In Which I Become an Outlaw Cook with John Thorne

Running a used bookstore for the last fifteen years has educated me about which books are treasured, or perhaps guarded is a better word, by their owners and hardly ever relinquished back into the market. I rarely get any books in the shop about blacksmithing, stained glass or rare coins; such classics as To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, The Cat in the Hat and Gone with the Wind don't show up to be traded; and works by a select group of authors and illustrators like Shirley Jackson, W.H. Auden, Edward Gorey, Kurt Vonnegut, Tasha Tudor and Philip K. Dick are seldom brought to our doors.

Add food writer John Thorne's books to this elite list. I was first made aware of his work many years ago by my bibliophilic friend Myra, who asked me to keep an eye out for Thorne's books. After at least a decade, I had yet to find any such titles in my shop or out book hunting, until one day when I was on a holiday in Great Barrington, Massachusetts at Yellow House Books, and spied a copy of  Outlaw Cook (NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux: 1992), a collection of food essays written with his wife Matt Lewis Thorne. I snapped it up and devoured it with great pleasure over the next several weeks and am waiting to savor another of his books, Mouth Wide Open, which is at the top of my bedside room reading pile.

Now I know why Thorne's books never show up in the shop. They are to be savored and reread, bookmarked and propped open on the kitchen counter, and reread again. I chose Outlaw Cook for the current round of Cook the Books, the online foodie book club started by me, and two lovely blogger friends: Deb of Kahakai Kitchen in Hawaii and Johanna of Food Junkie, Not Junk Food in Greece.  For this bimonthly blog event, participants are asked to read our chosen book, blog about it and cook something up that is inspired by our reading. Anyone can join the "regulars" in this book club by posting and then leaving a comment at the Cook the Books site. The deadline for this round is January 23, 2012, and I am delighted that our featured author, John Thorne, will be reviewing the submitted posts and picking a winner to receive the coveted CTB winner's badge.

Thorne's prose is an interesting mixture of the erudite and the commonplace. One will learn much about a lot of different subjects, and need to look up many things along the way, but the writing is simple and direct and full of great quotes and turns of phrase. There are many intriguing essays in the book which explore different dishes and cultural traditions, some autobiographical asides, reviews of cookbooks and examinations of food personalities. Outlaw Cook devotes many pages to bread baking and outdoor hearths and there's a gloriously evocative chapter on Russians' love affair with mushrooms.

I really like Thorne's approach to trying out a new recipe or ingredient. Once something strikes his fancy, he's on an adventure to study it and make it his own. He reads about it extensively, cooks up many variations and then presents the reader with his findings. Whether it's hunting for the perfect meatball, simple pasta dishes, black beans and rice, pea soup or the best thing to do with a bounty of summer raspberries, there's lots of research and development in the Thorne kitchen and library and plenty of references offered up for further exploration.

As an avid member of the Order of the Stinking Rose, I was particularly entranced by the essay on garlic soup. I've made creamy, decadently rich garlic soups and delicate garlic and rice soups, and thought that covered much of the culinary territory on that subject. Not so fast, says Thorne, with his musings on various Mediterranean permutations of garlicky broths. There's the paprika and saffron-laced Sopa de Ajo of Spain, France's Soupe a l'Ail Bonne Femme studded with potato and tomato, herb-redolent Aigo Bouido from Provence and even a cold Garlic and Walnut Soup with Fresh Goat Cheese.  Most of these soups require a crusty piece of toasted bread sunk at the bottom of the soup bowl, and since my gluten-free breadbaking production neither produces quantity nor quality (witness the hockey puck "fluffy bun"example in the photo below), I turned to my trusty recipe card file for a breadless garlic soup recipe instead.

 
My garlic soup recipe is of origin unknown, most likely copied out of a cookbook borrowed from the public library during my foodie youth, but I tinkered with it enough to confidently call it my own adaptation. It's a very herb-redolent broth, perfect for bolstering the winter-ravaged immune system  and imparting a warm glow after a day battling the wind and cold. Just be sure to share it with those around you, since "...garlic is the ravisher, dominating those who would eat it, and then crowing that subjugation to the world through the body's every pore." (p. 120)


Herb and Garlic Soup

1 head garlic, separated into cloves
2 quarts water
2 tsp. salt

2 whole cloves
1/4 tsp. dried sage, crumbled
1/2 tsp. dried thyme, crumbled
1 bay leaf
2 Tbsp. parsley, chopped coarsely

2 egg yolks
3 Tbsp. olive oil

Grated Parmesan

Bring water and salt to a boil and drop in garlic cloves. Boil 1 minute, then fish out garlic and peel. Cut off root tip and cut into chunks. Throw it back into the simmering pot with the herbs and spices.

Bring to a boil again and then lower heat and simmer 30 minutes. Strain soup to remove herbs and then pour broth back into pot. Finely mash the cooked garlic and put back into the soup pot. Bring to a low simmer.

Beat egg yolks with olive oil and add to the soup pot. Gently simmer for 2-3 minutes to let simmer and thicken. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve hot with a sprinkling of cheese on top.

