Minestrone Soup

This flexible recipe is a lovely meal all on its own. It’s specially exciting if you have some pesto and croutons to top it.

Ingredients:

2 tbs olive oil

1 onion, chopped

3 or 4 carrots, sliced

2 celery sticks (optional, but add lots of good flavor)

4 to 6 cloves garlic

1/2 cup tomato paste, or 1 cup of tomato sauce, or 3 medium tomatoes, finely chopped

2 potatoes and/or 1 or 2 zucchini or other summer squash and/or green beans, or other seasonal veggies, chopped

2 cups spinach and/or kale and/or turnip greens and/or beet greens or other seasonal greens

1 tbs fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried oregano

1 tbs fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried thyme

2 or 3 bay leaves

8 to 10 cups water and 3 cubes vegetable bouillon or 8 cups liquid vegetable broth

1 tsp salt or more as desired

1 tsp pepper (optional, but cooks in to add wonderful flavor)

1 cup pasta (elbow, rotini or shell pasta works well)

2 to 3 cups cooked white beans (black eyed peas work well, too!)

Optional Toppings—

lemon juice

parmesan or nutritional yeast

parsley

basil

microgreens

INSTRUCTIONS

In a pan, saute onions with olive oil for a few minutes, when starting to become translucent, add chopped garlic, carrots and celery and saute for 3 more minutes. Add a splash of water if it’s looking too dry

In a pot, add the water and bouillon or vegetable broth, cooked beans, sauteed onion, carrots, celery and garlic, chopped potatoes/zucchini, summer squash/green beans, herbs and spices, cover and bring to a medium boil for 10 or 15 minutes, until the potato is cooked through

Add pasta and greens and boil for a few more minutes until the pasta is cooked.

Serve hot and serve with any or all of the optional toppings for your steamy enjoyment!

Garlic Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes

Cauliflower makes a delicious dish in so many ways. Mixing it with potatoes makes it the ultimate comfort food and I just feel better about piling it on my plate since it’s not ‘just potatoes’. Here’s a quick and easy version to try—

INGREDIENTS

1/2 a large cauliflower or 1 smaller one, chopped

4 medium potatoes, cut into 1-inch slices (farm fresh potatoes are amazing and there will be some later in the warm season. For now, if you’re not sure where to find affordable organic potatoes, you can always try yukon gold organic potatoes available at Trader Joe’s for a pretty good price.)

6 to 8 garlic cloves, peeled

a sprig or two of fresh herbs (try thyme and/or rosemary)

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Put potatoes, cauliflower, garlic and herb sprigs in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for about 15 minutes or until veggies are cooked through and soft enough to mash.

Drain water and remove the sprigs.

Add olive oil, salt and pepper and mash it all up!

Serve it up and enjoy.

Green Potato Leek Soup with Mushrooms

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 to 3 large leeks, thinly sliced

3 to 4 cloves of garlic, sliced

3 to 4 cups greens, thinly sliced and then chopped up into small short pieces (Here, you can consider using up all the limp celery you didn’t get to in the last weeks, leaves and all! Kale, collards, spinach, turnip or beet greens, chard all will work. Mix and match. This is your chance to clear out the old greens to make space for the new!

2 to 3 potatoes, sliced into 1-inch slices and then cut into half moons (No, I don’t peel my potatoes! But I do make sure they’re organic. If you don’t have access to organic potatoes, maybe it is worth the trouble of peeling them. Potatoes are amongst the heaviest-pesticide-carrying crop in the industrialized agriculture fields.)

salt and pepper to taste

2 to 3 bay leaves

1 to 2 tsp thyme

8 to 10 cups veggie broth (or chicken broth if that’s your jam) If I’m using bouillon cubes, I will use 2 cubes Edward & Sons Not-Chick’n and 2 cubes Garden Veggie.

10 to 12 mushrooms (or more!), sliced in fourths (This is about what you’d find in an 8oz box at the grocery store)

fresh parsley leaves and/or microgreens for garnish

INSTRUCTIONS

Place mushrooms in a single layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake in oven at 400 for about 10 minutes, or until beginning brown, sizzle and crisp a little bit.

Heat oil in pan and saute sliced leeks sprinkled with salt and pepper on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Add garlic (and celery, if you’re going with that!) and stir fry for a couple more minutes.

In a pot, add the veggie broth or water and bouillon cubes, bay leaves, thyme, potatoes, greens and your sauteed leek and garlic goodness. Bring to a boil, then cover with a lid and simmer until potatoes are cooked through. Turn off heat when ready.

