Lizzie Ross

It’s officially Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, my favorite season of the year because it means summer is 9 months away, and I detest hot weather. I’d take a wintry wind over summer’s humidity, were I ever given the option. But, since that option is never offered, I savor the chilly nights of early autumn, knowing that ultra hot days are so far off, I don’t need to think about them.

And oh, the soups!

SOUP

Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourette (currently recovering from a stroke in a nursing home in upstate New York — all good wishes for a speedy recovery, Brother Victor-Antoine!) provides a lovely list of soups in September, from Cream of Celery to Escarole. Since I’m trying to cut back on the ultra-rich soups (anything with “cream” in the title!), I passed on the Celery, the Russian Cream of String Bean, and Cream of Corn (so tempting, with fresh corn available at local farmers’ markets), and chose instead two hearty and simple ones: Red Bean and Rice Soup, and Tomato Soup Florentine Style.

Red Bean and Rice Soup is exactly as you’d imagine from its name: sautée onions, carrots and celery; add water, beans and rice; simmer until beans and rice are done. I spiced it up with chili powder, chipotle pepper (in adobo sauce), and some left-over hot salsa, and added a garnish of chopped cilantro.

Perfect on the day, and even better over the following week, as the heat of the chilies and salsa intensified. It goes well with a bit of cheese melted on corn tortillas, making a Mexican-style meal without a trip to the local restaurant (which, I’m happy to report, is quite good).

The Tomato Soup Florentine Style combines tomatoes, vegetables, and spinach wonderfully (especially now that farmers’ market tomatoes are in — there is no flavor like that of field-grown tomatoes, harvested the previous day and looking so gorgeously red and ripe in the market stall).

I added some chili flakes and a can of cannelloni beans, and garnished with chopped parsley and a grating of parmesan. That’s a piece of my own cornbread next to the bowl, but almost any crusty bread will complement this soup.

Make this soup in large batches and freeze for the cold days ahead. Which reminds me: add “lots of tomatoes” to my shopping list for the next farmers’ market.

SALAD

As with the soup recipes, Brother Victor-Antoine’s collection of salads for September ranges wide, many featuring vegetables that would be peaking just now, or near the end of their growing seasons, especially tomatoes. Of the 21 recipes, 7 include tomatoes among their ingredients. Seven opportunities to eat my favorite vegetable. Yet I decided to pass them up, looking for something that didn’t include beets, jicama, or black-eyed peas. The Salad Savoyarde and Berried Smoked Salmon Salad met that qualification and did not disappoint.

Salad Savoyarde is basically coleslaw: cabbage, carrots and shallots in a yogurt + mayo sauce. This particular recipe includes tart apple for a bit of sweetness to counter the uncooked cabbage.

“Savoyarde” recipes generally have lots of cheese in them, yet there’s no cheese in this one. Perhaps it’s the apple that gives it a flavor of Savoie. Coleslaw itself is Dutch (from koolsla, or “cabbage salad” — so don’t let anyone try to tell you it should be called cold slaw!), so it may just be that d’Avila is getting very fanciful in his names. (For more information about the etymology of “coleslaw”, check out this article from the Merriam-Webster website; and don’t miss this article from Etymonline. Bet you weren’t expecting a linguistics lesson in this post.)

The vegetables maintain their crunchiness for at least a week, while the apple, although still sweet, becomes a bit waterlogged from the sauce after day 3. Still tasty, but this is a salad that won’t keep long.

As for the Berried Smoked Salmon Salad, I consider this the star of September’s recipes. I’m a sucker for smoked salmon, and must limit myself to two packets of it per month. Otherwise, I’d be eating it every day, and although that would be highly enjoyable, it strains the bank account. But as soon as I spotted this recipe, I knew this would use my September ration of my favorite seafood.

Because it required fresh raspberries, blueberries and blackberries, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make this recipe at all. Would any berries be available? And then, at my local farmer’s market, I found some. Pound-for-pound, more expensive than the salmon, but that seemed appropriate. This will go on my list of recipes for special occasions.

