A Very Uncommon Cook

In a lot of programming languages, a bang, or exclamation point, is the symbol for Boolean NOT. I’ve been working with JavaScript a lot lately, where you’ll write stuff like the following:
if (!bouillabaise) { whatever }

So when I read Ming Tsai’s One-Pot Meals cookbook, and saw the recipe for what he calls shrimp bouillabaisse, I laughed a lot, and then renamed it shrimp !bouillabaisse for my own use. Because, okay: it’s a good soup, and I’ve been enjoying it whenever I cook it, but bouillabaise comes from a fairly specific tradition, and this recipe does not conform to that tradition. I’m all for remixing tradition, all for making recipes your own, but there’s pretty much no way you are going to convince me that this is not just a simple shrimp soup, and Ming’s name for it is false advertising. (The Wikipedia article is a reasonable introduction to the tradition.)

(The title of the book is also false advertising, frankly, and this recipe is one of the most egregious offenders. By my count, this recipe demands a soup pot, a strainer, a large bowl, and various mise en place containers, plus more if you make garlic bread to go with, as Ming suggests.)

photograph by johnnyd2, licensed under Creative Commons BY-ND

Recipe

Peel a pound or so of shrimp (frozen is fine). Don’t throw out the shells. Coat the bottom of a tall pot with olive, grapeseed, or canola oil and heat over a medium-high flame. Add the shells and sauté until they turn that gorgeous pink. Pour in a scant cup of white wine or chicken stock (when particularly forgetful, I have used water and it was perfectly edible), deglaze the pan and reduce by half.

Add another quart of chicken stock. Simmer for five to ten minutes. Strain the liquid into a large bowl, and discard the shells.

Reheat the pot, and add a little more oil. Sauté a mirepoix of a chopped onion, one or two chopped carrots, a stalk of chopped celery — if you like fennel, include that; I hate fennel — and season the whole with a bit of paprika. When the mirepoix is soft, add the strained liquid and the shrimp you peeled. When the shrimp are cooked through, remove from the heat and whisk in a cup of Greek yogurt. Serve with toast.

I am a huge fan of Mark Bittman‘s work; his move from the Dining to the Op-Ed sections of the NYT is dreadful news for those of us who relied on his Minimalist column (and videos), but the essays he’s been writing since the move have been excellent. As a belated gesture of “yay Bittman, I will miss you on Wednesdays” and as a way of using up some of the three quarts of milk we had in the fridge, I made a quick batch of cream of carrot soup, using the 3/2/1 recipe that Bittman provided several years ago and which I have relied on ever since.

It’s much the same idea as in Michael Ruhlman‘s Ratio (I get no benefit by linking to this book on Amazon) — the idea that proportion is the important thing to understand about creating food, and once you have that down, the contents can be modified freely.

You remember those SAT analogy questions, the “bird : nest :: beaver : dam” ones? Think of this recipe as a grown-up, practical version of those — “broth : vegetables : dairy :: 3 : 2 : 1″.

photography by Robert Couse-Baker
So when I made a big batch of this, I gently sautéed half an onion and a garlic clove in some olive oil, and then dumped in four cups of chopped carrots and potatoes before pouring six cups of chicken stock (you could use vegetable stock or even plain water with a bouillon cube if you had to) into the pot, brought it to a simmer, covered it until the vegetables were tender (about ten minutes), and then blended it with M.’s immersion blender, and kept the whole thing warm until everyone was home. Then I added two cups of milk, mixed to combine, salted and peppered as required, and served with some croutons made out of the heel-ends of the bread we had finished off that morning for breakfast. It was a pretty big hit, if I may say so, sweet and creamy and filling from the potatoes that added bulk to the broth.

I haven’t made this in a while, and I suddenly cannot remember why not. It’s a fantastic weeknight dinner, and I will probably be inflicting it on my flatmates again soon.

I came down with a nasty, nasty cold recently. Or, more accurately, S. gave me a nasty, nasty cold. On the plus side, when I was lying in bed, moaning pathetically about how my eyes hurt and every muscle in my body ached and how much I missed breathing, she offered to make me chicken and dumplings in recompense for infecting me.

No fool I, I promptly wrote up the recipe and gave it to her, and a few hours later, there was chicken and dumplings for me to eat, and I hadn’t had to touch a single ingredient. (Which was doubly good, because it meant that everyone could eat it, rather than having to quarantine the pot.)

Chicken soup is a classic cold remedy, and it seems that SCIENCE! backs up the claims of Jewish grandmothers everywhere. My mother never made chicken and dumplings, but I’ve grown to love it, now that I’ve figured out how to make light, fluffy dumplings, and decided that I prefer turkey to chicken in this case. It’s more flavorful, and when you’re stuffed up, tasting anything is hard enough.

photograph by KellyK

Ingredients

Boneless chicken or turkey thighs, diced
Onions, sliced
Garlic cloves, sliced
Carrots, cut into discs (or baby carrots)
Celery stalk, sliced into thin half-moons
Russet potato, diced
Salt, pepper, parsley, etc., to taste
1/2 package frozen baby peas, thawed
Dumpling dough (below)

Heat olive oil in large pot over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add sliced onion. Sauté until soft. Add sliced garlic, sauté one minute. Salt and pepper lightly. Add carrots, celery slices, and potato, stir, sauté two minutes. Add diced chicken or turkey, stir, sauté until the outside of the chicken does not look raw. Barely cover with cold water, chicken stock, and white wine, in whatever combination pleases you. Cover pot. Bring to boil, lower heat, simmer 45 minutes. Taste broth, adjust salt-and-pepperness. You may need to smush up the potato bits with a fork on the back of a wooden spoon; they’re in there to make the broth thicker. Drop dumpling dough into simmering stew by heaping teaspoons, covering the surface. Cover. DO NOT UNCOVER FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES. Dumplings should be dry on top, or you can check with a toothpick. Serve hot.

Dumplings

2 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons softened butter
¾ cup milk

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt. (if you’ve got stray parsley, this is a good place to use it, rinsed & chopped.) Add butter and milk. Mix until just combined (overmixing will make the dumplings tough).