Roasted Yam and Onion Soup
What I like about making soup so much is that if you start with the basics and pay attention to a few fundamentals, you can get very creative and end up with some really tasty dishes. I almost never start with a recipe, but I usually have one or two main ingredients in mind. All that remains is to decide how to prepare the ingredients for the maximum flavor and perfect texture.
What I had in the larder to work with was yams. I especially like yams, as they have a lot more flavor than potatoes, and their starch is a lot more complex. For a hypoglycemic like myself this is important, because the calories do not burn so quickly. The other thing about yams is that they are sweet, and this is an opportunity to develop some really intense flavors.
With anything sweet and starchy, you want to both maintain and intensify the flavors. This means that roasting, not boiling, is the best preparation. Roasting is a dry heat, which means that no moisture will be leaching away flavors or nutrients, and the starches and sugars will have a chance to carmelize as well. If you have read many of my posts, then you will know that I am a huge fan of carmelization, and will take any chance I get to use it. In fact, in this soup I used carmelization twice (more on the second time below). I simply took 3 large yams, poked holes in their skins to allow steam to escape (this prevents explosions inside the oven, but more importantly it allows moisture to leave, letting the temperature increase to the proper levels for carmelization). I put them on a cookie sheet and roasted them for about 80 minutes at 400 degrees F. When they are done, they should be very soft to the touch, and should also have a reddish liquid oozing from the holes that were poked in the skin. No, they are not bleeding; this is carmelized sugar that is leaking out, and it is a good sign that the roasting went well.
After they are removed from the oven they will need to cool down for at least 20 minutes before you can handle them easily. Once they have cooled down, simply split the skin, and peel it away with your fingers — it will peel away very easily if the roasting is complete. Next, cut them into one or two inch thick slices and put them aside for adding to the soup later.
The second main ingredient I used was a large, white sweet onion. I wanted to treat it almost the same as I do in French Onion Soup, where they get suateed until they are golden brown. This is the second item that got carmelized, along with 4 cloves of garlic that I tossed in. I sliced the onions fairly thin (not paper thin; about the same as the onion slices in onion rings), crushed the garlic cloves to remove the skin, and tossed them in a soup pot with some butter and olvice oil, and a healthy pinch of salt. The olive oil helps by increasing the burning point of the butter, which lets you cook at a slightly higher temperature without getting that bitter burnt taste that butter can get after it begins to smoke. I cooked the onions and garlic for about half an hour at medium, stirring occassionally to make sure that all of them got their turn at the bottom of the pot. Once they were cooked, I “deglazed” the pot with a bit of chicken stock. ”Deglazing” simply means pouring in a small amount of liquid, and scraping off the bits that are cooked onto the bottom of the pan or pot. The little cooked-on bits are packed full of flavor, and you should always find a way to get these back into your food, providing they aren’t burned to a crisp, of course.
When the onions were deglazed, I added the remainder of my 6 cups of stock. In this soup, or any other, you can use any kind of broth or stock you want, which is why I included this in the Vegetarian category. (You can also use just olive oil instead of including butter). Vegetable stock, chicken stock, beef or veal are all good choices. I am not certain that a fish stock would be a good combination, but it might be worth trying. In mine, I used 2 cups of beef and 4 cups of chicken because that’s what I had on hand (that’s what soup is all about — using what you have!)
I then added the yams, and used a potato masher to get them to a lumpy consistency. You don’t need to cream them at this stage, as they will get mushy as they cook anyway. The next step is flavoring, and this is another opportunity to get creative. Because yams are so sweet, the more herbacious spices are probably not the best choices to use; instead, I went with a classic ingredient: nutmeg. Even though nutmeg is usually associated with desserts and sweet drinks, you should not be afraid to try it with savory dishes too, especially those that cross the line between sweet and savory already. Nutmeg is also used in simple White Sauce (also called Bechamel Sauce), and can be used in combination with other spices to create distinctive asian flavor sensations.
The last things I added were a cup of heavy cream for texture (completely optional; it can be left out altogether, or replaced with milk), and a little black pepper. About 5 minutes to heat it through, and then I used an immersion blender (hand-held blender, basically) to mix it to a creamy consistency.
I have to say, this was one of the best soups I ever made. It was really not that hard, and each step was simple and straightforward. What really makes this dish work is the proper treatment of the ingredients, and a little knowledge of what spices work with which foods. When you have this knowledge, it is easy to make dishes in which the ingredients speak for themselves, rather than the preparation of it. And to me, that is the essence of good cooking.
Yours in Good Taste,
Erik Christensen