Simple Feasts: What I cooked this week
Pumpkin soup, hin choy tortilla, honey-miso aubergine
It’s the autumn equinox here in The Netherlands. The sun is still playing at summer, but the rain and wind are conspiring for domination. The good thing is that this is the time of the year when so many summer veggies are still available, despite the wet and the cold creeping in.
I get a veggie box from my favourite local farm with whatever’s being harvested this week. One half of the week I was busy working (I’m a professional chef and I run an organic catering & event company with my friend) and the other half I was busy being ill. One-nil for autumn. Basically, this means that I’ve been cooking for comfort and ease, and not for anything beyond immediate survival.
Here’s what I cooked for myself this week:
Pumpkin soup. Funny how both autumn and illness warrant soup. While I was ill I managed to do battle with the tiny pumpkin that was in my veggie box and turned it into a hearty soup with lentils, caramelised onion, leek, chicken stock. It would’ve been perfect if I had been able to add some curry powder and maybe a bay leaf, but sadly I had none left in the house.
Hin choy tortilla. So, I love potatoes. I love eggs, and I love combining them, which means I eat a lot of tortillas (and just to clarify: when I say tortilla, I mean tortilla de patatas, which is also known as a frittata sometimes). It’s my go-to lunch dish when I need to feel full and satisfied. Usually, I keep things simple: potatoes, eggs, peas (because I always have these three ingredients in my pantry). My veggie box this week contained hin choy, which is a spinach-type leafy green plant originally from Suriname. I’d never tasted it or cooked with it before, so after a quick Google I found out you can basically cook it the same way as spinach. I added it to the tortilla and I was very pleasantly surprised that it’s very mild and with a much nicer “mouth feel” than spinach (you know that weird sort of grainy residue that spinach leaves in your mouth? absolutely awful). It’s also nice to be eating a veg that originated in a country where both my maternal grandparents were born. I stopped eating imported veggies a few years back, so knowing that this Surinamese plant grows in The Netherlands made me feel like a rare opportunity to connect to that part of my heritage through food.
Honey-miso aubergine. I also eat a lot of noodles because they’re quick, easy, filling and usually yummy without too much fuss. The veggie box actually contained tomatoes this week, but I don’t vibe that much with tomatoes so I was very kindly given aubergines instead by the lovely people at the farm. I fried the aubergine and once it was almost done, I added a mix of miso, honey, a splash of soy sauce and a little grated garlic to the pan to coat & caramelise the aubergine chunks a bit. I also let the noodles soak up the sauce before plating it. I was very tired and weak when I made this and I sadly wasn’t able to eat all of it, but oh my was it good.
So, this is what I cooked for myself this week. Hopefully it’ll inspire you if you’re trying to figure out what to have for lunch or dinner tonight. If you’ve tried out any of the dishes, please let me know how you got on. And if you have any tips for cooking with any of the veg mentioned in this post, please share them!