White Bean Soup with Bacon and Dandelion Pesto

Bacon is the center of the Venn diagram of this soup. White beans and bacon are a traditional pairing as are dandelion leaves and bacon, so why not combine the two to make a perfect complement? 

I’d been eyeing the quart of (regional and organic) cannellini beans that I made a while ago and froze, wondering what to make with it. Like canned beans, they were too mushy to be served whole so I decided on a pureed soup, transformed by the addition of chopped onion slowly cooked with a thick strip of smoky bacon. I added a little water to get the soup to the desired consistency. Separately, I made pesto of raw dandelion leaves from our lawn, pureeing them in a food processor with olive oil, salt and garlic.  First, I garnished the soup with the pesto and liked it so much that I added in quite a lot. The slight bite of the greens and the bacon perked up the smooth and mild beans to make a satisfying Saturday soup.

White Bean Soup with Bacon and Dandelion Pesto

1 thick strip of smoky bacon, chopped

1 onion, chopped

4 c cooked white kidney or cannellini beans, with liquid (or two 14.5-oz cans)

Water as needed

1 c dandelion leaves, washed

2 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

1 tbsp olive oil

½ tsp salt

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook the bacon until it has rendered its fat and turned brown. Add the onions and cook slowly until translucent. Add the beans and their liquid and cook until the flavors are well combined, about 15 minutes. Add water as needed. Puree the soup in a food processor or with an immersion blender, adding more water to reach the desired consistency.

Meanwhile, place the dandelion leaves in a food processor, add olive oil, salt and garlic and process until well pureed. (I leave mine a little chunky and I use less oil than most people do.) Stir the pesto into the soup and add salt (if needed) and pepper to taste.

Serves 4.

Read Full Post »

Gingered Kohlrabi and Root Soup with Ginger Radishes

You might say this is gilding the lily: ginger on ginger. Ginger’s been our antidote to wintery blues as we continue to thin the storage crops. It worked the other day for sautéed cabbage, so I put a hefty piece into a kohlrabi soup to spark it up.  Kohlrabi is a form of cabbage although the bulge at the base of its stem resembles a root. It’s one of the best keepers from last fall’s harvest. I still have a few turnips and a little celeriac too and they went into the mix, along with a yellow potato to make the soup creamy without using cream. I used a light chicken stock because I had some but a vegetable broth would be fine.

The soup was delicious but didn’t look like much so I quick-pickled some watermelon radishes with ginger and tossed them in for color and a spunky flavor. The colorful piquant pickle dressed up the soup in looks and taste like it belongs in the Easter parade.

Gingered Kohlrabi and Root Soup

6 medium kohlrabi bulbs

2-3 medium gold or white turnips

1 very small celeriac bulb (celery root)

1 medium yellow or white potato

2-inch piece of ginger root

1 medium onion,

2 tsp vegetable oil

4 c light chicken stock or vegetable broth

Optional garnish: pickled ginger and radishes

Peel the kohlrabi, turnips, celeriac and potato and cut them into similar sized cubes. Peel the ginger and chop it fine. Chop the onion into small pieces.

Warm the vegetable oil in a large pot over medium heat and add the onion, stirring to cook it until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the vegetables and the ginger and stir to combine. Add the stock or broth and bring to a simmer over medium high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer the mixture until all of the vegetables are tender. Remove and let cool slightly. Puree with an immersion blender or use a food processor. Serve hot.

Serves 4.

Pickled Ginger Radishes

3-4 medium watermelon radishes (or other variety)

1 tsp salt

1 or 2-inch piece of ginger

¼ c unseasoned rice vinegar

2 tbsp sugar

Peel the radishes and slice them into thin rounds, matchsticks or chunks. Place them in a bowl, sprinkle them with salt, and set aside for 15 minutes. Peel and slice the ginger to match the radishes in shape.

