Super easy, delicious hot or cold, and a great alternative to the same old roast chicken . . .

1 medium sized roasting chicken, 3 to 6 lbs.
1 C Water
1 C Honey
1 C Soy sauce
1 C Mirin (rice wine)
2 cloves crushed garlic
10 *star anise

Place all but the chicken in a Dutch oven or a soup pot, and bring to a simmer. When the brew is simmering, place your chicken in the pot and cover. Let all bubble at a medium simmer for 30 minutes. At the 30 minute mark, turn your chicken over with a pair of tongs. Simmer for another 30 minutes. Remove the chicken, de-fat the cooking liquid, and simmer the liquid for ten more minutes. Cut the chicken into eight pieces, drizzle with about 4 T of cooking liquid, sprinkle with a handful of chopped scallions and serve.

Serving suggestions: steamed or sautéed sugar snap peas or snow peas, sticky rice with sweet coconut milk…..

*available at specialty food stores and sometimes at the supermarket

Soup is a model of resourcefulness - and it’s a great way to clean out the fridge. Once you have it you’ll be glad you do - it makes a healthy and satisfying lunch, and takes the worry out of what to have for dinner when it looks like you’ll be late - and it freezes beautifully - although my soup almost never makes it to the freezer. If I’ve made too much for the two of us, soup makes a welcome gift to all friends and neighbors.

I roast a chicken every Sunday, and immediately make a stock with the leftovers, you could easily do the same with just vegetables for a vegetarian stock - remember no potato skins or eggplant in veggie stock. Lay the foundation of your soup with a few aromatics; saute in butter or olive oil some chopped spring onions and garlic, leeks, or shallots. Add your spring vegetables - peas, paper-thin skinned turnips, asparagus, spinach, tiny carrots - you can add one or all. Plan on about a pound and a half of vegetables for 4 cups of stock. Your vegetable of choice can be roughly chopped. Saute briefly and add the stock, simmer gently just until the vegetables are cooked through. Remove from the heat, taste and add salt and pepper. Cool, and puree in a blender - a blender works better than a food processor. If you like a thinner soup, you can always add more stock, or a bit of milk or cream. I love to swirl a pat of butte into the soup just before serving to richen, but it’s optional. Let the market be your guide no matter what the season, but here are some recipes for what’s out there now.

The Foundation

Lay your aromatic foundation: Saute your choice of chopped onion, shallot, leek, spring onion, green garlic and/or garlic or garlic scapes in butter or olive oil - about a tablespoon per cup of vegetables. Cook until softened.

Add your vegetables, trimmed and chopped. Figure on about 1 1/2 pounds of vegetables to 4 cups of stock.

Sweet Pea and Fresh Mint Soup

You must ONLY use sweet fresh peas from your garden or the market - if you can only get starchy peas, don’t bother as it will not be the same sublime soup.

3 T. virgin olive oil, plus more for garnish

1 cup fresh mint leaves (only fresh!!) - reserve 10 leaves

1 cup chopped sweet onion

3 cups shelled English peas (from about 3 pounds unshelled peas)

4 cups chicken or vegetable stock, or more as needed

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

8 slices day-old baguette

1 garlic clove, halved

Creme me fraiche for garnish

To make the soup:

Heat olive oil in a large pot over moderately low heat. Add the sweet onions and sauté 10 minutes, then cover and steam, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft, about 5 more minutes.

Add peas and 2 1/2 cups broth. Bring to a simmer, adjust heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook, uncovered, until peas are just tender, 5 to 10 minutes.

In a blender, puree half the soup and all but ten mint leaves until smooth. Return the pureed half to the pot and add enough broth to achieve the consistency you like.

Season with salt and pepper, taste and adjust, and reheat gently.

Toast the baguette slices until lightly colored. Rub one side with the cut side of the garlic. Drizzle with olive oil.

Stack the mint leaves atop one another and roll into a mint cigarette, slice thought the cigarette on the diagonal cutting the leaves into thin strips - this is a chiffonade.

Divide soup among warm bowls, topping each portion with a dollop of creme me fraiche, and a couple of toasts. Sprinkle a bit of the mint chiffonade atop the soup and serve immediately.

Jerusalem Artichoke and Potato Soup

1½ lb. Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and roughly chopped
2 T. knob of butter
2 leeks, finely chopped, white part only
1 large potato, peeled and diced
4 cups vegetable stock
3 T. heavy cream
2 T. white truffle oil
2 T. fresh chives or garlic scapes, snipped
salt and white pepper

Truffle Oil (optional but wonderful)

Heat olive oil in a large pot over moderately low heat. Add the leeks and saute 10 minutes, then cover and steam, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft, about 5 more minutes.

To make the soup:

Put the Jerusalem artichokes in a pan of salted water and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for eight minutes, then drain.
Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the onion and potato. Cover and sweat until soft, about ten minutes.

Mash the artichokes, then stir them into the onion and potato mixture. Add 3 cups of the stock, and simmer for 20 minutes.
Puree the soup in a blender, if it is very thick add enough remaining stock to thin it a bit. Pour the soup through a sieve into a clean pan. Stir in the heavy cream and reheat the soup gently, without letting it boil. Taste and adjust the salt and pepper.

Ladle the soup into four warm bowls. Drizzle a few drops of the truffle oil over the surface and sprinkle with the chopped chives or garlic scapes and serve immediately.

Jerusalem Artichokes

The Jerusalem artichoke is a type of sunflower, in the same genus as the garden sunflower Helianthus annuus. Despite its name, the Jerusalem artichoke has no relation to Jerusalem, and little to do with artichokes. The Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus L.), also called a sunroot or sunchoke, is a flowering plant native to North America grown throughout the temperate world for its tuber, which is used as a root vegetable both cooked and raw.

