• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

EGD

It's me!

  • Home
  • Recipes
    • Writing
  • About
  • Contact
  • Quaran-zine
Home » soup

soup

A happy spring soup

June 12, 2017 by edlyngd@gmail.com

(I wrote this three weeks ago. One can hope it’s still relevant.)

Earlier today morning on my walk I was trying to think about the one moment I could say was definitive of my 20s. With all of this nostalgia I’ve been feeling for a decade, nothing popped up right until now. Rather than “now” I mean last year. I was at the airport waiting to catch my flight back to Goa. I had just finished a memorable trip in Mumbai catching up with my friends and former work family and I was sitting in the departure lounge contemplating whether I should buy an overpriced stale samosa with watered down chutney. I felt…happy. Happy because for a brief moment in transit I could pretend I lived where my heart belongs and go home again. I was only a little meh about not getting to meet one of my work friends. I hadn’t seen him in a long time and after he moved abroad like me, there would be few chances where we would be in the same city at the same time. He was the favourite work child whom I loved to hate. Everyone we worked with read that as “domestic squabbles”, but in my mind it was more like a sibling rivalry. Maybe I was blind.

I dug out my foreign smart phone – which was dead for all phone-like purposes – to see if I could get it to connect to the airport wi-fi. I needed to have a local phone number which I had thanks to my mother’s extra phone and number she keeps around for when people like me visit. I entered my information into an electronic form and it sent me a code, which I then used to sign in and get my mind off samosas and onto WhatsApp. I sent him my first message that day using a usual “zinger” that we would send each other frequently over GChat. I typed something like “fail”, just like the good old days (but I didn’t mean it) and proceeded to tell him that he could have just been honest that he didn’t want to see me. Self-deprecation, my style. I went on to my next chat group to read the flood of messages that I hadn’t caught up on in a day or two. They were from my college friends’ group. My friend and his wife had twin girls. Nothing unusual except that the entire time they were pregnant he kept it a secret that it was going to be two babies. I said WHAT THE FUCK as quietly as one could in an airport. My fingers began to frantically type “CONGRATULATIONS” and “I could have come and seen you…why didn’t you tell me…now I’m at the airport on my way back to Goa”. As I was piecing together this surprise news I got a reply from my other friend. His mother had passed very suddenly. All of a sudden I was in the middle of a highway, traffic rushing by on either side of me. Good, bad, happy, sad, I retreated into my head and watched everything happen…being there but also being lost in a sea of emotion. Nobody around me knew the gravity of what was happening in these parallel universes except me and even I didn’t really know. All I knew is that for two people that day, everything changed.

Being 20-years-old was the start of adulthood for me. It was a time where I took big decisions on my own and saw overwhelming support from my family. I went on some of the best adventures of my life with some of my best friends, people I barely knew and my sisters. I got married(!) and a few months earlier, my grandma had died as a result of a mental illness and her medication. I got myself lots of anxiety, which I can manage most days but on others it’s the usual jaw-clenching, hair-pulling, nail-biting adventure. A lot of things I was when I was younger have started to get fine-tuned as I get older. I get excited when I am able to pinpoint how I’m still the same me even though I’ve flipped over the calendar. Life is complex. It’s bits and parts of the happy, sad overwhelming shit coming together and sweeping you over and under when you least expect it. It’s hard. It’s not going to be without a fight and on days when I can’t see beyond what I’m feeling in the present, I tell myself like the song grandma used to sing to keep our young attention, “que sera sera, whatever will be, will be”.


I prefer using homemade chicken or vegetable stock here because because because. I’m not fancy. I hoard ballooned bags of chicken stock in the freezer, that’s why. You can buy chicken stock parts at your meat vendor or grocery shop and it takes an onion, some garlic and herbs to make a stock. Same for vegetable stock; I save scraps and add it to water in a slow-cooking pot.

This is salt-as-you-go recipe. I add a little pinch each time I taste what I’m cooking. The final major salt balancing happens at the end.

Ingredients

  • 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 3 leeks, cut in half and sliced into 1/4 inch pieces (about 3 cups)
  • 1 tbsp ginger, grated
  • 1 tbsp garlic, grated
  • 10 fingerling or baby potatoes, rinsed and cut into 1/8 inch rounds (about 2 cups)
  • A large handful of kale, ribs removes and torn into smaller pieces
  • 1/2 tsp turmeric
  • 8 cups chicken or vegetable stock (2 32oz cartons, if you’re using those)
  • A bouquet garni* made up of 2 stalks of parsley, 1 stalk of thyme, 1 stalk of basil
  • 1 cup cooked navy beans
  • Kosher salt and pepper, to taste
  • Pecorino Romano, lemon wedges, bread and chopped parsley, to serve

*fancy word for bouquet of herbs. You can also add the herbs to a cheesecloth and tie up the pouch (like a tea bag). It’s easier to discard.

Heat the oil in a large soup pot and add the leeks to it. Cook them down to a jammy state of being, about 7 minutes. Add the ginger, garlic, potatoes, kale and turmeric and stir it all around for 2 minutes allowing the flavours to meld. About a tsp of salt here Pour in the chicken or vegetable stock and drop in the bouquet garni. Leave the soup pot a little over medium heat and let it come to a simmer. Leave it at that simmer for 25 minutes and then add the navy beans. Cook for 5 more minutes and add salt and pepper to taste. Discard the bouquet of herbs. They have done their part for the soup.