When the radishes are finished with their salting process, place the rice vinegar and sugar in a cup and microwave it (or cook it on the stove in a very small pan), just until it simmers and the sugar dissolves (give it a good stir). Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the radishes and let the mixture cool. Refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight.

Read Full Post »

Root Soup with Kale Chips

I spent the morning detailing my refrigerator. Seriously. I gathered my husband’s collection of brushes and probes for the non-greasy parts of the car and small equipment, and went to town. Actually, I wish I’d gone to town. Instead, I stayed home in the falling snow and emptied and cleaned my fussy fridge. I had two goals. One was to stop the flooding. My refrigerator floods itself every so often. I know that sounds silly. What gal in her right mind would buy a (costly German) refrigerator that floods? (I loved its hardware, dimensions and materials. Designers are not always the most rational people on the planet.) It floods when stuff gets crammed against the back wall, which acts like a vertical plane for condensation flowing to a tiny hole at the bottom of an inclined trough. It also floods when the tiny hole gets some little bit stuck in it. How inconvenient.

The other goal in cleaning house was to inventory the storage vegetables remaining after a long winter. It’s always my goal to be ready to start over by Easter, even though there will be a gap in substantial local produce until May. 

The fridge coughed up several varieties of turnips and beets, violet and green kohlrabi, a couple of parsnips, and celeriac bulbs. Not to mention cabbage, leeks, and carrots, some of which arrived more recently than the first list. I sorted them into soup groups: the first up would be a root vegetable soup of leeks and onions combined with celeriac, two varieties of turnips, and parsnips. This turned out to be a delicious combination, naturally sweet and creamy. To finish off the soup, I added a touch of half-and-half (cream and milk) and garnished it with spunky, crispy kale chips made from the lone stalk discovered during the clean-out.

Kale chips are terrific snacks and are simple and quick to make. Just be sure to rub the olive oil into the leaves thoroughly (like I did with my kale salad this winter) before salting and slipping them into the oven until dried and crisp. They offered my creamy soup a welcome salty crunch, a change from the typical garnish of snipped fresh herbs.

Root Soup

2 medium-large parsnips, peeled and cut into chunks

1 medium celeriac bulb, peeled and cut into chunks

3-4 turnips, peeled and cut into chunks (I used 1 large gold ball turnip and 5 very small white turnips)

1 large leek, white and pale green portions, cleaned and sliced

1 small onion, peeled and chopped

4 c homemade chicken stock

Salt

¼ c cream or half-and-half

Garnish: kale chips or fresh parsley, chopped

Place the vegetables in a large pot with the chicken stock, adding water if necessary to cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Puree the soup using an immersion blender or food processor and return to the pot. Add salt if necessary.

When ready to serve, add the cream or half-and-half and bring to a simmer. Serve hot, garnished with herbs or kale chips.

Serves 6-8.

Kale Chips

Curly kale, leaves stripped from the stems, washed and thoroughly dried

Olive oil

Coarse salt (Kosher or sea salt)

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Tear the kale leaves into small pieces. Place them on a baking sheet and sprinkle them with a little olive oil. Rub the leaves to absorb the oil. Sprinkle with salt. Place the pan in the oven and cook the kale for 10 minutes or a little longer, until the edges start to dry but not brown. Remove from the baking pan to cool.

Read Full Post »

Portuguese-style Fish Chowder

This chowder epitomizes the concept of “savory.”  It is well seasoned and flavorful, and a longtime favorite at our house. Spicy, garlicky chorizo sausage counterbalances the inherent sweetness of the white fish, and the grassy green pepper and cilantro leaves and stems complement the neutral base of onions and potatoes. A pinch of allspice subtly transforms the tomatoes. But underlying all of this is homemade fish stock that adds body and a certain depth of flavor.

