The Book
The Moosewood Collective is a group of nineteen members who, along with their employees, runs the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, New York. The restaurant has been in operation since 1973, and focuses on “natural foods with a vegetarian emphasis from a variety of international, ethnic, and regional cuisines.” To the best of my recollection, I’ve never cooked a bad recipe from one of their books.
The Moosewood Daily Special Cookbook is divided into five basic parts: soup recipes, salad recipes, recipes for accompaniments, a fantastic highly descriptive glossary of ingredients, and special lists. Each recipe is very clearly written, estimates an individual serving size, and provides nutritional information per individual serving. My favorite part about each recipe is that at the bottom there is a list of “pairing suggestions” along with page numbers for those recipes, so that you can create your own Soup and Salad Daily Special. Even the recipes for the accompaniments have “pairing suggestions” listed at the bottom. The special lists section includes lists of the recipes that fall into specific categories, like “Children’s Favorites,” “Healthy Low-Fat Favorites,” and “Quick & Easy.” Of course, there is a list of vegan recipes, but unfortunately there is no list of gluten free recipes.
To get started on my quest for leafy greenness, I opened to book to see where it would fall. It came open at the recipe for Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup, because I had stuck a pamphlet about dried mushrooms in that page. But the recipe looked good, so I decided it was worth a try. Among the paring options was a Fresh Pear and Blue Cheese Salad. Since I already had a can of sliced pears in my horde cabinet and a container of blue cheese in my refrigerator, I thought that one would be a nice one to try. Since I had recently bought a bag of red lentils, I looked that up in the Index to see if there was a recipe that would use them. There was a recipe for Egyptian Red Lentil Soup, which seemed a little unusual in that the lentils were pureed at the end of it all. But it could be worth a try because the spices looked good: just cumin, tumeric, and cilantro. The pairing suggestions were odd; none really had any leafy greens involved. My best option among the five was Persian Rice and Pistachio Salad, especially since I wasn’t feeling like firing up the oven to slow roast vegetables. For my last soup and salad pairing, I felt like I wanted to use some of my newly acquired white miso, so I looked that up in the Index to see what my options were. There was a ginger miso salad dressing, a split pea soup, a noodle soup, and ozoni, which seemed to be a soup. I was intrigued by the ginger miso dressing, so I looked that up to see what soup and salad combination would go with that. Sure enough, there were handwritten modifications to the recipe! The pairing suggestions only nebulously discussed that the dressing was great on fresh spinach rather than specifically suggested salads from the book. Although there was the recommendation to try the dressing on steamed broccoli for an Asian twist, which seemed to be an intriguing possibility. The four soup suggestions included Chinese Velvet Corn Soup, Wonton Soup, Everyday Split Pea Soup, and Ozoni. Just a glance through the ingredient list of the Ozoni ruled it out, as there were things that even I couldn’t pronounce or identify how to source. The Wonton Soup was ruled out because I wasn’t up to the effort of making wontons during the week. Split pea soup is not my cup of tea, so I didn’t even bother to look at that recipe. Fortunately, the Chinese Velvet Corn Soup had a simple ingredients list and looked like something I would eat. So that was the winner.
Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup
Quite unexpectedly, I ran into a challenge in gathering the ingredients for this recipe: my supermarket stocked neither wild rice nor fresh wild mushrooms. Since I wasn’t feeling like traveling a few towns over to check the Whole Foods, I went with what they had available. Instead of pure wild rice, I bought a wild rice medley from the organic section, which contained white rice, red rice, black rice, and wild rice. Instead of fresh wild mushrooms, I bought fresh shiitake mushrooms and fresh button mushrooms. The recipe called for four ounces of fresh wild mushrooms and estimated that would be about two cups. When I got home and looked at the four-ounce package of shiitake mushrooms, I was certain that it was not two cups in volume. So I went back to the supermarket and bought another four-ounce package.
The recipe seemed very easy, so I was looking forward to trying it to see whether I preferred it to our slightly more complex family recipe for Mushroom Barley Soup. Of course, I modified the cookbook’s recipe by using the container of beef stock from the horde cabinet to cook the wild rice medley rather than buying a new container of vegetable stock. The container had four cups of beef stock, so I used the required three cups to cook the wild rice and then used the fourth cup to replace some of the water in making the broth.
