Midweek Soup

Midweek Dinner.

Mid Week Feast

Kale with coconut milk, curry powder, and scallions. I put the beets in there to cook, because the greens were done too fast. Baked at 350 for 45 minutes.

Broccoli with coconut oil and sesame seeds. Tossed in a bit of cumin powder and turmeric powder. Baked at 350 for 20 minutes.

Beet greens, stewed in a bit of water and their own juices. Seasoned with ginger and garam masala. Baked for 25 minutes.

Snow peas with ginger and mint. Tossed in a bit of oil, and baked for 20 minutes.

Rasam. It's in the book.

All said and done, the prep time took the longest, because washing and chopping all those masses of vegetables in a tiny kitchen can take some time, but after it was all put together, it took five seconds to dump everything into the oven. That was well worth it. If you were making this for two people eating one meal, it would only take like 10 minutes of prep, and then dump everything in the oven. The broccoli and snow peas may be done in the microwave, if you wish. The beet greens as well. The kale really needs the oven to develop proper flavour. I didn't get to see the kale finish cooking, because I had to leave for work, so I asked Steve to turn off the oven when it beeped. He said it was fantastic.

Chickpeas are awesome in general.

I was in the vegan chat room today, and got to chatting with someone from Australia, who was just starting out her exploration of the humble, yes awesome, chickpea. She's been roasting them in the oven, and spending upwards of half an hour on the process, as the oven takes its own sweet time in making the roasty magic happen. I gave her a detailed explanation on how to roast chickpeas on the stove. She seemed shocked that it only takes a few minutes!

You can hear the results of the conversation here, on the new podcast episode. It was basically me catching up with my listeners, by reading their emails, and then plunging in head-first into chickpea heaven.

You start with a screaming hot skillet, some oil, some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and sesame seeds. I get into more detail about the conditions of the whole thing in the podcast episode, and in the cook book, so either way, read up or listen up to the whole popping spices deal before attempting this. If you don't have the book, listen to the pocast which is free. Either way, you'll get the idea.

After the seeds are popped, throw in the well-drained chickpeas WITH NO AROMATICS. Aromatics kill caramelisation of your ingredients. They exude water, and increase the cooking time. This is supposed to be a quick five minute thing. Besides, adding aromatics adds to your prep time. Bother with that stuff when you don't care about time!

Then, you roast the chickpeas on high heat for about five minutes. If you want them more brown, keep going. Do not fear oil! Stove top roasting is a bit more oil intensive than oven roasting. If you see the skillet drying out, add a bit of extra oil, until the chickpeas are slightly shiny from the oil, and keep roasting. You won't get that beautiful brown unless you use a bit of oil. If you are watching your calories, read on, and I'll explain how to do them in the oven.

After the five minutes (or however long you decided to roast them) is up, turn off the heat, and let the chickpeas rest for a minute, while you contemplate how to eat them. They're excellent in a pita pocket, with some alfalfa sprouts, cilantro, and tomato. They're good over hot steamy rice. They're quite nice all by themselves, as a snack. You can use them as croutons over a salad. You can add a cup or two of water, and make it a soup (to thicken up the soup, either mash with a potato masher or grind in a blender about 1/2 of the chickpeas). I discuss other possibilities in the podcast.

If you are watching your calories, and want to reduce the amount of fat, use the following ratio for 1 pound of cooked chickpeas:

1 teaspoon oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
Salt, to taste

Mix the oil, sesame seeds, and turmeric powder into a spice paste. Toss the spice paste with the well-drained chickpeas. Arrange them onto a baking sheet, so that they have a fair bit of space between them. For me, a pound of chickpeas takes two baking sheets. Your sheets may be bigger or smaller. The idea is that you don't want to crowd your baking sheet, or else the chickpeas will not roast on all sides.

Sprinkle generously with salt, to taste. Let them roast in the oven for about 20 minutes (at 180ºC or 350ºF), and check and see if they're brown enough for your liking. Feel free to shake the pans a bit to turn the chickpeas over. Also, feel free to rotate your pans. Some ovens have "hot spots", and you might do well to move the baking sheets around your oven, so that they can all get cooked evenly.

