Carrot Ginger Miso Soup

I have a list of secrets to tell you about carrot soup.  I don't like carrots much. I'm not wholeheartedly opposed, like I am to say, beets or okra, but I'm not a fan.  I keep carrots around, I eat them raw with hummus, I add them to things, but when I'm served up a pile of cooked carrots, I'm not thrilled about it. They're so sweet and orange.  But, as a colleague of mine would say, I don't want to yuck your yum.  Maybe you love carrots.  It's really none of my business. 

So I bought far too many carrots for a stew that never happened, and they were just sitting there, staring at me.  I considered making seven or eight carrot cakes to freeze.  And I had this sinking feeling that I knew what I had to do.  Carrot soup has been all around lately.  Not so much around me, but you know, you see a friend post on Facebook that she's eating carrot soup and a colleague is microwaving something in the break room that looks like it's guaranteed to stain their tupperware and it's just everywhere.  So much so that when I asked my Facebook friends what to make with all these carrots, I was like, "Yeah, I know, soup.  What else?" And they were all creative and sweet and thought about pickling carrots and carrot salads and deep in my heart I knew the whole time I was going to have to make soup.

Vegan Minestrone

Minestrone can be anything you want it to be.  It's super flexible, adapting to what's in season.  In the summer, your minestrone can be full of zucchini and fresh tomato and herbs, and in colder months minestrone can be a refuge from thick, pureed vegetable soups while still providing an outlet for the squash, potatoes and hearty greens of winter. 

Minestrone can easily be made vegetarian or vegan.  Many recipes call for pancetta or beef both, but a dab of extra oil and a bit of sundried tomato can fill in for the rich flavor and texture provided by the meat.  If you don't use butter and don't sprinkle the top with parmesan, it's a vegan soup.  If you leave out the pasta, it's gluten-free.  Minestrone is what you need it to be.

The recipe below is an amalgam of all the recipes out there, skewed towards what was in my fridge on Sunday.  Yes, this was superbowl minestrone.  It's vegan, and while I threw some pasta into mine at the last minute, it's portioned to result in a rich soup with plenty of chunky vegetables and beans and no need for pasta.  (Though, if you'd like to add pasta, just add more stock). 

Potato Cauliflower Soup

I've been traveling for work, which means I have once again taken many pictures of hotel carpeting.  I don't do a ton of traveling but this past month or so has been exhausting.  I spent more time elsewhere than I did here.   So I've seen an array of conference center rugs. 

Coffee Rings

It also means I haven't been cooking, because you know, I've been elsewhere, and that I came home and had no idea what was in the fridge or freezer.  So I had to do a serious overhaul/cleanout/accounting for what's what like I did a while back.

Thanksgiving Centerpiece

The magical part of doing that was finding soup in my freezer.  Chicken soup and butternut squash soup and potato cauliflower soup.  Finding soup in the freezer isn't like finding frozen tofu or leftover pasta sauce.  With soup, you're already there.  It's dinner.

Piercing Array

Before I left, I had made up a lot of potato cauliflower soup.  I don't find a lot of use for potatoes, and potato soup has a guilt-laden heaviness to it that stems from the clear association between potatoes and saddlebags--an association often forgiven in the face of french fries.

Still, somehow soup sounds like I'm pretending.  "Oh, it's healthy, it's soup."  "No, it's potatoes." But when I found myself with these potatoes, I also found myself with a head of cauliflower.  And if there's one thing cauliflower does well*, it's pretending to be a potato.

Curried Acorn Squash Soup

Oh, right, dinner.  I've been in that space for too long where I forget what that task I'm supposed to accomplish around 7pm is.  Dinner. 

This is dinner.  It took about 15 minutes of actual-paying-attention-time and it was ridiculous good.  Like, tell your friends and family good. 

I had this little acorn squash - and I don't have prep photos because I didn't think it was going to turn into anything special.  This little acorn squash came home with me on CSA day a couple of weeks ago, and my friend Kim said, "What are you going to do with it?  It's so small!" and I shrugged and said, "Soup? Just two servings but still, soup." So look at my math and imagine multiplying it to get the number of bowls of soup you want to get.  

Totally Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

I'm not posting step-by-step photos on chicken soup.  It's a classic, and I think mine probably looks like the same one you'd find in that old cookbook you inherited or picked up at the thrift store, with a couple of tweaks.  It's chicken soup.  I don't need to tell you it's good. 


Chicken soup is actually not among my top 12 favorite soups, but it's one that comes in handy sometimes.


Here's what I did (it's a two-day process). 

French Onion Soup

I love this soup.   Who can beat cheese and onion in rich broth?


But like so many restaurant foods, when we started cooking at home a lot, the restaurant versions all seemed too salty.  I don't order it anymore because there is just too much risk of it tasting like a salt lick.  Soup's tricky that way.  But if I make it, I'm in control. 


There are a lot of onion soup recipes out there, with some variation.  Some folks insist you need to use yellow onions, or white, or Vidalia or red.  There's the white wine camp and the red wine camp and the cognac camp.  There's apple cider in some, and balsamic vinegar in others.  Some recipes include three hours of baking onions.   Some use chicken stock, some use beef stock and some use a mix. 


This is a fairly quick*, delicious soup.  It's hearty and cheesy and warm and rich and a bit sweet.  You could even make a vegetarian version with mushroom stock. 


Let's do this, shall we?

