Category Archives: Food and Cooking

Because food is interesting and recipes are good.

The Idea of Soup

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It’s cold outside and there’s a thin layer of snow on the ground. January. My mind is filled with The Idea of Soup.
Really, I should say it is filled with My Idea of Soup. Yours may be quite different. My Idea of Soup tends to be filled with chunks of vegetables, possibly also with beef but not chicken, and garnished with chopped parsley. I don’t think I ever actually garnish soup with chopped parsley—I rarely remember to add parsley at all. But in My Idea of Soup, there is fresh green parsley.
My Idea of Soup. Where did it come from? I can think of several sources.
One is my favorite jigsaw puzzle, “Cubbyhole Cottage.” I was six or seven years old when I received it—my younger brother got a 60 piece puzzle with a jet plane on it. We used to have competitions to see who could put their puzzle together faster.
Cubbyhole Cottage jigsaw puzzle by Springbok
Cubbyhole Cottage, by Springbok
I liked to imagine myself as one of the people living in this old-fashioned house. Most often, I imagined myself as the girl in the purple dress and cap—the one stirring the soup. She seemed like the most important person in the house, as she was making the meal. The others were tidying, or setting the table, or watering the flowers, or just playing. Not nearly as important. Also, I liked the girl’s ruffle-edged apron.
Close-up of kitchen in Cubbyhole Cottage jigsaw puzzle
The hearth is the center of the home, even if not quite the center of the puzzle.
Another source for My Idea of Soup is a story by Margaret Wise Brown, “Mister Dog”, in a book of bedtime stories from long ago. The illustrations are by Garth Williams, one of my favorite illustrators.
The story is about Crispin’s Crispian, a dog who belongs to himself. One day, after various adventures,  he meets a boy who belongs to himself and invites the boy to come live with him. They stop by the butcher shop on the way home, and the dog buys a bone while the boy gets a lamb chop and “a bright green vegetable.” The dog makes soup and gives some to the boy, who contributes some of his bright green vegetable to the soup.
Page from Mister Dog, showing boy and dog with soup and green vegetable
See the bright green vegetable in the soup? Also, I love the cuckoo clock.
And now you know why My Idea of Soup is garnished with fresh parsley.
Finally, there is the old story of Stone Soup. There’s something appealing about all those people contributing a bit of this or that to the pot, and ending up with a tasty, nourishing soup “from a stone!” I love that idea.
Alas, in practice I’ve found that adding random vegetables to my soup tends to work about as well as mixing a lot of random paints together. The result is muddy and not particularly appealing. Even when I try to stick close to basics, the results are variable. However, the following ingredients generally work for a “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” soup (except that as I said earlier, I tend to forget the parsley.)
·         Some chopped onion, usually sauteed in a bit of oil first
·         Bite-size stew meat, dusted in flour and browned a bit before adding liquid (now cooked on the side so the rest of the soup can be vegetarian—but add some broth to the meat to take advantage of the browned bits on the pan)
·         Canned diced tomatoes with liquid
·         Carrots, diced or bite-size as you wish
·         Water as needed
·         Potatoes, in bite-size pieces
·         Salt and pepper
·         Sage, rosemary, and thyme
·         Parsley, either dried with the rest of the seasoning, or fresh and added at the end
Sometimes I add a bay leaf or a splash of soy sauce. Sometimes, if it doesn’t need to be vegetarian, I add a dash of Worcestershire sauce. I’ve tried adding mushrooms, but results vary. Sometimes I add some broth along with the water, but I don’t like the way a lot of vegetable broths taste and I’m not sure whether they help the soup or not. Basically, I keep messing with it, but I haven’t been keeping accurate records so I don’t have a good sense of what’s working.
So I guess that’s what I should do, to fulfill My Idea of Soup. I should keep records the next time I make some vegetable (and beef) soup. Maybe I’ll even make some tonight. After all, it’s freezing outside and my husband has a cold.
Coziness and caring. Isn’t that what soup is all about?

