An Ode to Autumn: Hungarian Mushroom Soup with Butternut Squash and Eggplant

Dearest Autumn,

I love the way you make the air smell like apple pie and fireplaces. I love the colors you wear, the orange of pumpkins, the reds of the leaves being pulled down to the ground in swirls by the wind, and the deep gray of storm clouds. I love the way you change how I dress, allowing me to wrap myself with scarves, knit hats, thick tights and big sweaters that still kind of smell like my dad's aftershave.

I love how milky Irish Breakfast tea in the Fassbinder mug my mom gave me years ago tastes so much better when it's raining. I love the way the light has shifted, and has that golden tinge when it peaks out from behind the heavy clouds before it sets, earlier and earlier. I love the way you give farmers the best apples and squash, the way you have everyone planning their disguise for parties and pranks at the end of October. I love the way you keep the tomatoes and peppers and zucchini and eggplants around, but show them up with the hearty fall flavors of sage and rosemary and caramelized pears. I love how you carry pumpkin spice lattes like presents to every coffee shop in the city.

But most of all, above most everything else, I love how you make me feel when I spend a few hours in the kitchen making a pot of Hungarian mushroom soup, warm in my nubby brown socks, anticipating a great meal and a greater season. This soup is the best of you, autumn. Hearty, comforting, rich, and complex while being completely familiar.

Also, I love how everything I cook this years seems to devolve into brownish mush. Well, maybe I don't love that so much. But trust me, I don't hold it against you. Much.

Thank you for everything you do, and love, always,
Allison Jones, the real Oakley Rhodes.

P.S. This is officially Lemonbasil's 100th Post! I figured it was about time I revealed my identity, if only because, someday, I'd like to be able to google my name and have my food writing show up in results. I can't believe I've been doing this for almost a year and a half. Thanks to everyone who spends a minute or two reading my words and checking out my recipes. You make my world go round. Here's to a future of eating well, online and off.

Autumn Hungarian Mushroom Soup with Butternut Squash and Eggplant

Ingredients

• 1 pound mushrooms, thickly sliced
• 1 cup onion, chopped (any kind will do)
  
• 1 or 2 large shallots, diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, diced
• 1 small eggplant, peeled and diced
• 1 small butternut squash, peeled, diced, and roasted in a 350 degree oven until cooked through and golden
  
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 cup milk (any kind works, I used skim)
• 2 teaspoons dried dill weed
• 1 tablespoon or more Hungarian, or smoked, paprika
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• fresh ground black pepper, to taste
• 1/2 cup sour cream or yogurt

Directions
1. Saute onion, shallot, and garlic in 2 tablespoons stock with a pinch of salt until translucent and fragrant.
2. Add mushrooms, eggplant, squash, dill, paprika, 1 cup stock, and soy sauce.
3. Cover and simmer 15 minutes. Set aside.
4. In a separate large saucepan, melt butter.
5. Whisk in flour and stir continually until flour beings to darken slightly.
6. Add milk and cook, continuing to whisk, over low heat until mixture thickens.
7. Stir in mushroom and vegetable mixture and remaining 1 cup of stock.
8. Cover and simmer 10 minutes.
9. Before serving, add sour cream and salt and pepper to taste.
10. Give thanks for fall.

Spicy Phở-esque Soup with Bok Choy and Wheat Noodles

Whenever I'm feeling particularly under the weather, or when the rainy weather itself is making me blue, I head to Phở Dalat on SE 39th, just north of Hathorne, for a big bowl of their Special Combination Phở. The combination of rich, savory broth spiked with Vietnamese herbs, the soft noodles, and the big bunches of herbs is so fundamentally comforting, and it never fails to brighten my mood. This is my (somewhat accidental) take on a traditional Phở. It may not have the Saigon cinnamon, star anise, charred ginger, cloves, or black cardamom pods that give the real deal its complex flavor, but this chicken broth-based soup came alive with the addition of fresh herbs and Sriracha (the ubiquitous chili-garlic hot sauce).

I'm growing bok choy in my container garden on my back porch, and I'd been meaning to harvest some for a while. The weather has been pretty nice lately, and my herbs, lettuces, and other greens have been growing so fast its hard to keep up. What better way to use up ambitious veggies than to make a big pot of soup?



