creamy corn soup with zucchini & tomato

first off, please excuse the weird illustrations. i neglected to take any pictures of this delicious soup and so had to draw some things on my phone. this is not quite as easy as you'd think.

nevertheless, hopefully they won't put you off making this soup, because it's quick, easy, and remarkably delicious. mike said that i could make it every day and he wouldn't complain (the subtext of that being that generally he DOES complain. just kidding! he is very easygoing, though he will suffer neither mushrooms nor fools gladly).

the corn here is amazing right now, so it would be great to snap some up and make this asap. out of corn season, i think frozen corn would be okay, but fresh is the only way to go when it's as juicy and sweet as it is now. zucchini and tomatoes are also pretty terrific, making this the epitome of the seasonal! local! eating! thing that everyone's always yapping about.

i also added some leftover grilled salmon, but you could also use chicken or tofu to add protein and bulk it up a little. it's also great with just the vegetables. so adaptable!

first, cut the kernels off of 4 ears of corn. this post regarding a tasty corn salad has a thing about cutting up corn, in case this is foreign to you. then put the cobs in a large pan with about 4 cups of milk. i used 2%, since that's what we keep around for coffee, but whole milk would of course be more decadent and skim more ascetic, so go with your instincts. heat the cob-milk mess over medium-high heat until it starts edging towards boiling, then let the cobs sit in there while you do the rest of the things. i think this just gives the end result a deeper and more complex flavor, but obviously if you're using frozen corn it'll presumably not come with cobs and should still be fine, so if you don't want to mess with this step, just skip it! it's your corn soup party! do what you want!

it's not in the picture, but you should cut an onion into smallish dice. heat up a bit of olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and add the onion. also chop some garlic into little bits. you can even cut the zucchini and tomato into bite-sized-or-a-little-smaller pieces at this point as well, if you're one of those fancy people with enough room on your cutting board to do so. 

so the onion starts getting translucent fairly quickly and then you can add the garlic and some herbs. i used a small bunch of lemon thyme stems that still had a few leaves on them. it was maybe like 1/2 the size of my thumb (i like to think that i have normal-sized thumbs, if that measurement was unclear) and i changed out the rubber band holding it together for one of those wire bread bag wrapper things from which i removed the paper. maybe you have some kitchen twine or something? just don't melt rubber into your soup and you'll be okay.

i also added a couple of big pinches of dried fines herbes, but pretty much anything not too weird would go well here - marjoram, chives, a little tarragon... (so, like, the things in fines herbes)

then throw the corn in, along with the milk in which the corn cobs have been steeping (sans cobs, obvs). probably some salt and pepper wouldn't be too out of place, either. bring it to a low boil and then turn the heat down to medium-low, so it keeps simmering. let it go for 20 minutes or so. 

at this point i like to blend some of it (like 2/3) up so that the soup has a thicker, creamier texture. you could blend the whole thing like crazy, but i prefer it with some whole kernels. an immersion blender would be best here (avoiding the thyme bundle), but i broke mine a few years ago in an ill-fated margarita disaster, so i made do with the food processor (a regular blender would be better than the processor, leakwise, but i don't have one). 

finally, brown the zucchini in a little olive oil, add some cumin and then the tomato, then add the whole thing to the now-blended soup. ta da! if you have some cooked fish or chicken you could flake/shred/chop it and add it so that it heats through.

don't eat the little bundle of thyme, if you used one.

somehow this ended up tasting almost kind of coconut-y - i guess maybe from the sweetness of the corn? i did use some really superlative corn, so that definitely helps the end result. 

*ingredients*

4 ears corn

4 cups milk

1 small bunch thyme - lemon thyme is particularly good (or some dried thyme)

other herbs

1 onion

3 or 4 cloves garlic

1 zucchini

1 tomato

1/2 teaspoon cumin (optional)

cooked fish or chicken (optional)

listening to: my kind of dumb/kind of awesome spotify mix of 90s-ish hip hop/r&b, so like GZA's shadowboxin', 2pac's california love, destiny's child's say my name, and tlc's waterfalls.

split pea soup with smoked turkey (or smoky cauliflower)

first things first - split pea soup is not the belle of the ball. it's homely in both the american and the british sense (more like what we mean when we say "homey" - like the simple comforts of home). until this week, it was also something that i can't remember eating, if i ever have, because it almost invariably has a ham hock or something like that in it.

