The Eye of Ha-Shem to Bring you a Taste of Heaven, like this soup will!Sopa do Batata Doce (Brazilian)
I got this recipe from an old Boulder High School buddy, who is a foodie like me. We are still good friends. I love it when folks bring me new recipes. He uses chicken or beef stock, but since my husband is vegetarian, I usually make all dishes vegetarian unless I know he won’t be eating them. If you make the Roasted Root Vegetable Stock recipe below, like I do, you will not miss any flavor. If you don’t have time to make this stock, make sure and use some kind of vegetable or other stock, even if it is something from the store (for shame!). It really gives this soup a better flavor.
2-3 white sweet potatoes (sometimes called Hannah or Japanese sweet Potatoes, you can also use the orange kind, but it is better with the white ones)
2-3 onions
4-6 medium flavorful tomatoes
4-8 Tablespoons unsalted sweet butter
4-8 or more cups of Roasted Root Vegetable Stock or stock of your choosing.
Roasted Root Vegetable Stock:
Wash well all the veggies. It is better to not peel any of them for this stock. Chop up a bunch of veggies, I use carrots, celery (including the tops with the leaves), onions, turnips, parsnips, mushrooms, etc.. big chunks are fine. Combine all of the veggies in a large bowl and toss with some olive oil, salt and pepper and some fresh herbs like parsley, (stalks and all) and don’t forget several cloves of garlic.
Throw all of this onto a baking sheet and bake at 350-400º for about an hour. During that hour use a large spoon or spatula and move the veggies around a few times. Start a large pot of water to boil on your stove and dump all of the veggies into it. At this point I add chard or beet greens or kale, just a few leaves chopped up. Let all of this water and veggies boil and simmer for at least an hour, if not more. Strain the veggies through a colander with cheese cloth or a very clean thin dish towel over a strainer into another large bowl or pot. You can use a pan or spoon to press out all the good veggie juice into your strained stock. You can let this cool and freeze for future use or start making the soup, right now!
Peel and chop sweet potatoes
Simmer sweet potatoes in stock until cooked
Peel and chop onions and sauté onions in some of the butter until they are carmelized, which I think takes about an hour or more. You must cover the pan the onions are in and stir frequently and keep the flame on pretty low.
Chop tomatoes
Add tomatoes and onions to soup
Cook a few more minutes
Puree the soup
Add the rest of the butter
Add good salt and pepper to season
Garnish with parsley or use some of Esti’s Parsley Sauce to spice this up a bit.
ShaKia, my newish Granddaughter and I, she loves this recipe and I promised her I’d upload it as soon as I got home from visiting with her and my daughter and her intended.
Fresh Salsa makes any meal much better. This is very easy to make. The trick is to cut everything really tiny and to have the cilantro clean and dry. Prepare the garlic the way I have already outlined multiple times (Perla’s Peppers, Esti’s Parsley Sauce). This Salsa will keep for about two days at the most. It’s really best fresh. If you want to use if for longer, cook up the remainder and blend it up and keep if for a few more days in your refrigerator.
2–4 fresh tomatoes
2–5 serrano or jalapeño peppers
a good bunch of cilantro, well cleaned and fairly dry
one white onion
juice of ½ lemon or lime
4–6 cloves of garlic (with centers removed)
salt and pepper to taste
Chop up the peppers, very finely (it’s best to use a chopper tool if you have one) and put them in a medium size serving bowl. Then chop up the tomatoes and add this to your bowl. Add the chopped onion, lemon juice, pressed garlic, salt and pepper and the chopped cilantro and mix it all up. The spiciness of this salsa depends on the spiciness of the individual peppers you use and the amount. Adjust to taste. I occasionally use habañeros in this salsa, when I know I won’t have visitors who can’t handle that level of heat.
Jewish Mother Warning:
When handling any fresh spicy peppers, wear vinyl/plastic/nitrile gloves (if you have any cuts on your fingers). If you aren’t using gloves, wash your hands two times with warm water and soap, immediately following cutting of peppers. Wash your hands after discarding the gloves as well, because you may not realize you got a drop on your hands. Do not skip this step, it is very important! The oils from the freshly cut peppers are very harmful to your skin and can truly cause terrible pain and if you forget and rub your nose or eyes, you will know what all those attacked by pepper spray know, basically torture that can incapacitate you. If you do forget and rub your eyes by accident, get in a warm shower and open and close your eyes in the stream of water for five to ten minutes until the burning stops. (I learned this from Poison Control, who I called one time, when I myself forgot this step and was suffering mightily.) I have never had this problem again, and the warm water shower solved my problem.
Now, don’t be afraid to make this salsa. It’s worth it. Just WASH YOUR HANDS!
