Elusive Recipe Found: Tomatillo-Chile Soup

I'd made this soup and liked it and scoured the Net for the recipe but it's not there; it's in Mollie Katzen's 1997 cookbook Vegetable Heaven. One of your neighbors probably grows tomatillos. Or you can buy canned and try this puree-style soup. Serve with cubed avocado and tortilla chips. Makes "six intense servings." Freezes well.

Tomatillo-Chile Soup

2 Tablespoons olive oil
3 cups chopped onion
4 medium-sized fresh poblano or Anaheim chile peppers OR 2 bell peppers plus 1 seven-ounce can of diced green chiles, chopped
2 heaping Tablespoons of minced garlic
2-1/2 teaspoons salt
2  Tablespoons chile powder
2 or 3 cans of tomatillos, drained, washed, and chopped; or 6 cups chopped fresh tomatillos
4 cups water
2 or 3 tablespoons of sugar or honey

Heat the oil in a soup pot or Dutch oven. Add the onion and saute over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add to the onion saute the chiles (and/or peppers), garlic, salt and chile powder and mix well. Then cover and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes.

Stir in the tomatillos, cover, cook for another 10 minutes or so. Add the water, bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer. Cover and cook 10 miniutes longer. Puree in a blender or food processor and return to the pot. Add sugar or honey to taste, and correct the salt if desired. Serve hot.

I note on my recipes the dates I cook them. This recipe is marked 2/14/00 and 3/16/03. And now that I've found the recipe at last -- again and more often!

Pasta with 0 Calories is Here

Shirataki noodles, made from yams, have 0 to 15 calories and 4g carbs per serving, and you don't have to boil them. Discovered through the popular diet books Wheatbelly and Hungry Girl, I found them refrigerated near the tofu at Wal-Mart and bought 4 eight-ounce packages of different brands and shapes, spaghetti and fettuccini. Most have 0 calories; the 15-calorie "Pasta Zero" brand includes a bit of chickpea flour to make it opaque and slightly more familiar to Americans. Forget portion control: I eat the whole eight-ounce package just as I used to eat eight ounces of pasta daily until my cardiologist said to cut it out.

Shirataki noodles make one demand: They must be rinsed right out of the package. Those imported from Japan have a smell considered enticing over there but Americans call it fishy. Be brave: It rinses out in a colander or strainer in 1 minute. Then heat a non-stick skillet and toss the noodles over medium-high heat 2 minutes until they're dry. They are ready. Or you can heat them in a microwave for 1 or 2 minutes, or boil them for 3 minutes, as if they were ramen. They are bland so I sauce them up with Alfredo sauce (pictured), the only calories in the whole pasta bowl, and as I said I eat the entire half-pound package myself knowing my noodles are calorie-free, wheat-free, gluten-free, fat-free, soy-free, low-carb, and vegan, and it doesn't get any better than that.

Pictured is Nasoya brand Pasta Zero Plus shirataki fettucini, $1.97 for 8 ounces.