I chopped up the bok choy, sauteed it with garlic and red onion, and added a scoop of this onto a bowl of whole wheat noodles, and topped it all off with my spicy herbed chicken broth.

Traditional Phở is garnished with Thai basil, fresh chili peppers, lime wedges, and bean sprouts. My version uses fresh basil, and some perfect little orange limes I got at the farmers market. Yes, you read that correctly. LOCAL OREGON CITRUS!!!


I nearly cried when I saw these little guys, and I'll be sure the pick more up tomorrow. They added a great freshness to my soup, and, well, everything else I ate this week. Come on, if you've read this blog for more than a few weeks, you'll remember that citrus is my achilles heel when it comes to eating locally. But there they were, little limes masquerading as kumquats or tiny oranges.

Give this soup a try next time you have some extra herbs on hand. It's pretty simple, and I swear, it tastes so much like Phở, without the imported, hard to find spices. Here's to exotic-but-local comfort food, from my backyard to your computer screen. Eat well!.

Spicy Phở-esque Soup with Bok Choy and Wheat Noodles

8 cups Chicken Broth
2 inch chunk of fresh ginger, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled
Big handful of fresh cilantro
Big handful of fresh parsley
Big handful of fresh mint
Big handful of fresh basil, plus extra for garnish
Sriracha, to taste
1/2 red onion
Olive Oil
1 lb. bok choy, chopped
Whole Wheat Noodles (I used spaghetti noodles)
lime slices

In a medium stockpot, bring chicken stock to a simmer over medium heat. Add ginger, garlic, herbs, and sriracha. Simmer about 30 minutes.



Strain broth and return to pot over low heat.

Cook noodles to package directions, drain, and rinse. While the noodles cook, sauté onions in oil until translucent. Add bok choy and cook 5–10 minutes.

Divide noodles among six bowls. Add A scoop of bok choy mix to each bowl. Pour hot broth into bowls and garnish with basil and lime.

Creamy Stinging Nettle Soup with Baby Garlic Greens

With regards to many seasonal fruits and vegetables, my job is fairly easy - It doesn't take much to get someone to switch to locally-grown strawberries and peaches - the intoxicating smells and incomparable flavor of farm-fresh fruit will convert anyone into a farmers market groupie. Even things that used to be considered out of the ordinary to the saaviest of shoppers - giant king oyster mushrooms, garlic scapes, and ramps - are now standard fare that most people know how to tackle.

Stinging nettles, on the other hand, are another story.



I woke up early to arrive before the first opening bell of the farmers market season - so many familiar faces, smiling kids with pastries bigger than their heads, hugs from market friends who seemed to be asking one all-encompassing question - "How was your winter?" We've all (barely) made it through the months without our weekly market bags filled with the harvest and our mouths filled with breakfast burrito, but the underlying celebration was evident everywhere - spring is here, and we're back in business!



I made my usual rounds, snapping shots of cute kids and all the photogenic produce you could ask for this early in the season. It was quite a turnout - plenty of greens and garden starts, gorgeous bouquets, and some new stars - including the nefarious nettle.

The small bags of nettles offered at a few stands seemed like perfect little gifts, each wrapped in an opaque bag, and at $2-3 bucks a bag, a seeming steal. Until you pick one up and the farmers cast knowing smirks as they ring you up and hand you a piece of paper with cautionary instructions. Yep, these babies come with warning labels.

I also scored some beautiful baby garlic greens that look and smell a bit like scallions with a purple cast. I picked out some beets, sunchokes, a peppermint start, and a big bag of pears to last me through the week. My score of the week was a salad bowl - a big round pot filled with tons of baby lettuces, bok choy, and spinach, a perfect mini-garden that cost less than a bag of gourmet greens - and it'll pay for itself over and over, I'm sure. It's such a good idea, I'm going to have to create a few more myself.

Here's the lovely Joan from Rainyway Farm with my Salad Bowl!


It was a beautiful morning, the sun poked out a couple times, and bluegrass music floated through the air, punctuated by sizzling sausage and bursts of laughter.

I came home with my bounty and got to work prepping the nettles, as I didn't want to leave them in the fridge where someone might get an unpleasant surprise. When handling nettles, you want to wear gloves - I used the thick kind we have on hand for dishes - and rinse well as you separate the tender leaves from the thick stems. I was probably a bit more paranoid than I needed to be, but these guys looked frightening, and I still felt a few stings through the gloves. After they are rinsed, you'll want to handle the nettles with tongs - trust me, you don't want to touch them.



