simple soup

We love to make soup. Most of the year, no other meal could be more satisfying—it's hot and hearty, simple, always adaptable. Our staple soup this spring has been lentil, which I love because it requires no grocery store trip or special planning: lentils, potatoes, onions, and cumin are always stocked in our cupboards and the farm always has some kind of greens to harvest and toss in at the last minute.

This week, we wanted inspiration for a new mix of flavors, which meant we reached for Best Recipe's Soups, Stews, and Chilis. An Asian soup sounded intriguing, and we picked the first one we saw—Japanese soba noodle soup—because it called for spinach and the farm has tons. 

A caveat first: we did not really follow the ingredients list. However, this not one of those recipe reviews that reads like, "Zero stars! I substituted dill for the cilantro and lemon for the lime, and it didn't taste Mexican at all!" No--all we did was simplify. (I love Best Recipe's philosophy to print only the best recipes, but sometimes I do not want the best; I want the easiest.) 

The original recipe calls for shiitake mushrooms, which you use to make your own mushroom broth. We didn't want to spend $12 per pound on mushrooms and our pantry is bursting with chicken stock, so we ditched the shiitake for white mushrooms (so much more attractive at $3 per pound) and used chicken broth. We made a few other minor adjustments (no mirin, which the recipe called for), and ended up with a rich, flavorful, and simple soup. Springlike, said Tim, because it's light and brothy. Fall-like, I said, because the mushrooms add a deep earthiness. Take your pick—either way, it's a repeat dish. 

Japanese Soba Noodle Soup 

{This recipe made 2 meals for us} 

8 cups chicken broth 

4 tablespoons soy sauce 

8 scallions, dark green parts and light green parts separated and roughly chopped
9 ounces soba noodles 

8 ounces white mushrooms, roughly sliced 

Spinach, washed and roughly chopped (we probably used 6+ ounces; the recipe calls for 3 ounces)

1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds (optional; I accidentally blackened ours until they shone like tiny grains of obsidian, so we did not have any!) 

Combine the broth, soy sauce, and dark green, roughly chopped scallions in a stockpot over medium heat.

While the broth is warming up, fill another pot with 4 quarts of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Once the water is boiling, pour in the soba noodles and cook, stirring frequently, for 4 minutes. Test a noodle--it should be tender, but definitely not mushy. Drain, rinse with warm water (Best Recipe stresses this: warm, not hot or cold), and set aside.

Now the broth should be simmering. Add the sliced mushrooms and simmer until tender. Then stir in the spinach and let it wilt, but only just.

Portion the noodles into individual bowls, then ladle the soup over the top. Sprinkle with the rest of the scallions and the sesame seeds (if they survived your toasting), and enjoy.

Note: If you have leftovers, the noodles will be much mushier the next day unless you keep them separate in the fridge. We didn't bother to keep them separate and it was fine, although not the delicious al dente of the first day.

cooking

I am completely obsessed with cooking. It's partly Smitten Kitchen (we joke that Deb rules our kitchen—what she writes, we cook), partly farm bounty, partly just plain excitement experimenting with food.

Plus I'm reading all these food books—recently, The Butcher and the Vegeterian and Ratio. Ratio is particularly hunger-inducing and I find I can only read it in small bits, tackling the pie dough chapter one week, the custard chapter the next.

On top of it all, I bike a lot, and often my rides turn into extended cooking daydreams...my wheels spin the miles away and my mind spins plans to make a ginger–soy sauce glaze for salmon or toast a new combination of nuts, seeds, and oats into crunchy granola. 

My most elaborate bike-fueled meal plan became Mother's Day brunch. I cooked nearly nonstop that weekend, on Saturday a graham cracker crust and pastry cream and sliced strawberries to stash in the fridge for Sunday dessert, then homemade pizza all evening, a feast of herbed dough and fresh mozzarella. Sunday started with brunch prep before church, then a whole afternoon playing head chef and ordering around my soux-chef husband, dad, and sister as we baked, cooked, sautéed, chopped, and plated a spring feast. It was every bit as luscious as I'd dreamed while cycling to the water taxi.

And then—and then. I promised myself I would take Monday night off. But when I got home, I discovered a lonely hunk of the last week's no-knead bread on the counter, so dry I couldn't even hack at it with our new bread knife, and just had to rescue it. A la Ratio, a ridiculously simple custard base and some cinnamon and about 5 minutes of work became bread pudding. 

Tuesday, I promised myself another night off. But then there were turnips—perfectly round and golf-ball-like turnips out in the hoop house, basically bursting out of the soil and begging to be sautéed in butter and sherry (doesn't everything?) with some chive blossoms sprinkled on top. 

Finally, tonight—after another week of cooking frenzy, my biggest triumph fish tacos on the fly—I have been stopped in my tracks. We bought a whole chicken this weekend, so on the water taxi this afternoon I let hints of this article (http://www.nytimes.com/recipes/1016335/steak-mock-frites.html) inspire my dinner plans. Chicken, rosemary from right outside our door, butter, and mock fries. Seriously, what could be better? 

To be completely honest, when Tim replied to my butter! chicken! rosemary! text with I already have dinner cooking!, my first instinct was to call him and cry, "halt!" 