If they are brown enough to your liking at 20 minutes, remove them. If not, keep roasting them until they're at the brownness and crispness of your liking. The longer you let them go, the more they dry out, and the more brown they get.

If you find that they are taking too long to roast, chances are that you're crowding the pan, and having them steam first, then roast. Make sure there's plenty of breathing space for the chickpeas in the pans.

Now go out and roast some chickpeas!

By the by, this whole entry and discussion with my friend on the chat room was spawned because of the mid week feast I made for Puppy. I've got the picture below and above this entry.

Soup

Of course I made soup. I had a bunch of disparate ingredients, and a hankering for something to battle that horrible rainy weather we've been having for the past few weeks. Contents of this soup include red potatoes, broccoli, and cabbage. Of course, it's got a metric tonne of curry leaves, some spices, and a touch of chili.

Then yesterday, I had some beans laying about. I was feeling lazy, so I tipped in a few cups of beans to the soup as well. Those lovely little gems launched my soup from wonderful to catastrophically delicious. I can't wait to have another go at it this afternoon.

What I mean in the Book ... in Pictures! (Part II)

When I last left you, I stopped at the point where you would now have the baseline for a basic curry type dish. To make it finalised, however, there are a couple of extra steps to go through. Don't worry! We'll do this together, and I'll have lots of pictures to get you through this. It's not difficult at all.

Once the onions are softened, and look a little dark brown around the edges, you'll notice that there are spices forming little crusty brown bits along the bottom of the pot. These little bits are pivotal in getting the final dish its depth of flavour and colour. You need the bits. The bits are good. Feel free to omit the alcohol if you don't imbibe. It's fine! I didn't add any at all, and it was delicious.
This is the point at which you want to add a liquid agent to perform the ever-important deglazing step. I've described deglazing in depth in the cookbook, so this should be a review for those of you who've read it. What you're looking to do at this point is to add something with liquid sufficient to release the crusty brown bits, and to dominate the dish at this point. Up until now, there has been more oil than water in the pot, and the ingredients have been cooking at very high temperatures. This is what gets them all roasty toasty brown, and smelling so delicious.
That's where our tomatoes come in. When you add that large, soft, squishy, and wet tomato, you instantly drop down the temperature of the stuff in the pot. Because water is so good at maintaining its temperature, the oil will not have the chance to get hot enough to allow spices (or the oil!) to burn. Add the tomatoes to the softened onions, and mix it in well. If you'd like to add a few pinches of salt, some dried chili flakes, and some wine or vodka, it'll amp up the flavour to new degrees of tasty. After the tomatoes are stirred through very well, turn down your heat to medium, and let them bubble away. This is where you'll thank yourself for having a pot with deep sides—the juices will not splatter and make a mess of your clean counter tops and stoves. You want the tomatoes to cook down a fair bit. They need to get broken up and form a sort of thick saucy thing. This is what I mean when I say to cook down the tomatoes until they're broken down in the cookbook. You can cook them less if you'd like for there to be pieces of tomato in the final dish, but I prefer to have them cooked down this way, so that they melt away into the background, and lend their beautiful colours quietly to your final dish.
Once the tomatoes have cooked down, you're in the home stretch. This is the base for a soup, stew, or daal. You've been doing all this work to form a strong, clean flavour profile in the final dish. Even if you make no adjustments at all in the spicing of the stuff, you'll still turn out stellar dishes every single time. If you are adding beans at this point, however, I certainly hope that you also throw in a bit of cumin and coriander powder, along with some extra black pepper and chili powder, to launch the taste into the heavens. If you're just doing a simple soup or stew, however, feel free to stick with the base, and work from there.
I added the potatoes and chayote at this point (reserving the green beans), because I wanted them to have long enough to cook. I turned the heat back up to high (you'll want to do this if you're making beans, otherwise they'll never come up to the boil!), and covered the lid for about ten minutes or so. Every five minutes, from now until the potatoes are cooked through, I give the vegetables a quick stir to redistribute them around. It's not strictly necessary, but I like to do it, because I get nervous that I'll end up burning something if I don't!
While that was going on, I diluted two or three tablespoons of cocoanut milk (the extra rich kind) in about three litres of water. When I say extra rich, I'm really not joking around. This stuff was packed with fat, and all of it was saturated fat! It was meant for recipes that require a thicker cocoanut milk. In the cookbook, when I call for cocoanut milk, feel free to omit it, or scale back on it heavily and dilute it out with water, so that you're not swimming in a cholesterol-inducing jungle. The flavours are wonderful without the extra fat. I just personally really like extra fat, so feel free to do with this information what you will.
Once the potatoes and chayote were cooked down, I poured in my cocoanut milk and water mixture into the pot. I let everything come up to a full, rolling boil, and then dropped the heat down to a simmer. If I wanted this to be a stew (which I wanted), I would let it simmer long enough that the excess water evaporates off, and makes it thicker (which I did). If, however, I watned to keep the soup as is, and have the amount of liquid, I could have left it at this point. The choice is completely up to you, and I hope you'll experiment.

