Challenge 1 - Coconut Milk

Last Thursday, my friend Carrie tagged me in a Facebook note titled, “Iron Chef Blogger Challenge.” Carrie and I actually met through blogging years ago and have remained friends through various shifts from Deadjournal to MySpace to Facebook and beyond. So any note with “blogger” in the title is bound to catch my attention. And I may be a bit of a food addict. Not just eating, although most times I would be happy to spend my whole day eating. I have a tendency to use cooking as a stress relief. It’s cheaper than a therapist, but barely.

But I digress. Carrie sent out a note, tagging 19 friends, inviting all of us to join her in a weekly Iron Chef challenge. Every Saturday we will find out our secret ingredient for the week and any applicable rule. (For week one, where rhubarb was the secret ingredient, the rule was “no pies”.) This Saturday I received my first Iron Chef missive: it was time to cook with coconut milk.

I would like to think that I’m fairly normal. My assumption upon hearing coconut milk was, “Oh! Thai food!” I’m guessing that most of my friends would have the same reaction. Here’s the caveat to Thai food: I am deathly allergic to peanuts. John, my live-in better half who also benefits from my cooking sprees, is deathly allergic to ocean-dwelling fish. (Trout and catfish are okay, farmed salmon has a green light and for some strange reason, the cod in fish and chips doesn’t kill him. But everything else, including shellfish is a great, big NO GO.) With both of our food allergies, we’ve pretty much ruled out a nice, cheap vacation to Southeast Asia. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have any Thai food, right? Right. I managed to find a recipe for “Thai Chicken and Coconut Milk Soup” that looked really appetizing.

I should have stopped there – I really should have. But I continued my Google search for “coconut milk recipe” and stumbled upon “Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Leek and Coconut Milk Soup.”

Anyone who has spent any portion of the holidays with me in the past two years has experienced one of my two signature soups, pumpkin or butternut squash. They’re the same recipe, just different main ingredients. Since I’ve gained the mastery of this wonderfully rich, creamy, incredibly heavy and filling soup, I don’t really need to add another pumpkin soup recipe to my repertoire, do I? I left it up to John.
“Sweetie? Would you rather have Thai Chicken and Coconut Milk soup or Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Leek and Coconut Milk soup?” His response was almost instantaneously in favor of the pumpkin.

Ok, then. New pumpkin soup recipe… this time with coconut. (You got a little thrill of anticipation there, didn’t you?)

Coming home from work today, I had my shopping list and stopped by the local Ralph’s. First ingredient? Coconut milk. That should be on the “Asian Food” aisle, right? You would think so. My Ralph’s also apparently has the smallest Asian food section of any grocery store in Los Angeles. I kid you not, it’s two feet wide. You would assume that in this span of two feet, I’d be able to find my coconut milk. Mmmmm… not exactly. Looking up, down, and around, I’m seeing nothing. I’m even scanning the soup section and while that gets the vegetable broth that I also need for the soup, I’m still lacking in the coconut milk department. So I find someone.

Our eyes met across the crowded freezer section. “Excuse me, can you tell me where I can find the coconut milk?”
He looks around and points to a display stand holding DVDS, “it used to be right here! Let me see if I can find it.” He looks around a bit and returns with a, “I’m sorry, I can’t find it.”

Wait… WHAT?!? Ok, go back to patrolling the freezer aisle. I’ll find someone else.

As I’m heading toward the produce section (at least then I can pick up the onion, leek, sweet potato, and pumpkin that I will also need for the soup), I encounter another employee and pose the same question. He gets a panicked look on his face, “It’s my first day! But I’ll go find out. I’ll be right back.” Ok, that’s a little bit better. He comes back, “it’s on aisle 15.” I thank him and head off to find aisle 15. Guess which aisle aisle 15 is? Yup. The Asian food aisle. My spirits drop. The supermarket gods are laughing at me. And all I want to do is buy my coconut milk and go home and make my soup.

Reminding myself that I cook to maintain my sanity, I removed myself from the tantalus (yes, I’m noun-ing a verb) of the coconut milk and went in search of my produce. Once I completed the rest of my shopping, I was still faced with the fact that I couldn’t make my soup without the secret ingredient. I had to find coconut milk.