Cut the smoked salmon into bite-sized pieces, add berries, chopped fresh orange, and scallions, serve on a bed of lettuce and drizzle with a citrus and honey-mustard vinaigrette. It’s a meal in itself. The berries cut through the salmon’s smoky flavor, and the orange pieces and lemony sauce counterbalance the fish’s oiliness. Needless to say, there were no leftovers to store: I made one huge serving and ate it all, happy that I had no one to share it with.

That’s it for September. Three quarters of the year have passed, Autumn will move along at a brisk pace, and before you know it, the Yuletide season will be upon us.

But, for now, let me just say, WITCH WEEK IS COMING.

True confessions time, again. I’ve never, ever liked raw onions. Well into my 30s, I picked around scallions, scraped aside slices and large chunks of red or white onion, even eschewed onion chutney delivered with my Indian food take-out. The raw-onion flavor was just too strong and pungent. Yet cooked onions, especially sautéed, are heavenly, and I use a variety of onions weekly: leeks, Vidalia and red onions, shallots, and the mundane white or yellow varieties.

In the past 20 years or so, I’ve expanded a bit, to include raw shallots in salad dressings, minced raw red onions in tuna or chicken salad, and even a tiny bit of white onion (the kind that make you cry when you peel them, but they must be finely minced) in a vegetable or pasta salad. What’s more, I’ve come to regret all those little containers of onion chutney I had discarded for decades. That stuff is delish!

But big pieces of raw onion? No thanks. Not even scallions.

So, remember that soup from July that was so terrible? It called for an entire raw onion, chopped and then blended with the other ingredients. (That was only part of the problem, but it was enough, and I should have known, but this year is all about trying things.) That flavor was still there, undisguised by the other ingredients, possibly enhanced by the crushing of the blending process.

I’ve learned something. For soups, sauté the onions. Always.

SOUP

Most of the August soups can be served hot or cold, and more than two stood out as options for this post. The Wild Rice Soup tempted me, but it called for a large dose of sherry, which seems too heavy for summer. Soup Pelou was another option I considered, with its base of radish greens, onions, and potatoes — finally, a use for the radish greens from the farmers’ market! But in the end, I chose these two:

Brother Victor-Antoine’s Broccoli Soup starts with sautéing broccoli, garlic, parsley and bacon (trimmed of its fat), then adding water for a quick simmer, and finishing with a run through the blender. Garnish with parmesan and fresh parsley. The bacon gives this soup a smoky flavor, which is great hot, but I decided not to try it cold. Next time, I’ll skip the blender and leave the soup chunky. A garnish of crisp bacon could be good as well. I might try this one again.

The Spicy Carrot and Orange Soup, served cold, is delightfully refreshing on an early afternoon of a hot August day. Start with a few chopped carrots and a leek, briefly sautéed with cayenne, ginger, nutmeg and paprika. Stir in vegetable broth, orange juice and zest, and simmer until the carrots are cooked. Blend, chill, salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with cilantro. (Brother V-A’s recipe says to cook the cilantro with the carrots, but I prefer it freshly minced. Otherwise the cilantro loses most of its bite and all its color.) My version is spicer than the good Brother’s, exactly to my liking. I can see this soup working just as well on a cold winter’s evening, so I’ve marked the recipe as a keeper.

SALAD

For this month, I’ve chose something savory, something sweet. I could have gone with the peach and blueberry salad, steeped in port wine, but the watermelon salad below looked simpler.

For the Rotelle in Spicy Napoleon Sauce, I had to use frozen peas, for there were no fresh ones to be found. You can’t see the finely minced Vidalia onions, but they are there. The julienned red peppers as garnish are my own addition (parsley would work equally well).

But “spicy” is misleading.

Despite the cumin, cayenne, curry and coriander, the yogurt-based Napoleon sauce barely registered on the Scoville scale, a tad above bell peppers, but not even as high as pepperoncini. The spiciness increased only slightly overnight, so if I make this again, I will definitely turn up the heat. (And here’s how: warm the spices in a dry skillet before adding them to the yogurt/lemon zest.)

At least the salad was good for a week — nice enough, even, when refreshed with lemon juice, for a picnic with friends. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, those are rotini and not rotelle, which look like wagon wheels. Like the fresh peas, rotelle were unattainable.

