Author: wellfedemily

Red bean soup.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

We’re going on a little vacation this weekend, so it’s nice to not have to buy groceries and also use up the stuff in the fridge. Also, periodically, I like to make a ton of soup, which can be frozen in containers for lunches. The timing was perfect for this soup, which is equal parts cheap to make and tasty to eat – the sweet potato gives the soup great texture and a touch of sweetness, and the combination of chipotle and lime makes it seriously flavourful.

It’s super good for you – low in fat, high in fibre, and filled with healthy stuff. Also, it goes very well with cold beer. So, no one loses!

Even if you don’t have this stuff in your fridge, I recommend a trip to the market to make this one on a weeknight. It’ll take you about an hour, not including the time to soak the beans – just plan ahead a bit, setting the beans to soak before you leave for work. And the leftovers are even better the next day.

Red bean soup

(Serves four to six.)

  • 1/2 lb. dried red kidney beans, soaked for eight hours
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 small sweet potato, diced (about one cup, but if you end up with a bit more, just use it)
  • 1 cup chopped celery
  • 4 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 5.5 oz. can tomato paste
  • 2 to 4 chipotles (or to taste), chopped
  • 1 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
  • 1 lime
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  • Water

Drain and thoroughly rinse beans. Don’t use the liquid you soaked the beans in, because that liquid contains something like 80% of the farty compounds that make beans so unpleasant sometimes. If you drain and rinse, you’ll wash that away. Set aside.

In a large pot, sweat onions, sweet potato, and celery in olive oil. Add garlic, and pour beans into the pot. Fill pot with four cups of water.

Bring to a boil over high heat. Maintain a boil for about five minutes, before reducing to medium-high heat, and stir in tomato paste. Let cook, uncovered, for thirty to forty minutes, until sweet potatoes are soft and beans are easily cut in half. Add chipotles. (Note: You can buy chipotles in cans in the Latin section of the supermarket, or in smaller Latin markets. They’re cheaper there. Or just get them for free from your friends who go to Mexico.)

Remove pot from heat, and blend until smooth with an additional two to three cups of water, adding extra water for thinner consistency, if desired.

Return to heat, and stir in cumin, coriander, and the juice of the lime. Add salt and pepper, taste, and adjust seasoning as needed.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream, topped with shredded cheddar cheese and chopped cilantro. A side of tortilla chips is a nice touch. And don’t forget the beer.

Tangelo Tart: Not just an amazing stripper name.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Okay, so, I’ve been trying to mostly eat locally and sustainably and good crap like that, at least as far as meat and produce are concerned, but sometimes the city kicks my ass and the clouds are so dark and dense that I’m all, “ALL I WANT IS AN ORANGE IN MY MOUTH!” Already the Olympics are starting to make my neighbourhood really annoying, and no one has seen the sun for days. Wouldn’t you want a tangelo? Me too, and so I tumble off my high horse and tear savagely into as many tangelos as I can get my hands on at once.

And it’s worth it.

In addition to juicing them, and gnashing at their flesh with my menacing fruit fangs, I also turned them into a gooey orange tart, which was shared with Nick and Paul and Grace at Grace’s dinner party last night. I am literally still full after Grace’s succulent roast leg of lamb, buttery lemon potatoes, and creamy spinach and gailan gratin. But since my only contribution to the night was a bottle of Riesling and the tart, I am going to tell you about that. One day perhaps Grace will guest post. I will work on that.

So here you are: Tangelo Tart.

Tangelo tart

Crust

  • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup ground almonds
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup flour

Custard

  • 3 large eggs, plus 3 additional egg yolks
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 tbsp. tangelo zest
  • 1/2 cup fresh tangelo juice
  • 2 tsp. lemon juice
  • 1/2 cup butter, cubed and chilled

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, cream together butter, almonds, and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg, and beat until thoroughly combined.

Add flour, and stir until a crumbly dough forms. Press dough into a 9″ tart pan. Line the crust with a piece of parchment weighted with pie weights or dried beans.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges. Remove from heat to a wire rack to cool.