Steeling myself, I started heading back to aisle 15. On my way, I see another freezer-section worker. “Excuse me, you may not know, but perhaps you can find someone for me who would know… you see, I’m looking for coconut milk and I was told that it was on aisle 15, which I had already checked, but I went back and searched high and low and I don’t know if I’m just blind or special or what, but I can’t find the coconut milk and I really need it so if you could get someone to actually point out where it is to me, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

He grinned. He also admitted that he didn’t know where it was, but would find someone who did. On our way to aisle 15, he stopped another employee who was mopping the floor, “do you know where the coconut milk is?” The guy nodded, set aside his broom, and literally scurried (seriously!) toward aisle 15. I hustled after him, thanking freezer-section guy #2 as I went.

Mop Guy was probably about 6’, maybe 6’1. I am 5’5”. We get to the two feet of Asian foods and he’s looking over the display when his eyes alight on the top shelf. Yeah. I’ve looked there. But what I couldn’t see was the coconut milk that was about a foot back from the edge of the shelf. SUCCESS!!!

I now had the ingredients necessary to create my culinary masterpiece for the evening.

At this point, ladies and gents, let me present to you the recipe for Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Leek and Coconut Milk soup (swiped from allrecipes.com):

1 tablespoon vegetable oil (I don’t actually measure this, but rather dump in an appropriate amount depending on the size of the pan used)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 leek, chopped
1 pound peeled and diced pumpkin
¾ pound sweet potato, peeled and cubed (Another grocery store dilemma: in the produce section I faced yams [what are commonly but incorrectly referred to as “sweet potatoes”] and actual sweet potatoes. I decided that since I didn’t know the spirit of the recipe, I’d have to stick to the letter of it and bought the genuine sweet potatoes.)
1 quart vegetable broth
1 ¼ cups light coconut milk (I just used the whole 13 ounce can. Whoops.)

As I start reading over the recipe, I acknowledge that while I have eaten leeks before, I have never prepared them.
“Janelle! How do I chop leeks? Do I just use the white part or does the dark green leafy part get chopped up too?”
“PASS!!! I know nothing about leeks. I’m passing on this question.”

Oh, Google, how I love you. (For the record, you cut off and discard both the roots at the bottom of the bulb and the dark green leaves at the top. Leeks are notoriously dirty so after chopping, you soak your little leek-pieces in a bowl of COLD water. Leeks float to the top. Dirt sinks to the bottom. Everybody is happy.)

So I prepped my ingredients (and conned my wonderful room mate into the not-so-desirable task of peeling the pumpkin – Thank you, Janelle!!!) and got to cooking. First was the sautéing of the onion and leek.

Heaven. I love that smell.

When everything softened, I added the pumpkin, sweet potato, and the vegetable broth. Once all the ingredients came to a boil, I lowered the heat and let it simmer covered for just over 15 minutes. At this point, the recipe calls for using a potato masher to mash the veggies to a coarse consistency. I do not own a potato masher. (I use my KitchenAid blender for amazing mashed potatoes.) I do, however, own a wonderfully fantastic stick blender. My soup is likely much smoother than what the original author intended, but it’s pretty awesome in its own right. After blending, it was time to add the coconut milk, salt, and pepper. Usually at this point, I’ll throw in some cayenne pepper. I like cayenne pepper. A lot. But I also like to let new recipes (sort of) stand on their own before I completely rip them apart and redo them. So I restrained myself and only added my kosher sea salt and some ground black pepper.

I took a sip.

Wow! This soup was a big surprise after the pumpkin/butternut squash soup recipes that I’m used to. It’s very light. I think that comes from using coconut milk instead of heavy whipping cream, but that could just be me. You can definitely taste the coconut milk in the soup though. That made me very happy as I was worried that my secret ingredient may get lost with the other, more powerful flavors. But it holds its own! The soup also has fresh, crisp, almost “green” hints in the undertones which I think come from the leeks.

Aside from the possible difficulty of finding pumpkin in the spring/summer, I would say that this soup is fantastic in the warmer months either as an appetizer or a main course. I feel like it would go well with a light cucumber salad or as an appetizer to a buttered halibut. Ideas to try at a later date (and in the case of the halibut, with the room mate instead of John). I would also like to try a similar version with two or three leeks and a little bit of curry powder. It might overshadow the lightness of the coconut milk, but I think it could create an interesting European/Southeast Asian fusion soup.

Overall, I really enjoyed my first Iron Chef challenge. I’m looking forward to future challenges as it helps me to expand my culinary horizons and move outside of my regular dinner fare. Iron Chef Challenge 11/21/09… it’s on. I’m ready for you. ;)