Recipe Reduction 29-27

Immunity Soup
by Heidi

Good work on coming up with a catchy name--which has nothing to say about the recipe. This starts with a basic recipe for vegetable soup that you could find in any woman's magazine cookbook circa 1960--onions, celery and carrots, stewed in oil. I assume the "immunity" label came from the additional of a generous portion of garlic and ginger plus a whole lot of white pepper to cover up its lack of flavor. Since I hate pepper, I skipped it, and sure enough the result had no flavor.

The recipe called for mushrooms and tofu, too, and since I couldn't stand to waste a soup that included two of my favorite things, I decided to give it some flavor.  I tried rice vinegar and soy sauce--better, but no unami. So I dissolved a healthy tablespoon of brown miso in hot water and plopped that in. Plus a dash of toasted sesame oil.]

Yummy!  Come on, immunity!


Curried Scallops
from Modern spice

I don't know what to say about this. What could be bad about scallops sprinkled with curry powder, sauteed in oil, then served in a sauce of the curry drippings, onion, tumeric and coconut milk?  It was good but not special, however, I may have omitted the key ingredient--fresh curry leaves.

Scallops are way too expensive and precious to waste on a less-than-stellar recipe, so I'll have to file this away. But I think it could have been great.

 
Roasted Delicata Salad with Warm Pickled Onion Dressing

 
Knock me over!  I thought this was going to be yet another meh from the long file of boring "salads" I could have thought up for myself.  It was good!  Like coleslaw on steroids.

I'll share the basics:
Roast some winter squash. It's hard to find delicatta, so I grabbed an acorn squash and a sweet potato from the CSA box. (The last delicatta from my garden had gone hopelessly soft in storage)

Mix 2 Tbsp honey, 3 Tbsp cider vinegar (the recipe called for red wine vinegar but I messed up and am glad I did), 1/4 tsp caraway seed and 3/4 tsp salt. Heat until boiling, then pour over 1/3 cup of minced red onion.

Shred 2-3 cups cabbage, an apple, and 1/2 c celery hearts. (Please don't measure any of this, just throw it in.) 

When the squash is cooled, mix it all together and top with some toasted walnuts.  I skipped the walnuts and that's good, because if I'd included them I'd probably have sat down and gobbled the whole bowl at once.

It's that good.

And with that I've knocked out another category (Salads) under the to-try folder!  I only have seven categories left.  3 desserts, 7 side dishes, 12 main dishes, 1 other, 1 sauce, 1 soup, and one spread. How does that add up? Excellent -- 26 to go.  With some interruptions in the picture, I may not make it but I'm not giving up the race yet.