After not having tortellini for maybe 10 years, I have them on the brain.  It’s kind of like when you learn a word, and then see it everywhere.  I rediscovered tortellini, and now I see and crave them constantly.  (Me:  What?  Has our local grocery store been selling tortellini all this time and I never noticed?!  Alex:  Yes.)

Alex is currently studying the brain for his Brain and Behavior class, yet he has been usless in helping me to determine why I cannot get enough tortellini.  Perhaps it is because his primary study tool is this video?

In any case, it seems as though the only cure for tortellini brain is more tortellini.  We conjured up this soup recently, and it has served as a sufficient antidote for about a week (though I can feel the urges kicking in again: flashes of tortellini, visions of pasta, etc.).  The recipe is adapted from one in Eating Well magazine.  The original recipe uses ravioli and suggests tortellini as an alternative.  I don’t just suggest it; I strongly urge it.   We made some other tweaks, and our version is posted below.

Enjoy, and don’t blame us if you catch the tortellini brain.  I hear it’s contagious.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 bell peppers, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1 28-ounce can fire-roasted crushed tomatoes
3 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 tsp dried basil
1 9 oz. package fresh tortellini
2 cups zucchini, dices
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Heat oil over medium-high heat large soup pot.  Add onions, and cook for about two minutes until glistening.  Add peppers and cook for an additional 3-4 minutes until onions and peppers are soft.  Stir in crushed red pepper, then add tomatoes, broth and basil and bring to a simmer.  Let simmer for about 15 minutes.  Add tortellini and cook for 3 to 5 minutes less than package instructions.  Add zucchini and cook until it is tender, about 5 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper, then serve.

Tomorrow is the first day of Spring, and this soup is the welcoming committee.

It’s brightly sweet and sweetly bright, heralding the season with a charming naivety regarding the 40 degree, rainy happenings outdoors.  And though it consists of mainly frozen peas, shallots and broth — ingredients that, sneakily, you can find year-round — tasting this soup feels like catching the first whiff of warm, flowery air or finding that the white tips on branches are no longer snow, but rather buds.

It’s here!  Finally.

Ingredients (serves 6):
3 tbsp olive oil
3 shallots, chopped
2 lb. frozen peas
4 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup nonfat yogurt (for garnish)

Instructions:
Reserve one cup of peas, heat in microwave for about a minute until cooked and soft, and set aside.  Heat olive oil in a large pot.  Add shallots, and cook until soft, about 5 minutes.  Add peas, broth, and basil, and bring to a boil.  Lower heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes until flavors mesh together and peas are soft.  In a blender, puree soup in batches until smooth.  Season generously with salt and pepper.  Pour soup into bowls, and garnish with extra peas and yogurt.

Exam season has arrived and we’re swimming (drowning?) in work.  Technically, I’m already 8 minutes behind today because it’s 9:38 a.m. and I haven’t begun to study.

So it’s been more than busy, but we did find time to quickly whip up this delicious fennel soup by Dan Barber of Bluehill during a series of 15 minute breaks yesterday.  We tasted the soup a few weeks ago at the restaurant, and thought it was the best soup we’d ever tried.  Amazingly, he’s actually published the recipe online so that amateurs everywhere can pretend to be elite chefs like Mr. Barber, and then cry shallot tears into their soups when following the recipe precisely yields a clumpy glob of gray soup.

Just kidding — that was our fear, but the soup actually turned out remarkably similar!  It’s creamy for a soup with no dairy, smooth, flavorful and unique.  And though it’s simple and light for a winter soup, you’ll want so many helpings that it’s sure to fill you up.

Ingredients:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 small shallots, minced
3 1/2 cups diced fennel, white part only, reserving green fronds for garnish
1 apple, peeled and diced
salt and ground black pepper
1 tbsp fennel seeds, crushed
4 cups vegetable stock (Mr. Barber’s recipe is online)
1/2 tsp chopped thyme

Instructions:
Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large pot.  Add the onion and shallots, and sweat until translucent. Add the fennel and apple, season with salt and pepper. Cook for 2-3 minutes before adding the fennel seeds and stock, bring to a boil, and simmer for 30 minutes. Add thyme and season to taste with salt and pepper. Transfer to a blender and purée, adding the remaining 2 tbsp olive oil. Return to saucepan and heat gently. Garnish with fennel fronds, and serve.

We’ve been blogging for over a year now (we forgot our own blogiversary, but plan to bake ourselves a cake to celebrate sometime soon), which we realized means that we’ve used up all of our seasonal recipes. Late summer has arrived again and we want to make gazpacho. But wait — we wrote about that last year.

