Panacea (Greens & Beans Chicken Soup)

There's something particularly unproductive about having a wracking, productive cough. This was not the piece I planned to write, this month, but as my cough and fever worsened over the weekend and into midweek, drastic measures were required. With a tiny apartment kitchen, I don't keep a lot of food in the house, so feeling too sick to run to the grocery can quickly take the food situation to critical levels. Luckily, Aaron came to my rescue with a vat of homemade chicken soup. This vegetable-forward recipe is one we've made for years and is perfect for days when you're sick or just suffering some late April chill (it is the cruelest month, after all).

Save us from this cruel month

Pastiche of Exoticized "Other" (Moroccan lamb burgers)

The hamburger, despite owing its name to the city of Hamburg, Germany, is considered a quintessentially American food. So as the mercury spikes and grills flare across the land, I wanted in on the action. A food with such cultural iconography (and such simple ingredients) naturally lends itself to extemporization and I opted to enhance my Americana with a trip to the spice market: Moroccan lamb burgers with gingered carrots, lemon-mint goat cheese, and microgreens. The carrot component is an easy make-ahead, but the rest is ready in minutes, leaving you more time to chill in the shade with a tall glass of iced peppermint tea.

Prepare to chill

Curried Away (Massaman Curry)

To Aaron's distress, I absolutely love Thai food. Not that he doesn't, but I tend to take things to extremes. I'll recommend we order Thai takeout multiple times per week, sometimes on consecutive days (Aaron usually says no to that). I simply can't get enough. Thai food utilizes a number of flavors somewhat unique to Southeast Asia: fiery, licorice-y Thai basil, sour tamarind, darkly sweet palm sugar, citrusy notes from lemongrass and kaffir limes, and a somewhat surprising lilt of seafood from savory shrimp paste and salty fish sauce, which end up in almost everything. These ingredients combine to give Thai cooking, like many Asian cuisines, a spicy, sweet-and-sour character that was once prevalent in European cooking throughout the Middle Ages, but fell out of fashion in favor of the simply savory. One of the most familiar dishes to a Western audience will be curry - a dish decidedly lacking a Western analogue. Curries are soup- or stew-like dishes with rich flavors imparted from curry pastes or powders, themselves made from copious amounts of spices. Common throughout South and Southeast Asia, an Indian curry can often be identified by use of more dried spice powders and a thicker, richer texture, whereas Thai curry is often a bit soupier and relies more on fresh, moist seasonings (curry paste).

Nom

Season of Squash (Spanish Pumpkin Stew)

Winter is coming. And I'm not just saying that as a Game of Thrones fan. With the early sunsets and icy breezes, winter is always a great time for soup, but soup is unfortunately not typically regarded as haute cuisine. I wanted to try to make a soup that would put some excitement back on the dinner table. People may appreciate chicken noodle, but it doesn't usually elicit oohs and ahs. I also wanted to find a way to feature pumpkin, as it's the signature produce of October, without falling prey to the ubiquitous assault of pumpkin spice (insert noun). Eventually, I found my way to a Spanish stew named Berza de Calabaza. Many sources list this as an Andalusian specialty, though the recipe I settled on as a base template employs a Catalan ingredient in picada: an almost pesto-like blend of toasted bread, almonds, and garlic, as a thickener. Between the pumpkin, picada,  and beans, this makes an extremely hearty winter stew to warm the toes, stick to the ribs, and lift the spirit.

Like magic

Hot Potatoes (Sweet Potato Chipotle Soup)

Lately, I've been obsessing over soups. The perfect answer to blinding snow and biting cold, they make a timely and seasonally appropriate companion. The winter pantry offers no short stock of roots like onions, potatoes, and garlic, and hardy greens like cabbage and kale, but today I extoll the virtues of the humble sweet potato. Naturally bursting with flavor and nutrients, sweet potatoes make a thick, velvety soup with a color sure to brighten up the end of the day. Some of the oldest evidence of human sweet potato consumption dates from Peru 8,000 years ago, spreading to the Caribbean by 2500 BC and Polynesia by 1000 AD. Europeans weren't lucky enough to first taste sweet potatoes until Columbus' famed voyage of 1492. I embraced a general Meso-American theme by including Mayan sweet onion and the smoky spice of chipotles in adobo.

Colorful, flavorful

A Time for Teriyaki (Beef Teriyaki)

As winter plows on and buries us in polar vortices, I'm always on the lookout for fast, easy dinner recipes that can be finished quickly, without having to sacrifice flavor or quality. I've been borrowing heavily from Nigel Slater's excellent recipe book Real Fast Food, and even begun to ponder Rachael Ray's milieux in a new light. The beef teriyaki recipe I share today, however, is purely a creation Aaron and I jiggered together over much practice of laying a speedy weeknight table. A little leeway taken with a package of minute rice turns this into a quick "one pot meal," and leveraging a hot oven cooks all the ingredients at once with minimal hands-on time. The end result is tender and flavorful, with the luminous gloss that gives teriyaki its name. This recipe feeds a family with ease and can be scaled up to feed an army as needed, but the real beauty, aside from the vivid colors, is speed of assembly.

In a jiffy

To Drive the Cold Winter Away (French Onion Soup)

Jon, my father-in-law, has a French onion soup recipe that is famous throughout our family, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on it. Jon's recipes reflect the instinctive, free-form simplicity of a great home cook-a list of ingredients and a general idea rather than a rigid set of measurements. This is a large part of the mystique of historical recipes, which in addition to amazingly creative spelling, almost never do the math. "Take ye a vasty amount onions, and likewyse a potte full of stronge broth, and seethe it well over greate fyre" is all well and good, but to really guarantee an outcome, you need a formula. I always measure things out when first trying a new recipe or jotting down something for the blog. 

Meticulously measured