Check your large bowls against your pot tops. Find one that fits nicely.

Into that fitting bowl, whisk eggs, yolks, sugar, zest, and juice. Place bowl over a pot of simmering water, and whisk, almost continuously, until mixture has thickened. At first, the mix will seem frothy, as if there is a layer of foam atop a layer of juice, but don’t worry. Your constant attention will ensure that the bottom layer joins the top layer in yellow creaminess. You’ll know it’s done when the mix is of a uniform thickness and texture, and when it coats the back of a spoon.

Remove the bowl from the heat, and whisk in butter, one cube at a time, until the butter has melted into the mix. Pour into a different bowl, cover with plastic wrap (make sure the wrap covers the surface of the custard or else a skin will form and it will look gross). Refrigerate until cooled.

Pour cooled custard into cooled pie crust. At this point, you will notice that you might have made too much custard, and you may find this annoying. But there’s a reason. Turn oven to broil.

You see? This is where it gets tricky, especially if you are easily distracted.

Place tart in oven under broiler, and allow top to brown slightly.

Operative word: SLIGHTLY. You want it to be a marbley kind of goldenness, not unlike creme brulée. If you get distracted and singe the top of the tart, the extra filling will come in handy as you scrape off the ugly bits and try again. It did for me. If you’re not a broiler failure, save the extra custard and either drizzle it over the whipped cream you’ll serve with the tart, or store it in a ramekin and eat it on your own later. There should be about one cup extra.

Chill tart for four hours before serving. Serve with whipped cream. Sigh heavily over its punchy fruitiness, its ooey-gooeyness, its “I can’t believe it’s not August” splendor.

Burdock pickles.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

Right now, at this very moment, I am making the brightest-tasting tart ever to be enjoyed in February, but there’s a lull in the process as my crust and my custard are cooling. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

I say that a lot. I said it about the burdock. So, lest you think I am being evasive and not sharing the magnificent joys of burdock root, I pickled it. All eight feet, which amounts to three little jars of spicy, garlicky pickles, all cooling on my windowsill.

They’re a lot like carrot pickles, which is exciting. Actually, they’re a lot like David Liebovitz’s carrot pickles, because I adapted the recipe from his site. Except that instead of two cloves of garlic smashed, I used four whole cloves of garlic per jar, and instead of cider vinegar, I used rice vinegar and a tasty drop or ten of mirin. ALSO, they’re spiced with one minced hot red pepper, and not fennel. Pretty good, at least based on the initial round of tasting – once they’ve stewed in their juices for three to six weeks, I am sure they will be awesome.

So there you have it. Follow through, late as usual, but enthusiastic nonetheless.

Another easy pizza crust, perfect for something unpleasant like Wednesday.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

So … burdock will have to wait until tomorrow. When you see prosciutto on special, you jump on it, and then you maximize its salty porkiness by cutting it into strips and baking it onto a pizza.

I make this foccacia bread that contains potato, and it’s quite delicious and always very moist. Sometimes I stretch the dough out and turn it into pizza, but it’s not a thing to make on weeknights, when I need to eat now-if-not-sooner the moment I get home. I thought tonight I’d try shredding potato into pizza dough and baking it that way, because it’s quicker than foccacia, and I might be onto something. Something awesome.

I topped the pizza with a sauce of a crushed bulb of roasted garlic and olive oil and some basil, strips of prosciutto, and a half-pound of mushrooms cooked in olive oil and garlic. And cheese, but not that much, actually, because even though it seems counter-intuitive not to load the thing up with an excess of cheese, on a pizza like this it’s better to use only what you need.

I’m only going to give you the recipe for the crust, because you can top it with whatever you want. But if you top it with roasted garlic and basil and prosciutto and mushrooms, I promise, you’ll be ecstatic upon eating it.

Potato pizza crust

(Makes one large-size pizza crust.)