Serve with plenty of Pecorino Romano, lemon wedges, parsley and bread.

Filed Under: food, Goan food, savoury, Uncategorized Tagged With: happy birthday, soup, spring recipes, spring soups

A Goan’s tomato soup

October 5, 2016 by Edlyn

pic1

You know you come here for the writing. I know I come here for the same thing. What if I flipped the script today? It would be the best day to do that, I think. I came back from a doctor’s appointment this morning and my sprained thumb is almost back to normal. Yes. Then my computer wouldn’t turn on. It has been acting buggy all week. It’s like someone knew I had these big plans to write but instead I got crabby and hungry and made myself some potatoes. Two eggs on top, please….

Read More »

Filed Under: Goan food, savoury Tagged With: Goan recipes, soup, spicy tomato soup, tomato soup, vegetable stock

Can’t live without summer love Thursday

June 13, 2013 by Edlyn

The title of this post was going to be something so pretentious. I am so glad I cannot be such a fluffy pie snobby penguin sometimes. I would have no idea what to do with myself. One side of me would say things written by the Queen of England herself and then the other would jump out of a tree like Robin Hood and roll her eyes in sloooowwww-motion. Everybody would need to see this. The eye roll, I mean. It would be a spectacle. As for me, I’d contend with being somewhat of an enigma.

What I’m trying to say right now is also an enigma. Pretentious. YES. It’s all coming back to me now. Made you think of the Celine Dion song.

This past Sunday I made a grown-up decision to finally walk through a (here it comes) farmer’s market in Seattle. The walking through required prior bus-hopping and subsequent hill climbing. Such is this pretty city that was once full of shit. ATTENTION: THIS IS NOT A GRIPE. It was a good choice considering marital life partner numero 1 was going to be doing taxes and I was happy to stand back and give him breathing room. “Take as much room as you need marital life partner numero 1. I just need to go over here for jusssst a sec…BYE.”

Seattle has seven..count it…seven such markets and in the course of my wandering/walking/getting stranded this past year, I’ve slowly learnt what goes where. Cities are totally my thing. I love how you can never look lost because people mostly don’t give a crap. You can wear the strangest clothes, smell like a sewer, not comb your hair, forget your umbrella and before somebody realises how “unfit for consumption” you are, you’re just another face. Maybe they’ll go home and tell their cat about it or you’ll just fade away in another “let’s meet for Happy Hour”. Magical words.

I found the Broadway market through various connections I made in my head about where it could be. It was perfect! Lots of summer manifested itself into food from the earth, making me nod my head in approval. Something about a piece of land enveloped by concrete, with its inhabitants fawning over squash and strawberries on the streets makes me wonder why it’s not always this way. Let’s tear it all down and only take what we deserve. We could all be happy everyday of the week and not just on *insert odd day of the week and time I’m never going to remember here*. Food would be free. Nothing fancy. We would never have to say “farmer’s market” or memorise the schedule ever again!

That and I won’t have to feel  like I’m being snooty pants. I’m really not. Local plants are just delicious.

Summer squash soup with parsley pesto

IMG_5083

I have a recipe for vegetable stock on this blog but I didn’t use it in this recipe. Reason? Convenience mostly. What I did was put 1 onion, 1 tomato, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 potato and 3 stalks of rosemary along with salt and pepper in 3 cups of water. My take on a vegetable stock, if you want to call it that. I really wanted to make this soup and these were the ingredients that I had with me. Might as well, right?

Ingredients

  • 3 cups vegetable stock
  • 2 cups summer squash, cut into cubes
  • 1 cup wild onions, trim most of the green part. Just use about 1/2 and inch of it with the bulb. Red or white onions will work just as well.
  • 1 cup potatoes, cubed. I used Yukon Gold
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • Parsley pesto to garnish (In the recipe from last Thursday)
  • Olive oil

Dial your stove to medium heat and put a soup pot on it. To the pot, add some olive oil. You will need enough to saute the onions. Swirl the oil around and once it’s hot, add the onions and garlic to it. Cook till the onions are soft. Add the potato and squash and coat them well with the onions, stirring for just a minute. Next add the stock and bring it to a boil. Once it hits the boiling point, reduce the heat and let it simmer with the lid closed. Make sure it’s constantly simmering until the squash and potato turn soft. Once this happens, take off the heat and let it cool.

IMG_5028 IMG_5097 IMG_5025

Bring out the food processor and in 2 batches, blend the squash till it turns into a smooth puree. You can also leave it slightly chunky if you prefer it that way. Once it’s all done, pour the soup back into the pot and heat it up to simmer. Taste for salt and add more or less or nothing accordingly. As soon as you notice the soup starting to bubble, take it off the stove. It’s ready.

Serve it up into a bowl and stir in some parsley pesto and croutons. Season with pepper and enjoy the summer in a bowl.

IMG_5089

Filed Under: food Tagged With: Can't live without Thursday, cooking, soup, vegetarian, yum

Primary Sidebar

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Archives

© 2012–2023