Frank O’Hara – Crystal Rivera

Roasted Garlic and Seared Broccoli-Potato Leek Soup

I woke straight up SICK. Achy throat, fever, sniffles, all the things caused by an already weak immune system plus this sudden change in weather. I would’ve slept real long had it not been for this cutie I rescued a few days ago, who believes 6AM is lemme-play-with-your-toes-time. It probably is.

Is s/he Luna Marina Rivera? Frankie O’Luna?–(see what I did there?)

Besides poet references, the moon has to be in his or her name, as I’m convinced it had everything to do with every little thing that has happened within the last week or so. Things have been wonderfully chaotic and NEW. And freakin’ adorable.

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Back to being sick. I woke up needing garlic BAD. Not one or two cloves, but about six or seven. I also didn’t want a chunky, hearty soup but something my throat could handle without me having to chew my way through it. This is when I whip out my immersion blender, which I am so very fond of. <3

I decided to make a very inexpensive soup out of ingredients I mostly had in the house, and it was SOsososo GOOD. It was simple and healing which is exactly what I needed it to be. In fact, I’m going to keep this post very short. I’m too sick for this writing business.

Roasted Garlic and Seared Broccoli-Potato Leek Soup

1/2 head of large garlic (or whole of smaller)
2 small heads of broccoli, cut into small florets
1 medium-sized leek with it’s dark greens attached, thinly sliced
7-8 basil leaves, thinly sliced
2-3 potatoes, diced
5 1/2 cups of chicken stock (or vegetable)
parmesan rind
olive oil
red pepper flakes (to taste)
salt (to taste)

Leaving your garlic with skin-on, cut the tips off and drizzle olive oil on top. Wrap it tightly in aluminium foil and roast it for 30 minutes at 375 degrees.

While it’s roasting, sear your broccoli florets in olive oil only on one side, leaving the other half a nice, bright green. Set aside. Add a little more olive oil to your pot, then caramelize your leeks with some red pepper flakes and basil leaves. You should be able to squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins at this point and gently fry em with the leeks. Add the potatoes and toss, making sure to coat them with that good garlicky paste. Add your stock and bring to a boil. Add the rind and the broccoli, simmer til everything softens up. I used a potato masher to see if it was ready to be pureed first. I pureed it for about 30 seconds, leaving some chunky bits in there. You’re all done and CURED!

For a sharp garlicky taste, feel free to take a raw clove and grate it into your pot as soon as you take it off the heat. The roasted garlic is mostly nutty and sweet.

Grate some parmesan to top it all off. 🙂

I am now taking my butt to bed, as kitty finally decided to take a nap.

Happy Sunday!

…I was gravy in judgment,

which might not mean much

unless you’ve taken a spoon

of it and poured it back over a dumpling

shaped like your heart

–Tomás Q. Morín

Once a month in Queens, NY, Valerie G. Keane has us talk poetry. Not our poetry, but poems written by poets we love and don’t love and/or don’t get. Poets whose name just popped up on our search engine once the month’s theme is established, too. I love Poetry & Coffee. If 15 people show up with a poem, I am going home with 15 poems I either never read before, or poems I haven’t had the opportunity to talk about, and that is pretty bad-ass, no? You cannot possibly be a better poet or HUMAN BEING without having read as much as you can read. You just can’t. I can’t. But it’s not just the reading part that triggers growth. It’s most definitely the sharing. I do not want to keep a good poem to myself and so I never do. Going to Poetry & Coffee is my way of doing more than just sharing a poem via Facebook or Instagram or email. I get to discuss these poems with people who genuinely want to be there. I always take home with me a feeling of hunger once the event is over. I want MORE poems. I want to write more. I want to connect.

I also wanted some freakin’ figs on my cheese board and in my mouth so Yes to this latest gathering!

This month’s theme was food and we threw ourselves a picnic. I immediately saw this as an opportunity to whip out my slab of cherry wood where cheese can only belong. But I also went a little overboard on bringing poems. We are generally supposed to bring just one. I brought 4. One for reading. The others were given as small offerings towards the end.

As for the cheese board? I went simple, which brought me as close to Summer as I needed to be.

For the board, I made a small thing of Tristar strawberry jam. I had to. During my latest walk through Union Square’s Greenmarket, these tiny, red loves were EVERYWHERE like new blooms.

I paired the jam with a creamy, sharp cheese that was a cross between cheddar and parmesan, and of course my favorite peppery toscano from Trader Joes. There were figs (there NEEDED to be figs!), heirloom and cherry tomatoes from Valerie’s backyard, ciabbatta, grapes. Simple. Valerie made a gigantic sandwich with smoked mozzarella and layers of summer vegetables. Others brought homemade brownies, cookies, a cherry tomato and corn bow tie pasta that I honestly want to make when I get home, and then there were poems. Delicious poems. A poem about the disrobing of artichoke (Robin Robertson, Artichoke.) A poem called From Okra to Greens that Connie felt spoke to my deep connection to cooking (she nailed it.) The one I read aloud was Dorothea Lasky’s poem about–and not about–canning. Some were funny. One, Parkinson’s Disease by Galway Kinnell, made everyone deep-breathe and cry.

There was one other poem that got to me right in the gut. Thankfully P&C offers a safe place for crying, though I don’t think anyone saw that I did. It was Salad Days by TOMÁS Q. MORÍN. (Thanks, Joan!) It made me think of the one thing I’ve been missing for weeks, which is the cooking I’d do with my love who is no longer with me. In fact, I felt him most when I was putting together the cheese board, and I felt him most in this poem, where the drizzling of honey onto turkey bacon comes into play with it’s sweetness, and when there was Light:

It’s all happening now,
you liked to say, and I agreed,
though it was not the news
from the outside I relished,
but the daily Extra! Extra! the light
of the morning brought to my attention
every time we woke in your house
or my house and my heart
— salty, risen — was warm
again in a way it hadn’t been for years.
Organ of passion, organ of righteousness
that has never had a single flavor cross its lips,
how could you know
how much I would miss the honey of those days,
her drizzle of it on the turkey bacon,
my cracking pepper up and down the pan,
the sweet meat of happiness
I would no longer let pass between our teeth.

This brings me to Frank O’Hara’s Having a Coke with You, the poem we did not get to discuss, but one I had given to everyone as a gift. It was certainly a gift to me many years ago, and today. It is where the 4 o’clock light in some of my poems comes from. It’s the poem that ALMOST made me want to name this blog Eating with You. Because it’s my favorite thing to do, it is.

it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

Tag: Frank O’Hara

Roasted Garlic and Seared Broccoli-Potato Leek Soup

Poetry & Coffee Picnic: 8/21/16