March 02, 2014

Yam & Ginger Soup

Picture this: your in-laws came for a visit over the noon hour but they ate before they came. You did not. They left at 2, you're starving, it's -30 out so you're not driving anywhere and you have skeletal food in the fridge. My suggestion is to try this. 


As someone who would not call flatter myself with the title of "cook", lately I've been a bit more adventurous. Today I tried to hack together this recipe for Yam & Ginger Soup - my first error was that the original recipe is actually for Sweet Potato & Ginger Soup but I grabbed a yam instead of a sweet potato and that's how we arrived my "updated" version of the recipe.

The original, which I got from Yoga Journal, looked easy enough. That's always how it starts though.

So after I peeled my yam, rolled my eyes at my own genius, I quickly re-scanned the recipe. What I thought I read was to mince the garlic and ginger, sauté it and then add the cubes of yam. Obviously that it not what it says up there, but I didn't notice that until after I sautéed the garlic and ginger for 5 minutes. Well, you can only do what you can do! 

So I popped my cubed yams into the pan to sauté them for 5 minutes and wouldn't you know it, I had sautéed my ginger to a pleasant crisp. At a point like this, I'd often consider giving up but the truth of the matter is the ginger smelled so flipping good that I just kept going. 

That is steam fogging up my camera. 

But, at this point, I abandoned the recipe. I mixed four cups of hot water with 2 spoons of bouillon, and poured it in the pan to boil for 15 minutes. 


15 minutes later, these babies were ready for a mash in'! At first I grabbed my hand blender but after scalding myself basically immediately, I grabbed my old fashioned masher and it was perfect. This soup ended up being 100% exactly right for a day where it's -30 degrees (not including wind chill). 

Normally, on a food blog, this is where people would show you the finished product of their incredible recipe, taken with some super camera that they bought for $1800. I did not - for two reasons. One, if I had a super camera, it would be covered in butter all the time and two, I ATE THE SOUP. I was hungry.