I’m Shifting Into Soup Mode
The first Heard Chef, Yes Chef Friday newsletter is here, and we are celebrating soup season.
It is soup season. The humble Seinfeld mainstay George Costanza once uttered a phrase that would resonate mostly with Twitter shitposters twenty years after he confronted the Soup Nazi: I gotta focus. I’m shifting into soup mode.
Oh, humble soup — arguably, more humble than Mr. Costanza — it is your season. It is your time to shine. You should be celebrated beyond Campbell’s cans and styrofoam cups of cafeteria-special tomato cream that will burn and blister the insides of mouths upon contact. You require a volume larger than a few tablespoons in a disproportionately big bowl at a fine dining establishment. You are deeply misunderstood. You are, often, deeply undersalted.
From broths to bisques, dare not discriminate against the divisive soup. A homemade broth, a drizzle of olive oil, a healthy dose of kosher salt, and a torn hunk of sourdough can all change a soup in a second. Soup tastes best — as food, as medicine — with patience. Get good ingredients. Taste as you cook, and adjust when you need to. Let it simmer and stew. Soup is forgiving if you are patient with it, and it’s a great canvas to practice seasoning and process.
With that patience comes practice; I am sometimes asked how I develop recipes, and while the answer is complex (much like a soup’s components!) I wouldn’t be able to make what I do without at least one miserable experience blending butternut squash or several hours tinkering with homemade broth. Part of caring for yourself, cooking or otherwise, is about giving yourself patience. I tend to be my own worst critic for everything but cooking; the trial and error, however, of cooking is something that didn’t discourage me. I’ll take what I can get, and I’ll be proud of it.
I’ve got three soups in this week’s newsletter, just in time for fall, the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday (stay tuned for a holiday special…) and the advent of soup season: the bitter winter months when the most physically and spiritually nourishing thing you can eat is a bowl of minestrone, or lentil, or chowder, or french onion, or rice, or barley, or miso, or matzo ball, or all of these and then some. Free subscribers will see my Miso Butternut Squash Ravioli, and paid subscribers will also get Açorda à Alentejana with Pickled Mussels and Beans and Oyster Mushroom and Chicken Soup. To unlock all of these, subscribe for $5 a month:
If you make anything, let me know! Leave a comment, join the subscriber chat, and tag me on Instagram @heardchefyeschef.
Miso Butternut Squash Ravioli in Mushroom Broth
Serves 2-4. Ingredients:
Mushroom Broth
1 yellow onion, peeled and sliced into quarters
16 ounces of mushrooms (your choice)
1 garlic bulb, cloves separated
1 carrot, snapped into quarters
3 stalks of celery, snapped in half
1-inch knob of ginger
8 cups water
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp peppercorns
1-2 parmesan cheese rinds (optional)
Skins from onion and garlic
Olive oil
Kosher salt, to taste
Ravioli Dough
2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk
3 cups flour (I like to use a half-and-half mix of semolina and all-purpose, but all-purpose works fine)
1 tsp kosher salt
Miso Butternut Squash Filling
½ butternut squash, peeled and cored
3 tbsp white miso paste
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
½ tsp nutmeg
Kosher salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
Preheat the oven to 375° F. Roll out parchment paper onto a baking sheet. Brush the peeled and cored butternut squash half with olive oil and season with salt and pepper; place core side down on the parchment and roast for 35 minutes.
In a Dutch oven or deep pot, add olive oil on medium-high heat. Add sliced onion, mushrooms, and ginger and saute until the onion is starting to soften; pour in water and add garlic cloves, carrot, celery, soy sauce, peppercorns, parmesan rinds, onion and garlic skins, and salt and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce heat to a simmer, uncovered, for at least an hour, up to three. Add in more water if too much evaporates and add salt or soy sauce to taste. You can prep the broth and strain it a few days in advance.
While the squash is roasting and the broth is simmering, make the pasta dough. I like to use a big bowl for my pasta making to minimize mess instead of going in on a flat surface. Add flour and salt to the bowl. Use a fork to create a divot in the center; crack in your eggs and yolk and beat together, slowly incorporating the flour. Eventually, I switch to my hands and start kneading the flour and eggs together for a few minutes until the dough can be formed into a ball that bounces back if you poke at it. Wrap in plastic wrap and rest for at least 30 minutes.
Remove the squash from the oven and check that it is fork-tender. Roughly chop into one-inch cubes and add to a food processor with miso paste, melted butter, nutmeg, and plenty of black pepper. Puree until smooth; salt to taste. Once the filling has cooled, transfer it to a piping tool (a plastic bag with a corner cut works great for this).
Unwrap the pasta dough and, using a pasta roller, flatten it into sheets and cut into squares. Pipe a dollop of the squash-miso filling into the center of one square; lay another square over and pinch the edges around the filling together (you can use a fork to press them together. Try rubbing the edges with a tiny bit of water if they are not sticking). Be careful that the ravioli does not dry out; place the finished pasta on a baking sheet and cover it with a damp towel.
Remove large solids from the broth and strain the broth through a colander or sieve into another pot (I like to layer cheesecloth or a paper towel inside the colander to remove fine particles). Bring back to a boil on medium-high heat. Drop your ravioli into the broth and cook for 2-3 minutes until floating.
Spoon cooked ravioli into bowls and add broth. Grate some parmesan over top, drizzle with a little olive oil, and sprinkle with a generous amount of black pepper.
Now begins the paid recipes…