the veggies are soft, remove the pot from the heat and puree the soup. You can do this by either sticking an immersion blender right into the pot, or by transferring the soup to a regular blender and blending until smooth. Check for proper seasoning and add more salt if it is needed.

5. To serve, ladle the soup into individual bowls and garnish with cream, pepitas, and cilantro. I usually eat this alongside a light mixed green salad and a piece of gluten-free cornbread. But, your favorite warm, crusty loaf of bread would be great with this as well.