The recipes for both the stock and the chowder come from Jasper White’s cookbook, 50 Chowders, which I’ve raved about many times. He calls the dish “South Coast Portuguese Chowder” in honor of the large Portuguese population of the south coast of Massachusetts and east coast of Rhode Island.  The key ingredient is the chorizo, removed from its casing and chopped. It’s a lesson in how adding even a little of something so piquant can transform an entire dish. White suggests using canned tomatoes because of their robust flavor. He adds them after the potatoes have cooked and released their starch. I’m a fan of the combination of potatoes and tomatoes but the acidity in the tomatoes inhibits the release of potato starch if they’re cooked together. I used Yukon gold potatoes since I wanted them to maintain their integrity and not become mushy. I followed White’s recipe pretty accurately but cut the vegetables into smaller pieces of different shape (dice versus slice). 

Served with crunchy bread and a little salad, this fish chowder stacks up well alongside classics such as bouillabaise and cioppino.

Portuguese-style Fish Chowder adapted from Jasper White’s 50 Chowders

1 tbsp olive oil

1 dried bay leaf

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium onion, cut into ½-inch pieces

½ green pepper, cut into ½-inch pieces

1/8 tsp ground allspice

2 c strong fish stock

1 lb Yukon gold or firm white potatoes, cut into ¾-inch cubes

1 c whole canned tomatoes measured with their juice, cut into ½-inch pieces

3 oz spicy dried chorizo sausage, casing removed and cut into ¼-inch pieces.

Sea salt (or Kosher salt) and freshly ground black pepper

1 lb whole filets of white fish such as cod, hake or haddock, pinbones removed

5 sprigs of cilantro, leaves and tender stems chopped (2 tbsp)

Heat a large pot over medium heat and add the olive oil and bay leaf. As soon as the bay leaf starts to brown, add the garlic and stir. Just before the garlic browns, add the onion, green pepper and allspice and, cook, stirring until the onions are softened but not browned. Add the stock and potatoes and bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. (Add more stock or water if necessary to cover the potatoes completely.) Cover the pot and turn the heat down a little, allowing the potatoes to cook vigorously until just tender, 8-10 minutes.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the tomatoes and sausage. Simmer for 5 minutes. Adjust the seasonings. Be liberal with the salt and pepper.

Add the fish and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat, and sit in the cilantro. Cover the pot and let the chowder sit for 10 minutes. The fish will continue to cook.

Serves 4 amply.

Read Full Post »

Waste Not, Want Not: White Fish Stock and Chowder

One of my favorite things to do is to walk away with an armload of “garbage” and turn it into gold. Fish stock is a great luxury and a classic lesson in “waste not, want not,” especially when our local fishmonger is generous with his trimmings. I can walk into his tiny store just about any afternoon and walk out with a bag of fish heads and frames to use as a base for soup and chowder. Like shopping for anything seasonal and regional, you need to be flexible. An ideal fish for a versatile stock will be a white-fleshed fish like haddock or cod. However, one day I received salmon and another, bluefish. The resulting chowders were highly specific to the characteristics and flavors of those fish.

Last weekend, I scored big on white fish. There was a sparkle in the eye of the store’s fishmonger-of-the-day when I asked for fish trimmings and he was in the midst of carving a sizeable cod hand-caught somewhere between the Bay of Maine and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Even the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the be-all-end-all of fish watchdogs, would approve. A wink and a nod later, I walked out of the store past a line of customers with their jaws dropped over the enormity (and maybe appearance) of what I was carrying in a clear plastic bag.  I think the fishmongers like to dish out daunting tasks, but know that I am intrepid. The great thing about this catch is that there’s usually enough flesh on the bones to make a fulfilling soup or chowder. However, given the generosity of the store and its place in our community, I always purchase some of the fish whose bones I got for free. It’s just fair. 

That afternoon, I spent an hour or so cleaning the fish and preparing a strong fish stock. Cleaning is important, since you want to rid your fish of all traces of blood, and if you have a fish head, you need to remove the gills. In addition, for this fish, I also used a thin flexible-bladed boning knife to extract meat for my chowder. 

