The Salty Spoon

I love the color orange, in spite of myself. It’s a loud color. A sarcastic color. Orange is the color that recites dirty limericks in front of your grandmother. But it is also the color of the meatiest part of the afternoon, when the sun is flexing its last bits of daytime muscle before retreating into the softer folds of pink and mauve. It is the color of the shag carpet from preschool – the tufted, polyester lawn that cradles small, dream-filled heads every afternoon. And it is the color that never fails to make me happy, even amidst a swirling sea of very gray days.

But what does the color orange taste like? It’s cheating to say it tastes like that citrus with the same name. Too easy. And too simple. I think the color isn’t quite so sweet. It’s more jumpy. More hyper. With an arched eyebrow and that throaty laugh that comes from eating too many sweet tarts. It’s just…more.

I set out to make an orange soup the other day. In order to fit more easily into searchable categories and whatnot, I will hang my head and call it “carrot soup” here, though that’s a bit like describing Gene Kelly as an “actor.” It started with carrots, then onions, then wine. A note in the Flavor Bible reminded me that carrots lose some of their carroty brightness when they are cooked, so the carrots that make up the base are boosted by a generous handful of raw, grated carrots at the end. Garlic for integrity. Cumin for complexity. Lemon for acerbic wit. And a little mint for fun.

This is fine to eat right away and hot, but if you can hold out until at least a few hours later (if not the next day), when it has had time to properly chill and the flavors can really get to know each other, it’s so much better.  It really shines when eaten cold, like an orange gazpacho. Use it to brighten your day when all else fails. I have it on good authority that it works wonders.

Chilled Carrot Soup

Serves 6

Ingredients
1 yellow onion, diced
6 medium carrots, washed and peeled
1 cup water
1 cup white wine
1 cup broth - chicken or vegetable
2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
2 bay leaves
Juice from half a lemon
1 T Cumin
10 fresh mint leaves, washed and dried
Sea salt, at least 1t

Rundown

• Chop 5 carrots
• Boil the liquid
• Add the vegetables
• Simmer for 15 minutes
• Blend
• Mix in the rest

Cut five of the carrots into small disks, no thicker than ¼”. Bring the water, wine, and broth to a gentle boil in a medium saucepan or dutch oven (whatever you cook it in, be sure you have a lid). Add the diced onion, sliced carrots, crushed garlic, and bay leaves and turn the heat down until simmering. Cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove the pot from the heat and carefully remove the bay leaves. Working in batches, blend until smooth in a blender. As I’ve mentioned before, be sure to keep a hand on the blender lid to avoid a painful geyser of hot carrot mess. After each round of blending, transfer the newly smooth contents to a large bowl or Tupperware (something that will hold the whole batch with a little room to spare).

After you’ve blended it all, set it aside and grate the remaining carrot. Chop the mint as finely as possible. Fold the grated carrot and chopped mint into the soup, stirring well until fully combined. Add the lemon juice, cumin, and salt. Once you’ve really stirred it up, taste it to see if it needs more salt. Adjust as needed, chill, and enjoy.

I can’t go another day without sharing my go-to challah recipe with you. It’s actually my mom’s recipe, which just goes to show that you don’t have to be born Jewish to inherit a perfect recipe for a most emblematically Jewish food. On occasion, I turn to the recipe in Joan Nathan’s splendid Jewish Cooking In America, her amazing oeuvre that reads the way I think a Jewish cookbook should – rich headnotes and historical asides paired with flawlessly-voiced procedures. Though I love Joan’s recipe, I confess that I find it a bit rich for regular use. I wax rhapsodically through phases of regular Shabbat observance in the form of Friday night dinners with candles and challah. For those weekly episodes, my mom’s recipe triumphs. Light and simple, the dough can be thrown together on Thursday evening and baked on Friday, either in the morning or just before dinner. To wit, I started a batch at 11pm a few weeks ago so that I could bake the loaves before work the following day in order to send them to friends in other cities (long story). A bit of mixing, a bit of kneading, a brief rest (while I cleaned the kitchen and brushed my teeth), and they were ready to shape before bed. Overnight, the refrigerator’s cool embrace slowly coaxed the yeast to plod along its flavor-making path gently and smoothly, just the way yeast prefers. Laboring while I slept, the bread readied itself for a morning bake. Perfect.

