Category: Soups & Stews

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Soups & Stews

Silky Smooth Vegetable Soup

Have you ever noticed that once you become aware of something new, you start to see it everywhere?  That’s been happening to me lately with this soup — I’m convinced it is following me!

On our trip to Tuscany, I noticed that the produce shop sold a mix of finely chopped veggies by the kilogram for convenient soup-making.  Then, when we returned, every cooking-related book, magazine or blog that I read (see, for example, this recipe) contained some sort of call for a simple pureed vegetable soup made primarily from wintery root vegetables.  And it just so happened that my organic produce deliveries for the past couple weeks generated an abundance of carrots, celery, onions, and potatoes.  Sometimes, resistance is futile!

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Peanut Soup with Rice and Scallions — Chopping Block Report

KC’s favorite soup is tomato, and she eats A LOT of peanut butter, so this recipe for Peanut Soup with Rice and Scallions seemed right up her alley! Sometimes, I think the beauty of the pureed soup is also its Achilles heel — the simple, smooth texture.  So, in order to avoid monotony from that texture, I generally serve smaller portions of pureed soups than of soups with more textural variety.  This recipes says that it makes 6 servings.  I halved the recipe, and I would say that I still got 6 servings from it.

It’s pretty foolproof.  You sautee the vegetables and aromatics.

Then, add stock and tomatoes, bring to a boil, and simmer for a while.  Then puree.  I use an immersion blender to puree hot liquids right in the pan, which makes life a lot simpler and less dangerous than using a blender!

 

Then after serving, sprinkle with sliced scallions. I omitted the tofu because the rest of our meal contained plenty of protein already.

When I tasted the soup, at first I thought, “Oh, this is just another tomato soup.”  Then, the peanut flavor snuck up and mingled with the tomato flavor in a way that was very surprising to my American palate.  Of course, if you were raised in Africa, this flavor combination will seem obvious to you!

I’ll definitely make this again!

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Appetizers & Snacks Soups & Stews

Something Old and Something New

We have started to see signs of fall, and summer officially ended this week, so I’ve had some of our favorite fall recipes on my mind.  Monday night’s dinner brought an old favorite with a seriously new twist:

butternut squash soup

crostini with blue cheese compound butter

I discovered this recipe for Winter Squash Soup with Gruyere Croutons last winter when I was trying to find new ways to use the squash that we were getting in our weekly produce delivery.  I typically omit the cream, and we don’t miss it at all.  This soup is great with the gruyere croutons described in the recipe, but I was inspired to pair the soup with blue cheese last year after I read this recipe for Butternut Squash an Apple Soup with Melted Blue Cheese.  Hence, our riff on the gruyere croutons. Since I typically don’t have apple cider in the house, I find the first squash soup recipe less complicated to make.  In this case, I made it the day before, and I only had to heat it up when I got home from work.

kale chips

These Tuscan Kale Chips were interesting.  In the words of my daughter, they were “the oddest thing I’d ever served!”  That said, we liked them quite a bit.  This recipe struck me as one of the many instances where cooking and chemistry really are one and the same.  Even if you don’t think you like greens like kale and chard, this one is worth a try!  It’s one of those recipes that I’ll pull out from time to time when I want to serve something novel to guests that can also serve as a conversation piece!