I make fish stock two ways. The first is analogous to making chicken stock: place the fish bones in water (preferably with a little white wine), and bring to a boil, skimming off the foam. Reduce the heat to simmer the liquid and add aromatics, such as onions, celery, carrots and parsley, plus whole peppercorns and a little salt. This cooks to perfection in 20 minutes.

The other method produces what Jasper White calls “Strong Fish Stock.”  Jasper White, if you don’t know him, is a seafood genius from New England. Having spent a good part of my life in Massachusetts, I appreciate what he has to say in books like 50 Chowders. I think I’ve cooked about 25 so far, most of which are variations on a method.  So-called strong fish stock is made in several gentle stages:  sweat (slowly cook) onions, celery, carrots, herbs in a large pot for 8 minutes; add white wine, stack the fish heads and frames on top and sweat them until the bones turn white, 10-15 minutes; cover with water and simmer for 10 minutes; turn off the heat and let the mixture sit for 10 minutes; carefully decant. That’s it.  Other than cleaning any residual meat from the bones. 

My big cod yielded not only enough raw meat for chowder but also enough cooked meat for fish cakes. Two full four-person meals from the trash, and 3 quarts of fish stock for the freezer. Not to mention that fish bones can be pretty good for composting, but don’t get me started.

This particular chowder is a variation on classic New England chowder, made with abundant celery and celery leaves, and generally follows Jasper White’s method. 

Strong Fish Stock, adapted from Jasper White, 50 Chowders

1 tbsp unsalted butter

2 medium onions, very thinly sliced

4 stalks celery, very thinly sliced

2 medium carrots, very thinly sliced

2 bay leaves

¼ c roughly chopped parsley stems and leaves

6 large sprigs thyme

2 tbsp black peppercorns

1 large (6”) or 2 small fish heads (cod or haddock), cleaned of blood and gills removed

2-3 lbs fish frames (bones), cut into 4-inch pieces and cleaned of blood

½ c white wine

About 2 qts very hot or boiling water

Salt

Melt the butter in a large saucepan or stockpot over medium heat. Add the onions, celery, carrots, bay leaves, parsley and thyme and cook slowly, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is soft, about 8 minutes.

Place the fish head and then the bones on top of the vegetables. Add the wine to the pot, cover it and let the fish bones sweat until they turn white, about 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring water to a boil in a quantity sufficient to cover the fish mixture. Add enough barely to cover the bones and bring the mixture to a simmer. Cook for about 10 minutes, skimming off any foam that rises to the surface. (Hint: push a shallow ladle or skimmer in a circular motion to the edges of the pot.)

Remove the pot from the heat, cover it, and let the mixture steep for 10 minutes.

Gently remove the fish and vegetables from the liquid and strain it. Cool thoroughly before refrigerating or freezing. This lasts for about 3 days in the refrigerator and a couple of months in the freezer.

New England-Style Fish Chowder with Celery inspired by Jasper White

2 tbsp chopped meaty salt pork

Vegetable oil or butter

1 medium onion, cut into ½-inch pieces

1-2 stalks celery, cut into ¼-inch slices, leaves reserved

1½ tsp fresh thyme leaves (or use summer savory)

1 lb Yukon gold or other white potatoes, peeled and cut in ½-inch dice

2-3 c fish stock

¾-1 lb white fish such as cod or haddock

½- ¾c half and half (or use heavy cream)

Salt and pepper

2-3 tbsp chopped celery leaves

1 tbsp chopped parsley leaves (optional)

In a large pot over low heat, sauté the salt pork until it renders its fat. Increase the heat slightly and cook the salt pork until brown. Remove the salt pork to a towel to crisp, leaving the fat in the pot.  (Pour off excess.)

Add the oil or butter to the pot and stir in the onions, celery and thyme or savory, cooking over medium heat until the vegetables are soft.

