Shakshuka. There are a lot of reasons to make shakshuka, an Israeli Tunisian dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce: It sounds like the name of a comic book hero.
Or some kind of fierce, long-forgotten martial art. Or perhaps something that said comic book hero would yell as they practiced this elaborate martial art, mid-leap with their fist in the air. Or you could make it because when I talked about making eggs in tomato sauce a while back a large handful of comments were along the lines of “oh, this sounds like shakshuka” and “I think you would love shakshuka” and “you really should make shakshuka” and you may have shrugged and forgotten about it until you finally had it at a café one day and whoa it turns out you really would like shakshuka! Or you could make it because that café had the audacity to close for Passover last week, right when you had the fiercest shakshuka craving yet. I mean, couldn’t they just not serve it with pitas? Serves 4 to 6. Roasted Tomato Soup with Broiled Cheddar. Lest you think I spend any part of my days doing Important Things — preparing, and totally not at the last second or haphazardly, for my only child’s second birthday, or for his first week of pre-preschool; assembling warm, wholesome meals for his lunch each day; meeting my manuscript deadline; dealing with the shoe bomb that went off in my closet, etc. — it’s only fair and honest that I tell you that I’ve spent a significant portion of the last year considering ways to merge grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup in a single vessel.
In a way, though, it relates to all of those things (well, not the shoes). There’s something very back-to-school-ish about tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, and because it’s still September, if you’re lucky, you can still get some tomatoes worth eating, and if not that, at least worth cooking down. Roasted Tomato Soup with Broiled Cheddar Serves 4 (though closer to 6 if served in mugs) Make soup: Preheat oven to 400°F.
Tortellini Soup with Balsamic Caramelized Onions & Mushrooms Recipe. While I yearn to make recipe after recipe with spring ingredients such as asparagus and strawberries, the reality is that winter has decided to stage a sit-in, planting her bottom firmly on the ground and adamantly refusing to leave.
While the extended season enables us to fit in a few more weeks of snowshoeing and sledding, it means that spring activities such as playing soccer and preparing the garden have been preempted for the time being. There are a few bright spots amidst the gray skies. For one, I can delay the inevitable squeezing of my winter padding into clothes that are decidedly less forgiving than winter fleece. That activity typically involves multiple unsavory words and a promise to purge the cupboards of every morsel of chocolate and candy.
The purging never actually happens, but dramatic resolutions are always made. The other undeniable benefit to cold days is soup…lots and lots of steaming, brothy soup. The recipe: Other tortellini soup recipes: Serves 4. Printable recipe.