Makes 4-6 servings.

I'll have a roundup of all the Cook the Books posts about Outlaw Cook after the January 23 deadline, so be sure to stop back to see all the submissions. Next up for our book club is Roald Dahl's childhood classic, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which will be hosted by Deb during February/March. Happy reading and eating!

Creamy Brussels Sprouts Soup

After a tiring day at the bookstore, this was one of the easiest supper I ever dreamed up. I had a limited larder the other night, but I crossed my fingers, heated up bunch of stuff, seasoned the whole and served it forth, and it turned out to be a wondrous soup. It was quick to make, tasty, easy on the wallet, outstandingly healthy, but unfortunately rather drab in the curb appeal department. Food to serve at the orphanage, gray food for a gray, drizzly day. But luckily, Oliver and Company rallied with "Please, Crispy Cook, may I have some more?"

It was a cinch to whip up since I had made a pot of vegetable stock in my crockpot several days earlier using my ever-present freezer stash of vegetable trimmings and had also thrown in several peeled, chunked potatoes for another recipe I had in mind. I still had veggie stock and cooked potatoes in the fridge, as well as some leftover cooked brussels sprouts from our garden, so it only took me 20 minutes to get dinner on the table. I estimate it only cost a total of $5 to feed my family of four with this awesome soup, so I patted myself on the back after this rare alignment of frugality, deliciousness and quick cooking time in my kitchen.


Creamy Brussels Sprouts Soup

6 cups vegetable broth
4 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
2 cups cooked brussels sprouts (about 1 lb. raw brussels sprouts or 1 10-oz. pkg. frozen sprouts, if you must)
2 tsp. dried thyme
2/3 cup sour cream
Salt and Pepper to taste
Grated Cheddar Cheese for garnish

The easiest way to make this soup is to put your stash of vegetable trimmings (carrot and potato peels, celery ends, onion and garlic skins, etc.) into a 4 quart crockpot overnight with water to cover. Add potatoes. Cover crockpot and cook on low heat 8 hours or until you wake up. The potatoes will be appropriately soft and will have a nice mahogany tan from the onion skins.

Cool and throw potatoes and stock in blender or food processor in batches to be pureed. You don't want to cook brussels sprouts or any member of the cabbage family for too long because they are surprisingly delicate veggies that will just slime out and get sulphurous when overcooked. Cook brussels sprouts separately in lightly salted water until done (about 15 minutes). Puree brussels sprouts in blender also.

If you don't have a veggie scrap stash or haven't done the overnight cooking of the following day's meal, skip the instructions above and just go ahead and boil up your vegetable broth from a can or bouillion powder. Add potatoes and cook until soft (about 15-20 minutes). Cook brussels sprouts separately in lightly salted water until tender (about 15 minutes).

Place purees of potato and brussels sprouts into soup pot and heat over medium heat until heated through. Add thyme, salt and pepper and taste. Swirl in sour cream and heat just until hot. Serve immediately with grated cheese on top.

A luscious, if not the most photogenic recipe.


Makes 5-6 hearty soup servings.

I am submitting this recipe for the first November installment of Grow Your Own, hosted this month by Filipino Foodie, Ning, of Hearth and Home. Grow Your Own is a fun foodie event that highlights recipes from home grown, foraged or fished/hunted items, as started by Andrea's Recipes. The Brussels Sprouts are among the lone inhabitants of my November garden plots, next to some forlorn and yellowed asparagus stalks and a few hardy herbs.

Yours truly will be the host of the next round of Grow Your Own, running from November 16-30 and I will be excited to see what everyone is cooking up from their gardens or catches in their streams, all around the world.

Tomato Rice Soup

Having blazed through our original bottle of Smoked Paprika, Dan and I were eager to grab another and keep experimenting. Thanks for all the great foodie suggestions in my last post on our new favorite spice. This time I wanted to try it in some homemade tomato soup and it lent an earthy, rustic taste that was just fabulous. A bit of leftover rice from last night's dinner and presto, Tomato Rice Soup.

The tomato processing marches on the Crispy Kitchen as our plants, though many have blight, keep cranking out fruit, and we haven't yet had a frost. One batch of chunked up tomatoes cooked overnight in the crock pot (4 qts.) made just the right amount of tomato puree, when the tomato water was drained off for later vegetable soup stock.

Tomato Rice Soup

8 cups cooked tomatoes, (skins and seed removed through a food mill or equivalent amount of canned crushed tomatoes)
5-6 cloves garlic, peeled and put through garlic press or minced fine
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 heaping Tbsp. smoked paprika
2 Tbsp. chopped Italian parsley
2 cups cooked rice
Salt to taste

Heat olive oil in soup pot over low heat. Add garlic and cook 1 minute, stirring constantly to avoid burning and making the garlic bitter. Add paprika and cook 1 minute more. Toss in tomatoes and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer 20 minutes, uncovered. Add rice and cook until heated through. Season with salt to taste.

Garnish with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, grated cheese, parsley and a nice round of fresh ground pepper. Divine!