As for why it’s called Napoleon Sauce, Brother Victor-Antoine keeps silence.

This next recipe is quick and easy to pull together (just cantaloupe, watermelon and blueberries, with a wine-citrus-honey dressing and a garnish of fresh mint). The lengthiest step in making the Summertime Salad is the time to chill it thoroughly before serving. You can minimize this by buying the fruit a day early, so that these are cold before you cut them up.

Surprisingly good the night I made it, and equally so the next day for breakfast.

I hear the concerned mutterings: “Breakfast?” “With wine in the dressing?” “Are you ok?”

Not to worry, dear readers. The recipe calls for a minuscule amount of dry white wine: two tablespoons whisked into a half cup mixture of orange and lemon juice, along with two tablespoons of honey, over at least four cups of chopped fruit. The cantaloupe and watermelon add even more liquid. I suspect I tasted the wine only because I knew it was there. But you could always omit this, perhaps replace it with white wine vinegar, I suppose. Or just not dip into the salad before the sun has gone over the yardarm.

And now two-thirds of the year has passed, with autumn just three weeks away. What will it bring? More soups and salads here, and my continued wishes for great eating and reading for all of you.

See you all in September!

This was an unusual month, since the two soup recipes required me to buy something for which I will have no other use: dry sherry (see my intro to my May Soup and Salad post). Long ago, traveling in Spain, I visited Jerez, in Andalusia, Spain, where I had my first sips of the drink that made the town. The colors ranged from amber to a brown so dark it was almost purple. With each sip, I knew I was never going to be a fan. Too complex, perhaps? or just too strong? As we left Jerez, I took comfort in the thought that I’d never be asked to taste sherry again.

And then Brother Victor-Antoine offers two soup recipes that call for a dash of that dreaded tipple. I made the soups (read below for the details), and poured myself a tiny amount of the sherry to see if my tastes have changed. That first day, it tasted interesting, but I didn’t top up my .5 oz/10 ml. Tried it again the next day, but knocked the glass over before I could have even one sip.

I took that as a message from Bacchus to stick with wine.

I’ve put the bottle of sherry up in my cupboard, where it will wait until someone who appreciates it can take it off my hands. Feel free to call dibs.

SOUP

Many of d’Avila’s July soups are served cold, and I also could have made soup with Jerusalem artichokes, or celeriac, but I looked for recipes whose ingredients I knew I could find. The first soup I made was too terrible to write about, so I moved on to d’Avila’s Avocado Soup. Blend an avocado with some milk, onions, and lemon juice. Heat chicken broth and then stir in a splash of sherry and some cream. Blend everything together and chill several hours. Cilantro garnish. It’s a lovely green color, but the flavor is merely ok. The sherry flavor is strong — be warned — nearly overpowering the avocados. I doubt I’ll make this again; I’d rather have my avocados on toast than in a soup.

I noticed that the Cold Salmon Chowder also called for sherry, so I thought I’d give it a try. Poach the salmon (I used butter and a splash of Sauvignon), simmer onions, celery and red pepper in milk, stir in the flaked salmon along with cream, sherry and salt/pepper. Then chill overnight. This was actually quite good, the sherry balancing well with the salmon. It was thick enough to be a chowder, and pleasantly cold on a brutally hot day. This recipe may be worth revisiting in winter, when it can be served hot. I might find some use for that bottle of sherry after all.

SALAD

The main ingredient of St. Benedict Salad is rice, which makes a nice change. And because the dressing calls for curry powder, I took the liberty of making a rice pilaf: sauté garlic and ginger in oil, add the rice and sauté for a couple more minutes, then add the water and cook to al dente. When the rice is cool, add chopped cucumbers, raisins, kalamata olives, capers, minced shallots, mint, and lemon juice. The dressing is mayo with minced garlic and curry powder. I added the hard-boiled egg to complete the meal. The combos of sweet and salty, curry and mint, crunchy and chewy make this recipe sound busy, but it isn’t (although I think you could omit the mint and no one would notice). By the way, St. Benedict established the Benedictine rule in the 6th century CE and is the patron saint of Europe.

