Polyphemus’ Ambrosial Roasted Tomato Soup

Scary.

I loved this month’s Let’s Lunch theme the instant I read it. I just knew there would be a zillion fun possibilities. Muaaah ha ha!!! Cue creepy music. This was going to be such fun!

Problem was, I couldn’t think of anything scary that I actually wanted to eat.

Ghosts made from homemade marshmallows? Nah.

Brownie-bodied spiders? Ick.

“Frog guts” made from food-colored rice krispie treats. Gag.

My mind was a blank. Nada. Zippo. Bupkis.

What did I really want in all this rain and cold and drear? (If you’re in the US Northeast, maybe you’ve noticed it’s been raining for weeks…).

What I really wanted was a warm, soothing soup. Something that held a hint of summer’s brightness and warmth. Ain’t nothing scary about that.

Then I saw this picture, and my creaky brain wheels began to slowly turn.

Tomato soup. Made from slow-roasted tomatoes and a bit of saffron, rich-tasting, but not heavy. Comforting and warm, but easy to make.

And the eye? That definitely put the dish high on the creep factor chart.

The original picture uses what looks like a peeled hard boiled egg. It works, but…yeah, I don’t really like eggs. They scare me, but not in the Halloween spooky way.

What else?

Ah…. I remembered that really cool Molecular Gastronomy kit my sister gave me as a gift. There’s a recipe in that kit for making “yogurt ravioles” which look a whole lot like pupil-less eyes.

Oh yes. Mad scientist lab experiments! Now we’re cooking!

So, with the help of Hyla, my “cycloptic assistant”, I set to work in my ~~kitchen~~ lab.

We tried two methods: painting with gel food coloring, which gave a really bloody and oozy effect; and the more restrained olive slice pupil and saffron thread veins. Both have their merits.

Either way, the eye pops in your mouth, then oozes. Gross, right? Perfectly scary.

Hey, while you’re making roasted tomatoes for the soup, why not make a second tray so you can put some roasted tomatoes into the freezer for the winter? ‘Cause what’s scarier than a bowl of soup that stares back? A whole winter without a roasted tomato. That’s what.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here are some other scary offerings from fellow Let’s Lunchers:

Lisa’s Pretzel fingers at Monday Morning Cooking Club
Lucy’s fabulously spooky Halloween cakes at A Cook and Her Books
Annabelle’s Halloween Spice Cookies at A Glass of Fancy
Linda’s Pumpkin Spiced Flan at Spicebox Travels
Rashda’s Spooktacular Stuffed Pumpkin at Hot Curries & Cold Beer
Joe’s Sloppy Vegan Joe with Mock Meat at Joe Yonan

Polyhemus’ Ambrosial Roasted Tomato Soup

Makes about one quart of soup

Ingredients

For the roasted tomatoes (I use this recipe from Fine Cooking):

3 tablespoons plus 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
4-1/2 to 5 lb. medium-large ripe beefsteak tomatoes (about 12), stemmed but not cored
kosher salt
granulated sugar
scant 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
3 to 4 cloves garlic, very thinly sliced
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

For the soup:

1 medium shallot, sliced thinly
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 pinches of saffron
4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste
plain yogurt or sour cream
the end sliced off one black olive

Method

Oven roast the tomatoes using the Fine Cooking recipe or any method you prefer. This will take 3-4 hours. It’s fine to do this a day or two in advance. Let the roasted tomatoes cool, put them and any pan juices into a sealed container, and then store in the refrigerator until you’re ready to make soup.
In a heavy-bottomed 4-quart pot, saute the sliced shallots with the tablespoon of olive oil over low heat. You want the shallots to get nice and soft, but not to brown or burn. This can take about ten minutes.
Add the roasted tomatoes and all of the reserved juice to the pot.
Add two cups of stock.
Puree the stock with the tomatoes and shallots, either by using a hand blender in the pot, or batch by batch in a blender or food processor. I pureed my soup until it was smooth, but if you prefer a lumpier soup, by all means, puree as much or as little as you like.
If you used a blender or food processor, return the soup to the pot.
Add the remaining two cups of stock and a pinch of saffron. Stir to combine with the tomatoes, juice, and shallots, then slowly bring the mixture just to the edge of a boil.
Simmer for 20-30 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with or without optional eyeball. To add the eyeball, you can either make a “yogurt raviole” (as demonstrated in this video), or just add a generous dollop of firm sour cream or Greek yogurt. You could also use a peeled, hard-boiled egg. Finish the “eye” with a slice of black olive for a pupil and saffron threads for gross-out veins. If you’re being extra creative, you can use some red food coloring to give the eye a blood-shot hue. Yum!

Wordless Wednesday ~ Fade into fall

Sestina, for yesterday, for M

It rained all day yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.

