Avgolemono (ahhv-go-LEH-mo-no; avgo is egg, and lemono is lemon) is Greek chicken soup, but you don’t need chicken to make it! Its simple combination of a few basic ingredients creates a deep well of comfort to satisfy your senses and soothe your soul. Even though avgolemono is about as simple as it gets, it’s an elegant recipe whose brilliance comes as much from the technique as the ingredients. As usual, the better the quality of the ingredients, the better the finished product. Also, you don’t have to use arborio rice, but it does confer a particular creamy texture that other kinds of rice do not. Continue reading
Category Archives: Soups
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Slow And Steady Wins the Race (2 vegan, 1 turkey)
Now that the cold weather has moved in, I thought it would be nice to talk about slow oven cooking. As often happens when food cooks overnight in my oven, its extraordinary fragrance awakens me periodically throughout the night. You have to try it to believe it; the smell is amazing. It’s impossible to go wrong with slow oven cooking. The flavors caramelize and blend to become complex and satisfying. Although it is true that eating well takes more planning, it does not take more time. In the case of slow oven cooking, it actually takes less, and all these recipes can also be made in a crockpot set to low. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Yellow Squash Crockpot Soup
This soup, perfect for fall days and nights, cooks up beautifully in a crock pot. If you put together all the ingredients in the morning, the house will smell heavenly all day, and the soup will be ready to eat when dinnertime comes. On the other hand, if evening time works better for prepping the ingredients, the house will smell heavenly when you wake up, and the soup will be ready at lunchtime and also keep til dinnertime. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Sweet New Year Soup
Tonight, as the sun slips below the horizon, we will begin our celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. Traditional Rosh Hashanah foods tend toward the sweet and the circular: sweet for a sweet new year, and circular to represent the seasons that run one into the next, year after year, around and around. Instead of the usual braid, we even twist our challah (egg bread) into a round this time of year. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Golden Gazpacho Soup
You can think of gazpacho as soup and salad, both, at the same time. It will make a great first course at a nice dinner, but you can also take it to work for lunch (maybe with Mary’s Gone Crackers or a slice of toasted whole-grain bread). It would also make a scrumptiously satisfying mid-afternoon snack. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Curried Lentil, Tomato, and Coconut Soup
Everything Yotam Ottolenghi touches turns to gold. If you don’t already have one of his cookbooks [Ottolenghi (2008), Plenty (2010), Jerusalem (2012)] in your home, prepare yourself. YO takes flavor to the next level. Look at this list of ingredients – I’ve used them all, but never to such glorious effect. And it’s not just flavor. He takes texture to the next level, and color. Surely his kitchen has more than three dimensions. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Eddie’s Lentil Soup
Last night, when I arrived home from work, I walked into a house full of family and friends of all ages eager to spend the evening together, catch up, share stories, and allow the crazy, busy workweek to recede into the distance. And the house smelled wonderful. Continue reading
Three Ways to Nourish Your Heart & Soul
When people talk about nourishing, the next word I usually think of is “food.” But you can nourish yourself in a whole bunch of different ways, and I’m going to share a few with you today. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: After-Thanksgiving Turkey Soup
No introduction is really necessary for this recipe. Just pop on over to the supermarket for some scallions and a little knob of ginger if you need, and make this soup with your leftovers. There’s a good chance you already have all the other ingredients. It’ll take all afternoon to cook, but only 10 minutes to throw together. The biggest time investment is looking through the bones for bits of meat. But don’t feel the need to go crazy looking for every last piece. Feel free to stop when you feel like it. It’ll be enough, and it’ll be worth it. Continue reading
YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Fennel Vegetable Soup
The folks where I work are always coming up with the most sublimely delicious recipes. This is one. If you’ve never eaten fennel, you are in for a delicious treat. Raw, it’s crunchy and sweet, a bit like celery with a faint whiff of licorice. Cooked it’s a different vegetable altogether. A great addition to any vegetable soup recipe, it is a total team player, happily absorbing other flavors from the pot at the same time as it shares its own. Fennel comes in bulbs, and the easiest way to cut it up, no matter how you intend to use it, is to slice it in half from top to bottom, and then to slice the half-bulb into thin blades, all of equal length and width, as you work around the bulb. Continue reading