Halloween Soup

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!  Here is Jane Butel's version of Halloween Soup made with, of course, pumpkin.  It's extremely simple and vegetarian to boot.

Halloween Soup

5 cups vegetable stock

1 small ion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

2 leaves fresh sage or 1/2 tsp. dried

3 cups pumpkin, cut in chunks

1 1/2 cups evaporated skim milk

1 tsp. crushed caribe chile

1.  Place vegetable stock in a pot and add onion, garlic, sage and pumpkin simmer covered until done and soft, about 30 to 40 minutes.

2.  Puree this in a food processor or blender and add the milk.  Place back in pot and simmer for another 10 minutes or until flavors blend (my note:  do not boil).  Serve in warm soup bowls.  Garnish with a sprinkling of caribe chile.

She notes that the soup can be very successfully frozen after pureeing.  My note:  you may need to check for salt seasoning and you can add some pepper (white works best) if you like.

Toheroa Clam Soup (From New Zealand)

Toheroa ("long-Tongue" in the Maori language) clams are indigenous to Aotearoa [the original Maori name for New Zealand].  They are a type of syphon clam, related to the American east coast soft shell clam the huge geoduck of the American Pacific Northwest.  They have been eaten steamed or roast by the Maori for centuries.  Here they go into the most famous dish to come out of New Zealand, so popular, it is canned in great quantity.  This comes from old cookbook simply titled The Polynesian Cookbook by Victor Bennett.  If you can't get the Toheroa (they are canned) and can't get the above mentioned clams either, two cans of minced clams will suffice.  So with that in mind, Happy Labour Day New Zealand!

Toheroa Clam Soup

1 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp. flour

2 cups milk

Salt and fresh black pepper to taste

1 can whole Toheroa clams, minced

1 cup heavy cream

1 tsp. finely chopped parsley

1.  In a large saucepan, blend butter and flour together until smooth.  Slowly pour in the milk, whisking until smooth and thickened.  Season with salt and pepper.  Add the clams and cook for 15 to 20 minutes over low heat...do not boil.  Serve in heated soup bowls, garnished with the parsley.

Potato Salmon Chowder

This is a very popular soup/stew in the Pacific Northwest and makes a hearty entree bowl that wards off the approaching cold of fall with harvest ingredients.  This is a version that is particularly easy to make, because it used canned salmon; but fresh salmon, cubed up can, of course, be used!  This comes from a cute little cookbook on nothing but potato called Tasty Taters:  Potato Cookbook compiled and edited by Judith Bosley.

Potato Salmon Chowder

4 cups cubed potatoes

1 cup sliced carrots

1 tsp. salt

3 cups water

1 10oz package of frozen spinach

1/3 cup butter

1/3 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup flour

5 cups milk

1 1lb. can salmon

1 cup celery

1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

1.  Cook the potatoes and carrot in salted water until just tender.  Add frozen peas, bring back to boil and cook 1 minute.  Remove from heat, but do not drain.

2.  Cook the ion in the butter until lightly browned in a soup pan.  Add the flour and stir until smooth. [Be sure to cook at least 1 minute to get the raw flour taste out).  Add half of the milk and whisk constantly until it boils and thickens.  

3.  Flake the salmon.  Add the fish, along with liquid from can to the vegetable.  Add the hot white sauce, rest of the milk, celery and Worcestershire sauce.  Stir well and heat through.  Serve hot, add a garnish of parsley if liked.

Atole (Atolli)

The word Atole as spelled in Mexican Spanish comes from the Nahuatl word Atolli, which is still used in that language; and "Atole" is basically pronounced the same way.  It is basically Aztec corn gruel or porridge, a cross between a soup and a beverage.  It is very comforting on cold winter days or nights!  While the recipe is very basic, this particular one comes from E. Barrie Kavasch's Enduring Harvest and is found in the section dedicated Dias de los Muertos, which are coming up next week, and in parts of Los Angeles and a few sacred sites in Mexico, have already begun.  She has that it can be made with yellow or blue cornmeal, but any good quality cornmeal of any color will work.  Pacqui Miccaihuitl!

ATOLE

5 cups warm water

1 cup fine yellow or blue cornmeal

1 tsp. salt

pinch of chamisa (Hopi word for cooking ash, its burn herbs, or use a pinch 

   baking soda)

1 tbsp. honey

1.  Dissolve the fine cornmeal in 1 cup warm water.  Bring the other 4 cups of water to a boil.  Gently add the wet cornmeal to the boiling water, stirring briskly until it thickens.  Add the salt, chamisa (or soda) and honey, stir well over lowered heat.  Simmer for 5 minutes.