It came down cold, and thick. It was nearly snow, but not quite.

If you’d wanted an excuse to curl up under the covers and feel pitiful, that would have been enough.

But instead, there was a birthday to celebrate. Another year in a beautiful life. A life I’ve been allowed to share because one day I went to work on a usual week day and met him and started to laugh in a new way and one thing led to another which led to a summer midnight in Maine when he asked the crazy question and I said “sure” and here we are, celebrating another birthday (and many more!).

Yesterday.
We shared the kitchen.
I made soup with smoked fish.
He made the world’s largest sandwich.
We sipped smoky Laphroig.
We lit the first fire of the season.
We went shopping for things we didn’t need, but wanted.
We read books.
We made an apple pie and missed our poor, old Golden Russet tree.
We talked about cider, smoke, cheese, goats.
We listened to music.

He reminded me of this sad-beautiful poem.

(I love that he loves poems. And old books. And stars. And paintings. And oak barrels. And bowls of soup. And wooden spoons. And wooly sweaters. And Cape Cod when it’s cold and the beach is empty. And silly songs. And games of Sorry.)

And the rain came down all that beautiful birthday day.

Sestina

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It’s time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

–Elizabeth Bishop

Wordless Wednesday ~ His name is Guac, and he’s an eastern mole

Wordless Wednesday ~ 8th grade science class requirement: make a red-backed salamander

A honey of a loaf

Where are my manners?

I’ve blathered about this Challah many times. I’ve mentioned it offhand in the course of other posts. I’ve even done a side-by-side comparison with at least one other Challah recipe. But somehow I’ve neglected to share the recipe with you.

So what better day to do that than on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year? It’s the perfect occasion for a festive, enriched bread, drizzled with a swirl of honey to help ring in a sweet new year.

Let me tell you, you need to make this bread.

Even if you don’t usually make bread, you need to make this bread.

As breads go, it’s an easy one. From start to finish, it’ll take just five hours, and only a fraction of that is time you’ll actually spend doing anything other than watching it rise to the lip of the bowl you’re proofing it in.

If you have a stand mixer, go ahead and use it; the bread won’t suffer one bit. I’ve kneaded this dough dozens of times, both by hand and by machine. With either method, you’ll be rewarded with one of the silkiest, friendliest doughs you’ve ever made.

For shaping, use whatever method and shape you like. When I was growing up, the gorgeous braided Challah was reserved for special occasions: holidays, bar mitzvahs, weddings. Our everyday Challah was made in sandwich loaves, perfect for slicing and toasting.

Oh, the toast! If for no other reason than the toast, you must make this bread!

Ahem. But back to shaping.

I usually make a simple three-strand braided loaf: cut the proofed dough into three equal pieces, shape them into long strands, and braid them together as you would a plait of hair. If you prefer something even simpler, just shape it as you would any regular sandwich loaf and proof it in a loaf pan. You can also divide it two smaller loaves.

If you want to be more daring, try a six-strand braid, using this helpful video as your guide.

For the loaf I made last night, I decided to try the four-strand round braid, so beautifully illustrated here. The round loaf is nice. It has more loft than the three-strand braid, so you get taller, thicker slices, and a bigger interior-to-crust ratio, if you like that. Be warned, though, if you do a round loaf, it’ll take a little bit more time to bake.

Before baking, the last thing you’ll have to decide is if you want to put any toppings on the Challah. If you like to keep things simple, brush on an egg wash (an egg yolk mixed with a teaspoon of water) just before you put the loaf into the oven. If you’d prefer, after the egg wash, you can sprinkle on some poppy or sesame seeds, or anything else you like to sprinkle on bread.

Let it bake fully. You want the interior temperature to be about 190ºF. Resist the temptation to slice into it right away. Let it cool a bit to let the interior finish cooking. The last thing you want is a soggy loaf.

But please don’t wait until it’s cool before you get a taste. It’s very nice cool. It’ll taste great. You can cut slices and drizzle honey on them, or eat them plain, or toast them (yes!).

But warm. Oh, warm slices of Challah. Is there anything better?

Yes, there is: fist-sized lobes of dough ripped off the still-warm loaf.

And kittens and baby goats. Cuddled while you’re eating warm Challah.

I’ve tried many Challah recipes, but I always come back to this one. It never fails. I hope you love it, too.

L’Shana Tova to you and yours. May it be happy, healthy, prosperous, and sweet as honey.

