Rasam=Comfort. Brothy, highly seasoned, savory and hot. Best over a bowl of rice and a topped with a scoop of homemade yogurt. A dash of a spicy salty aachaar (pickled condiment) is the ultimate yet optional finish. This is a classic South Indian last course in a dinner meal. It speaks home. It speaks the South. And it's just comfort. Tomato season is here and it's time to use the best ones for this rasam recipe. The juiciest ripest reddest ones you can get. It's worth it to get them at a farmer's market but if you do buy them at the supermarket and they are cold and hard, leave them on ... read more
Mulligatwaney Soup
MULLI-GUT-WAAN-EE. That's how it's pronounced. If you haven't heard of this soup and you're Indian, don't feel too badly about it; I never knew about it growing up and never heard it mentioned on my many trips to parts of India! It's been translated many times over and isn't any longer an authentic Indian dish. Originally, mullig meant "pepper" and waney meant "water. It became an adapted British stew/soup that came about when the Brits were occupying India. They probably having come upon South Indian style rasam, a thin broth-like pungent soup with many spices that is served alongside a ... read more
Winter Tomato Soup with Curry Leaf
A couple of weekends ago, we went to visit my parents for a few days. It was the beginning of what felt like the holiday season to us, because it was the first time we had a big extended family with the newest two additions in the family, my precious niece known affectionately as Pumpkin and her twin cutie, nicknamed Chunky. They are fraternal twins and just a few months old---but their presence brought livelihood and lovely chaos to a family setting that previously felt...smaller...and quieter...and perhaps even incomplete. We bustled in, my husband and I and the girls on that Friday ... read more
French Fridays with Dorie: Paris Mushroom Soup
This soup (part of the online cooking club French Fridays with Dorie) has got to be one of the easiest dishes I've made in a few weeks. Saute onions and garlic, add white button mushrooms, really good wine, puree. And there you have it. Well, there's a bit more to it than that, and it includes a funny story. I go out in the VERY dark front yard. On the curbside is our vastly growing rosemary bush, which I have snipped from many a time. I go out barefoot, in the cold, needing my rosemary desperately since the herbs had to be added ASAP, and because this is how I cook! Iff I leave the cooking ... read more
Soup Weather!
Those aren't earthworms in my potato-leek soup. Caramelized onions piled high may not be the best food porn you have seen, but this garnish is the center of attention, especially on the palate. Trust me. This is a standard potato-leek soup made with vegetable stock and accented by snipped fresh herbs from the garden and these sweetened onions. The slippery strands of onion, whose sugars have concentrated by cooking them in a bit of vegetable oil for a long time, are delicately sweet but retain a bit of their original sharpness. This is not achieved by simply "sweating" the onions. Go one ... read more