Chocolate Tofu Mousse–a foamy chocolate tofu for you

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Today I’m going to give you a recipe for Chocolate Tofu Mousse.
Six bowls of Chocolate Tofu Mousse
Why would you want a recipe for Chocolate Tofu Mousse? Good question. There are plenty of delicious recipes for chocolate mousse that use wonderful rich cream instead of tofu. There are even recipes that don’t use any dairy at all, without using tofu. And I’m not going to tell you that you won’t taste the tofu. My daughter claims not to be able to taste it, but she likes tofu so much that she eats silken tofu right out of the package. Unless you like tofu as much as she does, you’re going to notice a slight tofu taste. It takes a little getting used to.
One possibility is that you are looking for a dessert with protein. Between the egg white and the tofu, this mousse does have some protein. But beware! This is not a health food. It has sugar and chocolate. It contains no vegetables, and probably has negligible fiber. If you want something really nutritious, make a fried tofu dish with lots of veggies, or a veggie-filled omelet! Those can be tasty, too.
It is possible that you are looking for a dairy-free mousse. Sorry, I use milk chocolate in this (although you don’t have to—the original recipe uses three ounces of bittersweet chocolate.) Alice Medrich has a dairy-free mousse in Bittersweet (I had the wrong title earlier) Chocolate and the Art of Low-fat Desserts, and I even made it once, though that was twelve years ago. I remember it as being tasty, if rather intense.
You might be looking for a dessert that will boost your calcium intake. I am still checking to see if there is a silken tofu that is high in calcium. The brand I used for this recipe turns out to use a different coagulant, apparently, and so has little calcium. I don’t know if that’s a feature of silken tofu more generally, as compared to the non-silken type used for frying.
It’s probably pretty safe to say that it has less fat than more typical versions of mousse involving heavy cream. It doesn’t taste as rich either—you wouldn’t want to serve a cream-based mousse in the portions I show here. You’d get indigestion. I’m not sure whether “can be eaten in larger quantities” is actually a selling point, but there you are. A foamy chocolate dessert that is lighter than a cream-based mousse.
Chocolate Tofu Mousse (6 generous servings or 9 discreet ones)
12.5 oz silken tofu (the kind in aseptic packaging is unrefrigerated till opened)
3/8 cup Dutch-process cocoa
2 oz milk chocolate, chopped
1 ½ oz semi-sweet chocolate chips (about ¼ cup)
3/8 cup boiling water
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
9 tablespoons liquid pasteurized egg white
½ cup sugar
Bring measured pasteurized egg whites to room temp or thereabouts if possible. They will not whip as well as regular egg whites, so give them every advantage. Also be sure that the measuring cup, mixing bowl, and whisk are all free of oil or grease. (Note: you want to whip egg whites around room temp, whereas you whip cream when it is good and cold.)
Ingredients
Puree the tofu in a food processor until it is velvety-smooth, perhaps 2 minutes.
Velvety smooth silken tofu
Combine cocoa and chopped chocolates with boiling water in medium bowl. Stir till smooth. Then I like to add the chocolate to the food processor, along with the vanilla, and really mix it into the tofu. But you could also put the pureed tofu in the bowl and stir there, I expect.
Rinse bowl (if you did as I do) and then scoop all the chocolate mix back into it.
Chocolate mixture blended with silken tofu
Be sure to wash or at least thoroughly rinse all parts of the food processor before the tofu dries on it.
Now whip those eggs whites. Start in stand mixer (if you have one) with a whisk on medium. After they get a bit frothy, start adding the sugar. Increase the speed to high. It takes a while, maybe ten minutes, to get soft droopy peaks. Maybe if you continued, you could get it stiffer—I chicken out at this point since I’m not confident pasteurized egg white can whip that stiffly. Soft peaks still works for this mousse.
Whipped egg whites
Gently fold about a quarter of the whipped egg white into the chocolate mix to lighten it. Then add the lightened chocolate mix to the bowl of egg whites and fold till just blended. Spoon or pour mixture into dessert cups. Cover with plastic wrap (plastic should not touch mousse) and refrigerate three hours or more before serving.
 
The original recipe for this (from Weight Watchers Magazine) was for a mint-chocolate tofu mousse that used only bittersweet chocolate and cocoa, and added 3/8 tsp peppermint extract. You can use 3 oz bittersweet chocolate instead of the mix of milk and semi-sweet, for a more intense chocolate flavor. I would not recommend more than 1/8 tsp peppermint, though.
You can use powdered egg white and water instead of liquid egg whites. It would probably whip better. I just don’t like the extra step of hydrating the egg.
Till next post.