Challah

(adapted from Second Helpings, Please)

Ingredients
1 tsp sugar
½ cup warm water
1 package active dry yeast (or 2 ¼ tsp of instant yeast)
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup warm water
¼ cup sugar (or honey, if you prefer)
2 tsp salt
2 large eggs (if you can find them, I think duck eggs make the best challah)
4 –5 cups all-purpose flour (or substitute whole wheat flour for up to half of the all-purpose; I like using King Arthur Flour’s white whole wheat.)
1 egg yolk
poppy or sesame seeds (optional)

Method

If using active dry yeast, rinse a large mixing bowl with hot water. Dissolve sugar in ½ cup of warm water. Sprinkle yeast on top and let stand for 10 minutes.
If using instant yeast instead, you can omit the 10-minute wait.
Add oil, water, sugar, salt, eggs, and half of flour. Stir to dissolve, and then beat well.
Stir in the remaining flour. The dough should be sticky.
Cover the dough and let it rest for 10 minutes.
Turn the dough out onto a floured board and knead for 10 minutes (or knead in a stand mixer for ~7 minutes). Add as little flour as you can get away with. The dough should be tacky but not sticky (if you’re using a mixer, the dough should clear the sides of the bowl, but stick to the bottom).
Round up in a greased bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm place until double in bulk, about 1 ½ – 2 hours.
Gently deflate, cover, and let rise again until double, about 45 minutes.
Divide the dough into three equal parts (or six, if you are making two small loaves). Shape into strands. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet (or use a silpat or parchment paper) and braid loosely. Fasten ends securely.
Cover with a damp cloth and let rise until double, 30-45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400°.
Brush with a beaten egg yolk. If you’re going to add poppy or sesame seeds, sprinkle them on now.
Bake at 400° for 30 minutes, until golden brown and the internal temperature reaches 190-200ºF. If you’re making a round loaf, allow extra baking time, up to another 20 minutes or so. If you see the crust browning too quickly but the internal temperature is not high enough yet, tent the loaf with aluminum foil to keep it from getting too dark.

I shall say this only once

I’m kinda looking forward to fall this year.

I know!

Who has taken over this blog, and what have they done with Rebecca?!

I don’t completely get it either, but I’m going to ride with this strange-but-nice feeling: not dreading the change of season, welcoming the cool breeze at night that suggests I tug the comforter a bit closer to my ears, anticipating the fall bounty, not whining (too much) as summer heads south.

In particular, I’m enjoying the oblique angle of the light, skipping over treetops to light the fields, the rocks, the flowers, the river.

I’m thinking a lot about apples. Cider, sauce, adorable little hand pies.

Oh, and chili and stews and mahogany-colored baked beans. Loaves of freshly baked bread.

Birthdays, holidays, and celebrations.

The fair.

A wide, dark sky, the milky way painted in a prominent arc.

Fall usually seems to me a closing door, the end of things, and shutting in until spring.

For some reason, though, I feel slightly hopeful about this fall. I feel the new, clean air like a bright edge of promise, a hard, clear dividing line between what was behind and what is ahead. It makes sense that the Jewish New Year is nearly here. A clean start, a shrugging off the lazy days of summer, a time to move inside, gather thoughts, gather friends, make feasts.

I don’t know how long this feeling will last. You can be sure of reading my moans and groans about winter come November. I’m not that utterly changed.

Ask me tomorrow, and I may deny everything.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Please don’t tell our cats about this

Not dark yet

I hadn’t planned on writing today.

Then I went for a walk on this beautiful, blue-sky, September day and, as often happens, words and images started gathering into piles, arranging themselves into thoughts I wasn’t aware of earlier.

I starting thinking back to a similar blue-sky day, eleven years ago. About how we, as a country, were stunned into confusion, then silent shock, then railing grief.

I was thinking about our little girl, barely two, who had no idea about evil and destruction in the world. Who, on a neighbor’s television, saw a plane fly into a skyscraper during the endlessly replayed footage, and saw nothing more than blue sky, airplane, buildings.

About a tranquil field in Pennsylvania that cradled an explosion.

About earthquakes in Tokyo and Haiti.

A tusnami in Indonesia.

Hurrricanes in Louisiana. And in Vermont.

Lives and landscapes changed until they are unrecognizable.

The small, personal catastrophes that each one of us endures, that threaten to flatten or harden parts of our hearts.

But they don’t. Not forever.

You think you’ll die of a broken heart.

But you don’t.

The fields regrow. The rivers settle back into their banks. We go about rebuilding, reshaping, remembering. You forgive some things. You make your way around the things that you can’t forgive so that you can still laugh, you can see that blue sky and think, “Today will be a fine day”.

On my walk, I saw two turkey vultures riding the thermals overhead. They were looking for someone, something doomed. But it’s not me. Not today.

An inscription on the clock at Storyland, an amusement park for under twelves, brazenly echoes the old popular song, “Enjoy yourself. It is later than you think.”

Well, yes. It is, but there’s still time.

It’s not dark yet.