Soup, Stew, Pasta

Three recipes and eating notes

Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This week’s newsletter is three recipes and eating notes.

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I don’t have a well-formulated thought with which to open this newsletter. I have been working a lot and travelling for book events while performing gestational labour, aka being pregnant, which I have truly experienced as work. Instead of an essay, I present the documentation of three recipes I have cooked recently – which is also how I began writing for myself for the first time, in 2011. Sometimes it is not possible to gain sufficient distance from living to reflect on it and I can only record a few of my actions.

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Potage crème de carottes (a favourite soup)

This is a recipe for soup from an old-fashioned hotel in Switzerland that my family stayed at when I was around twelve years old. It remains one of my absolute favourite soups and if followed precisely RE quantities, produces a divine and balanced flavour. When I made this yesterday, I had weighing scales next to me as I sat at the table to check the weight of each ingredient after I’d peeled and chopped it. Pedantic perhaps, but the result was dreamy. I listened to a detective novel as I did so – an Inspector Wexford mystery by Ruth Rendell that was free on Audible.

Ingredients

Serves 2-3

400g carrots
1 small onion
150g leeks
1 small clove of garlic
700ml of vegetable or light chicken stock – hot
2 tablespoons crème fraiche

30g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons olive oil

How to Make

Clean, peel and roughly chop all of the vegetables to the same size, around 1cm X 1cm.  Melt butter and olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan and add all vegetables. Sauté on a medium heat for 5 minutes in the fat until they begin to soften, stirring so they all have contact with the heat. Pour in the hot stock. Leave to simmer uncovered for one hour on a low heat so it is very gently bubbling, making sure it does not dry out. Blitz thoroughly with a hand blender. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste. Stir in two tablespoons of crème fraiche. Serve.

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Braised orange-scented beef

This dish is an echo of something my mother has made once or twice, of beef flavoured with orange. I hadn’t planned on making this – the beef was quickly defrosted and I used what other vegetables we had – a bag of shallots and two carrots, for the rest. It’s very good served with long grain rice.

Ingredients

Serves 3-4

600g ish stewing beef, cut into 1.5 inch chunks
300g shallots, whole and peeled
2 large carrots (or more smaller ones), peeled and cut into 1 inch lengths
5 garlic cloves, whole and peeled
2, inch-long lengths of ginger, peeled
1 cinnamon stick
1 tin plum tomatoes
2 tablespoons soy sauce
4 tablespoons of Shaoxing wine or sherry
4 strips of orange peel (1cm x 4cm)
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ tablespoon muscovado sugar
40g unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil

How to make:

In a heavy based pot, melt the butter and olive oil together until foaming, and add in the beef and shallots and turn in the fat till the meat is lightly browned all over. Add the garlic, ginger and cinnamon stick and turn around in the pan. Season with a pinch of salt and a grind of black pepper. Add the wine or sherry, soy sauce and stir and let bubble for 30 seconds, scraping anything that has stuck off the bottom of the pan. Add the tomatoes, carrots, orange peel and enough cold water to cover with one inch of water above the level of the contents.

Simmer for 2 hours, gently bubbling. Add more water if it gets dry. Check seasoning and add more salt if desired.

Eat with rice.

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10-Minute Potato, Fennel, and Anchovy Cream Pasta

This is a soft, comforting and richly savoury pasta dish that takes as long to make as it takes the pasta to cook. The fennel is optional, but adds a gentle aniseed note.

Ingredients

Serves 2

1 medium size potato, peeled and cut into 1cm cubes
½ fennel bulb, finely sliced
4 anchovies
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
1 small dried chilli
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons, double cream
c. 30g finely grated parmesan for the sauce, plus extra to serve

c. 190g pasta (ideally a shape that takes under ten minutes to cook so as not to overcook the potato) – if pasta takes longer to cook, add the potato and fennel to the pot after a few minutes.

How to make:

Boil 2 litres of water in a saucepan and add 2 teaspoons of salt. Add the pasta, potato and fennel. Meanwhile, in a frying pan that can accommodate all the ingredients at the end, add the anchovies, garlic, and dried chilli in 2 tablespoons of olive oil, turn on the heat and cook gently, breaking up the anchovies with a wooden spoon. When the garlic is fragrant but before it browns, turn the heat right down and add the cream. Stir and then add a ladle of pasta water, half the grated parmesan and shake the pan to bring everything together and stir. If there’s still a while for the pasta to cook, turn off the heat – you don’t want it to dry out.When the pasta is cooked, extract a cup of water from the pot, then drain and add pasta, potato and fennel to the cream mixture. Toss it well, with the help of a wooden spoon, a few tablespoons more pasta water, and the other half of the grated parmesan. Check seasoning and add more salt if desired.  Serve immediately in deep plates/ bowls to accommodate any sauciness, with extra parmesan to grate on top if desired.

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Eating Notes

After I gave a writing workshop to students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill they took me to a fried seafood restaurant Saltbox and ate fried shrimp, oysters, fish and potatoes. The frying was ideal – leaving fish tender and not at all greasy – and the seasoning was so good I have thought about it constantly since. Thank you to Kelly and Antonia and your students for a wonderful time talking, thinking and eating in Chapel Hill.

Biscuits, fried egg, cheese and home fries at Sutton’s Drug Store diner in Chapel Hill. An affordable and welcoming place that I would love to return to.

Chicken, sweet plantains, beans and rice at Super Pollo in Ridgewood, New York. The plantains were so good I ordered an extra plate of them. There was a huge quantity of food (appetisers not pictured) and I saved leftover chicken to make soup.

Chicken soup made in my friend Nellie’s flat using leftover rotisserie chicken and leftover chicken from Super Pollo in Ridgewood. With leek, carrot, and onion. Very very good! Very chickeny.

Michigan four berry pie – amazing! Sour cherry, blueberry, blackberries and raspberries. Shared with my friend Dani’s partner Alex when I visited them in Ann Arbor. Each berry could be distinctly tasted. Overall wonderfully sharp with rich sweet crumble topping.

Appetisers at Giovanni’s restaurant in Dearborn – a suburb of Detroit dominated by Henry Ford’s vision of industrial utopia, the Ford Rouge Complex designed by Albert Kahn. Giovanni’s is an old fashioned and glamorous Italian restaurant in the midst of an industrial landscape. My favourite dish of a very good meal was the angel hair spaghetti with tomato sauce.

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Other things

Granta published my essay Haruspex in December, the most substantial piece of new work I published in 2023. Available to read for free online.

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy

is running a new online book club in January and February and her first book is my book Small Fires. Find out more on her newsletter. Kennedy has partnered with wonderful New York bookshop Archestratus to offer 20% off Small Fires too – they can send the book by post if you are not local.