Green Soup: Summer Days in a Bowl

I move too slowly for what used to be called the blogosphere and at nowhere near the frenetic pace of a commercial kitchen. I'm more temperamentally inclined to protracted exchanges with pen pals and the gradual simmer of a stockpot. I spend many long winter nights babysitting a chicken carcass submerged in water with herbs and aromatics, coaxing a lentil soup or a carrot ginger puree out of the dregs of the larder, and sometimes inventing zucchini matzo-ball ramen or Thai red curry pho with wontons. In summer, too, I find joy in frugal improvisations with broth, blanched or straight-off-the-vine veggies, ice water, and a blender. I take a lot of inspiration from Iberia. Simple salmorejo with its resourceful use of old bread, abundant ripe tomatoes, and flavorful olive oil, sometimes topped with chopped boiled egg and jamon serrano, makes sense to me. For several seasons now, I've also been meaning to try a strawberry gazpacho. But my attention this Memorial Day, after all the rain this spring and its promise of new growth, is on a spicy bowl of brightly colored goodness that I'm happy just to call green soup.

This has a lot in common the "fisherman's soups" that I think are common in the Bay Area and that I've always admired in pictures but never tried. My version does have some shellfish although my approach has been to use it only as an accent, reintroducing it into a vegetarian version that I've largely borrowed from Heidi Swanson. And I do a second variation with chicken stock and a poached egg. That said, the base recipe (which requires no actual cooking--only blending) is vegan and can be riffed on in any number of ways. I like to serve this, warm or cold, in a wide shallow bowl with a hearty scoop of farro (or any grain that contributes a little bit of carbohydrate and a little bit of protein) in the center, with the beautiful soup spread out around it, with the toppings centered above.

Ingredients:

Base Recipe (enough for at least 6 servings)

3 packed cups baby spinach or roughly chopped mature spinach

1 packed cup basil leaves

1 packed cup cilantro, leaves and stems

1/2 packed cup mint leaves

3 medium garlic cloves, roughly chopped

A small knob of ginger, roughly chopped

1/2 cup sliced almonds

Zest of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons honey

1 1/2 cups ice-cold water

1/2 - 1 teaspoon sea salt

1/4 cup olive oil

To serve

1/2 cup cooked farro or other grain per portion

Harissa

Chile oil

A handful of blanched fresh fava beans (peeled and halved) and/or wrinkly black olives (roughly chopped)

Paprika

1 of the combinations below

For the Iberian Fisher's Variation

Fish or seafood stock

1 small can of good-quality pickled seafood such as mussels or octopus (some inspiration)

For the Chicken and Egg Variation

Chicken stock

1 egg per serving

Directions:

Mix all of the well-washed greens in a large bowl, tossing them together with your hands. Prepare the base in two batches by combining half of the greens with half of the garlic, ginger, almonds, zest, honey, and water in a blender. (If the honey is especially thick--not pourable--dissolve it in the water first.) The water should only come about one quarter of the way up the side of the blender. Blend, stopping to scrape down the sides occasionally. You want to end up with something the consistency of a thick paste, so add more water if you need to but not too much. Pour off the contents of the blender into a bowl and repeat with a second batch. Then return both batches to the blender, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and drizzle in the oil one tablespoon at a time while blending to create an emulsion (if your blender doesn't have a small opening at the top that you can pour through, add the oil a little bit at a time to the stopped blender, and blend after each addition), stopping to test what you have so far after three tablespoons of oil. If you like the taste and texture, stop there; if you need to add more oil or salt, do so and blend again. You can work with this right away or refrigerate it for later. The freshness is incredible right away; on the other hand, the flavors meld wonderfully with more time. If you're going to store this for more than a day, try putting it into a jar or another container and topping it off with a layer of plastic wrap directly above the liquid or, if your mix is thick enough, a thin layer of oil, to help prevent the greens in the mix from oxidizing and going a bit brown--you could keep the base for up to a week that way.

When you're ready to eat, your job is to combine the base with enough stock or water so that you have a soup that pours easily off a spoon but still has a little heft to it. Add more salt here if you need it. Heat up the soup or not. Stir in some harissa, a little bit at a time, tasting as you go, aiming for extra flavor and a discernible bite. If you're making the chicken-and-egg variation, poach the eggs now. To assemble: start with a scoop of farro in each bowl, cover with the now spicy green soup, and top each one with some of the preserved seafood or a poached egg, then scatter the fava beans and/or olives on top, drizzle over some chile oil in concentric circles, and dust with paprika.

East London Fish Tagine

This dish started on the fateful trip when we were castaways aboard a tiny ship in the Regents Canal in East London. There was a ceramic tagine and a copy of Sam and Sam Clark's Moro cookbook belowdecks and an excellent fish shop on the Broadway Market nearby, as well as spices and fresh veg to be had at the Turkish markets in Dalston.

The result was a fusion of East London and Middle East that I've since brought back with me to New York, making it and reworking it a handful of times, adding a cous cous inspired by another London restaurant by way of the levant, Honey and Co.

