Shabbat Recipe: Swoon Soup

Swoon Soup

This soup will put the joy of life back into your weary bones. It will make you happy.
Even after a week of dealing with other people’s clerical mistakes that seriously screw up your life and a toddler who is jet-lagged and running a low grade fever (for example). Something about the ginger and garlic put a little kick back and make you feel really happy.

It takes all of 15 or 20 minutes to make. Best of all, you can use just about any old vegetables in your fridge. You can cook it with a pot of rice for a full meal. Or, better yet, serve it over a couple of little butternut squashes that you’ve halved, scooped the seeds out of, and microwaved for 5-10 minutes.

Disclaimer: I’m totally incapable of sticking to a recipe. I make things up as I go along. You, too, can make things up with this one. You can’t mess it up. As long as you have coconut milk, garlic and ginger.

Ingredients:

1 can coconut milk
1TBS powdered soup base (I use the chicken flavored one)
1-2 cloves garlic, finely minced (don’t, for the love of G-d, use the jarred stuff. It doesn’t have the same potency).
about 1 tsp fresh ginger, finely minced
1 small onion
1 red pepper
1 serrano/jalepeno/habenera pepper, seeded and cut into small pieces
2-3 small potatoes
4-5 dried shitake mushrooms
5-6 fresh mushrooms
a carrot
one of the squashes that’s been in your fridge and is now about to die
etc.
olive oil for sauteing

Method:
1. cut the onion and pepper into long strips, then cut the strips into thirds
saute in olive oil until soft
2. julienne the rest of the vegetables and add enough water to cook them with a little of the soup base. Add the dried mushrooms, too. When they’re soft, I take them out and cut them up.
3. When the vegetables are done, add the sautéed onions and peppers, add the coconut milk, ginger, and garlic.
4. Do not boil—just cook for a while until the flavors become cozy with one another. The flavors improve upon acquaintance.

As I said, you can eat it as a soup
you can pour it over rice and call it curry
you can spoon the vegetables into the butternut squashes, pour the coconut-milk broth over and around it, and call it fancy. The sweet butternut really complements the spicy soup.

It’s good at room temperature, and even cold.

Shabbat shalom!