I can remember being a kid in Oregon campgrounds in the summer, playing barefoot in the playgrounds and walking back to the tent with my older sister, and then - ouch - my foot landed in the middle of a nettle patch. I had a habit of stepping on things I shouldn't have - nests of red ants included - but this was a killer. It's funny to think the nettled I bought at the market today were probably harvested not too far from those campgrounds. So it was time for revenge.



While the nettles waited in a bowl by the window, looking mighty threatening, I chopped up some shallots, garlic, and the baby garlic greens, and sauteed them in butter and olive oil - never a bad start. After letting this smell fantastic for a while, I added a bit of dry sherry and the nettle tops and leaves. A quart of water, some salt and pepper, and a sprinkling of parsley, and I left it to boil off the danger for about ten minutes. Most recipes call for five minutes of boiling, but again, I was paranoid.

After the nettles seemed safe, I added a handful of baby spinach from my mini salad garden and a cup of good greek yogurt. A bit of a whir with the immersion blender, and... it smelled FANTASTIC, but looked not unlike swamp sludge. I know. I shouldn't say swamp sludge in a food blog. But it's true. As I was stirring, and tasting, and mmmmming, I couldn't help but laugh. My roommates wont touch it, partly because I scared them with warnings of imminent kitchen danger and partly because the immersion blender caused the soup to foam a bit, which did not help the situation aesthetically. In further appraisal, however, I'm really glad they won't be fighting over mugs of this stuff. I'll just let them think it's dangerous, because it's so good, I don't want to share.



Look out for more local finds from today's market this week, stay safe in the kitchen, and eat well!

Oakley's Creamy Stinging Nettle Soup with Baby Garlic Greens

Ingredients:

* 3 Tablespoons butter or olive oil, I use a mix
* 2 shallots, minced
* 2 garlic cloves, minced
* 1 cup chopped baby garlic greens or scallions
* 1/4 cup dry sherry
* 1/2 pound wild nettle tops
* 1 quart water or broth
* Salt and Pepper
* 1 cup greek yogurt, crème fraiche, sweet cream, or half and half
* 2 Tablesoons fresh parsley
* 1 handful fresh baby spinach

Procedure:

1. Sauté shallots, garlic, and garlic greens in butter or olive oil. Add sherry and nettles.
2. Add water and bring to a boil.
3. Cover and simmer until the nettles are very soft, about 8-10 minutes. Add spinach.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste, add yogurt or cream, and puree using an immersion blender.
5. Add fresh parsley and serve with more yogurt and chopped garlic greens.

Penny Pinching with Roasted Vegetable Bread Soup

Its another one of those weeks. I'm scrounging around the kitchen trying to feed myself for a few more days on the random odds and ends of the kitchen. What with school starting, buying textbooks, some auto mishaps that needed immediate attention, and rent, I'm pulling out the old bag of tricks to stretch my food budget.

Somehow, this always comes back to a loaf of stale bread. It might just be coincidence, but it seems every time I go through one of these "Let's see how long I can go without heading to the store" moods, I'm left staring at a loaf of bread on the shelf, long past it's fresh sandwich slice days. I don't eat a lot of bread, and everyone in the house buys their own (we're pretty independent eaters in general), so there is inevitably a loaf of bread past its prime in the cupboard at any given moment.

Last time I had this problem, I made a delicious panzanella, but I've been living off salads recently and wanted something a bit more filling. I've picked up this habit of making a roast chicken every Sunday night, and using it throughout the week, from curries to chicken salad to sandwiches, and I had a really great broth from last week's bird. Why not make a soup? At first I was going to just make some croutons out of the bread to put on top of a bowl of soup (french-onion style) but then I thought, why not make a bread soup?

This probably is not the traditional way to make a bread soup, because I added the bread cubes at the beginning and not at the very end, but this gave the soup a thick, satisfying texture. The bread acted like a sponge and soaked up all the herbs and broth - so the end result tasted like a combination of thanksgiving stuffing and chicken noodle soup.

I had a few vegetable odds and ends lying around the kitchen, so I roughly chopped what I had (a bell pepper, a summer squash, whole garlic cloves, and some grape tomatoes which I left whole) and threw them under the broiler for about 6 minutes to get a bit toasty.