Acorn Squash and Greens Soup

Sometimes, delicious food is not pretty.  See above.   If you'd like to look at beautiful pictures of orange squash soup, may I direct your attention here, or here, or here.  Google images works wonders.  


But imagine if you could have the rich, creamy, sweet taste of squash soup, with a bit of earthiness and spice.  And if you could dial up the healthy on an already great-for-you dish?  Yeah.  Greens.  


I admit it, greens do nothing for the look of this soup.  But we're not food stylists here, we're home cooks, and we're making food we enjoy and feel good about.  


I made soup, because today, Michelle said to me, "What kind of soup would you make if you were vegetarian?"  And I thought, Damnit, Michelle, I make plenty of vegetarian soups even though I'm not actually one of your kind.   But instead I said, "I'd make tortilla soup without chicken, or I'd make minestrone, or black bean."  And then I told her about this grilled-cheese-oriented tomato soup I saw on Smitten Kitchen.  And we started talking about grilled cheese, and got distracted from the soup idea.  


I got home, knowing I had to face the acorn squash.  It was time.  I had thought I was going to make ravioli out of it, shortcut ravioli with wonton wrappers, but the wonton wrappers' time had passed.  I threw the squash in the oven to roast, knowing I'd have to do that no matter what I was making, and then it hit me.  Soup.  

Cucumber Avocado Cilantro Soup

I wouldn't describe myself as someone who's into chilled soup. Soup, to me, is all about warm and cozy, rainy days and winter weekends with a pot going for hours. But I love gazpacho, and that's cold and I love cilantro, and wish it could be soup.

If you Google cucumber avocado soup, you'll find a range of recipes. Some cook the cucumber. Some add cream or yogurt. Some use chicken stock. But I have a blender and don't want to cook.

This took 10 minutes from idea to fridge (let it chill) and 40 minutes from idea to eat. Quick, cool, refreshing. It was, however, not filling. This is one course, not dinner. Do I seem like the sort who makes multiple courses? Eat it with a biscuit.

First, chop some veg.

Gazpacho

When I said soup season was over for me, I really meant it.  It's hot.  It's too hot for soup. Or pasta.  Too hot for any kind of a sauce.  It's salted radishes, hunk of cheese, piece of bread season.  


But then there's gazpacho.  Gazpacho is all the brightest and crispest flavors of Spanish and Latin American food with none of the heaviness.  It's not just cold, it's raw.  Like all soups, and most other things I cook, it's customizable.  Extra spicy? Sure thing. More of this flavor and less of that one?  Go for it.  

Beef Barley Soup

I'm the sort of person who makes food for people.  If you come over, I might open the freezer and suggest you take something.  "I made too much pasta sauce/pita bread/garlic scape pesto - why don't you take some home with you?" I'm like your Jewish or Italian grandmother, only much younger.  And I don't want you to eat it all now, just fill your pockets with it for later

My mother does this with groceries, so I have to imagine that's where I get it.  I still have a can of pineapple that she handed to me without explanation a few years ago, several boxes of cake mix, and I've just received a jar of banana-peanut butter.

If you live far, and something good or bad is happening in your life, I'll send food. If you live close and have something going on, I'll make food and bring it over.   For years, I've sort of had this joke about it, if there's someone who is sort of adorably pathetic - typically the younger hipsters - I say, "I want to make him soup."

Several weeks ago, I spoke to a friend about how she was dealing with her chronic illness and offered to make her soup.  Not that she's unable to eat a hamburger, or unable to cook her own soup, but you know, I could make her soup.  She seemed insulted and accepted no soup.

Fine then.   Maybe some people don't like to be described as adorably pathetic.  But I don't learn.  So another friend has been eating hospital food for several weeks now, and so I told him I'd bring soup, and that I make potato leek and chicken tortilla and such - was there anything particular he was interested in? "Beef barley."

Beef barley.

1.  I don't think I've ever had it.  It's just not something I'd choose.It's not the beef, per se, I like onion soup. I like beef stew.

2. I don't buy the sorts of things one makes beef stock out of.

Is it still considered making soup if you don't make the stock? I saw recipes for "quick" beef barley that included opening a can of stock, dropping in deli sliced roast beef and a few vegetables, and simmering 30 minutes.   Is that making soup?  Or is that adding some stuff to pre-existing soup?  Will it have the healing properties of homemade soup?

I didn't want to risk it, but I'm really not a "snout to tail" person.  I compromised.  Some existing stock, and some beef on the bone, and together we'd get something kind of made of food. 

Vegetarians look away - raw meat after the jump.

Potato Leek Soup

giant bowl of soup

It's getting to be the end of soup season.  A hot bowl of soup is so comforting right when the weather starts to get chilly and then through the winter, but as soon as there's a hint of a warm day here or there, soups can start to seem so heavy, so warm... still appropriate for a rainy day, but burdensome when the sun is shining.

But April showers, right?  We still have a couple more weeks.  Pretty soon we'll be trading leeks for scallions - until then, we have potato leek soup.

Tortilla Soup with Kale and Chicken

I don't really make soups.  I'm not good at viewing a soup as "dinner."  Put a grilled cheese sandwich next to it, and I'm all set, but just soup sounds like a beverage.   But this is different.  This is borderline stewlike.  This has stuff it it, and if you want to put different stuff in it, that's ok too.  Like pizza, pretty much, you can clean out your fridge into tortilla soup.