unorthodox migraine cures which are tasty
Nov. 18th, 2009 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lolaraincoatSo I have had a migraine on and off for about a week now. It has stubbornly resisted the usual drugs, but last night it went away after I had three bowls of tomato soup for dinner. I don't know if any warm salty liquid would have done the job, or if maybe the migraine just decided to go away temporarily anyhow, or if it was this soup, but just in case ...
here is a recipe for excellent tomato soup if I do say so myself
Grow the tomatoes. Leave them on the vine until they're really, really ripe. In a bad year for tomatoes (as this one was in our garden) get them from the farmer's market and go for the cheaper, just slightly over-ripe ones. Get a lot of them. No, more. More. Okay. You want at least twice as much tomato, by volume, as all the other ingredients combined - including chicken stock - and you might as well make a lot of this while you have the tomatoes and freeze most of it, for later.
Whether you grow them or buy them, avoid the flavorless paste tomatoes (Roma, I am looking at you.) Smaller tomatoes generally work better but are more work later on.
Roast a chicken (free-range, killed-with-kindness, local, organic, you know the drill: flavor matters, here.) Eat the chicken. Make stock from the carcass. Doesn't have to be very thick, deep stock, but you do want to skim off as much of the fat as you can. Stock is made, as my gran taught me and I'm sure you already know, by boiling the shit out of a chicken. Toss some carrots in and maybe an onion (quality of these vegetables makes no difference here; save your good fresh onions for later on.) Leave on the boil an hour or two, then strain and stick in the freezer. If you are vegetarian, skip this step and just use salted water when it comes to the part where I say to use the stock. Double up on the sauteed onions, though, if you skip the stock.
Grow some herbs. Almost anything works with tomatoes, so just come up with a combination you like that you have a lot of. I am partial to tarragon (lots) with parsley and chives (some) and rosemary (a wee tiny amount) but you may have a lot of mint to use up instead, and that's fine. Or lemon grass! Lemon grass is good. Just remember to wash the herbs carefully because gritty tomato soup is no good, unless you like that kind of thing. Also, dried herbs of any kind are not your friend for the purposes of this recipe. Herbs, like onions, are shockingly different and better when homegrown, so if you only have a little bit of space and energy to grow anything, grow the herbs and get your tomatoes at the farmer's market. Your soup will thank you for this.
Get some really good chiles. You may have to grow them yourself if the farmers at your farmer's market are as chile-averse as our local farmers - devotees of the sweet pepper, all of them - seem to be. Or there is always your local productos latinos store. If you have oregano and epazote among your herbs, you might want to get some poblanos and roast them, then scrape off the skins and cut them up for the soup. Or you could soak dried ancho chiles and use the water in the soup. Or you could just toss an habanero or two, whole, if you are using other herbs. Even flake red pepper will do. But spiciness matters, here, for medicinal purposes.
Get a red onion or two - again, fresh and local matters, you'd be surprised, grow a red onion yourself and you'll see what I mean - chop it up, saute gently over low heat until transparent, in olive oil.
Roast your tomatoes, just briefly, in a roasting pan in the broiler. And by briefly I mean 90 seconds or less, depending on size.
Cut tomatoes into largish chunks. Toss in the stock, with the peppers and onions. Leave on the boil while you chop up the herbs and throw them in. Once everything is in, you don't have to cook that long - just half an hour or so should do it.
Blend the whole thing until smooth with the immersion blender. Cook down to desired thickness (which should be pretty thick if you're planning to freeze some of it; you can always add water when you thaw it out later.) Let cool and freeze, or just eat right then.
I like it with a dollop of the good plain Greek-style yogurt in the middle of the bowl, and some toast. Or just float some stale bread on top if you have some stale bread. And if you have an old dried-out rind of cheese, drop that in, too. A really good cook would make her own bread and yogurt, I guess, but what are you gonna do?
Oh, and salt. You might want to add a pinch to the stock while you're making it (or a cupful, if you're my gran, who was not actually all that good a cook.) But I suggest that you wait until you serve the soup, and then use the good stuff, very sparingly.
here is a recipe for excellent tomato soup if I do say so myself
Grow the tomatoes. Leave them on the vine until they're really, really ripe. In a bad year for tomatoes (as this one was in our garden) get them from the farmer's market and go for the cheaper, just slightly over-ripe ones. Get a lot of them. No, more. More. Okay. You want at least twice as much tomato, by volume, as all the other ingredients combined - including chicken stock - and you might as well make a lot of this while you have the tomatoes and freeze most of it, for later.
Whether you grow them or buy them, avoid the flavorless paste tomatoes (Roma, I am looking at you.) Smaller tomatoes generally work better but are more work later on.
