DC come-back: Pressure Cooker Sweet Corn Soup

From 2011: A view of my old studio apartment.
I swear the new one looks just like this...

I hope this post is my transition back to food blogging. Ironically, the desire to blog comes from being back in DC, the place where it all began. There is something energizing about being back in the city. This evening was so lovely-- high 60's, the sun was soft, no breeze. It was an evening that felt like swimming in water of the perfect temperature.  I decided to walk up to Shaw near R and First street, just wandering up and down streets, looking at colored town houses and smiling at everyone else who decided  the evening deserved to be spent outside either on a patio, their stoop or walking. I walked past so many new restaurants that I wanted to try, so when I arrived home, I just couldn't spend another night eating a kimchi quesadilla (definitely a post on my new  go to dinner at a later date)

 I moved to back to DC for residency, and I have these constant flashes of my previous life here. It's like deja vu in which I am actively walking through old memories of events that occurred in this city. I spend 12 hours a day in GW hospital and often from the windows of patient rooms, I can see the brick facades of my freshman and sophomore dormitories, Fullbright and JBKO. It's a bit like living with one foot in the past. Things are certainly different now. For one, I'm way cooler now that I'm a bonafide doctor. I make more money. I'm more confident. Yet today I shopped for fresh ingredients to make this soup at the same Wednesday Farmer's market where I shopped in college. My living situation in DC didn't really improve. I am living in a different building, but my current studio feels just like the studio apartment where most of the posts on this food blog were made. I'm back to cooking in the smallest possible kitchen with crappy fluorescent lighting. I have 3 cabinets, so all of my dishes and implements are stored in an industrial shelf outside of the kitchen. My counter space is non-existent so yet again, I have to lay a cutting board over my sink to actually cook in my kitchen. In summary, four years later, back in DC: I'm a doctor with a closet for a kitchen. On a positive note, I have upgraded my location to Logan Circle, so my tiny kitchen is located in the coolest neighborhood within a reasonable walk to GWU.  

SO enough complaining. Life is great considering I am working 80 hours a week and still find time to walk around and try to blog.  I can't help but laugh at how far I've come and how nothing has changed. 

As evidence that many things don't change, I still browse food blogs when I have downtime at work.  On a particularly slow day at work yesterday, I  was randomly clicking through Serious Eats and found this simple recipe for sweet corn soup made in a pressure cooker. I was given a pressure cooker by a friend in Galveston, and I have been trying to master the art of making different beans and curries. It's an old fashioned, stove top pressure cooker that whistles to relieve pressure. I love my pressure cooker; it really does speed up cooking. 

It's still sweet corn season, and I knew my Wednesday farmer's market would have plenty corn and fresh ingredients to make this soup. So after my hour long wander through Shaw, I came back to my sweet, tiny studio  and its kitchen and whipped up this soup to take to lunch for the next few days. 

Here's the quick and easy recipe that I hope will rekindle my blogging fire: 

Pressure Cooker Sweet Corn Soup (adapted from this recipe on seriouseats.com)

Note the old fashioned pressure cooker cover in the top right corner

Ingredients: 

1/2 white onion, coarsely chopped

sweet red pepper

2 cloves garlic

4 ears of corn

4 cups of broth, either prepackaged box broth or reconstituted from bullion

bay leaves

olive oil

salt and pepper

1. Coarsely chop the garlic, onion and red pepper. Heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in the pressure cooker. Over medium heat, saute the vegetables until softened and slightly browned, about 5-10 minutes. 

2. While the vegetables cook, shuck the corn and remove the corn from the cobs. Reserve the cobs and cut them in half to fit into the pressure cooker

3. Add 4 cups of broth to the pressure cooker. (I didn't have any broth in a box or frozen broth, so I dissolved 2 bullion cubes in 4 cups of water) Then add in the corn kernels and the 4 cobs cut in half. I think the cobs help contribute to a sweet corn taste, especially as the soup is not cooked for very long.  

4. Stir to combine the corn components and other vegetables, add the bay leaves.

5. Close the lid to the pressure cooker and turn up the stove heat to medium to high, so you hear the cooker top rattling for a good 10 minutes. Keep on the stove until the pressure cooker has whistled 2 times,then turn down the heat and cook for another 15 minutes on lower heat, with the top still rattling. 

I realize the directions above sound like nonsense to someone without this style of pressure cooker.The original recipe on seriouseats.com simply instructs to cook the soup at the high pressure setting for 15 minutes. 

6. After 15 minutes, relieve the pressure by lifting the top and releasing all the steam and then run water over the pressure cooker for one minute. Remove the top and let the soup cool. I let it sit on the stove for 30 minutes while engaged in my other favorite activity, a short yogaglo.com yoga class. 

7. Once the soup is cool, puree the soup with an immersion blender or you can add it to batches into a blender or food processor.  

My immersion blender is now my new favorite tool as neither my blender nor my food processor made the move to DC. Both were old, decrepit and unworthy of precious storage space. I would love to buy a fancy new cuisine art food processor, but every pay check is already allocated for a different luxury good like new boots, a cool fall blazer, concert tickets, and all of those fun city living activities that make my tiny kitchen bearable. 

8. Once the soup is smooth, season to taste with salt, pepper, and an extra tablespoon of olive oil to round out the taste. 

9. Ladle into your preferred serving container and garnish with either more corn, scallions, tomatoes, and eat cold or hot. 

Mason jar lunch for Thursday

These days I eat a lot of my breakfasts and lunches out of mason jars. First of all it's easy to transport,even with a bumpy bike ride to work. For some reason eating out of jars makes lunch more enjoyable, like a makeshift bento box.