  • 2 tsp. dry yeast
  • 1/2 tsp. sugar
  • 3/4 cup warm water
  • 1 medium potato (such as Yukon Gold), grated
  • 2 cups + 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. olive oil
  • 1 tsp. cornmeal

In a large bowl, combine yeast, sugar, and water. Let stand about five minutes, until yeast is fluffy.

Add potato. Stir to combine.

Add two cups of flour, salt, and oil, and mix until a slightly sticky dough has formed. If your potato is bigger and causes an excessively moist dough, add a bit more flour. Turn out onto a floured surface, and knead in the additional quarter cup of flour.

Preheat your oven to 400°F. Cover dough and let stand for 20 minutes, as close to the oven as you can. Let it feel the warmth and grow just a bit.

Roll dough out into a relatively round sheet, a bit less than a half-inch thick, and lay onto a baking sheet sprinkled with the teaspoon of cornmeal. Top with whatever you like, and bake for about 25 minutes.

This is a bit unusual, and probably not what you want if you’re a die-hard thin-crust fan. It’s fluffy, because the potatoes get steamy as they cook, foofing up the flour and making this perfectly moist.

The other thing about it is that it’s filling, which is perfect for weeknight dinner, but it’s unexpected, and so you’re surprised around slice number three that you don’t even want dessert anymore, and you’re tempted to change into pajama pants if you haven’t already. Which I guess is good? Well, maybe the n0-dessert thing. Nick keeps mentioning my pajama pants, and how other wives wear skirts or sexy yoga pants, and he can shut right up because I feed him better than the other wives feed their Nicks, and they’re less fun and can’t hold their liquor. My pajamas are a point of contention around here.

Anyway, make this. It’s delicious. And soon, I promise, something about burdock root, which is not actually a very good hook if I’m hoping to get you to come back.

Winter chili: Sometimes you’re just too lazy to go to the store.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

Today was very busy, and I went into it tired, which never bodes well. I got home a bit early from work, and we were supposed to write tonight, because we’re doing that now, so I put on a big pot of chili. We never got to the writing – we were both malfunctioning creatively. Fortunately, chili is comfort food, and so as we vegetated, we at least did a little something good for ourselves.

I make this sort of thing a lot, and there was never really a recipe until tonight, when I finally wrote down everything that’s in it. It’s so easy, and you probably have most of what you need already. It’s a winter chili – in the springtime, and in the summer, we’ll have vegetarian chili with bell peppers, zucchini, fresh tomatoes, and things like that. This is a hearty dish making use of what’s available right now, things like the canned goods you have in your pantry and sweet potatoes. It takes a little longer than you may like for dinner on a weeknight, but it’s the kind of thing you can stick in a crockpot and cook all day, if that’s easier.

Serve this with cornbread.

Vegetarian winter chili

  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 medium sweet potato, chopped (about two cups)
  • 5 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes, including liquid
  • 1 19 oz. can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 19 oz. can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • 1 19 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 5.5 oz. can tomato paste
  • 1 cup beer, such as pilsner or pale ale
  • 4 tsp. chili powder
  • 2 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
  • Salt, to taste

In a large, heavy-bottomed pan over medium-high heat, sweat onions and sweet potatoes in olive oil. Stir in garlic, and add canned tomatoes. Reduce to medium heat.

Add beans to the pot, and stir in tomato paste. Stir in beer, add spices and salt, and simmer, uncovered, for ten minutes. Taste, and adjust seasonings as needed. Here is where you may want to add something like chopped chipotle peppers, or a dose of Tabasco or sriracha or something, but I didn’t feel like it. Had a spicy lunch.

Cover, and reduce to medium-low heat. Cook for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the sweet potato is soft.

Serve hot, in bowls. This makes quite a lot, so divvy the remains into dishes to take for lunches. I love meals like that, that you enjoy in the first place, and that you can revisit later on in lunch form. It makes good sense, and it saves having to trek out into the world in search of a mediocre deli sandwich.

