Solstice Soup

Deep nourishment on the longest night

Most years I try to create a special dish for the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. It is always black.

In years past, I’ve done a sort of risotto with black rice, cooked a black-skinned chicken, or made a proper squid ink risotto. Two years ago, I made a dish with black pasta and golden caviar that wasn’t terribly good. Alas.

My favorite Solstice celebration may be my most known: Snow in Winter — a sort of Nordic Death Metal dish featuring snow goose, black radishes, spelt spaetzle, black kale and a sprinking of cheese to look like snow.

This year, I’ve felt more like soup than death metal, so I dreamed up a “black soup” that I am happy to say really rocks! And it’s not super difficult to make, although with these dishes, I am less concerned with how hard they are to make than how good they taste when you’re done.

Sometimes I just gotta play.

So here it is. The core of the soup is a dark venison broth, enriched with black trumpet mushrooms and black garlic to stain it even darker.

Caramelized onions, more black trumpets, plus a chiffonade of black kale are the base ingredients. I added diced prairie chicken breast, which is a very dark meat, and made little riebele dumplings with rye flour mixed with black trumpet powder.

A touch of dark, inky-green pumpkinseed oil from Austria and it all came together nicely.

The soup is an umami bomb. The prairie chicken, the broth, the black garlic and the mushrooms all add savoriness to the brew. The dumplings are definitely vying for star status, and their earthy chew is a welcome bite.

I ate this soup heartily, then gave the rest to my friend Henry, who was home convalescing from a medical procedure. A good, healing soup for a cold, dark day.

Solstice Soup

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour

Serves: Four

Ingredients

Broth

1 quart dark broth (beef, venison, mushroom)

2 cups water

1/2 ounce dried black trumpet mushrooms

2 or 3 large cloves of black garlic

Salt to taste

Dumplings

2/3 cup rye flour

1/3 cup bread flour

2 tablespoons black trumpet mushroom powder

1 egg

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoons water

2 tablespoons pumpkinseed oil

To Finish

2 tablespoons sunflower oil

Skinless breasts from a prairie chicken, duck, sharp-tailed grouse, dove or pigeon

Salt

1 small yellow onion, chopped

1/2 pound black lacinato kale, cut in a chiffonade or chopped

Instructions

Start with the broth. Put all the ingredients in a medium pot and simmer them, covered.

While that’s happening, make the dumplig dough by mixing all the dumpling ingredients except the oil in a bowl. You should have a sticky dough. Get a large pot of water boiling and add salt.

When it’s boiling, you can make your dumplings in several ways. You can push the dough through a spaetzle hopper, which is what I did. You can smear the dough on a board and use a small knife to flick little pieces of dough into the boiling water. That’s a serious German grandmother trick. If your dough is stiff enough, you can grate it on the large holes on a box grater — this works really well if your dough is all wheat, no rye. Or you can roll the dough into a log about 1/2 inch thick and nip pieces off the size of your fingernail.

Boil the dumplings until they float to the top, then for a minute or two more. Move them to a bowl, and toss them all with the pumpkinseed oil.

While you’re waiting for the dumpling water to boil, sear the prairie chicken breast in the sunflower oil. You want it well seared, as the Maillard reaction will add flavor to the dish. Remove the meat, add the onions to the pan, and a little more oil if needed. Brown the onions well. It’s important that they are not white anymore. You want them well browned.

Dice the meat and set aside. While the onions are cooking, remove the black trumpets from the broth, squeeze them dry, and when they are cool enough to handle, chop very roughly and add them to the pan with the onions.

When the onions are nicely browned, add the kale and cook until the kale has wilted.

Meanwhile, strain the broth through a fine-meshed sieve with a paper towel set inside to remove any grit or dirt. Wipe out the pot and return the clean broth to it. Add the contents of the frying pan and the meat. Simmer this for 10 minutes, then add the dumplings and cook another 5 minutes.

Serve with malty beer and rye bread.