a broth for the sick the cold the sad and the restless

In the winter what I realize is that I like cooking because I like puttering. It’s an ADD thing, a futzing thing: having something on the stove bubbling away that you can poke a wooden spoon at every few minutes and throw a few dashes of whatever into, if only to feel like you’re doing something meaningful. Good, you think, sitting back down to a barely touched to-do list, I have done a small but important thing that will prove essential to my eventual success.

Unlike a loaf that’s already baking or, I don’t know, a perfectly sliced summer salad that you fucked up the second you bought the wrong tomato at the market, a pot of something on the stove is forever open to feedback and almost never beyond saving. It usually improves the longer you putter: beans’ bellies swell farther towards softness, soup ingredients swap flavor compounds like magic, sauce gets richer, a wan broth gains depth. Cooking takes patience, which is bothersome when you’re feeling impatient or sharply hungry, but the other side of this is your ability to put off something’s doneness, repeatedly telling yourself that if you do nothing, that if you sit back down and let things go on for a few minutes longer, that those things will improve.

So this is my winter look: large pots of beans I’m somehow predestined to oversalt, gurgly batches of Marcella sauce that stain the stove in splatters, big soups like minestrone that will stretch over days of dinners. I made so much minestrone last year I might as well marry it, or whatever.

I am just now, while writing this, getting over a cold. Finally I can breathe through my nose for the first time in about four days; even for a lifelong mouth breather this is very exciting. (nobody talks about the childhood shame of mouth breathing!!) Saturday morning, worried about bedsores, I decided that, yes, a nice homemade vegetable broth would cure what ailed me, which was both a cold and the sort of restlessness that comes from laying in bed feeling feelings and tearing through boxes of dollar-store tissues that turn the skin on your nose to ruddy shreds. I needed to stand and putter. I layered up and set out for the nearest farmers market and found nothing: there was no produce but mushrooms, does a fungus even count as produce. I bought seven dollars’ worth and some bread and eggs and resigned myself to the store down the street that masquerades as a health food store but is in reality a souped up bodega, you know the sort. Bought some flaccid leeks and a fennel bulb and an onion and some Puffin cereal and I will spare you the rest. I would not have the freshest broth but it’s February and February is always terrible.

When I make vegetable broth (nb: broth is seasoned, stock is not) it’s usually a catch-all for scraps. Kale stems and onion parts and stray carrot nubbins and Parmesan rinds (the golden tickets of food waste!) go in a zip-top bag in the freezer; when I have a few spare hours I drop them into a pot of salted water, then boil, then simmer until the water tastes like something. A premeditated broth seems like a luxury, then; my favorite combination is usually this one, of leeks and mushrooms and fennel and maybe an onion and a few garlic cloves which honestly you don’t even need to peel. It comes out clean, deep but still clear, free from a carrot’s orange sweetness or the murkiness you get from a kale stem. Feels like the sort of broth you could sell for $10 as a Health Thing. I also added ginger, they say it’s good for colds.

After a quick hour the broth already tasted like broth as far as I could tell (my sense of smell was compromised okay) and I was cold and I wanted soup, so I pulled it then. It was an hour of particularly cloudy-headed puttering, poking at all the little bits bobbing in liquid as if that would do anything, adding a few pinches of fusty red pepper flakes, convincing myself I was doing something of value and then tucking myself back under a blanket on the couch. Pulled out some cooked white beans and some wilty kale and scallions from the fridge and put them in a smaller pot—the vegetables were chopped and sliced—with a few ladles of broth. and then! I learned a brilliant thing! Onions and leeks and fennel turn into little swamp monsters after you simmer them for broth but mushrooms just plump up and taste like more than they did before. You can just spoon them out and slice them and add them to your eventual soup, which I did, and felt particularly clever. It’s the sort of two-for-one deal that makes you feel better about spending $7 on mushrooms just to turn them into flavored water.


 

So if you’re looking for something to putter around or something to warm you up or cure what ails you, here’s something. I know I can't really taste things right now but really, it’s quite good. I ran into a friend on the street this morning and we mostly talked about how terrible this month is, and I said that I always expect February to be a 5 or a 6, and it’s always more of a 3 or a 4, and that’s a big difference. But we can lie and tell ourselves that some soup will bridge the gap, and sometimes for a hot second it can.

a broth and a soup

1 large leek

a few handfuls of crimini mushrooms (or whatever sort you have), cleaned

1 fennel bulb, stalks and fronds and all, halved

half an onion

a few whole cloves of garlic

salt

red pepper flakes

combine everything in a large pot with a whole bunch of water, maybe 6 or 10 cups. start with just a few pinches of salt. bring to a boil then simmer gently for an hour, or until you like the way it tastes. add more salt if you need to.

cooked white beans

kale, torn into bite-sized pieces

mushrooms, from the stock above, sliced

soy sauce

1 to 2 scallions, sliced

in a small pot, ladle a few ladlefuls of broth, and add to it a half cup or so of white beans (rinse them if they’re from the can), a big handful of kale, and as many mushrooms as you want. cook until beans are heated through and kale is soft. add a dash or two of soy sauce and the scallions, cook for another minute to soften the latter, then serve.

the stock will be good for a week or so in the fridge, and a few months in the freezer. strain all the swamp monsters out before storing.

xx
m