2.  Serve hot or cool.  If you want a thinner drink, additional water or milk.  In addition to this being a very, very traditional recipe, it is also a sacred one, and one that is used as medicine--it is good for an upset stomach.  There are all sorts of variations on this, but that is best saved for another post.

Pawcohiccora (Shagbark) Hickory Soup

The word pawcohiccora (sometimes spelled powcohicora) is an Algonquin word that refers to both the Shagbark Hickory, and is in fact the word from which the loan word hickory in English derives from, and a kind of soup/nut milk made from several types of native nuts.  Shagbarks are one of the stars of harvest season--they taste a bit like very sharp maple syrup.  Commercial nut milks have become all the rage, and more and more home cooks are making the stuff at home.  If you have ever made homemade coconut milk, then you will be familiar with the process. For the most part, Shagbark hickory nuts are not available commercially, so they either have to be harvested in the wild or grown.  But pecans or walnuts can always be substituted, in fact any nut will work.  

Pawcohiccora (Modernized)

You will need a couple of pounds of hickory nuts.  Crack them and extract the nut meat, don't worry about clinging shell.  Pound this lightly, and boil/simmer in 3 quarts of water for a couple of hours, remove from heat and let rest.  The shells should come to the surface, to be skimmed off.  After skimming, pour the mixture through damp cheesecloth and squeeze all the moisture out of the nut pulp.  Spread the pulp on a baking sheet and dehydrate in a slow oven for use elsewhere.  Be sure to also save all the husks and shells as well (in native kitchens NOTHING gets wasted!  What is left is the simplest of Pawcohiccora.  You can drink this as is or use it as a base for a soup, either sweet or savory.  I few things to add if you go savory would included fiddleheads (which are mostly a spring thing, unless you live in the Everglades, but they can be roasted and frozen), chopped wild or domestic asparagus, herbs that you like, boiled pureed sunroots (sunchokes), leeks, etc.  If you want a sweet soup, the obvious thing to add would be maple syrup, add in also cooked wild rice and you have one of Native America's true taste treats, and it's completely traditional!  Fruit purees can also be added.

What To Do With The Pulp

There are many uses for dried nut meal or flour.  The obvious choice is to use it in baking of all sorts, but you are also make another type of soup with it.  Pretty simple stuff.  In the native kitchen, these soups are usually made with a meat stock base, but you make it vegetarian by using some type of vegetable stock.  A Meatless Monday Idea.

Hickory Nut Soup

2 quarts game stock, chicken stock, beef stock, or veggie stock

1 onion left whole

The dried nut meal

Salt to taste

Dried crushed spicebush (or use allspice)

1.  Heat the stock and boil the onion in it. Simmer for 1 hour.

2.  While the onion is boiling, pound the nut meal or place it in a blender or food processor and process until it is the consistency of flour.

3.  After boiling the onion, remove it and puree it, add it back to the stock, add in the nut meal and stir well.  Cook over medium heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4.  Season to taste, ladle and serve.

Of course, this is a basic recipe and it can be a spring board for any number of embellishments.  Making it spicy is quite a good variation.  Southeast meets Southwest.

What To Do With The Hulls And Husks

Homemade Dye

This makes a light brown dye.  This particular recipe comes from a little book entitled Natural Dyes And Home Dyeing by Rita J. Adrosko, which has been reprinted by Dover Books.  The recipe calls for a peck of hickory hulls, but a smaller amount can be made, the amount of the other ingredients does not change.  Instead of cutting up the hulls, as the book asks, throw them into a food processor and let 'er rip (obviously, when the book was written, there were no food processors).

Light Brown Wool:  alum mordant

Colofastness:  good

1 lb. wool

1 peck green hickory hulls (husks)

1/6 oz. potassium dicromate

1/6 oz. acetic acid or 6 to 7 tbsp. vinegar

Use alum mordant (see below)

1.  Place hulls in large pot and cover with water, let soak overnight.

2.  Next morning add the true reserved nut hulls and bring to a boil, boil vigorously for 45 minutes.  Strain with liquid, and add to 4 gallons of fresh water.  Bring to boil.

3.  Dampen the wool and squeeze out all the moisture.  Immerse the wool and boil for 30 minutes.  While boiling, prepare the other ingredients.  Add the potassium and acid to another pot of water and bring to a boil.  After the 30 minutes are up, transfer the wool to the second boiling pot, boil for 10 minutes, then rinse and dry.  

Alum Mordant

This can be purchased through mail order, just Google it. But here's the recipe anyway.