The Jerusalem artichoke has a delicious sweet, nutty flavor, and the texture when raw is like that of a water chestnut. It has high calcium content, and some A, B, and C vitamins, as well as the minerals iron, magnesium, and calcium.

Storage : Store them in a plastic bag, for up to two weeks in the refrigerator.

Preparation: This lovely vegetable is found in late fall and early spring in most markets, and can be eaten raw in salads where they add a crunchy sweetness. If the chokes are young, their skin will be thin and they can be eaten raw peeled or unpeeled. They make a lovely soup, and can be roasted or steamed and served as a side dish with a bit of butter, or boiled and mashed with potatoes.

Chef John Cox of Baleen Restaurant writes:
Sunchokes, otherwise known as Jerusalem artichokes, are a highly underutilized vegetable. Their ginger-like knobs filled with dirt seem to discourage chefs and cooks alike. Once you get past their rough exterior, sunchokes have similar characteristics of potato-with an intriguing hint of earth and smoke. This is a fast and easy way to enjoy them.

Sunchoke Gratin
1 lb. Sunchokes (spray with cold water in sink and scrub with kitchen towel)
1 lb. Yukon gold potatoes
2 roasted and peeled green chiles - or ¼ c. chopped green chile
1T. sage, chopped
1t. fresh rosemary, chopped
1 t. fresh thyme, chopped
3 T. butter
½ c. Oaxaca cheese, grated
½ c. Cotija cheese, grated
1 c. heavy cream
1 T. smoked sea salt *
Freshly ground black pepper

Slice the cleaned sunchokes into roughly even length sticks the width of a pencil. Cut the potatoes the same way, to resemble the size of the sunchokes. Toss together all of the ingredients chopped reserving half of the grated cheeses. Put the mixture into a 10″ cast iron skillet or a heavy baking dish-sprinkle the remainder of the cheese on the top. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and put into a 350º degree oven for 1 hour-remove the foil and turn oven up to 400º-cook for 20 more minutes or until golden brown. Gratin is done when you can easily poke the bottom of the pan with a butter knife.
* You can find smoked sea salt at specialty food stores.

Warm Salad of Jerusalem Artichokes, Radicchio, and Proscuitto
This recipe is for a warm salad, but I would just as easily do the whole thing as a raw salad. Also, if you can, splurge on the walnut oil - it has a distinct walnut flavor that really works here. Of course you can use olive oil but it won’t be the same…

Adapted from the Produce Bible by Leanne Kitchen
1 lb. Sunchokes, peeled and sliced not too thinly on the diagonal
½ lemon
1 head radicchio, quartered lengthwise
¼ c walnut oil
Juice and zest one orange
1 T. chopped, fresh parsley
6 slices proscuitto, sliced into thin strips

After you slice the sunchokes, squeeze a bit of lemon juice over the top so they don’t brown, set aside. Preheat the broiler. Put the radicchio, cut side up, into a medium, shallow, heatproof dish. Drizzle with half the walnut oil. Broil for about one minute, until the edges of the leaves begin to brown. Remove from the broiler and cool.

Cut out the radicchio stems if you haven’t already, and in a salad bowl toss the leaves with the sliced sunchokes, the remaining walnut oil, the orange juice and zest, parsley, and a generous pinch of salt. Sprinkle sliced proscuitto and the toasted walnut pieces over the top, and serve immediately.

Garlic Scapes
Allium is the scientific name for the garlic/onion/leek/chive family, and is derived from the classical Latin alium meaning “garlic.” “Scapes” are the flower stalks found on certain members of the allium family. Garlic scapes, which only appear on the finest hard neck garlic varieties, curl upward as they grow, ultimately straighten, and then grow little seed-like bulbs. A young scape makes one or two loops before straightening out, and then develops seeds. By snipping off the scapes before the seeds develop, more energy goes into making a bigger garlic bulb.

When the garlic scapes are still in full curl, they are tender and delicious. They have a taste that is milder than garlic cloves, and have a broad spectrum of uses from soup to salads to garnishes. Use only while the scapes are crisp and tender, still curled.

Storage: Use garlic scapes within two to three weeks, keep covered in the fridge or they will flavor your fridge and other foods.

Preparation: Scapes tend to get tough and will lose flavor if overcooked. To learn how much cooking is enough and how much is too much, cut scapes to desired lengths and saute in a little olive oil over medium heat, adding salt and pepper to taste. The end result will be an unusual and delicious side dish. Below is a list of other uses for Garlic Scapes.

Cut scapes into 2-inch lengths and saute in olive oil or butter over medium heat, adding salt and pepper to taste, when cooked, puree and add to mashed potatoes.
Add scapes to your favorite stir-fry dishes.
Chop and add raw to salads.
Add to pickled vegetables.
Use as a garnish like you would chives, on smoked or broiled salmon, cream cheese, steamed potatoes, or in egg dishes.
Use chopped fresh scapes as a garnish for pureed soups, or add to vegetable soups and stews just before end of cooking time.
Make garlic scape pesto (see recipe).
Chopped fresh on pasta, or sauteed with a little olive oil to dress pasta.
Slice and add to any sauce that you would use garlic in.
Chop and mix with softened cream cheese or butter.
Sprinkle chopped scapes on pizza.

Garlic Scape Pesto
1/2 lb. organic scapes (chopped into 1″ sections)
1 c. organic olive oil
2 c. grated asiago (I like it better than parmesan - but you can use parmesan)

In a blender or cuisinart, combine the scapes and olive oil. Pour mixture into bowl and blend the cheese in by hand. Taste and add salt or a little lemon juice to taste. This pesto freezes well if you don’t use it all.

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