I hope you've enjoyed this pictorial journey with me. Let me know what you think, and I might continue these in the future!

Dragged down

Yesterday was just one of those days. By the time I got to the bus, there was a steady drizzle of rain blanketing everything in its wetness. I got on the bus, which was relatively empty (looks like others had the sense to seek cover already!) and made my way home. I got out of the bus to relatively quiet sunshine and a gentle breeze. Since it wasn't that bad out, I made the mistaken assumption that it would be smooth sailing all the way home.

No such luck.

About half way into my walk, the skies opened up, and soaked everything to its core. Fortunately, I'd managed to stash all my books and electronics into a small plastic bag that I always keep in my bag for such wet emergencies. I wasn't worried about anything valuable getting wet, so I grumpily stomped my way home and let myself get drenched, rather than worry about rushing for cover, and delaying my date with my stove.

With the best of intentions, I'd put on a pot of beans to cook in the crock pot that morning before I left for work. Whenever I see the fridge start to look a bit threadbare, I make sure to get something going before I leave, so that by the time I get home, dinner is only 20 minutes (at the most) away. By the time I walked into the door, I was not only drenched, but also fairly miserable. For all it mattered, the beans could go hang themselves. Dripping all the way to my room will tend to put me in a sour mood.

Before changing into dry clothes, however, I set a pot of water to boil on the stove, and dumped in the rest of whatever potatoes I had. (I wanted something hot and comforting, and nothing calms and comforts like a hot boiled potato with some chopped broccoli and lemon juice.) I also hacked off the stalks from a couple of heads of broccoli, and pitched them in with the potatoes. I pointedly ignored the beans.

After about 45 minutes or so, I was dry and comfortable, and the potatoes and broccoli stalks were done to a turn. I ate a couple immediately, and instantly, my stomach calmed down, and my mood lifted. Now those beans would get the attention they wanted!

I drained out the potatoes and gave the pot a quick rinse. I set it back on the stove, and popped my spices as I do for a daal. In went the cooked beans, along with their cooking water. After giving the crock pot a rinse (and adding the water that I used to rinse out the crock pot to the pot of beans), I set the crock pot to dry. The broccoli was easy enough to break up into florets, directly into the pot of beans. I had some spinach that had seen better days (but was still good), and threw that in as well. There was also a knob of ginger laying around in the fridge, so I grated that up as well, and threw it in. (For next time, I'll chop up the spinach. It gets stringy, and I'm not a huge fan of that texture.) I dropped down the heat to a low simmer, and put on the lid.

By now, I had enough motivation to also throw on a pot of rice in the rice cooker.

As the aromas of the cooking food filled the house, I relaxed in front of the window with a cup of jasmine tea, and a book. By now, the rain pattering on the roof took on a calming sound. It was like listening to a thousand people snapping their fingers. Every now and again, the wind would pick up, and the trees would add their counterpoint to the rain. It was nice.

About 20 minutes later, when the rice was done, the beans were done as well. I turned off the heat, and chopped up two of the cooked potatoes, and slid them into the pot. It was still another hour till Steve came home, so I had time to relax some more, and the potatoes would have time to absorb the flavour of the beans without releasing their starch and thickening up the soup any more than it already was. (Note for next time: even if it is thicker, it might be better to let the potatoes simmer along. They got flavourful, but not as much as I would have liked. Fortunately, there wasn't that much of it, and the texture was fantastic.)