Zucchini Salad, Basque Style returns to the more traditional, vegetable-based salads. Very Italian, and easy to whip up. Chop some zucchini and cook briefly (d’Avila suggests boiling for 2-3 minutes, but I roasted mine), add chopped tomatoes, red onion, and yellow pepper. Oil and vinegar dressing. Garnish with Italian parsley. Simple, and a great side salad or appetizer. Not sure where the “Basque Style” comes in. The cooked zucchini? Yellow pepper? Whatever the case, I know I’ll make this again, because I can never get enough tomatoes. And bonus: two days later, when the tomatoes had broken down a bit more and the salad was somewhat watery, I added cooked couscous and stretched the recipe to two more meals.

That’s it for July. I hope you’re all keeping cool. And, as usual, if any recipe piques your interest, just let me know and I’ll send you the details.

True confessions time. One of this month’s recipes brought back a memory that contains a lesson for all. I’ll preface this story by pointing out that these events happened 47 years ago. I was very young and blinkered. Carrying my bubble with me, so to speak. Feel free to skip down to the recipes if you’re not in the mood.

I was teaching in a tiny village in equatorial Africa, where the local officials had given me a house: square, cinderblock, corrugated metal roof, divided into 3 rooms. Half was the living area, the other half my bedroom and washroom. No electricity or running water; all water (2 buckets a day, brought from the local river) had to be filtered. Fairly large “yard”, with no grass, a couple of shrubs next to the front door, latrine out back, and a bit further out were two huge mango trees, no more than 50 steps from the back door. When I arrived, the trees were full of fruit, and about two weeks later, the fruit began dropping. A dozen or so fell each day, and I could go out and pick one up for breakfast. Livin’ the life!

One day, I discovered 3 or 4 young kids under my trees, gathering my mangoes! I yelled at them, telling them off in the best French I could muster, but there was a lot of English in there as well. The nerve, coming into my yard and stealing my fruit. I wasn’t having it. It took me all of a week to realize that I was being a complete jerk. First of all, those weren’t actually my trees, growing in my yard. But even more importantly, it would have been impossible for me to eat all of that fruit. Some days, more than 20 came down, and this went on for a long time. Why not let the kids have as many as they could carry? And come back for more. Please!!!

That was me, showing the worst aspects of America: greed, white-lady privilege, etc. etc. Even as I tell this story, I wonder about that young woman I used to be. I know where she came from, and I’m glad she’s gone, but what kind of ignorant self-importance do I still carry around? None, I hope, but I keep an eye out for this person I was and hope never to be again.

And now the recipes. This month, Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette did not disappoint.

SOUP

My sister-the-chef, from whom I got d’Avila’s two recipe collections, recommended the Cream of Cauliflower Soup, so I had to give it a try. I love cauliflower in nearly all forms, so I knew this recipe would be risk-free. The creamy effect comes from a white sauce as well as the puréed vegetables (cauliflower, potato, carrot, onion, garlic). As with some of the other soups, this needed some heat from chili powder or red pepper flakes, so I drizzled a bit of chili oil on top, along with the chopped parsley garnish. Tasty, and certainly hearty.

Spanish Cilantro Soup offered me a new experience, and on the first day I worried I had overdone the cilantro, but that calmed down overnight, and on the second day, this was perfect. Sauté leeks, onions and garlic, add potatoes and simmer in a vegetable broth. Add chopped cilantro and purée. Reheat. Served with some Serrano ham and manchego cheese on sliced baguette, this makes a perfect meal.

SALAD

Pesto-Filled Deviled Eggs are exactly what they sound like. Mix some pesto in with the cooked yolks before stuffing the egg whites. Serve with sliced tomatoes, minced red onion, and chopped fresh basil. It’s a caprese salad, but with eggs instead of mozzarella.

And, finally, we get to those mangos that set me off at the beginning. I knew I had to make the Mango Salad Piquant. Mangoes, endive, red onion, red and green bell peppers, with a gingery vinaigrette, on a bed of lettuce and garnished with cilantro. Just exactly right.

Next month we move into full summer. Fresh produce straight from the farm. I hope d’Avila offers some exciting options for the next few months.