BB Cohen in Oukamaiden, Morocco with Etan Lev, April 9, 2013
My Uncle BB Cohen, may his memory be for a blessing, passed away on Sunday, March 30th, 2014. He was 88 years old. I last saw him with my youngest son. We spent two glorious days with him in the Atlas Mountains and ate good food, took good walks, and shared stories and family. We then rejoined my son’s companions on the school trip we were on. I am so grateful for this final time of connection with BB. I have so many good memories and a CD he gave me of his piano playing. You can read more about my visit with him in the piece called Omar and the Bowls that is at the end of my post called It’s a Small World.
What follows here is the basic veggie dish I make to go with about ten other dishes, coming later. There are seven vegetables that go into this dish and you can pick and choose which seven you use. My husband doesn’t eat bell peppers, so I never include them, but make a separate dish with them, Perla’s Peppers, already up on this site. If you like bell peppers, use them in this dish as one of your seven.
The Hot Pepper Sauce can be made all the time and can be used every day of your life, to the delight of your family and friends. It is absolutely essential, in my opinion, for any couscous recipe to add some spice. The actual flavors of this dish are very delicate and sweet, the cinnamon, saffron and coriander being the main flavors. For those who don’t like spice, the dish is perfect without it. For those who do need a little kick, this Hot Pepper Sauce is different from others due to the cumin, VERY Moroccan!
Also, I am not giving instructions about how to prepare the actual couscous grain here. That is a three page process that many others have written about. Perhaps one day. I recommend you do look up how to actually prepare couscous, the grain itself, according to the Master Directions given by Paula Wolfert from her book, Couscous and other good food from Morocco. There is no point in making nasty couscous mush to go with the vegetable dish, but unless you take the time to prepare the grain properly, serve the vegetables with a millet bread or some other grain.
This recipe and the Hot Pepper Sauce are my adaptation from the Sunset Vegetarian Favorites cookbook and also Paula Wolfert’s book mentioned above.
Moroccan Seven Vegetable Cous Cous with Hot Sauce
two large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes or use fresh pumpkin or some other sweet gourd/squash
several handfuls of fresh green beans, cut into small ½ inch pieces (instead of bell peppers for those who are allergic to bell peppers, otherwise use bell peppers!)
two-four large tomatoes, chopped
one or two large cans of garbanzo beans (rinse off the gooey juice) or the equivalent amount of fresh cooked ones
two-three medium size zucchinis chopped into small little wedges
one-two turnips (peeled and cubed into small pieces)
one large parsnip (peeled) or other vegetable of your choice, cut into smallish pieces
¼– ½ cup of olive oil
1–2 large onions finely chopped
2–4 teaspoons fresh ground coriander
2–4 teaspoons cinnamon
juice of one to two lemons
¼– ½ cup water
½ to a full teaspoon of saffron threads
dash or more of salt
Heat the oil and add the onion, coriander & cinnamon, stirring frequently until the onions are soft (5–10 minutes). Stir in the sweet potatoes and mix often for about two minutes. Add the parsnips, turnips, tomatoes, green beans, garbanzo beans, water, lemon juice, saffron threads and some salt. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 15–20 minutes. Mix in the zucchini, after the sweet potatoes and other veggies have cooked, they need less time. Cook for another twenty to forty minutes, stirring gently and on low heat. You can let this dish sit for a while before serving in a good covered pot, if you aren’t cooking in a traditional Moroccan Tagine style dish.
Serve over couscous and make sure and use the Hot Pepper Sauce as it makes this dish. This recipe w/out the pepper sauce is very savory, not spicy, the Hot Pepper Sauce adds the heat and you can use as much or as little as you wish. I also like to add fresh feta or some other crumbly salty cheese as it gives the flavors another contrast. Again, I serve the feta on the side. I prefer goat or sheep’s milk feta, but use whichever one you like.
Hot Pepper Sauce
In a small pan on a low flame combine ½ – ¾ cup olive oil, when the oil is warm to hot add 3–5 teaspoons of fresh ground red pepper (cayenne); 2–4 teaspoons fresh ground cumin seed (use the Sabatu/Suribachi to grind your cumin seeds); 2–3 cloves of garlic, pressed (be careful as the oil is hot, you can press the garlic into a small bowl and slip it into the oil if you are worried about oil splattering); ¼ – ½ teaspoon of salt. Cook over low heat, stirring with a chopstick until all of it is well–blended (5 minutes).
Enjoy and Live your life with gusto!!!!!!
View from BB’s home in Ouka, now he flies above these mountains, free as a bird!
by Helen Redman, please see her website birthingthecrone.com for more of her fabulous artwork.
You cannot have it all, do it all, be it all.
It is impossible to have a healthy body, family life, yummy and nutritious food, spiritual practice, community engagement, strong friendships, political involvement, mental well-being and fulfilling work that pays all your bills. I am a very positive person, but the myth of perfection in our society makes me feel crazy. There is a cost for everything we do. We are humans, flesh and blood. There are just only so many hours in a day. A person can maintain a career and a healthy relationship, but can they juggle a spiritual practice, time with friends and time to work-out and also be active in the community? What about family illnesses or any other number of circumstances. There is just no way to do it all. Letting go of being able to, is critical.