When Steve did get home, he said, "There's nothing like coming home to that smell!" It was obvious that he'd had as rough a time as I did in that hideous rain storm. A couple of bowls of piping hot soup over fresh steamy rice was just what it took to get him in good spirits again.

If you ever come home, and really feel unmotivated to cook, just give yourself a little time. Often, it just takes a quick meal that comforts you to get you ready to cook. Since you're the one doing the cooking, you're allowed to comfort yourself first, and handle the needs of others afterwards. Once you do get around to cooking, however, all those people who share your meal with you will share in your good feelings, and your own good feelings will increase exponentially.

Peanut Butter to the Rescue!

I took a container of rice and mung bean sprouts (from the pot that I'd made the other day) to work with me for lunch today. It tasted fine when it was fresh off the stove, but for whatever reason, it got sort of watered down when I nuked it for lunch. Allow me to explain.

Whenever I'm eating a daal and rice, I do the rice like my mother used to do when I was a young child. Because children really like soft food (and because I was child number three for my mother, and she knew this well), she would mash up the rice really well, then pour on the daal, then mix up the lot of it together really well. It's almost like having the texture of rice that you would with a Venn Pongal (recipe is in the book). It's comforting to the tummy, and it feels creamy when you eat it. The rice I'd thrown into my box was cold, so I couldn't very well mash it up. Instead, I figured that if I heated it up long enough in the microwave, it would come close to that texture that I so loved.

Not so.

So here I am, sitting with something that's lacking in mouthfeel. This is not a good thing at all, because around lunch time, I sort of transport to myself when I was four years old: very picky, and not eager to sit for a meal. I'd rather chat with my friends, or watch the birds cavort around. Who wants to sit around for a boring ol' meal, when there's so much to distract yourself with!? However, unlike when I was five, I know now that if I don't eat enough on time, I get cranky.

I frantically searched my office for something that would give the meal a bit more heft. When I used to eat that garbage, I would throw in some butter on top, and it would get that texture going just fine. Fortunately for the sake of the cows, those days are long past. Come on, Dino, there has to be something here!

Bingo.

My eyes lit on a jar of peanut butter that I always keep in my desk for emergencies. If I'm screwed, and forgot to pack a lunch, I can always snag a bag of pretzels, or some fruit, or some bread, and have a bit of a meal that's reasonably satisfying, as long as I dunk it in peanut butter. So, in went a couple of tablespoons of the creamy stuff. I added a bit more salt and pepper (also things I have access to at all times), and stirred it around some more.

Divine.

What was a relatively watery mass became transformed into this delightfully flavoured bowl of creamy dreamy wonder. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner! I'm tempted to use this trick for when any soup or stew is looking too thin, however, it does add a considerable amount of fat, so I might want to be a bit careful with the stuff. That being said, fat or no fat, it tastes wonderful, and I'm glad I kept my little jar in reserve.

Back to normal, after a breif break.

I was off taking care of business elsewhere, so this place has been a bit neglected. I came home to find the fridge dead empty. No rice, no bread, no nothing. EEK! I arrived back in Florida on Wednesday night, and really needed to get cracking.

This is when I'm so thankful to myself for taking care of things far in advance. For one thing, I always keep at least a few litres of soup in the freezer. This means that regardless of how long I've been out of town, or preoccupied with other things, or just swamped for time, I'll always have a ready meal, waiting for rice and/or bread within 20 minutes (which is about how long it takes to reheat in the microwave, if you keep them in one litre increments). While the soup reheated, it was a simple question of throwing rice into my rice maker, adding water, and hitting the start button.

Additionally, we have a breadmaker, that my mom got for us from Freecycle a while back. Since I always keep a few packages of yeast in the pantry, it was a simple question of dumping in the flour, water, yeast, salt, and a bit of oil, then setting the time and hitting start. Again, I don't have to bother with anything complex after getting off of a flight that took entirely too much more time than it should have.

Finally, as always, I had some dried beans in my kitchen. On Thursday night in they went for a soak, so that when I woke up in the morning, it was a crock pot away from having fully cooked beans by the time I get home tonight. I soaked up two different batches of beans, so that I could have some variety for Saturday night. Tonight, when I'm done cooking the first variety, I'll get the second variety started in the crock pot overnight. By tomorrow when I wake up, I'll have a second variety of bean to keep things interesting.

