This weekend I’d been thinking that I’d go on a 15-mile walk on Staten Island on Sunday with a group of like-minded folks who enjoy city-walks in all kinds of weather. But when this morning came, I changed my mind: I didn’t feel like getting up early, and the arch of one of my feet was a little sore from running around barefoot as a warm-up before trapeze class Friday night. Nothing major, but I felt like not walking 15 miles on it might be a good idea. So I decided to stay home and, among other things, cook. I’d just gotten Nigella Kitchen from the library on Saturday, and I thought a soup might be a good first recipe. Disappointment number one: there are hardly any soup recipes in this book. Soup is, I think, my favorite thing to cook: it’s generally pretty easy/not very fussy, often makes copious amounts, and reheats well. Disappointment number two: most of the soup recipes this book does contain are ways of using leftovers from other recipes. Like, if you made a roast chicken recipe and have leftovers, here’s how to make a great soup with some shredded roast chicken and coconut milk and some other stuff. Which is nice, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.
That said, I did find one soup recipe that was a stand-alone venture, “Sunshine Soup.” Making it couldn’t be any easier: you slice an orange bell pepper and a yellow bell pepper and roast them with some olive oil. (Nigella says to use garlic-flavored oil, but I didn’t have any so I just used plain.) Meanwhile, you boil some veggie broth or chicken broth, chuck in some frozen corn (I used local corn from my summer CSA share that my boyfriend had frozen), and let that simmer. When the peppers are done, you toss them in the soup, take out some of the corn kernels with a slotted spoon and put them aside (I skipped this step), and then blend what’s in the pot, adding the reserved corn back in when you’re done. The picture in the cookbook makes the soup look lovely, a lively yellow, and maybe that is how it looks if you use chicken broth. But the veggie broth I used is pretty dark, and even after blending the soup there are little bits of blackened pepper skin (and the peppers are supposed to be blistered, the recipe says so!): that combination, I think, makes the whole thing look pretty unpleasant. Luckily, it tastes really good, simple and bright. (And it wasn’t just me: I found someone else’s blog post that says this soup “looked a bit like sick but was very tasty,” and then I found a different person’s blog post featuring pictures of this soup that look just like mine did.)
I’m not sure what other recipes I’ll make from this book before it’s time to return it to the library, but if I do make more from it, I may post about it again. I also have The Food Matters Cookbook by Mark Bittman checked out, so I’ll probably post about that as well. If you cook: have you used either of these cookbooks? What did you think? What’s your favorite cookbook right now?
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