Speaking of excess, today I bought some burdock root. I have what amounts to eight feet of it, because I watch too much Iron Chef and am never smart enough to know when I’m outmatched by an ingredient. I’ll show it to you tomorrow – it’s a little ridiculous, and was a pain to carry home on the bus. I think I am going to pickle the stuff.

Have you any good ideas for burdock root? A Google search turned up very little information – apparently all of Japan is confused by the stuff, and only has one recipe for something called Burdock Kinpira, and since it’s been done to death, I’d like to try a new approach. If you’ve tried it and have some good ideas, let me know. I’m hoping tomorrow will be a thinking day, and that I will have my wits about me. Wish me luck.

Things like blue-cheese mousse.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

On Saturday, my food had a photo shoot for a magazine it’s going to be in. I wrote the recipes, and am scurrying to finish the last of the article (lame how this is my break?), but I wanted to tell you all about it. It, but mostly the mousse.

I made a few things – bacon-maple popcorn, which was fantastic but it was my big recipe so I can’t tell you about it until later, after the magazine comes out. I’ll post a link then, so you can make it and impress your friends with how very Canadian you can be. I made a little potato tart on puff pastry, and some wonderful little cheesy puff balls. And I made a little bit of mousse, with a little bit of Stilton, a thing I am going to elaborate on a bit later, and dropped it onto endive leaves and topped with slices of apple.

It made me insufferably gloaty. I ate almost all of it after the shoot. I didn’t feel great afterward. I blame the volume of cheese I consumed, but it could have been the bacon popcorn, or one of the two magnums we drank while all the photos happened. It was probably the Filet-o-Fish I had for lunch when on the run between grocery stores, the bank, and the apartment where I was burning things and Nick was trying to help but just getting in the way.

The photographer, Duran, was very nice and knows the boy I had a crush on in high school who is now a dentist and was kind enough to not say, “You’re weird and covered in crusty bits. I think he’s out of your league and please stop stealing sips of my wine.”

But I digress. The mousse.

I tested this out with a bit of Stilton I had on hand, because Stilton tastes like magic and my aunt told me about a dish at the ill-fated Star Anise restaurant that used to be on 12th and Granville that made a mousse of it. It was like eating cheese clouds off of crunchy boats paddled by apple oars, if you can imagine that.

So why don’t I just get to the recipe then?

Yes. Let’s go.

Stilton mousse on endive

  • 1/4 lb. crumbled Stilton
  • 1/4 lb. cream cheese (at room temperature)
  • 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon heavy cream, divided
  • 1 tart-fleshed apple, such as Granny Smith
  • 24 Belgian endive leaves (from approximately three endives)

Beat together the Stilton, cream cheese, and one tablespoon of the cream until creamy and smooth.

In a separate bowl, beat the cream until soft peaks form.

Fold the cream into the cheese, a little bit at a time, until fully combined. Taste, and adjust seasonings with salt and pepper, if desired.

Spoon into endive leaves and top with thin slices of apple. Serve cold, and as soon as you can.

Luscious. Wonderful. And there’s more where that came from. Check out the upcoming issue of LOVE. Magazine for details. I’ll post a link when it’s online.

Lazy Sunday muffins.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was non-stop, and I had a bijillion things to do and I was exhausted at the end of it, so much so that I decided it would be appropriate to change into footie pajamas mid dinner party, and then went to bed early, while all the guests were still here. As of right now, I am still in the footie pajamas, on the couch. It. Is. Awesome.

I got up briefly, because breakfast is important and I like baked goods. You know, something you can eat while you sit on your ass in front of the TV? That’s all I wanted, and so: Muffins. Lemony coconut muffins – little breakfasty bites – perfect for a pleasantly aimless Sunday morning.

Lemony coconut muffins

  • 1/2 cup butter (at room temperature)
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup coconut milk
  • 1 lemon (1/2 tsp. lemon zest, juice of whole lemon)
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup toasted unsweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Drop in eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each egg. Add coconut milk, lemon zest and juice, and continue beating until batter is smooth.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into the mix. Add in coconut as well. Fold the dry ingredients into the batter until just moistened.

