This is a substantial, creamy peanut stew with plenty of spice from a good dollop of curry paste. Use your favorite brand of curry, a homemade paste, or even the ubiquitous Thai Kitchen brand. Canned crushed tomatoes are easy to find (and good here!), but this soup gains extra depth of flavor with canned fire-roasted tomatoes. I thought about making the miso optional, because, really, it is. But it’s a nice addition, lending extra body, flavor, and dimension.
PREP TIME: 45 MINUTES • TOTAL TIME: 1 HOUR 45 MINUTES • SERVES 6
This soup is a lovely soft yellow; it sings with the color of spring, and gently soothes.
This soup has a decadent richness that skeptics of vegan cooking are often surprised by (tahini can pull a lot of weight!). It also comes together in about thirty minutes, making it a great option for weeknights. You’ll notice that I call for water rather than stock; in this recipe, it makes for a better liquid, as it keeps the flavors of the soup pure and aligned. Frizzled shallots make an excellent, if optional, garnish.
While working at Food & Wine magazine in my early twenties, some of the editors were raving about Hatch green chillies as we chatted, and, not wanting to seem like a total idiot, I nodded enthusiastically and then immediately went to search what these things were. They are, in fact, pretty awesome, and come from a town called Hatch in New Mexico, USA. You can add them to soups, stews, salsas or use as toppings for burgers or pizzas for a great depth of flavour. They range in heat level (and also offer a subtle sweetness to them), so buy whichever are better for your palate.
With its intriguing blend of Gothic and Renaissance architecture, Krakow’s town square blanketed in a thick layer of February snow is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. But it’s not for the faint hearted – stinging Siberian winds whip around the buildings and a post-wander warm-up was definitely required. So it’s fortunate that the Poles have comfort food pegged, and bigos (hunter’s stew) is everything you could hope for on a wintry day. Polish kabernos sausage has an amazing, distinctive smoky flavour that makes it the star of this soup, which is roughly based on that classic Polish dish.
Every single meal is an opportunity to nourish your body and do something good for yourself,” says Annie Lawless, cofounder of the organic cold-pressed juice company Suja Juice, who’s now running her own nontoxic beauty brand, Lawless Beauty. When it comes to mealtime, she goes for unprocessed foods that give her body the nutrition it needs, like this tom kha soup filled with healthy veggies, spices, and herbs—the ultimate comfort food at the end of a long day.
When Korean mothers have to leave their families for a few days, they often make a big cauldron of beef bone broth so their husbands and children can survive without Mom’s cooking during her absence. It’s become kind of a joke in families, even depicted on Korean TV comedies—a mother is cooking up a big pot of bone broth, so her children and husband are worried. “Where are you going?”
Fermentation lies at the heart of Russian cuisine as one of the most ancient techniques of preparing food. As you will notice throughout this book, numerous recipes rely on sauerkrauts, kvass, or rassol (the fermentation liquid) for their distinct tangy flavor. This soup, which carries the name rassol in its very title, is the embodiment of such a tradition. While historically rassolnik is an old Russian dish, the go-to recipe in our family comes from Poland. Back in the 1970s, my mom took part in a school program that allowed Soviet kids to find pen pals in neighboring socialist countries. She hit the jackpot, since she was linked up with a boy in Poland (the most coveted country of all friendly socialist ones). After a few years of correspondence, my mom and her parents were invited—and most importantly permitted by the Soviet officials—to visit her pen pal. Along with a bag full of trendy garments, chewing gum, and fancy stationery, which made her the coolest teenager in school, she brought back this recipe for a good old Russian rassolnik, cooked by her Polish friend’s mom. The delicious soup always reminds me of the interwoven nature of the Soviet and Slavic histories and cuisines.
Recipe provided by chef Hugo Ortega of Hugo's, Caracol Restaurant, and Backstreet Cafe. Good for any time of year, but especially satisfying when you've got a lot of leftover Thanksgiving turkey but you're tired of turkey sandwiches.