i was a vegetarian for a number of years, then about 10 years ago i started eating fish occasionally. i guess it was a slippery slope, because a few years after that i moved on to humanely-raised poultry as well. we still don't eat much meat - i probably do once a week or so, on average. i never took up eating beef, pork, etc. (it just was never something we really ate when i was growing up and it doesn't appeal to me) either, so i've missed out on split pea soup for way too long.

however, the store at which i get our poultry (new seasons market - it only carries humanely-raised meats, which i think is important to support) recently started carrying smoked turkey sometimes. when i saw some huge crazy dinosaur-turkey wings and some pretty split peas, it all came together in a perfect storm of delicious. you could, of course, also use a ham hock or whatever if you are of more of a pork-eating persuasion. or make some roasted cauliflower with lots of smoked paprika tossed into it and use that - it won't be the same, but it will be vegan and (i'm pretty sure) equally tasty.

this soup only has 6 ingredients and is incredibly simple to make. as i mentioned previously, i'm super busy these days with working, going to school, job-searching, and preparing to move back to texas (!), so ease and simplicity in food-making is particularly appealing right now.

for a pretty big pot of soup (it only gets better the next day/s) you need about 1 - 1 1/2 pounds of dried split peas (i used yellow and green, but i don't think color matters once it's cooked), a couple of carrots, an onion, garlic (i used 5 large cloves because we are Garlic People, but you can use less if you plan on making out with someone later on), a couple of stems of thyme and some smoked turkey on the bone. dead easy.

first chop up the vegetables. the garlic just needs a largish mince, then do the carrots and onions in a large dice. i used organic carrots, so i didn't even peel them - just cut them into quarters the long way then cut into medium chunks. i leave the thyme as it is and just stick the whole stems and leaves in - the leaves end up falling off as it cooks, so just remember to take the stems out before you chow down. you could also add a bay leaf or two, but i didn't have any and i'm not 100% convinced that they really add anything.

heat 1-2 tablespoons of oil in a large pot on medium heat. put the onion in and let it cook down a bit - you don't necessarily need it to brown, but just let it get kind of translucent - maybe let it go for 5 minutes or so, stirring relatively frequently. then add the garlic and let that go for another minute-ish before adding the carrot and thyme. after another couple-few minutes (3?), add the peas and whole turkey wings, and cover with water. you want the water to cover everything by a solid 2-3 inches or so.

eek. these are the (slightly scary) smoked turkey wings. i don't know if it's the fresh air or the roaming they do as they grow or if i just don't really know how big turkeys are, but these seemed HUGE. i think one could definitely use 2 instead of 3 in this, but they were really good (and super cheap), so i'm content with having used 3.

turn the burner up to high until the water boils, then turn it down to low-medium and let those puppies cook together until the peas get tender. this will probably take a while, but you don't have to be hovering over the pot the whole time. just go do whatever you need to around the house and check and stir everything every so often (15 minutes? 30? i think either is fine, as long as the heat is pretty low).

once the peas are pretty tender, take the turkey wings out and set them aside in something, leaving the peas to cook more. once the wings cool, you can strip the delicious smoky meat off them and add it back to the soup. it's pretty tough from the smoking, so you want to tear it into pretty small pieces (like bite-sized for a pomeranian? probably not much bigger than your thumbnail). add the meat into the cooking peas and just keep cooking everything until most of the peas disintegrate and the whole thing is soft and thick and comforting, just like a big fat wool sweater of a soup (i think mine ended up cooking for about 3 hours, in total. but don't let it scare you - most of it is unattended and it is so worth it!). if it seems to be too thick at any point, add some more water. it's not a terribly exacting sort of recipe.

once it's done, you may need to add a little salt, pepper, or more thyme. the smoked turkey can be quite salty, though, so definitely wait until the end so you can see if it even needs it.

see? not that pretty. but as jean-ralphio would say (and as i've been repeating in my head for the last 5 days or so), that shiz is straight-up deloicious.

if you want to try the cauliflower thing, i would roast it with a good couple of teaspoons of smoked paprika, then add it towards the end of cooking the peas so it doesn't get too mushy.

*ingredients*

1 - 1 1/2 lbs (or so - like 3-4 cups?)

2 carrots

1 onion

3-5 cloves garlic

2-3 thyme stems

2-3 smoked turkey wings (or 1/2 a cauliflower, roasted, or other smoked things)

listening to: grizzly bear (really just all of veckatimest), covers of daydream believer (rip, davy jones)