Fill a muffin pan with 12 muffin liners, and then divide the batter between the 12 cups. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of one comes out clean. Muffins should be yellow and lightly golden.

Remove muffins to a wire rack to cool, but serve warm, preferably with butter and a cup of tea or milk. These little muffins are so nice – softly coconutty, with a pop of lemon in every bite. Sweet, fluffy, and unexpected – I think I’ll make these next time we host brunch here. I bet they’d be nice with lime instead of lemon, if you wanted to switch things up. Lovely, and I tested them on the couch and they were perfect there too.

Homemade soy milk? Not difficult, and cheaper than anything ever.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

There are probably hundreds of thousands of food blogs to stumble upon, a percentage of which are beautiful and amazing and full of fantastic recipes and the percentage is higher than you think. It’s sometimes overwhelming, all this blog-stalking one gets to in pursuit of a diversion and something clever to do with all of these odd groceries one picks up because they were on sale or they were weird and it turns out one is not as creative as one thought.

One. Not me, of course. Of course. In the course of my regular stalking reading, I stumbled upon a beautiful food blog that made me want to pick up and change everything that I am. Or something like that. I found it through Tea and Cookies on Twitter – Tea and Cookies also makes me want to change everything that I am, and at this point, the thought of everything I need to do to improve is so exhausting that I think I’ll stay me, at least until I win the lottery and can afford to be someone better. Everyone notices a train wreck, and so that is what I will cling to.

Anyway, the thing is this blog, and this soy milk. Go there, and make it right now and wonder why you ever bought that crap at the market, even if it was on sale. This is so much cheaper than on sale: Using the organic dried soybeans, one batch cost me around thirty cents, and its yield was about one litre. Drink it hot or ice cold, or use it in your coffee before you head out for your weekend. Me? I’m using it in homemade chai lattes, which I am using to fuel a weekend of cookery, recipe development, article writing, and ego boosting in the form of a foodie photo shoot, which I hope to tell you all about tomorrow or the day after.

Have a great weekend!

Quiche is nothing to sneer at and is plenty manly, thanksverymuch.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

I made quiche for Nick.

In a different time, I’ve heard, it wasn’t so manly to eat quiche, never mind to want it. I met Nick in poetry class. The generations, how they gap. He wrote very long poems about damp shorelines and dead horses, and he wore scarves and I was convinced there was something wrong with him because he wasn’t madly in love with me. I thought he was the kind of guy who’d like quiche, you know?

It’s just as well: I was never interested in the kind of  boy who’d frown at quiche. And as it happens, that kind of boy was never interested in me either.

And here we are, a couple of years later and that’s all, and I mentioned quiche the other day and he kept reminding me I’d mentioned it. Nick wanted quiche. So I set out to buy some seasonal greens and a bit of whole milk for ricotta, and I made Nick an eggy pie for dinner.

I wanted to tell you about the quiche that had the chard in it, but my market was out and I was too lazy and too high up in heels to try another store, so I guess I’ll tell you about the spinach quiche, though I’d like for you to imagine it with chard. It’d be easy enough to substitute the chard for the spinach, just blanch the chard first. You don’t have to do the same with the spinach, because it’s wimpier.

Nick would have liked the quiche with chard better, I think, because chard is a manlier green, probably. (It’s perfectly lovely with spinach too, I’m just being unpleasant.) I suppose we’ll try again next week, maybe Monday when the shelves have been restocked.

