Spicy Tomato Coconut Soup by Celia Wakefield

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Once again, Sunday means our own Celia Wakefield, here with a tale of her brush with royalty, and a delicious, warming soup for a cold February night.

 

Here I am on Valentine’s Day thinking of all the delicious things that can be made from chocolate. My hope is that you haven’t finished your lovely box of chocs yet. As I age I find that stretching out the pleasure becomes a pleasure in itself, so I shall be miserly with my box and enjoy its delights very slowly. 

Having tempted your taste buds, I need to confess I have not made a chocolate recipe this time; but while we are on the subject of chocolate, did you know that Ghana is the world's second-largest cocoa-producing country? (Côte d'Ivoire is the largest).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was sixteen when the Duke of Edinburgh (married to Queen Elizabeth II) came to visit Ghana and declare open the University of Ghana where my father worked. The University had been open for many years, but had been accredited to the University of London for the degrees bestowed. Now London had accepted their academic standards were comparable to London University and therefore Ghana could grant their own degrees. The buzz in town was HRH’s visit and the Convocation in the new hall atop Lagon Hill. I was very excited, as my father had a ticket for me as well as for my mum. I had a new dress and a hat, of course. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We arrived in the forecourt to see several Chiefs, dressed in kente cloth robes, seated on their ‘stools’ with their courts around them. We found our seats in the hall and waited. Finally the academic procession with HRH arrived with ceremony and after the usual introductions the Duke rose to address us. He cast a careful and deliberate look around the new hall, and said, “Isn’t it a good thing that the world loves chocolate.” 

 

 

Much applause. I have no photos from the event unfortunately. Imagine how his remark would be received today with everyone reporting on Social Media.

Now before I go further, I have a book to give away. Decluttering is one of my goals for 2024, and I have started. Slowly but determined is me. Finding I have two copies of Ruth Reichl’s memoir of her time at Gourmet magazine, Save Me the Plums, it seemed the right thing to offer it to you all. If you missed it, the title alone makes one want to open the book, and the poem in the frontispiece by William Carlos Williams draws one further in. I have loved Ruth Rechl’s writing ever since I picked up Tender at the Bone, and was fascinated by her stories of her mother. Ruth’s tenure as Editor at Gourmet ran the gamut from great successes, through witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers to the unexpected closure of Gourmet Magazine. It’s a great story. The copy that’s up for grabs is signed by Ruth. I didn’t mention that did I?

But what about the recipe you cry. Where’s my soup? Soup has certainly been our go to as the recent temperature in Maine fluctuates greatly. This is another grab what you have and cook with very few weights and measures. A few weeks ago I found Roma tomatoes in the local supermarket. I know they are wonderful for sauce so I bought a dozen home and thought, now what? I hope you will try my tomato, coconut soup with shrimp, or chicken or whatever takes your fancy.

Ingredients and Directions for my tomato, coconut soup with shrimp:

Preliminary directions:

I cut the tomatoes in half, drizzled them with olive oil fairly liberally and roasted with sliced onions and garlic in a low oven, 325F degrees for about an hour and a half till they were jammy in texture. 

I left the veggies to cool then put them through a food mill. See the photo of the amount of lovely tomato left on the underside of the plate to be scraped off into a measuring bowl.

Ingredients:

1 medium onion chopped in small pieces

 

Seasonings: I know several of you have spoken about my recipes which use curry spices. So does this one, but I see no reason to use other seasoning that is enjoyed by your family. Taco or barbecue seasonings, Old Bay or other mixes. Use and adjust to your preferred taste.

I am using a Patak Tikkka Masala Spice Mixture which contains: turmeric, paprika, canola oil, salt, corn flour, tamarind paste, cumin, fenugreek, cilantro. But for the future and my very low salt eating, I shall make up my own masala mix as I have all the spices in house, but the spice mix 

is convenient which is what the soup is all about.