I am that addicted. 

And Tim knows it. His first reply was Sorry!!! 

But I am a smart wife. I might even go so far to say that it's a dreamy thing to have a husband who cooks too, who I have to race to the kitchen, who concocts feasts like lentil stews and chilis—without even consulting a recipe book or website—that are most often better than my attempts at the same things with recipes. 

For now, my mock-frites vision must wait. I must relax on the couch to the smell of slow-cooking chicken and piles of melting vegetables seeping out of our slow cooker and...dream up tomorrow night's dinner. 

the cilantro miracle

In March, on one of our first weekends at the farm, we cleared out a narrow bed along the fence right outside our house and planted the herb centerpieces from the rehearsal dinner. We also raided the farm's seed stores for past-date things and scatter-sowed the rest of the bed with huge handfuls of chard, mustard green, cilantro, and dill seeds. But watering and waiting brought only green weed sprouts, and after a few weeks of checking the bed we gave up. Too early, we said, and too cold for anything to make it; it wasn't even spring! And then my hoped-for house plants died. Isn't it sad, I thought, that I live on a farm and can't grow a thing? 

But this morning, as we were stretching post-run out in the grass, Tim said, "Hey look, chard!" I lunged my way slowly over to the bed—which I thought had been lost to weeds. But there was chard, about two inches tall. Tim pointed again. "And mustard!"

Now the hunt was on. And in seconds I discovered—it couldn't be—something vibrantly green with lacy-edged leaves; so small still, barely three inches tall, that I almost couldn't relate it to its gangly grocery store sibling. This was cause for shrieking, even at 7 in the morning. 

"Tim! Cilantro!" I yelped. We smashed a leaf between our fingers and sniffed (actually I did; Tim just popped one in his mouth). And voila, magic, surprise, it was cilantro, and now we could see it everywhere, up and down the bed, so much that I kind of felt stressed out. "Enchiladas! Tonight!" I cried. 

Now we were down on our knees in the wet grass, searching the bed for more. This spiky gray-green thing? That fuzzy purple-green thing? Tim pronounced them weeds. 

"What about this?" I pinched off a handful of something else green and feathery. 

Tim sniffed. "Dill!" 

I sniffed too. And yes, dill it was, smell-able even through the rich cilantro scent still sticking to my fingers, making an herby cocktail that nearly knocked me over. 

I'm pretty sure we planted other things, although now I can't remember what they were, that didn't come up. But long after we gave up hope—and completely forgot about it all—those hardy past-date seeds decided to sprout en mass! And yes, we are most definitely having enchiladas tonight with cilantro on top. 

(Update: fresh cilantro on enchiladas!)

fava beans

Last year, I discovered that fava beans are highly addictive (and highly difficult to shell, but totally worth it). 

This year, I discovered that their flowers smell sweet and sugary, like a light perfume. Their smell filled the tunnel the other night as I harvested radishes and turnips. 

recently

Every day it seems like there's something new blooming around the farm or along the highway. A few weeks ago, it was the apple trees in the orchard on the farm; today, it's purple lilacs! Spring is wildly green, especially on the farm, especially when I think back to February and March, when the trees were spidery and bare and the field out in front of the house was all dirt.

Now, the view out our kitchen window is a screen of about ten different greens; the fields out the west windows are lined with neat rows of peas and brassicas. The tomatoes, which I swear were an inch tall just a bit ago, are springing and leafing up--and the reject starts that we rescued to place on our windowsill are all bending energetically into the glass to catch the afternoon sun. (The bachelor's buttons and marigold and lemongrass seeds that I planted in pots, also on our windowsill, are doing less well . . . but I blame that on my forgetting to water them.)




Even the baby ducks. These guys are like four or five weeks old, and they're already giants--hilariously clumsy and quite afraid of humans. Just last night, as Tim and I were walking by, they all scrambled up from their naps on the ground and tried to rush away--but kept looking back at us while they ran, so one of them tumbled into the water dish and others fell on their faces. They are not used to their ducky feet yet.

Our dinners are more springy too--we have been devouring huge bowls full of fresh-picked lettuce, dressed with a bit of olive oil and balsamic, every night. And this week, radishes!

It is kind of wild, how all of this color and lushness and yummy food can sprout out of spindly winter trees and dark winter dirt. I don't think I've ever, well, had so much direct exposure to spring.

But with spring comes the end of winter. I'm mourning the last of the over-wintered leeks (which I've come to love sautéed in butter with a little orange zest and possibly some julienned asparagus)--they will be gone by this Sunday. And I'm not yet ready to say goodbye to this miraculous kale salad (we have discovered endless variations of it that are bowl-scrapers every time). But all the flowering kale plants have been tossed to the chickens.


When I was bemoaning, kind of dramatically, the end of the leeks the other day, Tim summarized it all very practically: I will feel this way about every vegetable.

So this is the trade-off of eating in season--I plan the last leek quiche with a heavy heart and wonder if that kale salad will be as good with lettuce instead, and at the same time I dream of a new salad with radishes, and a tart with pastry cream and rhubarb sauce, and pester Tim about what's next. And always, I dream of tomatoes.