A Soup for the Moment

Maybe you need some ginger and miso and broth, and maybe you also need a new world.

Hi, friends. I’ve found it hard to know what to say or write about ~everything, anything, all of this~ lately, so I’m going to borrow some words from others.

I’ve found Tressie McMillan Cottom’s writing really useful, now and always; she articulated something I had been thinking about—paraphrasing here, but that a defining phenomenon of this moment is that Americans are trying to make enough money to exempt themselves from our many collective problems—a basically impossible endeavor—instead of working on collective solutions to those problems.

Naomi Klein, in her stunningly prescient book Doppelganger, said it this way:

“Being alive in a knife-edge moment like this, being forced to be complicit in it, while our so-called leaders fail so miserably to act, unavoidably generates all kinds of morbid symptoms. Inevitably, people reach for narratives to make sense of this reality.

Among such narratives is the one that the climate justice movement has been telling for years…that people of good conscience, across all the lines meant to divide us, can band together, build power and transform our societies into something fairer and greener just in the nick of time. But that story is getting harder to believe with each day that goes by. So, another narrative, this one spreading much faster, goes like this: I’ll be okay. I’m prepared, with my canned goods and solar panels and relative place of privilege on this planet—it’s other people who will suffer. The trouble with that narrative, though, is that it requires finding ways to live with and rationalize the mass suffering of others. And that’s where the stories and logics that cast other people’s deaths as an unavoidable for of natural selection, perhaps even a blessing, come into play.”

I don’t know what will come next, but at the very least, we can refuse to rationalize away suffering—suffering of others but also our own.

Thank goodness for food. And for the holidays, which, sorry, I love love love. I mean, I really love the holidays. Part of this is because both my parents are gone, and I’ve just taken over Christmas and celebrate it the way I want to, which means a big dinner party, a big tree, and too much of everything.

I’m not religious anymore, but I grew up a member of a (super liberal New England) church, and every single year, I think: How beautiful is it that Christmas is about how the earthshaking love brought by the birth of a baby (every baby) can make the whole world new? (You probably didn’t think this was going to land in Jesus talk, did you?) But seriously, what a gorgeous and radical idea. We need new worlds, new imaginations, and that’s how I like to think about Christmas. Birth in the darkness, birth without a place to call home, birth in gigantic hope. And there are so many different celebrations of light in the darkness, like Diwali and Hanukkah and the Solstice—looking for light, seeking miracles, in the darkest times. (Not that these traditions are all the same or analogous to Christmas, but I find comfort in the common themes.) Couldn’t love it more.

AND cookies and cocktails and lavish meals and music and decorations. We’re alive, right!?

What’s for Dinner?

If you are feeling the need for a soup that is nourishing and brothy and fragrant with ginger, garlic and miso, I have a soup for you. This soup can be your best friend around the holidays: Soothing and even steadying somehow! Probably will cure a cold! Filling but leaves room for treats!

The real stars here are Korean rice cakes (tteok), which have the best texture of any food on the planet. These are not (not!) those crunchy puffed snacks but are more like very fat, thick, dense rice noodles, made from pounded rice. You can buy them refrigerated or frozen, in the shape of cylinders or sliced disks (tteokgukyong-tteok). The disks fit perfectly on a spoon; satisfyingly chewy and slippery, these rice cakes turn what is otherwise a light soup into a meal.

If you have an HMart near you, you can definitely get tteok there. Any well-stocked Korean market will have them, as well many more general East Asian markets. Again, I hate to send you to the Bad Place, but yes they are there.

And a note about broth: Use vegetable stock to make the soup vegan, or chicken stock if you’re not concerned about that. I used homemade chicken, which was fantastic, but I don’t always have good homemade stock. You don’t need it! But if you are a Soup Person, you do need to find a supermarket broth/stock that you really like just sipped on its own in order to make truly good Soup. (Sometimes people think that the added ingredients in the soup can make up for bad-tasting broth, but it can’t. If the broth doesn’t taste good or at least fine, the soup also will not taste good.) Personally, I really like Better than Bouillon roasted chicken base because it tastes good enough to sip on its own and comes as a concentrate that keeps forever in the fridge and doesn’t take up much space. But you may find you like something different.

Did Mira eat this? We have, yet again, run into the wet greens problem. At this point, it seems like I am seeking out the wet greens problem, I know. Amol came home, saw what was for dinner, and was like: She’s not going to eat that. And I was like: But she loves rice cakes! And tofu! And he was like: Aren’t those wet greens?? Duh. She picked out the rice cakes and tofu and ate those, while painstakingly wiping off every little bit of bok choy with her napkin, which she then treated like toxic waste.

Miso-Ginger Soup with Rice Cakes and Tofu

You could serve this with chili crisp or Sriracha if you like. Any kind of tofu will work but I love the custardy delicacy of firm silken tofu.

Serves: 4 to 6

1/4 cup olive oil
10 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
4-inch knob ginger, peeled and minced or grated
8 cups stock or broth of your choice
1/4 cup yellow or white miso, plus more to taste
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 pound bok choy, chopped
5 scallions, chopped
1 pound fresh or frozen sliced Korean rice cakes (tteokgukyong-tteok)
1 to 1 1/2 pounds firm or extra-firm silken tofu (like this), cut into large squares

1. Warm the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large pot. Add the garlic and ginger and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and fragrant, about 5 minutes.

2. Pour in the stock or broth and bring to a boil. Whisk in the miso until well combined, then add the soy sauce, bok choy and scallions. Simmer until the bok choy is wilted, about 2 minutes. Taste the broth and add more miso if you like. (Miso varies a lot in saltiness and assertiveness; in general the darker the miso the stronger the flavor.)

3. Add the rice cakes and the tofu (treat the tofu gently so it stays in large pieces) and cook until the tofu is warmed through and the rice cakes are softened and chewy, 2 to 3 minutes.

I may write again this year, and may not. Either way, I am sending love and light to every single one of you, and hopes for a warm and cozy and restful holiday season, especially if this season is difficult for you. I hope you cook and eat things that bring you joy.

Take care of yourselves, friends.