 

2 Tbsp Masala spice mix

1 Tbsp pink garlic powder

1 Tbsp spanish paprika

 

1 cup tomato mix, see above or use a cup of drained canned pureed chopped tomatoes

2 Tbsp tomato paste

2 Tbsp red miso mixed into 3 Cups of water or salt free stock

1 can unsweetened Coconut cream (I bought sweetened coconut cream in error it tasted really good and Julia loved it. But if one is trying to watch calories unsweetened would be best).

1 can Coconut milk

 

1-2 Cups small frozen shrimp or cooked chicken, tofu, whatever protein you enjoy

2 Tbsp Oil, Canola or Safflower 

Directions:

Heat the oil in your soup pan to medium (I use a Le Creuset dutch oven)

 

Add spices including the garlic powder and saute gently

 

Add onion pieces and cook till translucent

 

With the heat on low add the tomatoes and saute mixing everything well

 

Add the tomato paste and taste to see if more seasoning is needed

 

Add the water and miso paste and cook gently

 

Add the Coconut cream and milk and stir to mix well

 

As it comes to a gentle boil, cook for a couple of minutes

 

Taste for seasonings again

 

Add the shrimp and bring to a gentle boil checking that the shrimp are cooked

Serve to appreciative guests with some bread for mopping up.

Revels and Traybakes: Cooking with Celia Wakefield

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: If it's Sunday, it must be time for another delicious recipe from our own Celia Wakefield. As usual, I got to taste-test this easy-to-make dinner (and by test, I mean I had two large helpings) and you are all in for a treat. Vegetarians, I'm afraid you may have to look away from this sausage-y, bacon-y goodness, but for those of us who like a little meat now and again, oh, my, please give this a try. It pairs nicely with a bottle of red brought from my house!

 

 

 

Happy New Year to you dear Reds and Readers, it’s lovely being invited to join Julia and everyone in January when the year is still new and we can all feel hope and freedom to travel and visit each other.  

I have two goals for this year. This is opposed to resolutions, usually I don’t make them, too exhausting, or "intentions" - well I do have some of those but this is about come hell or high water I’ll be there. First, for my younger, taller grandson, Connor, who graduates High School in June like the rest of the seniors around the country. He is heading to Tulane and is thrilled. I am hoping that I might, maybe get to visit him but probably not this year. 

But the second is that I will be at NE Crime Bake and I will need lots to help etc as I have never (full disclosure) been to a mystery convention or in fact to any convention around a single topic other than business ones which are not the same, are they? I won’t need a suit will I? But will I need a costume? Or a hat? Perhaps Edith can loan me one, though I do have a big head, literally. But enough of pleasures ahead.

 

Among the yearly treats we have enjoyed is our visit to see TheRevels at Sanders Theater, Cambridge. In the past Victor and Olivia have performed in Revels when we had a Revels Group in NYC. I always worked backstage. Revels is such a huge part of our Christmas tradition that when they did a pandemic version in 2021 we got the virtual ticket and invited Julia over as she had attended a couple of the live shows pre-pan with us.

How to describe Revels if you haven’t seen it? Of course now, thanks to streaming, one can get a virtual ticket, but in the past you could attend if you lived in or near Hanover, NH, or Seattle, in Washington, D.C. or Houston, or in Santa Barbara, Boulder, Portland, Oregon, and Puget Sound. The chorus is always made up of community people who audition as well as local traditional English dance teams.  Though the theme is not necessarily English tradition, there are certain elements which are tradition too and somehow the directors manage to fit in these loved pieces and carols year after year. In fact the year, many years ago, Revels in Cambridge decided not to have the Sussex Mummers Carol to end the show. Well the audience stood and sang it anyway before they left. That’s how traditions begin and a lot of singing and dancing will drive the dark away. 

 

 

While I don’t want to witter on about what Revels has meant in the life of our family, I do want to share some of the tradition with you. January is the start, but it is a month rather devoid of fun or tradition so let me introduce you to John Langstaff, Revels founder. 

