Time for Soup

Well, after a couple of days of Florida weather (84? In San Francisco?), we're back to normal: cold and clammy. And that can mean only one thing: Soup!

Dear Love at First Bite:

I hope I didn't hear you say "soup." Who on Earth has time to make soup? Where do you find time to do all this cooking? I can barely keep up.

Take-Out Tammy

Dear Tammy:

First things first: No one keeps up. It's a myth.

Second, here is my secret (Close the door.): Extra time is delivered to my house one night a week and also on the weekend.

Don't tell anyone.

It's easy to think there's not enough time these days. I remember talking to a friend about how it was always a struggle to get everything done Friday afternoon to get to temple on time. (Later, I stopped worrying about it and considered it instead a public service: If I ever arrived at temple on time, the rabbi would fall off the bima.)

My friend said gently, "Laynie, I think you need to start earlier."

And so it is with cooking. Most recipes have a few ingredients in them, and those ingredients need to be measured, chopped, diced, minced. And it's later than you expected, and you need to eat something, and the heck with it. Peanut butter or take-out.

So eat the peanut butter or take-out. And then reach for one of the recipes you want to try and pull out the cutting board. Chop. Dice. Mince. And measure. And take some small jars or plastic containers (you can get tiny containers with lids at Costco [just be sure to re-use them] or those little porcelain saucers in Chinatown), measure the amount of each ingredient you need for that recipe, put a date on the containers, and sit them in the refrigerator.

The next day: Presto! All you need to do is assemble and cook the dish, then pat yourself on the back or graciously accept the compliments for your creation.

Which might be this very soup.

"Fish Soup from Tunaco":
(From Barbara Karoff's South American Cooking, I adapted it to three servings from the original six.):

1 lb. bass, cod, snapper, or other firm white fish
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt to taste
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1-1/2-2 jalapeño or serrano chiles, seeded and chopped
3 tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
2 cups water or stock
1 cup coconut milk
Chopped cilantro

Cut the fish into bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle them with lemon juice and salt and set aside. In a soup pot, sauté the onions in olive oil until they are soft. Add the chilies and tomatoes and cook over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the water or stock and the fish and simmer gently until the fish is almost done. Take care not to overcook. Add the coconut milk and let the soup come just to the boil. Serve immediately, topped with chopped cilantro.

Time-saving tip: While you're squeezing the lemon for the juice in this recipe, make extra and put the lemon juice in a glass jar with a date on it. It'll be ready for the broccoli-asparagus stem salad or the lentil-chard soup coming up shortly. Same thing for the onion and when you have a recipe that calls for minced garlic. If a restaurant prepared every ingredient from scratch for each dish, the patrons would starve and the joint would go out of business in a New York minute.

©2009, 2013, 2014 Laynie Tzena.