I really enjoyed this mushroom soup! It was very similar to the family Mushroom Barley Soup in that it was loaded with mushrooms and carrots. Unlike the family recipe, however, the broth was clear and not starchy at all. Of course, the best part was that the soup kept well in the refrigerator so I was able to enjoy it for lunch and for dinner for several days.
Fresh Pear and Blue Cheese Salad
The Fresh Pear and Blue Cheese Salad came together in a blink of an eye as the Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup was cooling down to an edible temperature. Rather than peel, core, and slice a fresh pear, I used about half of the remaining can of pears that I had opened for the pear salad that accompanied the Cajun dinner. After I arranged the pear slices on the bed of salad greens, it was just a matter of measuring and shaking the ingredients for the dressing, and then topping with crumbled blue cheese. The dressing was very simple and rather low calorie - orange juice, lemon juice, olive oil, and minced garlic – so that was a refreshing difference from the usual Good Seasons Italian dressing.
Egyptian Red Lentil Soup
This soup seemed super easy, so I was looking forward to trying it out to see if I could work it into my normal rotation. Basically, the recipe required mixing water, red lentils, chopped onion, chopped potatoes and garlic in a pot and letting it simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes. Very straightforward. Although the recipe specifically called for two cups of chopped onions and two cups of chopped potatoes, I didn’t bother to measure. I just set aside two sweet Vidalia onions and three Russet potatoes to be cleaned and chopped for the soup.
Right after I measured the lentils into the water, I got immersed in a cell phone conversation. I was unable to clean and chop the onion or peel and chop the potatoes while on the phone, so the lentils just sat soaking in the water for an hour or so. They did expand and lose some of their nice red color. Once that conversation ended, I got involved in another conversation so the lentils continued to soak for another thirty minutes. Of course, once I finally was free to clean and chop the onions and peel and chop the potatoes, I was pretty hungry. But I still set the pot for twenty minutes. Since I was using my largest Faberware pot rather than my red Dansk soup pot, the stuff bubbled over a bit toward the end.
After simmering for twenty minutes, the next steps were to remove the pot from the heat and sauté cumin, tumeric and salt in oil before adding to the soup. Since I was quite hungry by then. I just measured the cumin and tumeric – sans oil and salt – into the soup pot. I didn’t quite measure or chop the cilantro before adding it to the pot; I just tore off a handful from the bunch and tossed it in.
My shortcuts with the cilantro and the spices didn’t work out too well. The cilantro wound itself around the blades of my immersion blender and complicated the pureeing process. Had I used a regular blender as called for in the recipe, I probably wouldn’t have had that problem. But the immersion blender was much simpler and safer than transferring hot soup in small batches to a regular blender. Besides, I had the cool gadget to be used!
Otherwise, the soup was very good. It was a surprising bright yellow – which the cookbook calls “a rich golden color.” The soup was more like a thick potage than your standard lentil soup. But it was definitely a substantial meal in and of itself. I was happy to enjoy it for a few days as leftovers.
Persian Rice and Pistachio Salad
Since I was quite hungry when I finally started the Egyptian Red Lentil Soup simmering, I decided to postpone fixing the Persian Rice and Pistachio Salad to another day because I did not want to wait the hour that it would take to finish this salad. Unfortunately, when I finally engaged myself in making this salad a few days later, I met with disaster.
The recipe starts innocently enough: rinse the rice in sieve and let drain; warm oil in a saucepan on medium heat; sauté the rice with the oil for three minutes; stir in the spices; sauté for one minute. Of course, I skipped rinsing and draining my rice because I invested in a good brand of basmati that assured me that had already been taken care of. So I went straight to heating the oil on medium heat and sautéing the rice for three minutes. Since the recipe gave no sensory clues as to what the rice should look like or how the rice should smell at the end of its sauté time, I set a timer for three minutes and went by that. At the end of the sauté time, the rice was nicely golden brown and smelled a bit toasty. I had all my spices lined up on the counter near the stove, so it was easy to measure them into the pot. However, in the time that it took me to measure the five different spices into the pot, the rice progressed from a toasty smelling golden brown to a burnt smelling dark brown. I was pretty sure that in the extra minute of measuring the spices the rice had burned. But ever the optimist, I progressed to the next step. I stirred in the two cups of water and let the rice simmer covered for thirty minutes on very low heat. When I tried the cooked rice, it was clearly and obviously burned. So I walked away from it and had more Egyptian Red Lentil Soup for dinner.
