Date I made this recipe:
August 25, 2013
The Too Hot to Cook
Book by Miriam Ungerer
Published by: Walker
and Company
© 1966
Recipe: Garden Soup with Pistou (a French variation
of pesto) – p. 42-43
I just purchased this cookbook from Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks in NYC and not a moment too soon as Minnesota is
experiencing scorching temperatures. But
here’s what is so typical and annoying:
the minute Labor Day rolls around, we are projected, once again, to go
from high 90’s to 72 degrees overnight.
This is just so damned unfair, especially this year when summer arrived
late and warmer temperatures took a while to roll around. I know I stand alone when I say that this
heat can last well…indefinitely! I hate
winter, I hate being cold, and am not too fond of 72 degrees, no matter how
refreshing that “cold” temperature appears to the rest of you.
But hey, although I may enjoy hotter temperatures, I am not
crazy enough to turn on my oven during this hot spell and thanks to our author,
Miriam Ungerer, I don’t have to! And yet
don’t ask me why, but out of all the recipes that appealed (and that would be
most of this book), the hot soup recipe caught my eye. I’ve been on sort of a veggie kick since last
week’s vegetable fried rice recipe and since I had some leftover veggies, why
not?
This recipe, which serves 10 which of course is way too much
for our little household, is adaptable to whatever vegetables you have on hand
and so I threw in some diced baby corn from last week and some celery from last
week and some leftover mushrooms from last week (and even some leftover rice
from last week – how convenient) and then left out a few vegetables that I
don’t like as well, namely lima beans and okra.
The most time-consuming task is chopping said vegetables but once you
get past that, you are golden. Cooking
time for most of the vegetables is 30 minutes, after which you throw in your
faster-cooking vegetables for another 15 minutes, add in a few more minutes to
make the pistou and in about an hour total, you have dinner.
You should know that all the flavor of this dish comes from
the pistou as no other “spices” are added to the soup itself other than
salt. I think if I made this again I’d
play around with adding some spices to ramp up the flavor just a bit. And you should also know that while I made
only half the soup recipe, I made the full pistou recipe and well, let’s just
hope you like garlic because it contains 4 cloves.
I am pleased to announce that despite the high heat this
weekend (96 or 97 I think), I stayed cool in my kitchen and even cool eating
this dish. And that’s what you need when
it’s “Too Hot to Cook”!
Garden Soup – Serves
10
From the author:
Unlike a rich, slow simmered winter soup, hearty and filling with
turnips and cabbage, a summer blend should be lightly cooked and each vegetable
retain its freshness, flavor and texture.
Prescribing exactly what to put in a vegetable soup would be a bit like
a numbered canvas that the artist could never claim as his own. This is a rough outline to fill in with your
own design. This serves 10 to 12 as a
main course.
2 quarts water
Salt
2 cups baby carrots, sliced
2 cups new potatoes, diced
2 cups peeled ripe tomatoes, diced
2 cups scallions, sliced
1 cup fresh green lima beans
1 cup fresh tiny green beans, cut in 1-inch lengths
1 cup fresh okra, sliced
1 cup fresh corn, scraped off the cob
1 ½ cups cooked rice
Pistou
4 cloves garlic
¼ cup fresh basil, chopped
2 Tb fresh parsley, chopped
3 Tb tomato paste
½ cup grated Romano cheese
½ cup olive oil
In a mortar, pound the garlic to a paste with the basil and
parsley; add the tomato paste and cheese.
Beat in the oil by droplets, then beat in 1 cup of hot soup. Pour the sauce into a small bowl and pass it
around with the soup.
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