I am giving up trying to be perfect and trying instead to be present in lots of areas of my life, but I no longer think I can do everything in a magically balanced way. Something will have to give in one or more areas of my life in order for other things to come to the foreground. Letting go of the myth of perfection is a daily and ongoing practice.
We have to start being honest about this in a MUCH bigger way than we are. So many people are weighed down with guilt or shame or pain around the things they just cannot manage or handle and they think they are doing something wrong or are deficient in some way. I deny the allegation and I deny the alligator or the crocodile on our collective backs!
My body has taken a beating of sorts for the duration of my life as a mother. It has been the vessel of life for three amazing children, physically and has paid the price in multiple ways for that. You cannot grow babies in your body without depleting systems. Every pregnancy brings cavities and some bone loss, even if you supplement. My body rightly chose to put the calcium and other nutrients it deemed necessary into the babies in my womb as they grew. When my third child could not make it through the birth canal after two days of labor, he had to be cut out. That was me getting sliced through and sewn back up. The muscle tissues never completely have healed and additionally I developed a thyroid condition around this time. So, my metabolism is not working the way it used to. Every person has their own body story.
Addressing my body is a very time consuming practice. Beyond the feeding and shopping and cooking of healthy food for it trying to exercise is a whole other matter. If I spend fifty minutes swimming and twenty minutes in the shower, ten minutes if I drive to the gym or twenty minutes there and back if I ride my bike, that is about two hours all told. Sometimes if I really rush I can get it all done in slightly less. Whether I take a Zumba class or some kind of other weight-training or strengthening class the time it takes is still the same. Those two hours are not something I can always afford. They certainly take a back seat to the care and feeding of my family, any illnesses, religious observances, or friends in need.
I choose to honor and perfect my heart and soul muscles first in EVERY situation.
I love this body I am in and I want it to be well for a long time, but I cannot forgo the covenant I have made with the Universe/The Holy One to be of service and to tone and tune my heart. It is not an either or equation, but often the body piece comes after the others. Everyone makes their own decisions about this. I can tell you, for certain, that when I die, folks are not going to sit around talking about what a sexy body I had or how pretty I looked once I lost thirty pounds. What they will remember is the soup I made for them, the time I sat with them at the hospital while their friend, mother, brother, sister was dying, the advice I gave them about being kind to themselves or their children. The energy I build that is based on the work I am doing for others is and will always be present long past when I am. My body will eventually turn into earth and no longer be of service to anything other than the worms and soil.
And, I need to keep this vessel that the Holy One gave me, in good enough shape to sail the waters for as many years as I can. The day I am bound to die is not in my control. I could be an Olympic athlete and the number of days due me this lifetime would still be controlled not by me, but by a force or forces way beyond me. So, how do I find a way to pray, grow and honor my body now? Since my youngest is almost out of the house and his need for me is less, in many respects, than they have been, I have a little extra time for self-care.
I have found that I cannot pray while I am doing Zumba or intensive weight-lifting, or strength-training in teams at Healthsport. I can and do pray when I swim. I know yoga is a mind/body practice and I love doing that, but I need something metabolically stimulating right now for optimum health. So, here’s what I’ve figured out. There are many folks in my life who are in compromised situations, either a divorce, loneliness, illness, injury or distress for any number of reasons. I imagine this person in my mind and I surround them with light and healing or visions of love or laughter, whatever they need. I do this as I swim a length of the pool. I do it everyday except Shabbat.
If my list of folks in need gets much longer I might be swimming for several hours, but I could always alternate folks to different days or combine several into one length. This seems to be working for me and I love the blending of my body moving through the water and my heart and soul engaging in practice for those I want to be sending love and healing to. I will still occasionally do other forms of exercise, but for now, praying in the lap lane is one of the ways I have found to combine two very important elements of my life into one discrete packet of time. Both the exercise and the prayer are different as a result. The exercise is improved, the prayer, I’m not so sure. I will have to spend more time alternating between concentrated prayer for folks and this kind of praying in the lap lane and see. For now, though, I’m doing it this way.
If you see me in the lap lane, perhaps you’ll remember that you too can find a way to juggle your many commitments and remember to laugh when some of the balls fall down and start over again.
Originally published in the Mad River Union on Wednesday, March 19, 2014.
Some Salts Sweetly Sitting Strongly Sending Savory Suggestions
Most folks are clueless about salt. I mean this with no disrespect, but I have found it to be true. Salt is not your enemy, nor is it bad for you. It is only a problem when you are eating too much processed foods or if you have a specific medical condition. Even then, talk to your doctors, but I bet if you eliminated processed foods you could actually salt your food with real salt.