Roast a chicken (free-range, killed-with-kindness, local, organic, you know the drill: flavor matters, here.) Eat the chicken. Make stock from the carcass. Doesn't have to be very thick, deep stock, but you do want to skim off as much of the fat as you can. Stock is made, as my gran taught me and I'm sure you already know, by boiling the shit out of a chicken. Toss some carrots in and maybe an onion (quality of these vegetables makes no difference here; save your good fresh onions for later on.) Leave on the boil an hour or two, then strain and stick in the freezer. If you are vegetarian, skip this step and just use salted water when it comes to the part where I say to use the stock. Double up on the sauteed onions, though, if you skip the stock.
Grow some herbs. Almost anything works with tomatoes, so just come up with a combination you like that you have a lot of. I am partial to tarragon (lots) with parsley and chives (some) and rosemary (a wee tiny amount) but you may have a lot of mint to use up instead, and that's fine. Or lemon grass! Lemon grass is good. Just remember to wash the herbs carefully because gritty tomato soup is no good, unless you like that kind of thing. Also, dried herbs of any kind are not your friend for the purposes of this recipe. Herbs, like onions, are shockingly different and better when homegrown, so if you only have a little bit of space and energy to grow anything, grow the herbs and get your tomatoes at the farmer's market. Your soup will thank you for this.
Get some really good chiles. You may have to grow them yourself if the farmers at your farmer's market are as chile-averse as our local farmers - devotees of the sweet pepper, all of them - seem to be. Or there is always your local productos latinos store. If you have oregano and epazote among your herbs, you might want to get some poblanos and roast them, then scrape off the skins and cut them up for the soup. Or you could soak dried ancho chiles and use the water in the soup. Or you could just toss an habanero or two, whole, if you are using other herbs. Even flake red pepper will do. But spiciness matters, here, for medicinal purposes.
Get a red onion or two - again, fresh and local matters, you'd be surprised, grow a red onion yourself and you'll see what I mean - chop it up, saute gently over low heat until transparent, in olive oil.
Roast your tomatoes, just briefly, in a roasting pan in the broiler. And by briefly I mean 90 seconds or less, depending on size.
Cut tomatoes into largish chunks. Toss in the stock, with the peppers and onions. Leave on the boil while you chop up the herbs and throw them in. Once everything is in, you don't have to cook that long - just half an hour or so should do it.
Blend the whole thing until smooth with the immersion blender. Cook down to desired thickness (which should be pretty thick if you're planning to freeze some of it; you can always add water when you thaw it out later.) Let cool and freeze, or just eat right then.
I like it with a dollop of the good plain Greek-style yogurt in the middle of the bowl, and some toast. Or just float some stale bread on top if you have some stale bread. And if you have an old dried-out rind of cheese, drop that in, too. A really good cook would make her own bread and yogurt, I guess, but what are you gonna do?
Oh, and salt. You might want to add a pinch to the stock while you're making it (or a cupful, if you're my gran, who was not actually all that good a cook.) But I suggest that you wait until you serve the soup, and then use the good stuff, very sparingly.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-18 06:53 pm (UTC)Mmmm, that soup sounds AWESOME. If only I had time and energy to cook!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-18 07:05 pm (UTC)*whistles tunelessly*
ANYway. I may have made this soup sound harder than it is. The trick is to do it in stages, like, make the stock when you have the remains of a chicken carcass on hand, and then freeze; make the soup later, when you have the ingredients around and also time, and then freeze that too. Also, you live - I happen to know - in the land where all vegetables you can just buy at the market are BETTER than what I could grow myself, so you could skip are the gardening bits. Also also, you live where there is Trader Joes, so no need to cook, like, ever. Not that I am bitter about the crappiness of Canadian consumer culture or anything, because I am not.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 12:10 am (UTC)But I would go with your Gram on the salt, but then i am probably about as old as she.
JakeInHartsel
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 04:28 am (UTC)This definitely is not a recipe to make this time of year, though - save it for August! unless you're in California, which you're not.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 01:09 pm (UTC)And you are right onions and in general the tubors grow here well. The problem with those is after years of feeding the birds and others we have a whole army of various kinds of ground squirrels that would love them.
Jake
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 02:30 am (UTC)Your recipe sounds delightful, and I have a pretty good idea what took care of your headache -- it was the peppers. Peppers contain capsaicin (the hotter the pepper, the higher concentration of capsaicin), which a good amount of research has shown to have the effect, with repeated exposure, of decreasing your sensitivity to pain. It might be a good thing to keep frozen on hand for when the migraines get bad. You might be able to find it in pill form, too, but I think part of the reason why it works is probably because you're smelling and tasting it.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 04:30 am (UTC)Or I could just bathe in horseradish, that would probably work. Mmmm, horseradish.
How are you and yours doing? I've been thinking of you!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-20 04:58 pm (UTC)You've said horseradish and now I really, really want some. :-D How's your migraine doing? Do you get them often?
no subject
Date: 2009-11-19 03:04 pm (UTC)I don't know if any warm salty liquid would have done the job
HEE HEE HEE