John, or rather Jack as we all knew him, was a man with more energy than 10 teenage boys. We first met him in the ’70’s at Pinewoods Camp, a traditional dance and music camp outside Plymouth, MA. It was Family Week and the camp was filled with families of all ages from the grans to the newborns. We were gathered in the large open air pavilion for the morning session when on the hill path above us came the sound of singing and an extraordinary creature appeared. Dressed in black with a tall pointed headdress and a huge circular skirt which stuck out around them and then hung to the ground. This being, the 'Obby 'Oss, hails from Cornwall, England and is part of a very old fertility rite. 

Accompanied by dancers dressed in white with red kerchiefs and hankies, everyone danced down to where we all stood singing lustily - "Unite and Unite, now let us all unite for summer is a comin’ in today.” Soon everyone was singing and Jack was leading us. I learned he decided the morning gathering needed a little something. So he had left Camp early, driven back to Cambridge to the Revels costume store and taken the ‘Obby’ costume and other items to do the Padstow May Day processional for us. What fun, what joy and glee. 

They've taken to wearing pants in our modern age.

In Padstow they gather at one of two Inns at midnight; there are two processionals which weave their way through the streets and huge crowds to celebrate the arrival of May. In times past we read that the ‘Obby had tar on the skirt of the garment. They would ‘capture’ young women by putting the skirt over their heads, where the girls found that the ‘Obby was as nature intended. This was my introduction to Jack, who wanted to share traditions with everyone.

Having bought our Revels virtual ticket and found some space on Julia’s schedule I needed easy dinner. I wasn’t thinking so much of recipes but ease was to the forefront. So I made a dinner tray bake as opposed to a dessert one. Having done some cursory research on tray bakes  the origins seem to be Irish bakes made on a cookie sheet and then cut into squares. How can I not after 53+ years know the name for American cookie sheet bakes? But during the pandemic Melissa Clark of NYT and cookbook authorship fame started write up recipes using a cookie sheet and mixing veggies and other ingredients. The term used by Food52 is sheet pan meals, I do think tray bake sounds more beguiling. I don’t know if anyone made any of Melissa’s sheet pan recipes but here is my version. I’m sorry there’s no video to give you all a laugh but nothing in this is complex. 

Making my Revels Tray Bake:

Rimmed Sheet Pan lined with foil (to save the washing up)

Sharp chefs knife and cutting board

Shallow bowl

Oven 350F

 

EV Olive Oil

Rosemary & Thyme or other mixed herbs

1 rasher Bacon per person, or more

1 or 2 Sausages each, we had Irish Bangers

1 or 2 sweet onions cut into chunks (I love sweet onions they don’t make me cry)

Peeled mixed veggies cut into chunks. No thin slices here please

I used the following veggies, but you should use whatever is in your veggie drawer - Carrots, sweet potato, fingerling potatoes, parsnips, Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, whole peeled garlic cloves etc. salt and pepper

Pour about 1/4 C Olive Oil into the bowl and add herbs

I used a frying pan for this as I wanted to spread the veggies around in the oil rather than having them piled up in a mixing bowl. So I only put in enough veggies to cover the bottom of the bowl at a time, then stirred them around with the olive oil and herbs. 

 

Add the rest of the veggies and mix

Add all the oiled veggies onto the baking sheet and spread out

 

Cut the sausages in half both long ways and wide and set on top of the veggies (cutting is optional)

Cover the sausages with bacon rashers

Place in heated oven

Cooking time: Set your timer for 20 minutes, then mix the tray around as much as you can do and turn over the bacon and sausages. If you want the sausages to crisp up remove the bacon on to the veggies only. Cook another 20 minutes and test if the sausage is cooked to 160F and the bacon is crisp. Keep warm or serve with a good helping of a Brit Mystery.