Ricotta and greens quiche

Crust

  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 8 tbsp. cold butter
  • 1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk, beaten
  • 3 to 5 tbsp. ice water

Filling:

  • 1 tbsp. butter
  • 1 shallot, minced
  • 1 cup fresh ricotta cheese (this is a very good recipe, and I keep wanting it, even now after it’s gone)
  • 1 1/2 cups milk
  • 2 large eggs, plus the white left over from the crust
  • 1 tsp. Dijon mustard
  • 1 1/2 tsp. Kosher salt
  • 1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 1/2 cups packed fresh spinach leaves or blanched chard (my estimate is two bunches, chopped and lightly packed once blanched; this is what I would use, but please correct me if I’m wrong)

Assemble pastry in the typical way, crushing the butter between your fingers into the flour, salt, and Parmesan. Stir in beaten egg and ice water until dough forms. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough out with a bit of flour, and press into a nine-inch tart pan. Roll the rolling pin across the top to trim away the extra dough. Line the pie crust with parchment and fill with dried beans or pie weights. Bake at 400°F for 20 minutes.

Remove pastry from the oven. Cool slightly, remove beans and parchment, and continue to cool. Until cool. Meanwhile, leave the oven on.

Sauté shallots in butter. Remove from heat and set aside.In a large bowl, whisk together your ricotta, milk, eggs and egg white, mustard, salt, pepper, Parmesan, and nutmeg. Add your shallots and butter to the mix, and whisk again.

Taste now, and adjust your seasonings as needed. Stir in your spinach or chard, and pour into the pie crust.

Bake mixture in shell for 4o to 45 minutes, until golden and slightly puffed. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 20 to 30 minutes before serving. Remove from tart pan to slice and serve.

Enjoy. It smells so good, and is the creamiest quiche in the history of ever, because of the fresh ricotta and because when you’re making something like quiche, you just sort of will it to work, and those happy thoughts make it into the oven with the pie. Serves four for brunch or dinner, or more if you’re cutting it smaller to make it an hors d’oeuvre.

Nothing dainty about it. Isn’t it nice that anyone can have this sort of thing now? Yes. Yes it is. And besides, I wouldn’t serve something like this to anyone who’d sneer at any sort of homemade pie. We don’t take kindly to those types around here, poets or not.

Miso Monday.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

Today is a very stiff day, in which I am confined mostly to the couch with inflammation and unbrushed hair. Fortunately, I’ve got three seasons of Sex and the City on DVD and close at hand, so even though I am stuck here, I can’t say I mind. Painkillers and television are such wonderful things when used in combination.

For sick days or lazy days or days where you can’t do much with your hands, miso soup is a great thing, easy, and only four ingredients. Five if you have scallions, but I did not. I stole this recipe, sort of, from my friend Tracy, who eats this stuff every day for lunch – when you amortize the cost of the ingredients over the length of time they’ll last for, it’s a meal you can make for literally cents and little more. It’s filling enough and good for you, too.

You can buy kelp and miso at stores like Whole Foods or at Asian markets, where it’s likely to be cheaper.

Also, the darker your miso paste, the more flavour you’ll get. I only had white miso paste (shiro miso), but I like the red stuff a lot better. But you can make do with what you’ve got, and adjust the amounts of each ingredient to your own taste.

Miso soup

(Serves one; multiply for additional servings.)

  • 1 1/4 cups water
  • 1 strip macro kelp, trimmed into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 1 heaping tablespoon miso paste (or to taste – if using red or black miso, use less)
  • 4 mushrooms, sliced
  • 6 bite-size cubes of medium-firm tofu
  • 1 tbsp. chopped green onions (optional)
  • A few drops of sesame oil (optional)

In a small pan over medium-high heat, add kelp to water and bring to a gentle boil.

Reduce heat to medium-low, and add miso paste. Taste as you go, adding more to taste.

When paste is dissolved and you’ve reached your desired flavour, stir in mushrooms and tofu and simmer gently, until just heated through, about two minutes.

If adding scallions and sesame oil, stir into soup just before serving. Serve with tea, or with a refreshing glass of ginger ale. And then take a nap, if you feel like it.

UPDATE: I tried this again, with two kinds of miso, and it was even more fantastic. I also sauteed the mushrooms quickly in a bit of butter and the tiniest bit of garlic before adding them to the soup, and the results were a revelation, totally serious.