Cheesy Tomato Soup: A Love Story

Under any other circumstances, it might have been a very long winter, devoid of Summer's coveted ripe tomatoes and quite possibly, the very reason for my being. If it weren't for the bottom shelf of the canned food section in the supermarket next door, glowing like a beacon of light, I may never have found the San Marzano tomatoes, $1.79 for a 28-ounce can, and lovely in soups and stews, tomato sauces and more. Try them, you won't be sorry. So, I did, again and again, never pausing too long to long for a juicy plum or ripe vine treat. All winter long, I returned to that beacon of light, and reaped the benefits, in the form of this cheesy tomato soup. And so the love story begins...

Cheesy Tomato Soup
(Adapted from Mollie Katzen's The Enchanted Broccoli Forest)

1 tbs. olive oil

1 medium chopped white onion

1/2 tsp. salt

2 large cloves garlic, smashed, peeled, and minced

1/2 tsp. dried rosemary

1 tsp. dried basil

1 bay leaf

freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes, pureed in a blender or food processor

3 tbs. dry sherry

1 tsp. honey

4 oz./half a block or cream cheese

Heat the oil in a soup pot. Add onion, garlic, salt, herbs and black pepper. Cook over medium heat until onion is soft (~10 minutes). Add tomatoes, sherry, and honey. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Carefully remove bay leaf. Cut cream cheese into pieces and drop into the hot soup. Stir until smooth. Serve hot with good bread and a big salad. 

Portobello & Roasted Red Pepper Sandwich

The other day, I ventured to Murrays' Cheese Shop for lunch. Encouraged by the aroma of stinky goodness upon my arrival, I surveyed the pressed sandwich selection and decided upon the Veggie Bite - complete with goat's milk gouda, artichoke pesto, arugula, and tomato slices. Needless to say, it was a little slice of heaven in my day. Though Thich Nhat Hanh's new book Savor encourages mindful eating, I must admit I'm guilty of the occasional sandwich-on-the-run. The sandwich is a food of convenience, one you can wrap up and haul along, tuck it in your purse or pack, and eat when the time is right. This sandwich was particularly tasty:

Portobello & Roasted Red Pepper Sandwich with Feta and Spinach

Heat a splash of water in a small frying pan with a lid. Steam a washed and stemmed portobello mushroom for 10 minutes or until tender and the juices have released. With the top of the mushroom facing down, add a handful of feta (next time, I'll use goat cheese), and let it melt for a couple of minutes.   

Meanwhile, toast two slices of whole grain bread. Compile your sandwich by stacking roasted red peppers on top of the mushroom and cheese. Top with fresh spinach or arugula. Slice and enjoy!

A Nod to My Mother: Casserole

I am a girl who grew up on casseroles - sweet potato casserole, broccoli cheese casserole, and squash casserole to name a few. They were the highlight at family gatherings, alongside sweet peas, tomato biscuit sandwiches, and a large red bucket of fried chicken.  But for some reason I have always been reluctant to return to mass quantities of mush, however delicious and flavorful, in my own cooking adventures. But something about Mollie Katzen's scheherazade casserole caught my attention. In an era of "eat this, not that" advice from every direction, diets, cookbooks, nutritional theories and postulations, casseroles are not high on anyone's list of healthy foods. But this one combined several ingredients on my most coveted foods list, namely tomatoes, feta, and cumin. How could a dish that combined these ingredients turn out badly? And so the experiment began. A trip to the store supplied me with raw bulgur, dry soybeans, a beautiful red bell pepper, and white onion (because the spanish and yellow onions just aren't up to par lately). With garlic, olive oil, and spices on hand, that's all you really need.

Scheherazade Casserole 
(Adapted from Mollie Katzen's The New Moosewood Cookbook)

1 c. raw bulgur
1 c. boiling water
1 tbs. olive oil
2 c. minced onion
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. dried basil
3 twists of freshly ground black pepper
3 dashes of cayenne
1 large bell pepper, diced
3/4 c. dry soybeans, quick soaked & drained
1-14 oz. can diced tomatoes, drained
3 tbs. tomato paste
1/4 c. dried parsley
2 c. crumbled feta cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Oil a 9 x 13 inch baking pan.

Place the bulgur in a medium sized bowl and add boiling water. Cover with a plate and let stand at least 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add onion, garlic, salt, and other seasonings. Stir occasionally as you saute over medium heat for 5 to 8 minutes. Add bell pepper and saute for 5 more minutes.

Place your drained soybeans in a blender with a cup of water. Grind until it resembles a coarse batter. Transfer to your largest mixing bowl.

Add soaked bulgur and sauteed veggies to the soybeans. Stir in the tomatoes, and add tomato paste, parsley, and 1 cup of the feta. Mix well.

Spread into your dish. Sprinkle remaining feta on top. Bake uncovered for 40 minutes at 375 degrees. Remove and place under the broiler for 1-2 minutes or until the cheese is browned on top.