Tomorrow morning, I'll lay down some moong beans to sprout. Those will take about a day or so to bring together, and will give me a third option to have dinner on the table. After all is said and done, beans bought on sale in the 12 - 16 oz dried packages keep indefinitely, and cost around $0.50 per package at the regular price. Rice is dirt cheap, and bread made at home is just as cheap. Meanwhile, for less than $10 or so, I've got enough of the staples for the week. Now all I have to do is spice them up, and round out our meals with some vegetables. That part's the easy part.

Kitchen Triage

I made a batch of potatoes, carrots, and beans. I used red potatoes, cumin, black mustard seeds, black beans, and garbanzo beans. Ostensibly, it should have tasted wonderful. Then I took a bite of the final dish.

...

That was the worst idea ever. Let me amend that. I don't know whether it was a worse idea to cook the dish, or for me to take a taste of it. It was horrifically bland, the texture was akin to mealy tomatoes. It was so bad that I needed a couple of hours to just get over the shame of making such a catastrophe. What's worse is that Steve took a taste as well, and was far too polite to call it the abomination that it truly was.

I knew that I would have to redeem myself.

Enter Kitchen Triage. Whenever you have a wet dish, such as a soup, stew, or curry, there are certain secret weapons at your ready disposal whenever you know that it should be better, but it really isn't. It is time for me to reveal these secrets to you. Garlic, onions, carrots, tomatoes, salt, curry powder, and oil are essential ingredients that you should have access to at all times, to save yourself from disaster. Regardless of what type of dish you're working with in this vein, you have this secret arsenal ready to save the food, and your palate.

Here's how it works. Mince up your garlic and onions (1 medium onion per pound of food, and 1 clove of garlic per pound) as finely as you can get them. Start with a healthy dose of oil. For every pound of food that you're trying to resurrect, start with 2 tablespoons of neutral flavoured oil, such as corn oil, Canola oil, or peanut oil. In a large stock pot, begin to heat up your oil over high heat. Get it nice and screaming hot. You know that it's hot when you see it shift from a thick viscous oil to a decidedly more liquid one. Once it gets hot enough, add the onions and garlic. Add a healthy dose of salt and curry powder. Roughly a teaspoon or so should do the trick. You want the taste of the spices to permeate the dish, but not overpower whatever other flavours you're trying to build. Stir the onions and garlic around in the pot to combine them with the spices and oil. Once the mixture in the pot turns yellow, turn down your heat to medium low.

While the onions and garlic are cooking in the pot, start slicing up your carrots in any manner that suits you. I personally just grate it up quickly on a box grater. Usually, one or two medium sized carrots for every onion that you add is a good amount. As soon as your carrots are processed, add it to the pot with the onions and garlic. Don't worry about stirring anything. Cover the lid of the pot, and let the carrots gently cook in the pot for about ten to fifteen minutes. Basically, you want the carrots to get soft. Stir the ingredients around every five minutes.

Open up some cans (about 1 pound should do it) of diced tomatoes. By now, there should be little bits of brown spicy stuff sticking to the bottom of your pot. You're going to think that you've messed up, because stuff is clumping and sticking, and being annoying. Guess what? This is a Very Good Thing. The flavours that you have just developed cannot be matched by any other cooking method. Be proud of yourself.

Add your can of tomatoes, juice and all, into the pot as soon as your carrots are soft. Increase the temperature of the stove to as high as it will go. Keep stirring around the tomatoes until they get sort of broken down a bit. You'll know it's just about right when the stuff in the pot starts to resemble a tomato sauce. Once you reach that stage, you're at the home stretch. Pitch in whatever it is that tasted dead to you. Pour in just enough water that you can stir everything around in the pot, and release all the brown bits from the bottom of the pot. Add another generous dosage of salt. Let the water come up to a full rolling boil. Drop down the heat to medium low, and cover the lid of the pot. Let it simmer for about fifteen minutes.