It took me about two weeks to recover from the disastrous rice cooking experiment. The burned residue wouldn’t fully scrub off the bottom of the pot, despite my best efforts with a scrubbie pad and baking soda. So I re-engaged the recipe using my slightly smaller Faberware pot. This time I used set my burner knob halfway between “Medium” and “Low” before I sautéed the rice for three minutes. It didn’t smell toasty or look golden brown at the end of the time, so I figured it was safe proceed to the next step. Like last time, I had all the spices and measuring implements lined up along the side of the stove, so it didn’t take me but a minute to measure the spices on the rice. The rice still looked good. As instructed, I sautéed the rice with the spices for one minute before adding the water, covering tightly and reducing the heat to “Warm.” Thirty minutes later, the rice looked good. And it tasted good too.
Once the rice was done, I pulled the pot off the stove and immediately stirred in one half cup of dried zante currants. I then let that sit and cool for roughly twenty minutes before stirring in the pistachios and orange juice. Adding the orange juice helped scrape off the sticky rice on the bottom of the pot. Since I’m not a fan of celery, I skipped that. I also skipped stirring in some extra oil – just because I could.
Chinese Velvet Corn Soup
The Chinese Velvet Corn Soup was another recipe that looked easy enough to fit into the regular rotation. Essentially, the recipe consisted of a few sauté steps, boiling for ten minutes, pureeing the soup, and a few straightforward finishing steps.
Fortunately, the recipe was as easy to execute as it seemed. Rather than measure out two cups of chopped onions, I just tossed in two coarsely chopped sweet onions. I figured that each onion would yield about a cup of chopped onion, although I really had no basis for that belief. After sautéing the onions with black pepper and salt, I added one sixteen ounce bag of frozen corn kernels, which was probably closer to three cups of kernels than the required two cups. After that sauté step, I added the water and a few other ingredients and brought the pot to a boil. Once it reached a boil, I covered it, reduced the heat, and let it simmer for ten minutes or so.
For the puree step, I used my immersion blender rather than transfer the hot liquid to and from a standard blender. Unfortunately, the corn kernels and the onions clogged up the immersion blender’s blade area so I kept having to stop and scrape out the blade area so that the immersion blender could work efficiently. In the end, I settled for a slightly chunkier soup than a perfectly smooth puree.
To finish the soup, I measured one cup of corn kernels from the second bag of frozen corn. I also followed the recipe instructions to make the egg white threads in the soup. However, I skipped the step to thicken with one tablespoon of cornstarch. Because I probably overestimated the initial volume of onions and corn kernels, the soup looked thick enough to not need the cornstarch. And I hate the taste of raw cornstarch, so I didn’t want to risk ruining the pot.
For such minimal effort, the soup was okay. It was definitely more flavorful than the corn and onion dishwater that one would expect from such simple ingredients and simple steps. But I absolutely had to add more salt to kick up the really mild flavor of the soup. And, if I were to do this recipe again, I would use two or three egg whites to make more egg threads in the soup. I might also add more than the two tablespoons of dry sherry required in the ingredients list. Otherwise, I would most likely do the recipe just the same way.
The Verdict
Aside from the disaster with the Persian Rice Salad, cooking from the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special Cookbook was really easy. The ingredients for the recipes that I chose were readily available in the supermarket – or in my cabinets – and the recipe steps were very straightforward. I sincerely appreciated the Daily Special Menu Ideas at the bottom of each recipe page, as that helped me easily put together a satisfying meal. I didn’t mind that the recipes were all vegetarian. In fact, it was kind of fun to be vegetarian for a while.
In the end, I would definitely recommend this cookbook for anyone interested in quick, simple, and healthy recipes. I had so much fun with it that I may dip into it again for future recipe testing adventures.
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