In this latest iteration, I'm content to use a standard Le Creuset-type pot instead of a dedicated tagine and I cook everything on the stovetop (at low temperature but not particularly slowly). You can make this dish from start to finish in under an hour. Relying on several pre-made pantry ingredients also guarantees a speedy result, but you could also work backwards to make some or all of them yourself. You could do the roasted peppers now or in advance. Same with the spice mix (the cookbooks already mentioned have various recipes for dry spice mixes and spice pastes that you can play with, as does Zahav--see the bit on hawaij and schug). You might make your own marinated feta in advance. You could potentially even preserve the lemons and cure the olives, if that makes sense for you and your geographical location. The sides are simple, with possible accents. You could skip the cucumber salad, maybe replacing it with plain yogurt, or skip both sides and serve bread on the side. You might add a little more water and turn this into a soup. A note on salt: I never use enough, so please take every opportunity to make the marinade, the base, etc. a little more salty than seems right so that you end up with the perfect balance for the whole stewy thing.

Like many things in my domestic situation, this serves two generously and up to four more modestly.

Ingredients:

1 pound (500g) small potatoes, peeled (or not), and, if they are bigger than golf balls to start out, halved or quartered

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

3/4 pound (350g) cherry tomatoes

2 roasted peppers, any color, torn into strips (maybe half a dozen strips per pepper)

A small handful of pungent black olives (if you can get the really dark, wrinkly ones, great), pitted

1 1/2 pounds (700g) firm white fish fillets, skinned and boned; halibut is great if it's available, affordable, and sustainable where you are; cod is a fine catch-all but falls apart a bit more; monkfish is an alternative but I find it too meaty

Water or fish stock (a good fish stock adds extra richness but it's not necessary)

Salt and pepper

For the marinade:

One small bunch of cilantro, chopped, stems and all; I like to end up with a cup of roughly chopped cilantro (you might reserve a small amount for serving)

3 tablespoons of any sumac-y and/or paprika-y Middle Eastern spice mix

Salt, as needed

2/3 cup (160ml) olive oil

Ingredients and options for the sides below

Directions:

Boil the potatoes until they are just tender (they should be edible but just so at this point--they'll cook a little more later). Drain.

Meanwhile prepare the marinade: Mix the cilantro, spice mix, and oil in a large bowl together with salt and pepper as needed (taste it).

Cut up the fish fillets into two-inch chunks, going lengthwise; if the fillets are very wide, cut them in half before cutting up the pieces.

Drop the fish into the marinade. Use your hands to make sure the fish is completely covered with marinade in every nook and cranny. Cover with plastic. Leave the bowl out if you are doing everything right away and you work quickly; but if you're going to take a break between steps and/or work slowly, refrigerate the fish and try to time it so that you take it out of the fridge 20 minutes before you're ready to use it.

To make the base of the tagine, add the two tablespoons of oil to your hefty pot, then saute the garlic over medium-low heat. When the garlic is just about nicely cooked through, add the tomatoes and cook, stirring constantly, until they burst (you can help them along by pressing them gently against the sides of the pot with your wooden spoon). Add the roasted pepper strips and cook, stirring, for one minute more, until the juices are nicely melded. Season with a little salt and pepper.

Remove about half the garlic-tomato-pepper mix to use later, and beginning layering the "tagine." With the heat on low, nestle the potatoes into the tomato mixture left in the bottom of the pot. Then nestle the fish into the potatoes. Then scatter the olives, nestling them in, too.

Poor water or stock about 2/3 of the way to the top of the fish (the steam will do the rest of the work), and raise the heat to medium until the water boils. Reduce to a gentle simmer, cover, and cook for about 20 minutes until the fish is just cooked (you want that nice, flaky, poached-fish texture). Don't stir too much because you don't want to break up the fish (you may not need to stir at all).

Serve either on top of cous cous, or with cous cous on the side, with feta and cucumber salad if you'd like.

Cous cous

You have a few options here. You want to start with a cup and half (260 grams) of uncooked cous cous (you could also use the larger Israeli cous cous). If you want keep it simple, just cover it with two cups of boiling (480ml) in a metal bowl, cover the bowl for five minutes, and then, as everybody tells you, fluff it with a fork and season with salt. Alternatively, cook 1/3 cup of chopped onions or leek (maybe half a small onion or leek) in a tablespoon of oil in a small pan over low heat, then add one and a half teaspoons of ras el hanout spice mix, or just a half a teaspoon of either cumin or cinnamon (or half a teaspoon of each), and keep going until everything is cooked down; you could also add some chopped tomato (half a large tomato or one small one) when you add the spices. Season the veg and spices generously with salt and pepper, mix it together with the uncooked cous cous in a metal bowl, and then, as described above, cover with two cups water, mix, cover, let sit five minutes, then fluff with a fork. If you want to add more substance to the meal, mix up to 3/4 cup (125g) of cooked chickpeas into the couscous.

Cucumber and feta salad

You need a quarter to a half a pound (115 to 225 grams) of good marinated feta here. It's worth splurging on this. And then you need one small or half a large cucumber. Use a peeler to remove most of the peel, leaving some dark green strips on the cucumber. Cut the cucumber in half lengthwise, scrape out the seeds, and then slice half-moon shapes that are about a quarter of an inch (half a centimeter) thick. All you need to do is mix the cucumber together with the feta and its marinade, breaking up the feta a bit, and you have a nice little side salad. You probably don't need to add additional salt and pepper, but of course you can. You can also mix in extra olive oil, some lemon juice, and/or some finely chopped dill, parsley, mint, or cilantro--or preserved lemon--depending upon the texture, taste, and mix of flavors you want. Or you could substitute thick/strained/Greek/Turkish yogurt for the marinated feta and follow the recipe above without the extra olive oil or lemon, or just serve yogurt on its own instead.