Now, the quick and easy way to finish up is to get your potato masher (metal please! Don’t stick plastic into your boiling liquid!) and semi-mash your potatoes directly in the soup pot. This leaves you with a soupy/chunky mix that I love to serve topped with croutons and pan-fried veggie italian sausage. Although, doubling the mushrooms is healthier and often filling enough for me to skip the sausage.

Alternatively, and perhaps, more traditionally for a potato-leek soup, you can blend it smooth. An immersion blender works great and you can better control how smooth you want the soup to be. The last method I would suggest, if you love your soup smooth and creamy, is to let it cool a bit, then transfer into your blender. The big blender is faster than the immersion blender, gets it smoother, but takes more patience waiting for the soup to cool enough to transfer to the blender, and then, of course, there’s more clean up because you’re stuck washing the blender. Blend and return to your pot (reheat if necessary) and serve topped with your garnish and mushrooms. The upside of blending to me, is that the kids tend to eat more greens this way. Can’t pick them out if it’s all blended up!

Chard Carrot and Potato Dal

Chard is a powerful, nutrient dense green—standing out for its vitamin K content, lots of vitamins A C and E, iron and calcium. It’s known as anti-inflammatory to promote heart health and regulate blood sugar.

Thanks to Kelli Mcgrane for the recipe that informed this post. I have tweaked it a bit, doubling her original recipe, simplifying the steps a bit and changing the order so the greens don’t cook as long. Finally, this version has more liquid because any kind of dal makes me crave the first course served at Taste of the Himalayas, which is simply soupy and delicious. What better way to eat lots of chard?

Serves 6

Ingredients

4 tbs oil (try 1 tbs sesame and 1 tbs olive or coconut oil)

6 cloves garlic , peeled and chopped

3 inch piece of ginger, chopped or grated

2 tbs ground cumin

1 tbs paprika

1 tbs ground turmeric

1 tbs salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 large or 2 medium onions, finely chopped

4 to 6 carrots, sliced

1 bunch swiss chard, chopped

4 small or 2 large potatoes (try gold or red potatoes!), chopped into large cubes

1 cup red lentils

6 cups water

1 cube veggie bouillon

pea shoots or microgreens

Instructions:

Heat oil in a pan. Add spices and cook for 30 seconds.

Add onion and garlic and cook until onions are translucent.

Add carrots and cook until they start to crisp (maybe 6 minutes)

Add potatoes, water and veggie bouillon and bring to a boil. Then simmer for about 20 minutes until lentils and potatoes are cooked. Add chard and cook for a couple more minutes.

Serve hot and enjoy. Goes well with a side of rice and topped with microgreens or pea shoots!

Persian Cress Orange Soup

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion

2 cups chicken or vegetable stock (or 1 cube bouillon in two cups water)

1 potato or 1/2 cup plain yogurt

1 cup cress (this is approximate; use more or less if you wish)

1 cup kale, finely chopped (also approximate, adjust to your mood or budget!)

1 cup orange juice

salt and pepper

Instructions:

In a pot, saute chopped onion in olive oil until translucent. Add prepared stock or water and bouillon cube along with the chopped potato and simmer until potato is soft. (if opting for the yogurt instead of the potato, do not add yet!)

Rinse cress (save a little for garnish) and kale and add to pot along with the orange juice, salt and pepper. Simmer for a couple more minutes, then remove from heat. If you have an immersion blender (my favorite kitchen appliance these days!), blend the soup directly in the pot. If not, let cool a bit then transfer to blender to puree. (if you opted for the yogurt instead of the potato, mix it into the soup once you’re finished blending it.

Enjoy with toast, croutons, biscuits, or crackers!

Potato Tacos with Microgreens

Potato tacos with pea shoots over our City Heights skyline—life is good.

INGREDIENTS: 

potatoes

olive oil

paprika

salt and/or vegetable broth

corn tortillas

carrots

microgreens (our current favorites for this are broccoli, daikon radish or kohlrabi)

1. Boil potatoes until cooked

2. Strain then mash with a little olive oil, paprika, salt and/or vegetable broth

3. Fill warm tortilla with mashed potatoes and top with shredded carrots, and microgreens. 

My four-year-old is always excited to choose whether he wants his taco folded in half or rolled. I enjoy putting lemon and chiltepin on mine...What do you put on your tacos?