While the veggies cooked, I sauteed an onion and a diced hot cherry pepper from my garden in some olive oil. When the onions were just beginning to brown, I added two cups of chicken stock, a teaspoon each of sage, thyme, oregano, rosemary, and parsley, and a good amount of salt. I cut up about 7 slices of bread (mine was whole wheat sourdough but this would be good with most breads, I'm sure) into cubes and threw them in to the soup, brought this to a boil, and reduced to a simmer. When the veggies were browned and fragrant, I tossed them into the pot (I mashed and chopped the roasted garlic before adding it - yum!), added two cups of water, and let the whole thing simmer for about 2 hours while I went to the farmers market.

When lunchtime rolled around, I ladled a big bowl of the soup and topped it with freshly chopped basil, tomatoes, and pine nuts. So comforting, and I'm sure it would adapt to any veggies you have lying around.

Satisfied with my week of frugality - down to the last slices of bread - I took a precious $20 to the market this morning to replenish the kitchen. I met up with some of my band mates and we sang a few songs (I pocketed five bucks for three songs - not bad!) and went off to stretch my dollars. I'm so excited about how much I got! There was a great deal at one vendor - three boxes of any fruit for 8 bucks! I walked away with 5 pears, 4 big peaches, and 6 nectarines, which will certainly last me a while. I also got some beautiful cylinder beets, a bag of apples, a huge bunch of basil, a cantaloupe, a big zucchini, a baking potato, and a bag of bee pollen (nature's superfood!) - plus it was a beautiful morning to be at the market - the skies were gray but the air was fresh and not too cold.



I'll let you know what I do with my market bounty - until then, eat well!

Weekend Cookbook Challenge #30: Farmer's Markets

I had to laugh a little when I saw the theme the wonderful (and fellow Portlander!) Michelle of Je Mange la Ville picked for July's Weekend Cookbook Challenge: Farmer's Markets! I don't think I'm going to shock anyone with the fact that I spent all day at the Portland Farmer's Market at the PSU campus, and had plenty of options for my submission.

I chose a recipe from the fabulous Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden by Jeanne Kelley. Ivonne over at Cream Puffs in Venice has praised this book, calling it "one of the most beautiful cookbooks [she has] ever seen!" so, of course, I had to get a copy. I wanted something that would really highlight a single, beautiful seasonal ingredient, because that's what the farmer's market is all about - getting the best of the best when it's at its peak.

I picked up some stunning carrots at Groundworks Organics' booth this morning, as well as some local shallots and (amazing) goat cheese. The recipe, which I tweaked just a bit to feature my local ingredients, was originally a sweet carrot soup with a dill gremolata. I substitued lemon basil for the dill (for obvious reasons), left out the orange zest (sadly, no orange trees in Portland), and added a swirl of local cream, goat cheese crumbles, and capers.

A deceptively simple recipe, the few ingredients worked so well together, it's easily one of the best soups I've made. I especially loved the salty capers and goat cheese paired with the sweet carrot that is the star of this dish. I can't recommend this enough. It took no more than 35 minutes, almost all of that downtime waiting for the carrots to cook, and cost next to nothing. A bonus, the soup itself is really low-calorie, being made of only carrots, shallots, a bay leaf, and water! Which, of course, I negated with my liberal use of cream and goat cheese. It's so worth it, friends. Trust me.

Happy weekend, and remember... Eat Well.

Sweet Carrot Soup with Basil, Goat Cheese, and Capers
Adapted from Leanne Kelley's Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes
(serves 4 to 6)

For Soup
3 tbs unsalted butter
2 large shallots, sliced
2 pounds fresh, organic carrots, sliced into rounds
4 cups water
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp sea salt

For Topping
2 tbs minced shallot
1 tbs minced fresh basil
3 tbs whipping cream
2 tbs capers
1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese

Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots and saute until tender and golden brown. Add sliced carrots, stir to coat with butter. Add 4 cups water and the bay leaves, and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, and cover for 20 minutes, or until carrots are very tender. Remove the bay leaves, and puree soup with an immersion or standard blender. Season with salt to taste. Divide into bowls and garnish with herbs, minced shallot, cream, goat cheese, and capers. Enjoy!