Give your food a taste test. If there isn't quite enough salt or heat for your liking, go ahead and adjust it at this point. Let the water come up to a full rolling boil if you do add more salt or pepper. If it's still feeling a bit tired, feel free to pitch in a few more cloves of minced garlic. If nothing else, your breath will be too strong for anyone to care about the taste!

Lazy lazy Friday

It's been one of those Fridays where I was busy at work, but not to the point of exhaustion, like some days. I figured out how to load up video to a PC computer from a camcorder, by switching the camcorder to PLAY mode, and hitting the play button, while setting the video capture thing from Windoze Movie Maker. It was pretty cool, if a bit slow. I'm guessing firewire would have been faster? I'm not sure. Either way, it was pretty neat to know that it's possible, and relatively easy to do! Mind, I'm not going to start cheating on my mac, so no worries there. She's the first lady of my heart anyway.

Steve, on the other hand, didn't have as easy a time as I did. He was there at work from 8:30 in the morning till close to 9:00 at night! On top of that, because he was in the middle of a project, he never did go to lunch. I figured that by the time he got home, he'd be exhausted, so we nixed the plans to go to see that new Pixar movie. Instead, we stayed in, and ate some bean sprouts (spiced with mustard, cumin, chili, lemon, salt, and pepper) and rice, and some fresh popcorn (popcorn, olive oil, salt). I find that when you pop the kernels in olive oil, they have a very rich and buttery taste. I love it! Also, before sprinkling on the salt, I ground it down in a spice grinder to get it very fine, so that it adheres to the fluffy popcorn more easily. It was divine.

I am pleased that we've started to get involved in doing things more often than we used to. Saturdays and Sundays used to be "let's lie around and be lazy, and pretend like we don't actually have to get up to do anything." I'm sure it was driving Steve slowly mad, because we're funny like that. He's very introverted, but still likes to get out and do things. As extroverted as I am, I prefer to mooch around in the house. Either way, we've always found ways to amuse ourselves, whether it's sitting around the house, or going out.

The kitchen needed a mass overhaul type cleaning, so I figured that when it was done, I'd give Steve a treat. In the filter of the coffee maker, I put in 1/2 cup of ground coffee, cinnamon, cayenne, clove, nutmeg, and then topped it off with the rest of the ground coffee that I needed for a full pot. I filled the coffee maker. I then poured a twinge of vanilla extract, 1 tablespoon per cup of water of cocoa powder (unsweetened), and a few tablespoons of sugar. I turned on the coffee machine, and let the smells waft throughout the kitchen. It smells quite lovely, and is delicious straight up, with nothing added. If you've read my book, you know how I feel about "omni subs" or foods that substitute omnivorous ingredients (tofu, seitan, tempeh, soymilk), so I won't get into it here. I'll maybe cover that stuff in a later entry.

I started some beans soaking, and another set of moong dal to sprout. I think it's so cool that I can increase the amount of food I can put on the table, just by adding water to my beans, and letting them soak for a six hours, then air dry after draining them. They sprout on their own, and they're so cute! I almost (read: ALMOST) am tempted to get the stuff planted in my garden, so that I'll have plants, but I can't be bothered. I'm a bit too lazy for that to happen.

Maybe some day, eh?

On Salting

When you're in the process of putting together a soup, stew, or chili, make sure to lightly salt as you go along. What you want is for the salt to get into the components, but not to the point where you're making a pickle! Instead, take your time, and add gentle additions of salt with every new ingredient that goes into your pot.

For example, let's say we're making a soup with aromatics, root vegetables, tomatoes, and leafy greens. Let's take this step by step, and see if we can't make sense of it, shall we? As with any soup or stew, we're going to be going in the proper order of oil, then spices, then deglazing, then long cooking vegetables, then short cooking vegetables.

Start with oil in a deep stock pot. A good peanut or sunflower oil should work ideally. Turn the burner's heat dial as high as it can go. When a small wisp of smoke escapes the surface of the oil, add your whole spices (like mustard seeds, sesame seeds, and cumin seeds). Wait for about 30 seconds or so. You should hear them popping and crackling like mad. If you have them, pitch in a healthy handful of curry leaves. If not, skip this step.

