Golden Turmeric Sipping Broth
by Stacie Evans
I didn’t create this recipe, but I am certain it was created very specifically for me by some excellent process of magic, intuition, and why-the-fuck-not. I found the recipe on Kimberly Harris’ website, the Nourishing Gourmet, with make-it-vegetarian modification by me.
2 quarts vegetable stock
15-16 ounces coconut cream (or coconut milk)
2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp ground ginger
6-8 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
Generous sprinkle of ground black pepper
Salt (I used Kosher, Harris lists “unrefined,” but I am far too unrefined my own self, and I have no idea what that is.)
I used Knorr vegetable bouillon cubes to make the stock because I really like that stuff, but it is ridiculously greasy, a detail I’d forgotten. I will switch to Better than Bouillon Vegetable Base when I’ve used up my supply of Knorr.
Put all the ingredients in a pot, heat it up and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Remove garlic. Serve. I doubled the recipe because I sensed there was no other option than to have a lot of this stuff in the fridge, ready to go. I was right.
Sip
The Nourishing Gourmet’s Golden Turmeric Sipping Broth is the only kind of recipe I can manage these days, the throw-everything-in-at-once kind, the kind that doesn’t care if I’m particular in my measurements, the kind that will end up colorful and comforting without me having to focus for more than a minute.
I love to cook. I love to eat. Even in the before times, however, I struggled with consistently taking that kind of care of myself, with making meals that soothed and pleased me. When I did, life was better – I felt more stable, felt . . . cherished. Which, of course, meant that I felt “uncherished” all those times I didn’t cook, those nights when dinner was popcorn and wine, the Olivia Pope meal plan.
When quarantine started, I imagined I’d snuggle into a self-care plan that would distract me from Covid fears and buoy me with feelings of comfort. It was still cold enough in mid-March that I imagined swinging into shelter-in-place in full, last-gasp-of-winter cooking mode. In my grocery store the night before lockdown, I had visions of pulling trays of mac and cheese out of the oven, roasting sweet potatoes with caramelized onions and brown sugar, pan-frying kale with dark sesame oil and garlic. As if. I left the store with a couple of loaves of French bread, some fancy cheeses, Noosa yogurts, several Amy’s bowls, and grapes. Instead of cooking, I settled into quarantine in what’s-the-least-I-can-do mode.
I started 2019 in Martinique. One afternoon, my host drove me out to visit a spectacular garden. In addition to flowers of all kinds – delicate, peach-tipped, lavender orchids draping from a tree at the entrance – the owner grew chocolate and cinnamon and dozens of medicinal plants. Among my surprises that day was turmeric, seeing turmeric as a plant, not just a furiously-colored powder I had no idea how to use but which held space in my spice cabinet.
At the end of 2019, I was being pampered at a residency, enjoying days of gorgeous, sunny quiet for writing, and nights with luxuriant vegetarian dinners prepared by the house chef. One night, she served us something she called “golden broth,” with an array of add-ins like grilled tofu and scallions. The “gold” in its “golden” came, lo and behold, from turmeric, that mysterious root-like thing I’d met up close and personal on a high, sun-soaked hill in Martinique. That broth was heavenly, a gentle embrace, a hand rubbing slow circles on my back.
The chef said she’d found a basic recipe online and fiddled with it, so when I got home, I began some fiddling of my own, hoping to recreate the magic. The recipe I settled on was a turmeric and pureed cauliflower soup. I made it a number of times last winter, but it wasn’t exactly right. The golden broth I’d had at residency had been dairy-free but had a heavy cream feel to it. The cauliflower never got creamy, no matter how long I pureed it, and its slight graininess wasn’t the warm hug I was looking for.
And then, seven months into this navigation of Bizarro World, I stumbled on Kimberly Harris’ sipping broth recipe. As soon as I saw “coconut milk or coconut cream” in the ingredients list, I knew it was going to take me to a place the cauliflower just could never. If I had any doubts, they were vanquished when I realized I already had all the fixings, even a can of coconut cream left in my cupboard from Christmas coquito-making. One-dish meal and make it effortless? Yes, please.
Everything into the pot, back to my makeshift home office to answer some emails, and just like that, it’s done. First taste made me do a comically theatrical double take, looking into the pot as if it had been holding out on me. I’d planned to ladle up a mug and sit back down to work. Instead, I filled a bowl and sat down with a book of Lucille Clifton’s poetry. I sat down to savor. I’d read a poem and drink some soup, read a poem and drink some soup, and with every taste, I felt more like a human and less like an elastic band stretched way too taut. There is some kind of magic in that recipe. Yes, surely I can lay that at the feet of the coconut cream, but it’s not just that indulgent yumminess. It’s all the pieces together. It’s the alchemy of heating those basic pieces in one pot, giving them time to melt from pieces into peace.
My mother never made anything like golden broth. When I tell her about this recipe, she will likely have a lot of doubt. She’s never made this soup, but this soup is her love for me in an impossibly easy, two-step recipe. Just as eating Massaman Curry calls up the memory of a pork chop dish she made when I was a kid, golden broth makes me feel as warm, as safe, as held as I felt when I lived under her roof, when she was the one who made me feel cherished.
Covid means I can’t see my mother. She lives hours away from me. She’s eighty-four. I would never forgive myself if I brought coronavirus to her house. And that means I haven’t hugged her or been hugged by her since mid-February. It means I won’t likely get to hug her or be hugged by her for at least as many months to come. Kimberly Harris’ soup recipe isn’t my mother, but being able to quickly create a bowl of something that conjures the feeling of how much she loves me, conjures just for a moment the person I miss most in the world . . . that magic is, as the recipe so aptly calls out, golden.
Stacie Evans is a multi-genre writer who lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently working on a comics project, Adventures in Racism. She is a four-time alum of the VONA Voices writing workshops for writers of color. Her work has appeared in New South, The Powder Room, After Ferguson, Bitch Magazine, and The Rumpus.