OmNomNom!

It's been ages (plus an international move), but after eighteen months at my parents' place, I have a kitchen of my own again and I'm back to cooking. To celebrate, and in the spirit of the recent increase in activity on dreamwidth, I'm posting the recipe for the soup I made myself for supper tonight, with a potential variation to make a Doukhobor-style Borscht.¹


( Dietary and Accessibility Notes )

( Ingredients and Directions )

1. Real Douhkohbor borscht is amazingly delicious but is typically prepared in huge batches in a much more complicated process than the rough-and-ready somewhat similar method I've described here, and it's much richer (think DEFINITELY heavy cream plus MASSIVE AMOUNTS of butter). back

I made this salad for supper tonight, as I do quite often in the summer, and it occurred to me that I could also post it here. My version is a slight evolution (or more accurately devolution?) of this 2008 Canadian Living recipe. I also use the dressing/vinaigrette on normal salads.

( Accessibility and dietary notes )

( Ingredients and directions )

For Christmas, my parents gave me Karen Page, The Vegetarian Flavor Bible, which is essentially a giant dictionary of (vegetarian) foods, each one listed with all the other foods they taste good with. As I was flipping through it, I discovered that fennel and butternut squash were supposed to taste good with each other, and with cheese, and the idea for this soup was born. It turned out well!

Dietary and accessibility notes: This soup can be made either vegan (no cheese) or vegetarian (with cheese garnish). It requires some chopping (especially of the fennel bulbs - you could substitute pre-chopped butternut squash, onions, and garlic), and an immersion blender, blender, or food processor for pureeing.

( Ingredients )

( Instructions )

Edited to add: sid has suggested that this might also be good with goat cheese, a suggestion I can only agree with. If so, you may want to increase the salt a little.

A new deli has opened in my neighbourhood recently, and a couple of weeks ago I stopped in to check it out. As soon as I ordered my vegetable sandwich, the owner had me pegged as a vegetarian, and she spent the rest of my wait for my sandwich explaining the vegetarian options she already offered, and asking me for my suggestions. She tried to induce me to try some roasted red pepper-smoked gouda soup, but my takeout preferences run to things I can't make nearly as well myself (like amazing delicious sandwiches on massive sesame-challah buns) and soup doesn't fit that category. However, having determined that roasted red pepper-smoked gouda soup is a thing, I decided to make some.

I used this recipe as a guideline, and came out with some pretty delicious soup. If the prospect of grating up a bunch of fancy cheese and melting it into a pot of pureed veggies sounds like something you'd enjoy, this is definitely a soup for you.

Dietary note: This is largely vegetarian, depending on your tolerance for cheese that may use animal rennet. If you only eat rennet-free cheese and rennet-free smoked gouda is something you can get your hands on, not a problem. If not, I'm afraid the cheese is what makes this soup (although you might be able to get something similar in taste with a combination of liquid smoke and some kind of sharp white vegetarian cheese).

Accessibility note: This is a pretty easy soup chopping-wise; it's pureed, so no need to be finicky about chopping the veggies. It does require an immersion blender (or at least some kind of blender) and opening some jars, though.

( Smoked Gouda, Roasted Pepper, and Tomato Soup )

I made what I consider a delicious batch of vegetarian friend rice for supper tonight, and since I was writing it up anyway in the hope of being able to reproduce it in the future, I thought I'd share it here as well.

Dietary note: I made this with egg, so it's not vegan, but it would probably be pretty tasty without egg, with extra cabbage, or with some crumbled tofu.

Accessibility note: This dish involves several preparation steps including pre-cooking the rice and pre-making the sauce. It also requires chopping (although you could use pre-chopped or grated carrots and pre-shredded cabbage to cut down on that) and ten to fifteen minutes of standing over a hot wok or skillet stirring.

The sauce I used come from my favorite cookbook, Audrey Alsterburg and Wanda Urbanowicz, ReBar Modern Food Cookbook, and it's great for general stir-fry purposes too. Here's the recipe:

( Soy Chile Sauce )

Here's the recipe for the rice:

( Vegetarian Fried Rice )

This is my go-to winter soup recipe and my go-to vegetable soup recipe. It's the product of a slow evolution from this recipe in the March 2009 issue of Canadian Living: Hearty Vegetable Soup, which I've gradually modified to my liking. It's a pretty flexible recipe, actually, built on a foundation of tomato, onion, garlic, cumin, cinnamon, and oregano. Feel free to use the root vegetables and legumes of your choice! Likewise, it can be scaled up or down. I usually make it in my 10-litre soup pot, which the full recipe fills about halfway, but I've also made it in a tiny, 1-litre pot!

It's vegetarian (and indeed, vegan), and forms its own delicious broth as it cooks, so there's no need for pre-made stock or broth. It does, however, require some significant chopping and stirring.

( Ingredients (in Imperial and Metric volume units) )
( Directions )

The original recipe suggests serving the soup with sour cream, which would undoubtedly be tasty, but it's equally tasty on its own. It also makes excellent leftovers - its flavor improves once it's been sitting for a while.