Now in come our aromatics. Add your chopped or minced aromatics (maybe some onions, garlic, carrots, and red peppers this time?) to the hot fat. Stir everything around in the pot until everything is combined with the oil. Sprinkle in some salt. You just want to add enough to draw out some of the water from the aromatics. Drop down the heat on your burner to medium low. Put the lid on your pot, and get to work on chopping your other ingredients. These are going to cook for about ten to fifteen minutes, or however long it takes them to get softened. If you'd like some colour, this would be a good time to add some turmeric, and stir it through. If you want more of an earthy flavour, this would also be a good time to add your favourite dried herbs. Thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf works for a deep, rich stew.

Start with your tomatoes. If you're using canned tomatoes, skip this step, and just get them ready to add to the pot. If you have fresh tomatoes, roughly chop them up into 1 inch cubes. Don't worry about getting them perfectly chopped--we're going to end up cooking them down in any case. Reserve about a cup and change of water at this point.

If you're like me, the chopping of the tomatoes is done around the same time that the aromatics are nice and soft in the pot. Once the aromatics have softened, add your diced tomatoes to the pot, and increase the heat to high again. Add a little more salt, and stir everything to combine it with the oils and flavours. You're going to start to discover the delight of the smell of tomatoes with garlic and spices. Savour that aroma. Once your tomatoes seem to be incorporated into the dish, turn the heat back down to low, and put the lid back on. You've got another good fifteen or twenty minutes to go before you have to bother anything. If you're nervous about the tomatoes getting too dried out, check every five minutes or so, and have that reserved water at the ready to loosen things up as needed.

Next come the root vegetables (how does a nice blend of radish, potato, and turnip sound) into roughly the same sized cubes. You want to go for about 1/2 inch all around, to get relatively quick cooking times, and still give the final dish something with some oomph to bite into.

Around the time that you've diced your last potato (or a bit sooner, if you take a little longer in chopping root vegetables), your tomatoes should be ready for the next step of the soup. At this point, there's a couple of different things that you can do. If you notice that there are quite a lot of vegetables left over to cut up, feel free to buy yourself some time by adding a few cups of water to the pot, leaving the lid open, and dumping in the vegetables as you go along. Because they're going to cook for another hour or so, you don't have to worry overmuch about cooking times.

If, however, you've finished chopping your vegetables, dump them into the pot, add a couple of litres of water, and crank the heat up to high. While you're waiting for the first boil, start loosely chopping up your leafy greens. Again, you want it to be small enough to fit on a spoon, but large enough to make an impression.

Once your pot starts boiling at a full, strong boil, add a few more pinches of salt, and let it sustain that rolling boil for about five minutes. Quickly taste the soup for salt. If it tastes salty at this point, there is too much salt, and you've got time for damage control. Grab a couple of cans of beans, and tip the contents into the pot. If, however, your soup just barely tastes salted, and is a little on the bland side, you're in good hands. Why is this? As the soup continues to cook, the water will evaporate, and the flavours will concentrate. You want to know how you're doing at this point, because damage control is far easier when you're still early on in the game, rather than at the last minute when you're scrambling.

But I digress. Once you've gotten that full rolling boil sustained for about five minutes or so, drop down the heat to medium low again. Put the lid back on. Finish chopping any final greens you want to add. While you're here, you might as well wash up some of the dishes you've generated along the way. You've got a good forty five minutes to go. Pour yourself a nice cold glass of the drink of your choice, and clean up at leisure. Why leave the mess for later, when you'll be tired?

After about forty five minutes, test the largest piece of vegetable you can see in the pot. If it's done all the way through, you're good to go. Add the leafy greens to the top, and increase the heat back to high. Put the lid on, and let it come up to the boil again. Let it boil, uncovered, until the greens are done through.

When the greens are done, let the soup sit and settle for about fifteen minutes. It's just had an exciting journey in becoming a wonderful dish. Letting it settle for a bit gives the soup (and you) a chance to just relax and mellow for a few minutes. Take the time to set out the table with some nice dishes and your place settings. You've spent all this time on your dish--why not enjoy it properly?

There. Soup is ready. Test it for salt once more before serving. If it's a touch on the bland side, just perk it up with some more salt. Just make sure to let it come back up to the boil after you've added as much salt as you think you'll need. That final boil will make sure that the salt is properly incorporated.

Enjoy your meal.