 

Sunday Recipe: Summer Cherry Tomato and Zucchini Tart

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Readers, you're in for another delicious treat as our friend Celia Wakefield presents the best possible way to eat all those zucchini and tomatoes overflowing your garden and filling up the farmers' market. I got to have this at a luncheon following a home Eucharist led by the Reverend Canon Eleanor Prior, who only looked a little bit taken aback when we started peppering her condensed sermon with comments and questions. 

With or without an accompanying religious celebration, this savory tart will put the essence of September on your palate. 

 

 

Good morning my dear Reds and readers. I love it when Julia’s turn comes around and she asks me for a recipe to share. I wanted to check up on how long I have been writing for JRW on Julia’s page, but went down the site search engine rabbit hole and realized this was a task to put down. How am I? Happy to say much, much better over this time last year. My beloved, who will attain his 95 birthday this month, is so much improved in his health, though at his age there is concern on long term issues. Still enough of that, all is well right now. 

 

What have I been cooking, same old, same old, same boring! I needed a brain jolt, which I got a couple of weeks ago when Sam Shifton, NYT cooking head honcho, chef, and bottle washer wrote about no recipe recipes. I only read the Cooking section emails as I have refused on principle to pay for a second subscription. Plus one can get plenty of ideas from reading the articles, not to mention that Sam (or his crew when not washing up after him), usually adds in a non cooking article which just cries out to be read, and I have not been disappointed there yet.This gave me a new lease on my cooking life which added to having some real  activities to look forward to, in addition to enlarging our social circle of two, would involve bringing food.

 

The first outing was to an annual barbecue for the St. Luke’s volunteers who work at the Preble Street Soup Kitchen in Portland. St. Luke’s is the Episcopal cathedral in Maine which both the Hugo-Vidal and Wakefield families attend, when not sheltering from the plague. There is no more soup kitchen work per see, that’s now in our past life, but they do still need volunteers so St. Lukes is still involved. However our hosts brines, marinades and smokes briskets, pork and chicken each year and invites us to feast at their lakeside camp. We bring the rest. Today’s recipe was my offering and more on that later.

 

 

I’m not sure if there is a corner of the world that hasn’t experienced some topsy turvy weather this year. We certainly have up in our NE corner. August usually arrives with beautiful sunny days, hot enough to be outside in comfort after the swelter of July. Not this year. We have had swelter day after day. We retreated indoors to our Heat Pump providing dry, cool air, which does defeat the outdoor point of summer. But it was time to think up non heat generating food and as there is plenty of zucchini and tomatoes on the farm stands that gave me the idea of todays recipe for a Zucchini, Cherry tomato tart. I made it as finger food for the barbecue and cut it into bite sized pieces. It was most successful.

 

Let’s make it again. My cousins were visiting Maine from Vermont. We invited them to lunch and I wanted something easy so that I spent the time with them, not with the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what the weather would produce, but the tart plus antipasti from our Portland Italian store, Mucicci’s gave me necessary freedom with all food prepped for service in advance. Our trip through the summer social circle concluded with more friends for whom I made a seafood salad of mussels, shrimp, tiny potatoes and shucked corn.The salad was a great success, but a request for the dressing from one of the guests left me searching for the original recipe which I adopted for our meal. As I cook without recipes, creating some accuracy on amounts was needed, and here is part of my reply to the request.

 

Dressing, Well my recipe measurements are always a bit vague, however here is the recipe from which I worked!  

https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/mediterranean-potato-salad-with-shrimp-feta

I used at least a 1/4 C of olive oil, about a Tbsp lemon (half a large lemon), 1 tsp Dijon mustard approx, 1Tblsp frozen basil which had been prepped for pesto, 3-4 cloves baked garlic, (I bake several garlic heads in foil with olive oil at a time and store in the fridge), good squeeze of TJ'c Balsamic glaze instead of the sugar. (You can get Balsamic glaze in WhF too). I hope this helps.

