Where is my Spring?

So after the brief heat wave of the weekend, I'm back to wearing gloves for the morning bicycle commute. I want my Spring back and I want it now!

I haven't done a Mystery Produce Review for a couple of weeks. Last week I was trying to use up leftovers from Coronet and clear out older stuff from the produce bin in the fridge, so I didn't buy anything exciting. This week I picked up some green garlic and have plans for a garlic/mushroom/asparagus soup tonight. (Recipe to follow when I've invented it.) But two weeks ago, I did pick up something I plan to review: commercial almond milk. I was originally thinking of trying out a couple brands and using one in the strawberry pudding for Coronet, but then I figured a proper comparison should involve home-made as well, and I ended up using that one in the pudding and was too rushed to do a proper taste-test at the time. So that's on tap for later posting as well. But here's one of my random experiments with the commercial product:

Golden (Almond)-Cream of Potato Soup

Boil about a pound of Russian Fingerling potatoes (a yellow-fleshed variety) until tender. Slice into chunks and put in a blender. (You can peel them if you like after boiling -- I don't bother.) Heat 2 cups of Almond Breeze unflavored almond milk to near boiling with a pinch of saffron. Pour in the blender and blend until smooth. Salt to taste and serve, garnished generously with grated cheddar cheese.

Result: Very yummy. The Russian Fingerlings have a bit more of a ... glutinous? texture than the more common commercial varieties and it gave the soup a very smooth body. Between the yellow flesh of the potatoes and the saffron (which also adds a hint of a summer-hay flavor), the soup is almost an egg-yolk yellow. I'd have to do a specific parallel taste test to tell what components the almond milk adds -- I used it mostly because I'd opened up two quart containers of almond milk to taste and want to use them before they spoil. One observation is that using almond milk as opposed to regular milk, there's a lot less concern about scorching it when heating.

Mystery Produce Review: Green Garlic

As promised, my experiment with a produce item I've never cooked before: green garlic (i.e., immature garlic bulbs). In my initial brainstorming of what to do with it, I was feeling rather soupy, and when I fed green+garlic+soup into Google, one of the hits was for a garlic-asparagus soup. Since I already had a bunch of asparagus pencilled into the food plan[*] for today, I took the basic idea and then torqued it all out of recognition. Mushrooms were also pencilled in for today, and I still have a couple open containers of commercial almond milk to use before they go bad, so I thought of doing a sort of chunky-creamy soup with an almond milk base, pureed asparagus, and the garlic and mushrooms sauteed but left chunky. There was also a duck leg pencilled in for today, and that got worked in as well.

Green Garlic and Asparagus Soup

Take one bunch (ca. 1 lb) asparagus, remove and reserve the tips, and chop the stalks into approximately one-inch pieces. Simmer the asparagus in 2 cups almond milk until tender.

In the mean time, peel the outermost skin off a bunch of green garlic (my bunch had a finished weight of ca. 100 g) and trim the stalk where it stops being solid (this leaves about 6" of stalk as well as the bulb). Slice the garlic across in thin slices. Also slice about 150 g of mushrooms. Heat about 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet, sear a duck leg on both sides then add the garlic and stir about while it softens, then add the mushrooms and asparagus tips and ditto. Add about a cup and a half of hard cider (my usual substitute for white wine, since I keep the former around for drinking but not so much the latter) and simmer covered until the duck leg is well cooked and the cider is nearly all reduced.

When the asparagus in the almond milk is tender, puree it. Remove the duck leg (and do whatever else you're going to do with it) then combine the puree and the other ingredients and simmer long enough for the flavors to mingle. (My standard unit of time at this point is "while I change out of the gym clothes and shower".) This recipe made about a quart and a half of soup.

Results: I like it. The texture is just what I had in mind: a thick, creamy (in the texture sense) base with suspended chunks of garlic and mushroom. When I tasted it for seasoning, I decided not to add any salt which is a bit unusual for me. The overall taste is both mild and complex. You can smell the garlic more than taste it but it's definitely there underneath the asparagus, and there's even a perceptible hint of duck. There's a bit of sweetness due to the cider which probably wouldn't be there if you used wine, but I like it. If I weren't trying to use up the almond milk, I would have used chicken stock for cooking the asparagus, which would alter the balance as well.

[*] "The food plan" is partly about shopping-planning and partly about food-journaling. At the start of the week I do my major shopping without necessarily having specific meals in mind, then I sort out the results in to the food-journal spreadsheet to make sure I have something interesting and filling planned for each dinner. Things get moved around in the spreadsheet as the week progresses and plans change, but having it all pencilled in helps me keep track of what's in the refrigerator and needs to be used.