The veggie box came with the first delicata squash of the season, the last of the corn, tomatoes and zucchini. I already had some tomatoes that needed to be used, some carrots, onion and a few other items.
It's time for soup.
This recipe is from The Garden Vegetable Cookbook.
Fall Vegetable Soup
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 large carrots, cut into small cubes (or sliced, depending on what you like)
1/2-1 yellow onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
3 celery ribs, diced
6 c chicken stock or veggie stock or water
4 large tomatoes (or more or less, depending on what you need to use up) roughly chopped
3-4 zucchini, diced
3 small ears corn, removed from cob
1 can cooked beans of your choice, or 1/2 can each of two kinds of beans
5 or so Swiss chard leaves, center ribs removed, roughly chopped
1 1/2 c frozen or fresh peas
3 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
(reduce quantities if using dried)
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Materials
Chef's knife
Cutting board
Strainer or "china cap"
Wooden spoon
Medium saucepan
Large pot
Method
1. Heat olive oil in large pot, add carrots, onions and half of celery. Saute until just a little tender. Add garlic and remove from heat so that the garlic warms but does not burn. If using dry herbs, add at this point.
2. Place tomatoes in saucepan with enough stock to cover, cook until tender, 10-20 minutes
3. Place strainer over soup pot, carefully pour in tomato-stock. Press tomatoes against strainer until pulp and juice are all in pot and skins and seeds are left behind. Discard skins and seeds.
4. Add remaining stock to pot, simmer.
5. Add remaining vegetables to pot. Simmer until soup is hot and vegetables are slightly tender. I like to save half of the celery to add at the end so that some of it is still a little crunchy. If using fresh herbs, add at the end.
This soup would also be great with lima beans, cauliflower, potatoes-- almost any vegetable. There are a lot of ingredients, but it's really just tomato-infused stock with herbs and whatever vegetables you have on hand, the "mirepoix" vegetables chopped first and simmered with the stock, and everything else put in at the end. I find the methodical chopping very contemplative. Cut the carrots in half, then in long slices, then sticks, and finally, into cubes. Same thing with potatoes. I like cubes, because I can make all of the vegetables about the same size, so you can get a bite of everything in a spoon, but if you want it to look a little more rustic, do what you like. This time, I didn't have any cooked beans on hand, so I had to cook white and kidney beans from scratch, but I still finished the whole soup in under 2 hours. (See my without a pressure cooker quick bean method below.) I served with Levain bread and a spoonful of summer pesto for dinner.
Cooking beans from scratch if you forget to soak them:
Place beans in pot with plenty of cold water
Bring to boil, uncovered
Reduce to manageable simmer/low boil for 30 minutes
Remove from heat, cover for 1 hour
Bring back to boil, cook until desired tenderness
It is ok to add salt to cooking beans, but DO NOT add acid, ie, add these beans to your vegetable soup with tomatoes,above, until they are cooked to your desired tenderness. Acid will stop the softening process.
Format note: something is funky with my blogger interface, so I don't have all of the tools I usually do to make this aligned, bold and pretty. Anyone else having this problem? (Fixed!)
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