Rice and Parsley Pottage

The wintry mix continues to belabor us here in upstate New York, so we're fighting back with hot pots of soup. Here's a cheap and nourishing soup to warm your innards:

Rice and Parsley Pottage

3 Tbsp. corn oil
1 small onion, chopped
4 medium potatoes, peeled and grated
4 Tbsp. chopped Italian parsley
2 quarts water
Salt and pepper to taste
3 Tbsp. gluten-free vegetable broth base
3/4 cup uncooked rice
3 Tbsp. butter
1/2 cup grated Romano

Heat oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add onions and saute until soft and golden. Add potatoes, half of the parsley, water, salt, pepper and vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Add rice, reduce heat and cover. Simmer 15-20 minutes or until rice is cooked.

Remove from heat and stir in remaining parsley, butter and Romano.

Makes 6-8 servings.

Sweet Potato and Corn Chowder

In an effort to use up some refrigerator oddments and clear shelf space for the Thanksgiving feast, I decided to make a pot of soup the other day. I consulted my cookbooks for the best use of two baked sweet potatoes, some vegetable stock, a few corn tortillas and a bag of frozen corn that kept getting roughly shuffled around by various naughty Jagareskis with a resultant confetti of corn kernels sticking to all parts of the freezer compartment. Perusal of one of my favorite cookbooks, "Vegetarian Planet" by Didi Emmons (Boston: Harvard Common Press, 1997) offered up a delicious-sounding Corn and Sweet-Potato Chowder. I riffed on the recipe, which ingeniously uses bits of corn tortilla to thicken the chowder in a delightfully gluten-free way. Here's my version:

2 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup chopped onions
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. paprika
2 Tbsp. white rice flour
6 cups vegetable stock
3 corn tortillas, cut into small pieces
2 cups frozen corn
2 sweet potatoes, baked and cut into chunks
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup half-and-half or heavy cream
1 small can green chiles, diced

Melt butter and olive oil in a heavy stockpot. Add onions, garlic, cumin and paprika and cook, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes or until onions are softened.

Add flour and stir constantly with a whisk for 30 seconds. Gradually add stock, stirring all the while, to keep smooth. Add tortilla bits and frozen corn and bring back to a boil. Add sweet potatoes and chiles and cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Just before serving, stir in half-and-half and warm up chowder, but don't let boil.

Serves 4-6 people.

This is a very rich chowder, so just serve with a green salad for a warming dinner on a cold night.

Potato Cheese Soup

Last weekend our school district held a showcase for kids talented in the arts, music and drama and some of the parents were asked to bring food. It was a grey and drizzly day, so I put together a nice warm pot of soup after consulting the following cookbook:
New Recipes from the Moosewood Restaurant (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1987).

I did peel the potatoes and carrots, contrary to the recipe's instructions And I added some fresh thyme, which was still verdant and fresh in the garden with our mild autumn weather. I had a lot of positive comments and the triple batch of this soup all gone now, so this recipe is definitely a keeper, even though it's a bit of mess to clean up the food processor and inevitable slopping over that the pureeing entails.

Very Creamy Potato-Cheese Soup

3-4 Tbsp. butter
2 cups chopped onions
1 large garlic clove, minced
2 large potatoes, unpeeled and coarsely chopped
1 large carrot, unpeeled and coarsely chopped
3 cups vegetable stock or water
1 tsp. dried dill (or 2 Tbsp. fresh dill)
4 oz. cream cheese
1-1/2 cups milk
1 cup grated sharp Cheddar cheese (3 oz.)
Salt and Pepper to taste
Chopped fresh parsley

In a large soup pot, saute the onions and garlic in the butter until the onions are translucent. Add the potatoes and carrots and saute for 5-10 minutes longer. Add the stock or water and dill and simmer until all the vegetables are tender.

Puree the vegetables with the cream cheese and milk in a blender or food processor. Return the soup to the soup pot. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in the Cheddar cheese and reheat gently.

Serve each cup or bowl garnished with chopped fresh parsley.

Ooh Baby, It's Cold Outside

More single digit tempera-tures outside and wild winds sucking out the heat inside. Time to whip up a hot pot of soup. Minimal cupboard contents dictated the following Italian comfort soup.

PASTA E FAGIOLI (Pasta Fazool)

3 Tbsp. olive oil

2 cloves garlic, chopped (more if anyone in the house is feeling poorly)

1 large onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 (28 oz.) can plum tomatoes or diced tomatoes

1 (15 oz.) can canellini beans or chick peas, drained

1 cup water

Seasonings: dried or fresh basil, parsley, salt and pepper to taste

1/2 lb. cooked gluten-free pasta (elbows or ditalini are traditional, but I used leftover fettucine)

Grated Romano or Parmesan

Heat oil in soup pot. Saute onion, carrots and celery for several minutes. Add garlic, taking care to keep heat low so garlic doesn’t get bitter. Saute several more minutes.

Add remaining ingredients, except for pasta. Simmer gently 15-20 minutes. Add pasta for the last five minutes of cooking to avoid mushiness. Top with grated Parmesan or Romano cheese. Serves 6.

Mangia!