It is debatable as to whether or not this would make a satisfactory entree. I can see it doing very well alongside a piece of chicken or a mild fish. Also note this dish makes for fantastic leftovers, especially after sitting in the fridge overnight, allowing the flavors to mingle a bit more.

A note on terminology:
If you're from the Dakotas you might refer to this type of dish as a hotdish. If you're British, you might call it a bake. For the rest of us folk, casserole works just fine.

Sunday Supper

Sometimes, when my humble dishwasher is watching horrible sitcoms on BBC America, I like to sneak away into the kitchen for some meditative vegetable chopping. Though my kitchen is more like a cubby hole, so deficient in storage space I must store bakeware and pots and pans in my oven and can't actually chop vegetables in the kitchen. It is a wonderful reminder of how lucky I am to have pots and pans in the first place and a little oven nook in which to store them.

On this particularly warm March afternoon, a colorful soup full of spices and magic was in order, as was a variation Momofuku's famous crack pie. Here it goes...

Gypsy Soup (adapted from The New Moosewood Cookbook)

2 chopped and seeded plum tomatoes from a can (or 2 fresh seeded and peeled tomatoes, chopped)

1 tbs. olive oil

2 c. chopped onion

2 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced

3 stalks celery, chopped

2 c. sweet potato, peeled and chopped

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. paprika

1 tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. dried basil

2 dashes cinnamon

2 dashes cayenne

1 bay leaf

3 c. water

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 can chick peas, rinsed and drained

Heat olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven. Add onion, garlic, celery, and sweet potato, and saute over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add salt, and saute for 5 more minutes. Add seasonings and water. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. 

Add tomatoes, bell pepper, and chick peas. Cover and simmer for 10 more minutes. Serve and enjoy with a cool glass of water. 

And then there was dessert...Momofuku's crack pie is perhaps the most egg-, butter-, and sugar-laden pie I've ever encountered. A surefire way to satisfy any sugar craving, it's actually not as labor-intensive as people make it out to be. It basically involves making a giant cookie, cooling the cookie, crumbling it into some butter and sugar and molding it into your pie pan. Then, pouring some more butter, sugar, and egg into the pie shell and baking it for about 20 minutes. Peas Love Carrots has a lovely version of this pie as well, complete with step by step photographs. 

Eggs, the Food of Many Faces

How many ways are there to enjoy eggs? You can poach them, fry them, scramble and bake them. But eggs alone cannot satisfy this cook... There are perhaps as many ways to enjoy eggs as there are to make heuvos rancheros. Simple and delightfully messy, huevos rancheros are a terrific gentle-on-the-wallet weeknight meal. Like tortilla soup, huevos rancheros are all about the garnishes. Collect your favorite mexican food memories and compile them over tortillas and eggs, and you will have something like huevos rancheros. While a particularly creative friend of mine poaches her eggs in tomatillo salsa, I prefer to fry mine before transferring them to a cheese topped tortilla in a heated skillet.

Huevos Rancheros My Way

1 avocado, cubed

1 package of grated sharp white cheddar (Cabot Farms in Vermont makes a great sharp white cheddar)

1 c. salsa (I used Green Mountain salsa, later rinsing and saving the jars for water glasses)

6 small corn tortillas

6 eggs

1 tbs. butter

Heat a frying pan over medium heat. Place a tortilla in the pan and top with cheese grated on the big holes of a box grater. In another frying pan, melt butter, and begin to fry your eggs, one or two at a time.

When the eggs are begin to brown on the bottom, transfer them one at a time onto the heated tortillas. When your eggs are done cooking to your satisfaction, transfer the egg and cheese topped tortilla onto a plate. Garnish with salsa and avocado. Repeat the process, beginning each time with a clean tortilla, fresh grated cheese, and fried egg. Garnish and serve. Easier than pie.

Carbohydrates, I love you, but you're weighing me down

On particularly cold & blustery nights....

When all you want to do is cuddle up in your comfy cozies....

You can take solace in baking.

Baked ziti may not sound all that impressive, but my belly would disagree with you. This baked ziti is simply marvelous. My humble dish-washer and I feasted on this dish two nights in a row (mathematicians take note, this is 4 main-course servings).

Supplemented with a simple salad, this is the carbohydrate-lovers perfect winter weeknight meal. If you are me, a simple salad consists of arugula, fresh cilantro and/or basil, lime juice, olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.

And on a particularly grueling day, a lone can of your cheapest brew.

Baked Ziti with Three Cheeses

(adapted from the Williams-Sonoma Cookbook: The Essential Recipe Collection for Today's Home Cook)

Olive oil for coating and drizzling

1 c. ricotta

1 egg yolk

1 c. freshly grated asiago or pecorino romano

A generous pinch of ground nutmeg

1/4 c. dried parsley

salt & pepper

1 lb. dried ziti

Your favorite tomato sauce (I used 1.5 28-oz. cans of Trader Joe's pasta sauce)

1/2 lb. mozzarella, cut into cubes

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Coat your baking dishes (I used one rectangular and one square pyrex dish). Bring salted water to boil, and cook your pasta until it is al dente (12-16 minutes).

