Tag Archives: allium

A Double Dose of Allium Soup

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IMG_1555Is there anything better than walking in your front door and being greeted by the scent of garlic and onion sautéing in a pan? For one, it smells delicious, and it also means that someone else is on top of dinner. Jason and I both took a turn at cooking up the ol’ alliums this week (the family that includes both garlic and onions), he with a healthful, cold-fighting garlic soup, and I with a not-so-healthful-but-seriously-super-delicious French onion soup.

Jason got the skinny on the garlic soup from his yoga teacher, who made it for her sick child. Garlic has long been a home remedy for warding off the sniffles, to say nothing of its reputation as a worthy adversary of arthritis, heart disease and some kinds of tumors. You could argue that garlic is not a miracle drug…or you could just eat some of this garlic soup and be happy. And you can trust me on this count: the garlic in it is well-cooked enough that you won’t leak garlic from your pores. I was sort of looking forward to getting a seat to myself on the subway afterward, but I smelled no more like a salami than usual. You can find the recipe at this very earnest website.

french onion soupHealthfulness is a noble ambition, but I had other things on my mind when I made my allium soup. Namely, the fact that the day I figured out that most French onion soup is made with beef broth was a very dismal day in my vegetarian life. Once, I was listening to an Australian woman rant about her travels in America. I was with her until she said, “My God, you put cheese on everything! I ordered soup and it came covered in cheese!” That’s the moment I discovered I had nothing more to say to this woman. If you can’t see the beauty in a heap of melted Gruyere, well, then…perhaps you better scoot on back to your former prison colony of a nation.

So when we got a couple big ol’ white onions in our farm share, I looked up a recipe and changed it a little for vegetarians. It involves making big Gruyere-coated croutons that you float on top. This might not be quite as impressive as blanketing the bowl like restaurants do, but it’s easier and it ensures that not a shred of cheese is wasted. Good for a cold? Maybe not, but it’s good for the soul.

Vegetarian French Onion Soup Continue reading →

Easter Green Garlic

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green garlicAt the very end of making a miso-lemon glaze in which to bake tofu last Sunday night, I realized that I had intended to include garlic in the mix.  I quickly crushed a bunch of cloves, pressed them into the tofu, and closed the oven door.  When I checked on dinner half an hour later, I found the garlic a bright, Easter Basket-grass green.  What the hell?

Turns out that crushing garlic releases an enzyme named Alliiase which in turn goes to work on a sulfurous compound named Allicin.  Allicin is garlic’s primary defense against pests and also the chemical basis for humanity’s long reliance on garlic to bolster health and fend of diseases.  When the flesh on the garlic bulb is torn, the Allicin breaks down into other sulfurous compounds, and when those compounds mix with an acid they form carbon-nitrogen rings that link together in various combinations to form molecules.  Continue reading →