For 1 pound of wool

4 oz. alum (pharmacies often have this)

1 oz. cream of tartar

Dissolve the alum and cream of tartar in 4 gallons of cold water.  Immerse the wool after wetting it and squeezing out excess moisture.  Gradually heat the mordant bath to boiling point, reduce heat a slowly boil for 1 hour, stirring every so often; add water as needed to keep the water level consistent.  Soak overnight.  Next morning remove wool and squeeze out the moister, roll in the towel and store in a cool place.

Black Walnut And Pumpkin Soup

One of the greatest Fall harvest gifts from October on are the falling of the large toughly husked black walnuts.  When I lived in the northern Indiana, there numerous black walnut tree in and around a park just down from my house.  I would gather these and process them myself, no easy task given that their husks can be close to impossible to break--but hey it was free food!  Worth the effort.  Those same husks can be used to make a very nice dark dye.  If you do decide to process the nuts yourself, be aware that your hands will be stained black for days!  Fortunately they can be bought in their hulls whole or shelled and bagged.  Of course, I do not need to mention that pumpkins are also a gift a fall...I mean they gave us the New World version of the old European Jack-O-Lantern!  This soup comes from another of E. Barrie Kavasch's books Native Harvests:  American Indian Wild Foods and Recipes, a real classic at this point!  The pairing of the these two harvest ingredients may sound a bit strange; but Native Americans put nuts into all sort of soups all the time (example:  the very old Cherokee recipe for Pecan Soup or the Peanut Soup of the Muskogee Creek people), and the combination is a winning one, truly a taste treat, especially with the addition of the maple syrup!  As Ms. Kavasch points out, this combination is high in essential carbohydrates and proteins--this means that it is a high energy food.

Black Walnut And Pumpkin Soup

1 small pumpkin, washed

1 cup black walnuts, chopped
Maple syrup (to taste)
1 qt. water
Garnish:  chopped walnuts and roasted pumpkin seeds

1.  Roast the pumpkin whole at 325° F for 1 hour (or until the skin wrinkles and is easily pierced with something sharp, remove and let cool.  Cut the pumpkin open and spoon out the seeds (be sure wash and save these, they can be pan toasted and eaten as is).  Spoon out the pumpkin meat into a saucepan and mash it with the walnut and syrup.  

2.  Add the water, cover, and bring to a simmer.  Cook for 3 to 5 minutes.  Spoon into heated bowls and garnish.

Macadamia Nut Soup

Macadamia Nut Soup

This comes from an older cookbook simply entitled The Polynesian Cookbook by Victor Bennett; it was first published as The South Pacific Cookbook, which is probably a better name for it, as it contains recipes not just from Polynesia, but also Micronesia, a few outlier island nations and, of course, Australia.  Here is the super simple recipe for macadamias in soup!  I've clarified the instructions a bit.

1/2 cup soft butter

1/2 cup whole macadamia nuts

4 cups chicken (or vegetable) broth

Dash cayenne

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 heavy cream

1/2 cup additional macadamia nuts

1.  Grind up the first 1/2 cup nuts into a fine powder and knead them in with the softened butter.

2.  Heat the broth, whisk in the nut butter well, until smooth, season with cayenne, salt and pepper and heat thoroughly, whisking all the while.  Meanwhile, chop the extra 1/2 cup macadamia nuts coarsely.

3.  Add the cream, whisk well, and heat slowly.  Serve hot with chopped nuts as a garnish.

Peppery Potato Tomato Soup

Peppery Potato Tomato Soup

This is another of the super easy, but really tasty recipes from the Kimball/Anderson book The Art Of American Indian Cooking.  It is a wonderfully light potato soup that is completely vegetarian.

8 Medium Potatoes, washed and peeled

6 Medium Tomatoes, washed and cored

2 Onions, peeled and sliced

1 quart water

1 green pepper (sweet or, better, hot!, include seeds)

1/2 dried red chile, crushed (or 1/2 fresh hot chile, minced)

1 large sprig parsley

1 tbsp. salt

1.  Place the first 4 ingredients in a large saucepan.  Bring to boil, reduce heat and then simmer for 1 hour.  

2.  Break up the potatoes with a large fork (this will also break up the tomatoes), add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for a further 20 to 25 minutes.

Variation:

If liked the soup can be made with sausage and beef or chicken stock, in which case the potatoes should be diced and added at with the last ingredients, so that they stay in chunks.

Simple Black Bean Soup

This is a really, really easy and simple little recipe to get a hearty soup that is suitable for any cold weather and is hearty enough to double as an entree.  It's actually just a "throw together" recipe, but has a great deal of flavor due to the tasty (but alas, non native) leek.  It comes from The Art Of American Indian Cooking by Jean Anderson and Yeffe Kimball.  I've made it many times and never get tired of it.  Any type of hearty bread, especially corn breads goes great with this!