If you really want to know more about Salt, beyond what I am sharing here, please read Mark Kurlansky’s book Salt: A World History. If you can, please order directly from his website or your local bookstore.
I no longer use soy sauces of any kind, even gluten-free tamari has left my cooking. I tried the coconut aminos, and occasionally when I am doing something with a particularly Japanese, Korean, or Chinese kind of flavor and I feel it absolutely needs that kind of taste I will use those instead. Some folks really hate all the soy alternatives and need that flavor. If you are mostly cooking from that part of the world, you may need to use soy based products, but I prefer not to at this point.
Just say YES to SALT
So, let’s talk salt. I usually have on hand at least five or six different salts, as you can see from this picture above. I am always on the lookout for different salts and will tell friends when traveling, “if you want to bring me something back, I am always in the mood for salt.” One friend while traveling in the Himalayas returned with a purple rock and reverentially handed it to me. “I said what is it?” He said take a lick, and I did and sure enough it was a sulphur flavored salt slab. This is the purple salt in the picture sitting on one of my brother Paul Barchilon’s coasters. The green and large pink rock salts are also on dishes of his.
Sometimes, when I want to engage folks with their taste buds and they are up for it, I give them the Himalayan purple slab and tell them to take a taste. Most folks are not happy with this particular salt’s flavor, but I love the intense mineral taste that brings me to the stark and high-peaked mountains. One lick and I am standing above it all, yet grounded right here in my body.
Nicole’s Salt Rules: (Salt does RULE!)
You don’t need a lot of salt to make things taste good.
Experiment with different salts and combining or pairing them with what you are cooking.
If you cannot afford a wide array of fancy expensive salts, and most folks cannot or wouldn’t dream of spending a lot of money on salt, you can get away with just having kosher salt flakes. Kosher Salt flakes are cheaper than any other salts and stand far above almost any other salts that the average person buys. Rock Salt can be found cheaply now as well. Also Real Salt, from Utah, if you are in the U.S.A. or bulk pink Himalayan Salts are not that expensive.
Salt your food at the very end, not while you are cooking. This is almost always the case, but sometimes I salt mushrooms or soups close to the end of what I am doing. I also salt meat, chicken or fish before cooking them or have the salt in the marinade, but not during.
Salt changes things, it is a chemical, it is powerful, it shifts the flavors, either enhancing them or transforming them. A little can go a long way, if you do it right.
If you are cooking fish it is a good idea to soak it for at least 1/2 hour in a large stainless steel or glass bowl (NEVER PLASTIC) with about 1/2 cup or so of kosher salt flakes. When you do this, you will see a scummy layer of stuff that is in the water. Salt purifies and removes toxins. It is not a guarantee that you are getting all the nasty chemicals in our oceans and rivers out of your fish, but it helps. Rinse the fish off and then marinate or cook. You do not need to salt your fish too much.
Brine, Brine, Brine your poultry. If you cook chicken or turkey and you don’t brine it, you are missing out. There is a world of difference. There are many different brining recipes, but I stay pretty simple with mine. I use about a cup of kosher salt, a half-cup of brown sugar, lots of fresh ground black pepper, some red pepper too and whatever herbs I’m in the mood for, tarragon, oregano etc… I combine the salt, sugar and herbs in a large one quart glass mason jar and pour boiling water over it and let it sit and shake it up so it all combines nicely. I then pour this into a large brining tub/bucket that I use only for this purpose. This bucket is filled 2/3 way up with cold water and the brine. I then put in a whole chicken or two and stick it in my fridge. It does take up space. You can also do this in a cooler with ice if you don’t have room in your fridge. You can use a stainless steel large soup pot as well. Please always clean all your surfaces when handling raw chicken. I always do this in a clean kitchen and use a natural cleanser on every surface the chicken touched or I touched, including faucets, sink and counters. I recommend leaving the chicken in the brine for at least 24 hours, but I’ve gone 48. When you remove the chicken to cook it, repeat the cleaning steps. You’ll have to go to one of my chicken recipes to get suggestions on cooking. But you can just remove the chicken from the brine, and pat it dry or let it air dry in the baking dish you will be cooking it in. Contact me if you have questions about this and I will clarify.
Some folks say that if you use metal and salt together you eliminate the benefit of using a better quality salt. This is complicated and I am not going to address it in full here. I do tend to salt my food in the dish I am serving it in and have taken to stirring or tossing the food when I can with a wooden serving utensil. I always use my fingers to distribute salt, since they are better indicators of how much I want than any spoon or measuring device. I keep salt shakers on my table for those who don’t want to do that, but I also always have several small bowls with different salts on the table, for those like me, who prefer their fingers. Remember commandment # 6 from The Ten Commandments of Nicole’s Kitchen.
Open Heart Open Hands 