Hot au Many (as opposed to Pot au Feu)

The French have many beef stews, probably the most 'peasanty' of which is 'Pot au Feu.'  The French never had to live with our inconsistent WAPA, but they do (as most of us practice) tend to cook from whatever fresh ingredients they can source. So today's culinary Cirque du Soleil concoction combines the peasant stew concept with the whatever is fresh, available, & most importantly, whatever this weeks myriad power outages have failed to shrivel or rot. Yum, that sounds good!  ;) You'll note there is no beef in my version, but the 'Many' in the title refers to the number of veggies. The heartiest of those & the base of this satisfying, just one more spoonful dish is baby Portobello  Shrooms. The 'Hot' descriptor comes later. 

I like to cook when I get to chop a lot of stuff & don't have to measure exactly. Makes me feel all 'chefy' inside. So here goes:

Coarsely chop 2 medium  or 3 large carrots, 3 large stalks of celery, reserving the leaves, and 4-5 good sized shallots. Put them together in one bowl & put them aside. 

Scrub a mesh bagful (1 1/2-2 lbs) of cutesy little potatoes (new, Yukon gold, white cream, whatever you find) & pare out bad spots. Leave the skins on & cut them each into 2 or 3 pieces each to make them cook more uniformly. Put them in a big soup pot (there will be lots of room, but we'll take care of that later) & cover generously w/ salted water, adding a hearty shake of granulated garlic & the reserved celery leaves.  Bring to a boil & cook until just tender (don't cook to a mush because they'll be cooked a bit more when combined with the other ingredients), then drain into a colander & add 2 TBS butter & 1 TBS sesame oil (tempura version is lighter) to the empty soup pot & return to the heat. Add 1 tsp ground chipotle, 1 tsp gran garlic, 1 tsp curry powder, 1/2 tsp each, ground cumin & cumin seed & heat a bit to release the flavor of the spices.  Add the bowlful of carrot, celery, shallot dice & stir to combine with oil, butter & spices. 

Cook that mixture until celery & shallots start to become transparent.  While the celery mix is cooking, clean & roughly chop 2 8oz containers of baby portobellos & (optional) 4-5 thin slices of Deli honey ham, then cut the kernels off 3 ears of cleaned sweet corn. As soon as the celery is transparent, add the shrooms, ham, cooked potatoes & corn kernels to the pot along with a few more shakes of gran garlic & 1-2 tsp Worcestershire sauce. Stir to combine, cover with the lid & reduce to a simmer for 3 minutes. At this point I added 1/4c of shaved Parmesan but you can opt out.  Stir again & as soon as the cheese melts, remove from heat & stir in 1/4 c nonfat plain Greek yogurt. 

Serve in your fave bowl. The smokey heat of the chipotle balances well with the sweet corn & the nutty, earthy notes of portobello & sesame. The yogurt is a bit of richness to finish. 

Enjoy!