The Low Down

The human body is a metabolic marvel comprised of dozens of little systems connecting to create one complex system. Food is the fuel, the input, for the systems. Our metabolic machinery evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to function optimally on select fuels. These fuels were the original, Primal foods of the human organism. Over these hundreds of thousands of years our Big Game Hunting, small prey capturing, scavenging, foraging, gathering, opportunistic ancestors accumulated experience and wisdom about nourishing themselves. The learned to preserve and predigest foods to maximize the quality of their metabolic fuel. Eventually they learned to cook foods without destroying the important nourishing properties of the food, and then they learned to heal the human body with food. Only recently in the human evolutionary experience, have we abandoned all these hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated epicurean genius. Now we fuel our marvelous, complex metabolic machinery with crap invented to create profits for agribusiness. We have become dumb eaters. As we regain our eating intelligence it doesn't make sense to move back to the savannah and put out our fires or climb into our cave and pretend there is a glacier next door. It makes sense to fuel our bodies with all the primal human foodstuffs, prepared and preserved with accumulated ancestral wisdom and served up for the undeniable desires of the human taste buds. Primal, paleolithic food choices, handled according to ancient food ways resulting in outrageously good food.
PRIMAL. SMART. DELECTABLE.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Sweet Potato Soup and pink cake!






So, on the east coast in the winter, this is how they stay warm. Toussaint the Liberator is my sister's partner, or more importantly, Daddy to my fantabulous niece who is turning FIVE on St. Patrick's Day. Born on St. P's day in Boston to a reggae/soul singer and a red-haired mama, go figure. Inari wants a pink cake for her birthday. She is allergic to egg so my sister will produce an undoubtedly spectacular egg-free, pink cake. Maybe we'll get a picture. Happy birthday Inari. I hope the strawberry cake is delicious! In Tucson, while I guess we have a lot of sunshine to keep us warm, I'm not that impressed with the hot music. Plenty of tattooed hipsters, not too much soul. Oh well. Keep warm with soup. Try some Chipotle Sweet Potato Soup with bacon and red onion salsa. I got the idea for this soup from Ming Tsai, owner of Blue Ginger restaurant in Wellesley, MA. He has a degree in Engineering from Yale, so he must really have followed his true passion when he became a chef. I love that.

Use your kitchen scissors to snip up 5 pieces of good smoky bacon. Saute the bits in a heavy soup pot until browned. Scoop out the bacon, set aside, take 3T of bacon drippings and add them to a small skillet.

In the heavy soup pot, in the remaining bacon drippings, saute 2 large yellow onions with 5 cloves of garlic. Don't worry about chopping stuff small, because you'll puree it later. When the onions are soft add 3 large or 6 small peeled chunked sweet potatoes and 8-10c chicken stock. Add 1 scant teaspoon powdered ginger and 1-4t chipotle puree (depending on your tolerance for spice). Simmer until sweet potatoes are very soft. Use a hand immersion blender or your regular blender. Just be careful blending hot soup. Cover the top of the blender with a heavy kitchen towel.

Finish the salsa by mincing a red pepper and a medium size red onion. Saute them until just soft in the reserved bacon drippings. Add the bacon bits and squeeze half a lime in.

Serve the soup with a big spoonful of the salsa on top and a little salt and pepper. You can use it as a side dish or starter. I also used it as my main dish by chopping up a piece of leftover steak and adding it to my bowl. Really good.
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