Eclairs I Have Known–trying a gluten-free eclair recipe

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I judge a pastry shop by the quality of its eclairs. Supermarket bakeries and other chains tend to fill their eclairs with the same sort of stuff that they put in filled doughnuts–either some sort of pastry “creme” or processed vanilla pudding. I’ve also had eclairs that were filled with a rather glue-y sort of custard.
When my family lived in Tunis, long ago, the local patisserie had very good eclairs, although strangely enough, I don’t remember what the filling was like. I remember that I usually chose an eclair over the other pastries, and I remember that they had two kinds–one was chocolate on top and one was some other flavor. I’m not sure I ever knew what flavor it was. Memory suggests either maple or mocha, and since maple doesn’t really seem likely, I’m going with mocha. I do remember that there were lovely rosettes of something like stiff, flavored whipped cream on top.
Now I’m lucky enough to live near a co-op with a good bakery (see The Hows and Whys of My Mini-baguettes). Their eclairs aren’t nearly as elegant as those I had in Tunis. They are rather irregular in shape and smeared in chocolate (ganache, I think.) But they are generously filled with a heavenly vanilla pastry cream that goes wonderfully with the ganache on top. With eclairs like that less than ten minutes away, why make my own?
The answer is–to get a gluten-free eclair that the whole family can enjoy.

The recipe I used is from the Faithfully Gluten-free website. The same pate choux recipe is used for cream puffs and eclairs. I made the cream puffs last week and filled them with whipped cream. They turned out pretty well, though I took them out a bit early because they were golden and maybe they could have used a bit longer in the oven. They re-crisped well the next day (the unfilled ones) after ten minutes in the oven, as per instructions.
The recipe calls for white rice flour and sweet rice flour. Whole Foods usually has white rice flour. The sweet white rice flour can be hard to find. I ordered sweet rice flour over the internet for a different recipe, but I think I’ve seen it in a store since then. Xanthan gum is available now in a lot of stores, usually in the baking area.
The procedure for the gluten-free pate choux is almost exactly like that for regular pate choux. The water and butter (sometimes also sugar and salt) are brought to a boil and the flour mixture is stirred in. Be prepared–you are stirring it till it resembles playdough, which means it takes arm strength to stir. Since I am still having trouble with my right shoulder (frozen, though no longer aching), my husband did the stirring.
This recipe didn’t get quite as playdough-like as the regular flour version, and there seemed to be quite a lot of liquid butter oozing out onto the bottom of the pot. I wonder whether the recipe would work with slightly less butter? Or is it just that rice flour doesn’t hold onto butter as well as regular flour? (I have read something to that effect.)
Once you reach playdough (or something thick and well-combined), the stuff goes in the standing mixer for yet more beating. First a bit just to cool it off slightly, then with the eggs, one at a time. The recipe notes that “the dough will look like it breaks apart, but keep mixing it until it comes back together again.”
And so it does.  I like recipes that tell you what to look for.

On my last trip to Michael’s, I got a 6B piping tip and some 16″ disposable piping bags. I was think about cookies more than eclairs, and possibly I should have gotten an even larger tip. Again, I had to get my husband’s help as the dough was stiff to pipe. I would have gotten a round tip, but they didn’t have one in that size, so I ended up with interestingly ridged eclairs.
The ridges were less pronounced after baking.
Again, I think I took them out a bit early. I also did not pierce them and cool them in the oven. It didn’t seem like it made much difference with the cream puffs, where I cooled some in the oven and some on the rack, but maybe I should try that again.
For filling, I made Dangerously Easy Microwave Vanilla Custard. I may not have cooked it quite long enough, as it was a bit liquid even after I speed-cooled some of it. Or it may be that my recipe, while fine for bowls of custard, needs a more thickener in order to be used as a filling. It tasted good, anyway.
Since it was getting late and we wanted to actually eat the eclairs that day, we just smeared Nutella on top rather than mess around with chocolate ganache or some other interesting topping. I should have taken the photo before biting into mine.
Messy, but good.
Till next post.