The Duo Dishes

Playing with your food takes on a new meaning once you’re an adult. Especially once you’ve realized just how fun it is to play with your food. You can push a pile of peas around with your folk, stack french fries into a fortress or squish a summer squash into a pulp. We guess that’s fun for some people. But when we think of playing with food, we like the idea of tweaking textures, enhancing natural flavors, creating pretty patterns and messing with colors. The colors found in foods are so amazing. How often do you stumble across blue potatoes, purple carrots and green pumpkins without being entranced? Maybe only the rest of us food geeks can relate to that one! We didn’t fool around with the genetics of any foods this time, but we did fashion a zen-like homage to the world’s varied color palette of vegetables.This dish takes a bit of double duty. There’s a lot going on at the same time as it’s really two soups in one. But it’s pretty! And that’s worth the effort. We do think it helps to have a friendly assistant in the kitchen if you have one around!

Deb at Kahakai Kitchen hosts Souper Sundays, which presents a round up of all the great soup created around the blogosphere each week. If you’re a soup lover like us, check out the other soups there on Super Bowl Sunday!

Chayote Squash and Roasted Pepper Swirl Soup

Roasted Pepper Soup
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
7 ounces stock (chicken or vegetable)
8 ounces water
1/2 onion, chopped
4 scallions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 bell peppers (orange or red)
Olive oil
Salt

1. Place peppers on top rack of oven and roast for 50-60 minutes at 450 degrees or until blackened and soft. (Layer foil on the rack below to keep clean up easy.)

2. Put peppers in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit and steam until cool enough to hold. Peel, de-stem and deseed. Save juice and pepper pulp in the bowl.

3. In a medium sized pot, swirl olive oil in the bottom and cook down celery, carrots, scallions, onions and garlic until soft.

4. Add stock and water to the pot of vegetables and stir.

5. Carefully pour veggies into a blender. Starting at a low speed, blend until chunks begin to disappear. Drop in roasted pepper pieces one by one. Blend until soup reaches desired consistency.* Salt to taste.

6. Pour back into pot and simmer on low heat.

*Add more stock if it’s too thick.

Chayote Squash Soup
3 chayote squash (also called mirlitons), peeled, deseeded and chopped
4 scallions, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
8 ounces milk
1/2-1 serrano chile, deseeded and minced
14 ounces stock (chicken or vegetable)
8 ounces water
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/2 cup parsley, chopped
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons kosher salt
Olive oil

1. In a heavy pot, sweat scallions, onions and garlic in olive oil until tender.

2. Add squash, water and stock and allow to boil until squash is tender, approximately 20 minutes.

3. Add milk, cornstarch, cumin and serrano chiles. Stir until incorporated.

4. Carefully pour hot liquid into a blender and blend until chunks break up. Drop in parsley, cilantro and salt and continue blending until desired consistency is reached.* Add more salt if desired.

*Add more milk (make sure it’s fairly warm) or chicken stock if you prefer it thinner.

Now the zen-like part! Using two heavy spoons, ladle the red pepper soup in one and the chayote in the other. Pour into a wide bowl simultaneously. This will take some practice if you want to get a perfect yin yang. What you see in our bowl is not evidence of perfection, but we’ll work on our ladle skills another time. Use a toothpick, or your finger if so inclined, to create other fun patterns. Pipe on a bit of sour cream or crème fraîche if you’re really feeling feisty!

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