1 leek, well washed and sliced (be sure to use some of the green part!)
1/3 cup corn or other cooking oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 1lb. cans of black beans
1/2 cup water
1 level tsp. salt
Black pepper to taste

1.  Heat the oil and saute the leeks in a large saucepan until they are golden.  Add the garlic and 1 can of beans (do not drain the bean), with a bean masher or fork, mash up the beans as they heat up.

2.  Add the second can of beans, again with their liquid.  Stir in the water with the salt and pepper and cover.  Simmer for at least 30 minutes to let the flavors meld, giving a stir from time to time.  Serve hot.

Akutasquash Soup

Dale Carson Askutasquash Soup

This Abenaki food writer Dale Carson's recipe from her New Native American Cooking (Random House, 1996).  The majority of the food words in the book are in the Wampanoag language.  The Wampanoag are often referred to as the "Thanksgiving Indians."  The "good to eat" squash here is the yummy and readily available butternut.

1 medium onion

2 tbsp. butter

1 large butternut squash, seeded, roasted and scrapped from skin

2 cups or more chicken stock

1 cup sweet apple cider (my note:  that's the murky looking stuff)

1 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. curry powder

Salt and fresh black pepper to taste

2 tbsp. heavy cream, optional

Sour Cream and/or Dill sprig

1. In a saute pan over medium low heat, sweat the onion in the butter until translucent.

2.  Combine the squash, sauteed onions, and 1/2 cup of the stock in the bowl of a food processor or blender.  Puree, adding more stock as needed.  The puree shouldn't be very thick.

3.  Pour squash puree into a large saucepan and stir in remaining stock, cider and seasonings.  Heat.  Add the cream, if using and just heat through.

To Serve:  Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with a dollop of sour cream or a sprig of fresh dill.

Serves 4 to 6

Dale Carson's own photo of this soup cooking in a traditional manner.  Reprinted in Indian Country Today.

VARIATIONS (These Are Mine):

You can easily make this soup vegetarian or even vegan, by using vegetable stock or water and omitting the dairy.

You can vary the spices.  Native allspice is nice!

You alter it to make it with whatever winter squash you have.  These days they are so dang expensive, use what's on sale, by all means!

Add favorite chopped herbs while cooking.

This is Dale Carson

This is her book

Sunroot Soup

SUNROOT SOUP

1 lb. sunroot (usually sold as Sunchokes)

2 wild or green onions chopped

6 cups stock (vegetable or chicken) or water

2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. fresh black pepper

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1.  Peel and boil the tubers for 30 minutes.  Conversely you can boil them in the skins and scoop out the flesh.  In either case, mash.  

2.  Combine all the rest of the ingredients and heat for 30 minutes.  If you want the soup a pure puree, then blend it first, or use a submersible blender and puree it at the end of cooking.  

3.  Temper the eggs by ladling a little of the hot soup into the eggs, whisk, repeat twice.  Pour this into the soup, reduce heat and let warm (not simmer) for 10 minutes.  Serve as is or garnish with some chopped green onion, green herbs and stir in some Mexican crema.

Note:  there a some OK stock granules out there if you want to use the recipe while traveling or camping.  Those from Mexico and Kosher brands are best.

Smokey White Bean Soup

SMOKY BEAN SOUP

This is a recipe that comes from yet another out of print, and rather under appreciated book:  Blue Corn and Chocolate by Elisabeth Rozin.  I recently picked up a copy of this for next to nothing and find it to be a really decent book.  I really admire projects like this that take on the many, many foods that the New World has bestowed on the rest of the world, and present recipes from both Native American and international culinary traditions.  This recipe is from the former repertoire. 

1 lb. dried navy beans

6 whole cloves

1 large onion, peeled

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

2 ribs celery, with leaves if they have any, chopped

2 bay leaves

3 tbsp. tomato paste

1 to 1 1/2 lb. smoked turkey parts

2 1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp fresh black pepper

1.  Soak the beans in water for 4 hours or overnight.  Drain. (my note:  I don't ever soak overnight, it's just not something that is needed, and most Native cooks don't bother).

2.  Stick the cloves in the whole onion.

3.  In a soup pot combine the drained beans, the onion, along with all the other ingredients, except the salt and pepper.  Bring to boil and simmer for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until the beans are tender.

4.  Stir in the salt and pepper.  Remove the onion, bay leaves and turkey parts. Serve soup hot.  Frybread on the side is never a bad addition.  (My note:  you can chop the turkey meat and add it back, or use it for Smoked Turkey Tacos with Guacamole.)

Variations:

You can use Great Northern or Pea Beans.

Substitute any dried bean.

Buy a multi-bean pack for soup and use those.

Substitute the turkey with ham.

Spice it up with cayenne or chiles.