Vegan Hot and Sour Soup
Hello there!
Raise your hand if you're not quite ready to give up summer but sorta looking forward to sweaters and cozy bowls of soups and stews. Here in Santa Cruz, the fog has rolled in so we're layering up once again. I'm not ready to pull out the light down jacket but I am wearing socks as I'm typing this note to you.
We had a Monarch butterfly visit yesterday. It rested on the curry leaf branch for a while, long enough for me to capture a decent photo. Now is the time when the Monarchs travel to Mexico. Santa Cruz is luckily part of its migratory route. If you're in our area, check in with Natural Bridges State Beach to see if there's Monarch action.
Seasonal Soup
Seasonal cooking these days means that you can take advantage of the shoulder season. That's to say, I'm getting a deal on large bunches of green onions at the farmer's market (for some reason green o's at my regular markets have gone up big time!). That means when I was working on a vegan hot-and-sour soup and needed a bright green accent, I went big on green onion. It perked up the color and flavor of the soup recipe, which I just posted on the site for you to cook up. Nope, you won't miss the meat. There's plenty of texture, depth and flavor.
Along with the detailed recipe, there's a little video to highlight what went into the soup. We enjoyed the hot-and-sour soup for a few days because one batch can serve many. Grab the Vegan Hot and Sour Soup recipe.
Rare Genius Status
I've written a lot about tofu and it's a star in my upcoming book, Ever-Green Vietnamese. But I never thought any of my ideas were brilliant. I just try to figure out ways to use the little soy bean. But Kristen Miglore included my tofu and canh recipes in her Simply Genius cookbook, which just released. She told me that the tofu and canh provided comfort and nourishment during her many hectic days of being a working mom, executive at Food52, and writer. Eater picked up on the recipe and Bettina Makalintal interviewed me for a story that ran last week. The recipe is included.
Chinese-American Restaurateur Icon
Sylvia Wu, nee Cheng recently passed away at the age of 106. She was born near Shanghai and with lots of pluck and contacts, her Madame Wu's Garden restaurant was a major Hollywood celebrity scene for decades. Merv Griffin, Mia Farrow, and Robert Redford were among the patrons. She drove a Rolls Royce, influenced what we now know as Chinese chicken salad, insisted on old-school Peking duck preparation but allowed for steaming refrigerated biscuit dough into bao. She also wrote a cookbook that is now out of print. You can read about Madame Wu in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times tributes; and if my share link does not work to get you pass the paywall, here's a summary from Eater.
September Book Giveaway Winner!
Congratulations to Kim for winning the giveaway. She shared that she has visited Vietnam before with Vietnamese expats. What a marvelous trip that must have been.