What will we do this fall when it’s time to make all of our favorite recipes, but we’ve already blogged them? Re-blog? Innovate? Make new dishes? The horror!

Luckily, this time we were able to use a recipe for a gazpacho that’s quite different from the classic version we made last year. Alex’s mom found this recipe in a cookbook called Thrill of the Grill, and cooked it for us when we visited his house last week. Enamored with its smoky, grilled flavor and chunky texture, we knew we had to do it again on our own.

This is great as an alternative to ordinary gazpachos, but its also a perfect soup on its own — filling and fresh, ideal for summer days and nights.

Ingredients:
1 tomato, sliced into 1-inch rounds
2 red peppers, halved with seeds removed
2 green peppers, halved with seeds removed
1 small eggplant, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
1 small onion, sliced into 1-inch rounds
3 cloves garlic
4 slices bread (preferably day old)
2 quarts tomato juice (we used one quart spicy, one quart not spicy)
juice of 2 lemons
salt and pepper to taste
basil for garnish

Instructions:
Grill peppers, tomato, eggplant and onion until soft, cooked, and lightly charred — about 10-12 minutes. Once vegetables are cool, cut them into small pieces. Combine bread and garlic with a little bit of salt and pepper in the food processor, and pulse until combined. Whisk tomato juice into bread mixture, then add vegetables. Season to taste with salt and pepper, add lemon, garnish with basil and serve.

Are you interesting?

Because this is a soup, we concluded, for interesting people. If you are boring, might I suggest this recipe instead? No need to read on.

So the soup. It’s not your grandmother’s Thanksgiving staple, and it’s not the version you held your nose and swallowed so that you could leave the table and play vids. Ahem, “do homework.”

This is the soup you wish you had in those days — creamy without cream, tangy, flavorful, exotic, and perfect for sipping outdoors on warm summer nights.

It’s a raw soup, so no cooking involved, and it derives its silky texture from avocado, not anything milky. The recipe is originally from Vegetarian Times Magazine, and we adjusted it a good bit. Also, we added pine nuts since the recipe calls for them, but I’m not quite sure what they did for the soup. If you want to try omitting them, let us know how it goes.

Ingredients (serves 2-3):
2 cups carrot juice
1 avocado
2 tbsp ginger
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/8 tsp cumin
2 tbsp lime juice
lime slices for garnish

Instructions:
Process pine nuts in a food processor for about 15 seconds. Combine with all other ingredients in a blender, and blend until smooth. Chill. Garnish with lime slices, and serve.

Our birthdays should actually be called “get pampered by food days.” We use them as an opportunity to go crazy at restaurants and in our own kitchens, not restricting ourselves by anything but the size of our stomaches (and sometimes not even that.) For my birthday yesterday, I put in a tall order: I wanted Alex to cook me dinner. Although my expectations were high, I was really blown away by some amazing dishes that I’d like to share. He photographed them as always, but insists that I write so that I can “talk about how delicious they were.” They were very delicious.

Take, for example, this lovely chilled roasted red pepper soup with croutons. I’d been yapping about making this soup for ages since I love the Trader Joe’s version, and Alex made a delicious recipe from Epicurious. It had a sweet, smoky flavor, and arrived topped with his signature crunchy, homemade croutons. The soup was simple, pretty, smooth and refreshing. Yesterday was abnormally chilly for late April, and I imagine it would be especially welcome on a warm summer day.

Ingredients (serves 4):
(soup)
4 large red bell peppers
2 tbs olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cups chicken stock
1/8 tsp dried crushed red pepper

(crutons)
1 1/2 cups of 1/2-inch French bread cubes (stale bread works great!)
2 tbs olive oil
salt and pepper

Instructions:
To make the soup, roast peppers under the broiler until blackened on all sides. Wrap peppers in a paper bag and let stand 10 minutes. Peel and seed, then cut into 1/2-inch pieces. Heat 2 tbsp oil in large saucepan, add onion and sauté until brown on edges, about 6 minutes. Add peppers and 3 cups stock. Simmer until vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes. Transfer peppers, onions and stock to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Mix in dried red pepper. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and chill until cold. (Can be made 1 day ahead.) For croutons, toss bread, olive oil, salt and pepper in a bowl until well coated. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 min until bread achieves the desired crunch. Spoon cooled soup into bowls. Top with bread and thin slices of basil if you desire.