In the morning, the smell emanating from the kitchen was warm and sweet. It crept down the hall and into our bedroom, rousing my sleepy husband who wandered into the kitchen asking “are there pancakes?” as he rubbed his bleary eyes. Thankfully, he wasn’t disappointed to find that I was making challah instead, and that one of the three loaves was for him.

One request: please learn to say it correctly. HAH-lah. The first sound is a soft, guttural ‘h’ and not a hard ‘ch’ as in chalk.

I should note that this dough is infinitely adaptable to whatever shape you like. In elementary school, my mom would shape the loaves to look like teddy bears, which we would adorn with chocolate chip eyes and noses before presenting them to my teachers as Christmas gifts. I will give you a few minutes to join me in giggling at the irony of using challah dough to make Christmas bears for my teachers in Utah, the only place where Jews are considered gentiles. It’s the little things that make me smile. Shabbat shalom, my friends.
(Keep reading Challah…)

Without fail, the purchase of a bunch of bananas implies that one of the bunch will end up entombed in my freezer. It’s always the same story. We buy bananas, intend to eat at least one a day and by the third or fourth day, we burn out. The banana that was lemony yellow and unblemished on Sunday becomes a brown-flecked tube of sickly sweetness on Thursday. That lonely, time-tattooed, orphan banana in the bowl always rides to the freezer on a sea of good intentions – I’m not wasting it, I’m preparing for banana bread! The fact that I found a brown, frozen banana in each of four layers of my freezer’s sedimentary melee of forgotten foodstuffs is evidence that it has been a while since my good intentions did anything other than pave paths. I’ve been so energized by yeast breads for the past several months that I’ve treated quick breads with shameful neglect. It’s probably good that we don’t buy bananas very often.

As the name implies (and as discussed in the recent contest entries), they are quite quick. More of a batter than a dough, they are typically mixed, poured, and baked. The baking can last for upwards of an hour, since the batter tends to be quite wet, but that’s the most time-consuming part of the process. Getting yourself to the oven stage of a quick bread is, generally, a dump-mix-pour program. In that sense, it’s a lot like a cake.

This recipe doesn’t produce the tallest loaf in the world. As you can see from the pictures, it’s rather compact. It is not, however, dense. The chocolate and chocolate chips add a sweetness and richness that make the shorter slices seem appropriate.

I’ve jazzed up the bananas here by simmering them with a bit of rum. This is optional. If you find yourself with a pile of ready bananas and no rum, don’t worry. The recipe will still work. If you are worried about the alcohol content of the finished bread, fear not. The alcohol will completely cook off between the simmering and the baking. Whether or not you simmer the bananas, be sure they are very well mashed. If you leave big globs of banana in the batter, you’ll end up with boggy wet spots in the bread.

(Keep reading Chocolate Banana Bread…)

Oh lovelies. It feels like it’s been a while, probably because it has.  I was out of town for several days this past week, working like a madwoman on a case.  Though the work was kind of exciting and allowed me to keep the most delightful company all week, I was very glad to come home – to my own bed, my house, my sweet husband, my cats, and my kitchen.

I wrote up this recipe before I left but didn’t have time to post while I was on the road.  This is a perfect dinner for a night when you come home late, weary from the day but with a ravenous belly.  It’s quick, satisfying, and falls squarely in that tiny space in my mind where I turn when I say “it’s either this or chips and salsa.”  Bear with me, friends, and more regular posts will resume soon.  In the meantime, go bake some bread!

(Keep reading Skillet Potatoes with Chickpeas and Salsa Verde…)