Combine egg yolk, ricotta, half of the asiago, nutmeg, and parsley in your largest mixing bowl. Toss well. Add the heated tomato sauce, mozzarella, and drained pasta. Toss again.

Transfer mixture to your coated baking dishes. Smooth on top. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle the remaining asiago. Bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes until bubbling and lightly browned. Let the baked ziti rest for 5 minutes before serving. Garnish with fresh basil if desired.

Photos 1 and 2 courtesy of Urban Decay

...and she invited him into her home. His name was Stew.

When I think of stew, I think of large chunks of beef in a soupy broth, but I've come to realize that stews need not be meat-centric to be flavorful. In fact, I've been making a flurry of stews this past week. My favorite was Tomatican, from none other than the Moosewood Collective's The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home: Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day. A Christmas present, this book is my current go-to for a quick and simple meal, one that doesn't require too much clean up or preparation.
A huge fan of soups, stews can stand alone and make for a nice topping for rice, barley, or quinoa. Last week, I made a Chilean stew called Tomatican twice. It goes something like this:


2 c. chopped onions
1 fresh chile, minced, or 1/4 tsp. cayenne
2 tbs. olive oil
2 tsp. ground cumin
2 c. frozen lima beans
3 c. undrained canned tomatoes, or 1-28 oz. can plum tomatoes
2 c. fresh or frozen corn
1/4 c. chopped fresh cilantro (I used about 2x as much)
salt to taste


In a heavy nonreactive soup pot or saucepan, saute the onions and chile or cayenne in oil for about 5 minutes, until onion begins to soften. Add cumin and lima beans and saute, stirring, for a couple minutes. Add juice from the tomatoes, cover, and simmer for 5 minutes. Chop the whole tomatoes right in the can. Stir in the tomatoes, corn, and cilantro into the pan. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the vegetables are tender. Add salt to taste.


I served this over quinoa seasoned with a bit of salt and fresh lime juice, and feta.

Homemade Vegetable Soup

Tonight I made homemade vegetable soup, a variation of a recipe from my mother's family recipe arsenal. While hers included juicy chunks of round cut beef, mine is vegetarian and chock full of veggies. A large pot costs roughly ten New York dollars. You could probably do it for 7 or 8 suburban dollars. Great for family feasts or for a week's worth of dinners for single folk, it's wonderfully supplemented by sourdough toast, but honestly, what isn't?! My father always made cheese toast in our oven toaster to accompany this one-pot wonder. Give it a try.

Homemade Vegetable Soup (vegetarian version)

1 bunch of celery, chopped

1 package of whole carrots, chopped

3-4 medium golden potatoes, skin on, chopped

1 package of frozen peas (about 2 cups)

1 28-ounce can of whole roma tomatoes

1 46-once can of tomato juice

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

olive oil
2 cups of water

1 large stock pot with lid

Once you've chopped all of the vegetables, heat a couple splashes of olive oil in your stock pot, and saute the onions until soft. Add carrots and celery. Stir the vegetables so they are all coated with a bit of the olive oil. Cover and cook over medium heat for 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile, place your chopped potatoes in a microwavable container, and microwave on high for 8 minutes. Add the potatoes & canned tomatoes to the pot. With a spatula, chop the tomatoes into bite size pieces. Add the entire can of tomato juice, the water, the package of peas; give it a stir. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30-45 minutes, longer depending on how soft you like your vegetables. Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy with caution. It will be hot!

Tonight, I enjoyed my soup with a glass of water with a fresh slice of lime. This, I think, is the ultimate cheap summer luxury.

Cleansing Tomato White Bean Soup

Lately, I've been craving simple meals, full of flavor, and fresh seasonal ingredients.

Too often, meals are complicated by an overabundance of ingredients, prepackaged sauces and seasonings, and over-processed flours, preservatives, etc.

Not this one. This one was perfect and clean. Eating it I felt fresh and renewed. Isn't it amazing how food can change your mood and make you feel completely different from how you felt before, relaxed, better, or uncomfortably worse? For this reason, I want to eat only foods that make me feel clean and alive.

Tonight, I cooked a beautiful soup, adapted from Cucina Nicolina.

White Bean and Tomato Soup

2 large cloves garlic, minced
4 cups spinach, coarsely chopped
1 can crushed tomatoes (or 3 tomatoes, diced, juices reserved)
4 cups vegetable broth or water (I used water with low sodium vegetable bouillon)
2 Tb. dried basil
1 can white beans
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the garlic in olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes, broth or water, dried basil, and beans. Stir well to combine. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Add the spinach, and simmer until wilted. Salt and pepper to taste. Simmer, half-covered, for about 15 minutes. Serve hot.

Serves 4.

Add two slices of good Tuscan bread, and you've got a meal. Perhaps vanilla bean ice cream for desert....