Add the potatoes and enough stock to cover them completely. You can add water if you do not have enough stock. Bring the liquid to a boil, lower the heat to medium-high and cover the pot. Cook the potatoes vigorously until just tender, about 8-10 minutes. Smash a few potatoes against the side of the pot to release the starches and slightly thicken the chowder (this cuts down on the temptation to add a lot of cream!).

Add the fish, salt and pepper,  and most of the celery leaves and cook over low heat for 5 minutes.  Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the half-and-half or cream. Let it sit, covered, for 10 minutes, covered. (The fish will continue to cook.)

When ready to serve, heat the chowder over low heat, stir in the reserved salt pork, additional celery leaves, and parsley if using.

Serves 4.

Read Full Post »

Gingered Kuri Squash Soup

As penance for my recent foray into non-seasonal vegetables, I went all out with local produce this weekend. Actually, I am trying to clear my stash of storage vegetables before spring. Every year at this time, I find myself with lingering winter squash, sweet potatoes and turnips, as well as onions and garlic that are starting to sprout, and ginger root still growing in a pot. Typically cheese pumpkins and blue hubbard squash are the lingerers but this year it’s red kuri squash, which is sometimes called Hokkaido squash or, in French, potimarron. Its flesh is dark orange and its flavor deep, even after it’s been stored for a couple of months. We grew these last year and they’re my new favorite.

I halved the squash, saved the seeds of course, and roasted it cut side down in a 350-degree oven until soft, about an hour. Once cooled, I scooped out the flesh and stored it in the refrigerator for all kinds of uses: soup, risotto, even pancakes.  I like this simplest of all soups, thick like puree, creamy from the addition of sweet potato, and very flavorful from the richness of the squash and the abundance of ginger.  Of course, you could make it creamier with the addition of coconut milk or garnish it with nuts or seeds, but it was perfect as is.

Gingered Kuri Squash Soup

3-4 lb red kuri squash

Olive oil

Salt

1 medium onion, chopped

Vegetable oil (such as canola)

3 tbsp slivered fresh ginger

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and chopped

3-4 c vegetable broth or water, or a combination

Salt and hot red pepper to taste

Optional: ¼ c coconut milk

To prepare the squash, wash and halve it, and scoop out the seeds. Sprinkle the cavity with olive oil and salt and place the squash, cut side down, on a baking sheet. Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for about an hour or until very soft. Let the squash cool and scoop out the flesh. You can make this ahead of time.

To prepare the soup, slowly sauté the onion in a neutral vegetable oil such as canola until it softens. Add the ginger and stir until the ginger turns aromatic. Add the sweet potato and a couple of cups of vegetable stock or water or a combination. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer, covered, until the sweet potato is tender, about 15 minutes. Add the roasted squash, additional liquid if needed, and cook for another 15 minutes, covered.  Puree the mixture with an immersion blender or in a food processor. Adjust the seasonings and add more liquid if needed, including the optional coconut milk just before serving.

Serves 4

Read Full Post »

Curried Zucchini Soup

What am I doing cooking out-of-season vegetables? There have been dark days of winter when I challenged myself to cook almost exclusively with local produce, and I have to say that it changed how I shop and how I cook, generally for the better. I became interested in the seasonal cuisines of other parts of the world with similar climates. The result is that so-called Mediterranean-inspired food was not in the picture during late fall and winter. No eggplants or zucchini, tomatoes or peppers, unless they’re home-canned or dried. In those dark days, nary a summer squash would enter the house. Except for one thing.

I have an urge, born of innate frugality, to “rescue” slightly tired vegetables from the clearance area of our local organic produce market, affectionately known as the “soup bin” and also from a local grocery store. Who could pass up six organic zucchini for under a dollar, even if they have a few nicks? I recently was served a curried zucchini soup somewhere when I was traveling and I thought how nice it would be to make some, if only I’d remember that moment in July. But no, those ‘”seconds” in the market were too good to pass up and fulfilled my hankering for this slightly spicy soup.