I used tiny potatoes which I boiled, an ear of shucked fresh corn, about 2 C tiny frozen shrimp, which I cooked in vermouth and water with parsley and 5 Spice powder, and of course the mussels.

 

My guests came with six pounds of mussels which we cooked with vermouth plus seasonings, let them cool and mixed them with more dressing into the potatoes, corn and shrimp. There’s no photo as it really was a one color dish with some freshly chopped parsley on top. The vermouth is an old Julia Child trick. In Mastering the Art .  .  She wrote that is no white wine was opened or available use vermouth instead. And it works.

 

 

 

 

But back to my original tart recipe, having written the back story already. I know that tart conjures up baking, but for once I bought my tart pastry ready made. I won’t bore you to death with how I am not THAT baker, but I can make pastry however it was the 90+degree week and way too hot to make pastry so I bought frozen pastry shells and defrosted one. A rectangle is easier to work with for finger food and the pastry allowed me to remold and roll out to a rectangle. Once rolled it went into a foil lined pan. Then I pricked the rectangle all over, covered it with parchment paper, (foil works too), and sprinkled it with metal pastry weights. Into the oven for ten minutes, remove paper and weights, being careful not to burn oneself. Sigh! Return to the oven for five minutes plus just to finish. Buy or make some bread crumbs. I choose to make mine but Panko will work well.

 

This can all be done in advance. Next step is the assembly and the baking. I chose small zucchini and cherry tomatoes of different colors for contrast. I found a tip for grating Mozzarella on Google. Put the ball in the freezer for about twenty minutes plus and it grates just fine. Because this is a no recipe tart, be ready to eyeball your tart as you assemble as the quantities are approximate

 

Summer Zucchini & Cherry Tomato Tart

 

INGREDIENTS

 

Packet of short crust pastry (the sort already in ready-made pie pans works well)

1 baking sheet at least 9”x13” for the pie tin pastry. 

Line your pan with foil for easy removal, and spray lightly with oil spray. A pan or baking tin with a small lip works well, but this can be made free form too. As we are using zucchini cut into lengths, a square or rectangle works best.

 

2 small zucchinis, cut into thin slices lengthwise

Green box of cherry tomatoes, mixed colors if possible

1 Cup grated Mozzarella ball

Cup of fresh toasted breadcrumbs or Panko crumbs

3/4 - 1 Cup Parmesan / Pecorino Romano grated cheese

 

Method:

You have 2 choices for pastry:

 

1)    Make a shortcrust pastry using1 3/4 cups Flour, 1 stick + 1Tblsp unsalted butter, 1 egg yolk,

    1/2 tsp salt, 2-4 Tblsp water to mix into dough*. I make pastry in the food processor.

2)    Buy frozen shortcrust pastry, defrost 1 pie pan if already rolled

    Fold pastry in four, and reroll into a rectangle or square to fit the pan.

3)    Chill the pastry until ready to blind bake it.

4)    Heat oven to 350 degreesF, cover pastry with parchment or wax paper and add pie weights

5)    Bake for 10 minutes, 

6)    Remove paper and weights, and bake another 5-10 until pastry is firm but not colored.

7)    Cool pastry until ready to assemble

Assembly

    Cover pastry with a thin layer of breadcrumbs. These keep the pastry from getting soggy as it bakes.

    Set the zucchini slices on the breadcrumbs in a single layer

    Cover zucchini with a layer of grated mozzarella 

    Cut cherry tomatoes in half across and add to the tart,

    Sprinkle generously with Parmesan cheeses

 

Bake in a 350 degreeF oven for 30-40 minutes, rotating once.

 

Serve warm or at room temperature. The leftovers are great, but heat in the oven. Nuking doesn’t improve pastry.

My pastry recipe is the one I have been making since I received these Robert Carrier Cookery Cards for my Twenty first birthday, and that’s a long time ago!

ENJOY!