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A Charmed Life
This week, I’m feeling like I live a charmed life. I’m fortunate to live where I do, when I do, and how I do. A major calamity would have to happen to make me start to feel sorry for myself.
This musing comes on the tail of the movie and the play that I saw last weekend. Both have caused me to be sure that regardless of the little inconveniences of life, I am a very lucky person. I have a roof over my head, a job, and a family I love (human and canine), and quite a bit above and beyond these basics. Who could ask for more.
It started on Friday night when we rented watched the movie Winter’s Bone. The movie was excellent, but incredibly depressing. The movie tells the story of a teenaged girl Ree whose father has put their home up as collateral on a bond bail when he was arrested for making crystal meth. And he’s disappeared. If he can’t be found, the family will lose the house. The girl is the only stable part of a family that, excluding the missing drug-dealing father, is made up of a mentally ill mother, incapable of caring for her children, and two younger siblings. They live in extreme poverty in Appalachia. Ree sets out to find her father and save her family’s home, running into low-life characters at each turn. It was a grim story, though Ree’s strength and determination was inspiring. This movie made me thankful for the life I have.
It gets worse. On Saturday, we went to the Huntington Theatre to see their current production Ruined, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This play was incredibly powerful, among the best I’ve seen in the years we’ve been attending the Huntington.
The action takes place a bar/brothel set in a jungle in war-torn Congo. The residents are women whose lives have been ruined by the war around them, both emotionally and physically. In this world of brutal soldiers, rape is rampant, part of the pillage of the war. Those that are raped are then shunned from their families and villages. As hard as it is to image, the brothel offers a haven for the girls, where survival in the bush, their only other option, would be tenuous to impossible. Mama Nadi, the madam, offers a modicum of safety for these girls, as she herself struggles to survive.
The best (and worst) of human nature drive the story, and the horror of the world this introduced me to has stayed with me. Again, I look around my own world and realize how fortunate I am. Perspective is everything.
Comfort food was called for to rewarm the soul and take the chill off from these chilling realities. I dug up an old recipe for a root vegetable bisque. It’s probably been years since I last made it. We still have a large supply of root vegetables from our winter CSA. This soup starts with the sweetness of caramelized onions, potatoes, parsnips, and carrots. When the sherry and cream are added, it gives the soup the “bisque-y” flavor I love. This soup is only partially pureed, so some chunky vegetables provide contrasting textures in each bite.
Root Vegetable Bisque
Serves 8
2 Tbsp butter
2 large onions, halved and sliced
1 lb carrots, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
½ lb parsnips, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces
1 quart chicken broth
1½ lbs red potatoes, unpeeled, cut into ½-inch pieces
½ tsp dried thyme
1 cup half-and-half
¼ cup Sherry
Melt the butter over medium-high heat in a large soup pot. Add the onions, and sauté until golden, about 15 minutes. Turn down the heat if they are browning too fast. Add the carrots and parsnips and cook for 10 more minutes. Add the chicken broth, potatoes, and thyme. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer until th potatoes are tender, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes.
Puree half of the soup in a blender (in batches, if necessary) and return the puree to the remaining soup in the pot. Stir in half-and-half and Sherry. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring the soup back to a simmer before serving.
A Trio of Winter Winners
We’ve certainly been experiencing our share of winter weather this month. Light snow, heavy snow, and wintry mix. Having a dog sheds a new light on winter because you have to go out walking, rain (or should I say snow) or shine. I’ve learned to enjoy winter walks, especially on a weekend afternoon when we can walk through the woods. Cold just doesn’t feel as cold as it used to.
That said, the amount of winter precipitation is getting tiresome. Any suggestions on where we should move for better weather? It’s tough to figure out because I don’t like to be hot.
In deference to the weather, in the past week, I’ve tried three new recipes for hearty fare. Two were from websites I follow and the third, torn from a magazine by a friend and shared with me. All three were successful, so I share the results here with you.
#1 Mujaddara
This is a relatively simple lentil and rice dish, Middle Eastern in origin. I found this on Food 52, the website of Amanda Hesser (of former New York Times fame) and Merrill Stubbs. I can easily get lost for hours, browsing through recipes and watching the videos. The thing I especialy like about this site are the videos. They make everything looks so easy, which is inspiring.
Each week, this site has a themed recipe contest. The top two recipes, as chosen by Amanda and Merrill, are demonstrated and readers can vote. If I understand the site correctly, all the winning recipes are being published together in a cookbook, coming soon.
Lentils are probably my top favorite bean or legume. For this recipe, three basic parts are cooked separately and then combined and served with a spicy yogurt sauce. You bake some rice, while simmering some lentils, while caramelizing some onions. That’s about it. After you combine the lentils, rice, and onions, they sit for a short while while the flavors blend. This is just enough time to make the yogurt sauce. Its components definitely sum up to something greater than its parts. If you check out this recipe, be sure to watch the video.
This recipe comes from Six Burner Sue, the website of Susie Middleton, former editor at Fine Cooking magazine and author of the recent book Fast, Fresh and Green. Given the 5 pounds of parsnips in the fridge, this one appealed to me right away.
The recipe uses only one pound of parsnips, so it use up my entire supply. However, this is a fast side dish that I will definitely make again. I think I made the “fries” a little to thin. I cut them to around ¼-inch sticks. That was fine for eating with fingers, but with a fork, slightly wider, maybe ½ inch sticks would have been better. I also might not have blackened as many if they’d been a wee bit thicker.
We opted for a simple sprinkle with kosher salt, though a lime and maple drizzle was offered as part of the recipe. Maybe we’ll try a little squeeze of lime juice next time.
#3 Beet and Fennel Soup with Kefir
My friend April (see her recent guest post on my blog here) passed this recipe along to me. It’s from the January issue of Bon Appetit, which I subscribe to, but hadn’t browsed yet. Again, I have a large supply of beets (10+ pounds) in the fridge from our winter CSA. They are gigantic beets too.
This soup has a lot going for it. The texture was velvety, the color was a shocking pink, and it uses kefir, a yogurt-like drink, which was a new taste adventure for me. I can’t say enough about the color. It’s wild! The double fennel taste, supplied by fresh fennel plus fennel seeds, is not overpowering as I feared it might be. It has an interesting flavor that complements the beets nicely.
I had some already roasted beets, so instead of peeling and dicing raw beets, I just peeled and diced my roasted cooked beets and simmer for only 10 minutes to blend the flavors as the beets did not need cooking. Because I love the caramelized sweetness of roasted beets and the ease of peeling them, I’d go this way again. Actually, I made a double batch of this soup.
I still have some kefir left, so I think I’ll try to use it in place of buttermilk for some scones or other quick bread this weekend. Or maybe for pancakes on Saturday morning breakfast, or maybe both!
A Plateful of Happiness 