This is a delicious soup that belies the simplicity of its ingredients and preparation: onions sautéed in vegetable oil, curry spices added to blend, chopped zucchini and a little potato cooked with water until tender, and blended.  Served as is, it was light and spicy, With the addition of a little cooked rice and yogurt, it became a heartier soup that felt appropriate in the winter.

Curried Zucchini Soup

1 medium onion, chopped

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tsp (to taste) good quality curry powder

3 medium or 5 small zucchini, scrubbed and cut into chunks

1 small white or yellow potato, peeled and cubed

Water (about 3-4 cups, more if needed)

Salt to taste

Optional: a cup or so of cooked rice

Optional: a spoonful of plain yogurt per bowl

Optional: herb garnish

In a medium-large pot over medium heat, saute the onion slowly in the oil until translucent. Add the curry powder and stir to combine, cooking slightly. Add the zucchini and potato and continue to sauté until the surfaces are well covered. Add water to cover and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat so that the liquid simmers. Partially cover the pot. Cook until the vegetables are very soft, about 15 minutes. Puree the soup with an immersion blender (or process in a food processor). Add salt to taste.

Serve as is, garnished with herbs, or place cooked rice in the bottom of a soup bowl, ladle on the soup and top with a spoonful of yogurt (or heavy cream).

Serves 6.

Read Full Post »

Dorie Greenspan’s Orange-Lentil Soup

I’m once again hooked on Dorie Greenspan’s Around my French Table. Thanks to a monthly cooking challenge that delves into one cookbook a month, I cracked open Dorie’s tome and started paying more attention to her approach. I do mean “tome,” since you could get your upper body in shape between this book and the similarly sized Baking from my Home to Yours.

I decided to make her “orange-scented lentil soup” (pages 90-91) as this week’s soup, and it’s a winner. I’ve always liked Dorie’s cooking but now that I’ve looked closer at this volume, I realize that she’s continually making a twist on something traditional, creating fresh combinations. In this soup, for example, she starts with a traditional French lentil soup, in which French puy lentils (I used American organic indigo lentils, which are similar) are stewed with onion, celery and carrots in chicken stock or vegetable broth (or even water, as I sometimes do). Then she adds orange peel, coriander seeds and a clove, and grated fresh ginger. The result is a delicious tonic, spunky and spicy from the ginger and aromatic from the orange. She suggests topping the soup with yogurt or lardons (thick bacon). I chose light sour cream since I had it on hand, grated more orange rind on top, and snipped thyme from my garden.

The proportions are pretty simple. She uses 1 cup of lentils to 6 cups of liquid (I used 4 and reserved the rest to thin the soup to taste, which it hardly needed). An onion, a carrot and two stalks of celery with leaves, all chopped, are stewed in vegetable oil and added to the pot, along with a sizeable strip of orange peel (1×2 inches), 1-inch piece of ginger grated, 6 peppercorns, 1 clove and 4 coriander seeds. After simmering, covered, for 45 minutes, you add a teaspoon of salt and fresh black pepper to taste. Continue to cook until the mixture is very soft (altogether an hour or a little more) and puree it the soup in a food processor until smooth.  This makes about 6 servings. I’m not going to say it serves 6 people though, since everyone wanted more than one bowl. It was that good. 

Read Full Post »

Rutabaga Soup with Bacon and Apples

Everything tastes better with bacon, so goes the cliché.  I went to Richmond, Virginia last week and had a non-bacon “bacon” experience with a certain parsnip soup. The soup, which I will attempt to replicate sometime, seemed to be a simple puree of parsnips and pears poached in vanilla cream. It was served over so-called red shrimp, salty little nuggets of battered and fried crustaceans. An unexpected bite that made a perfect foil for the soup’s richness. So it’s really not the bacon, but the combination of crunchy texture and intense salt that creates the sensation.

Back home, I had bacon. And slivered red apples that I added to a pureed rutabaga cooked with onions and chicken stock, both adding textural and flavor dimension to this spunky soup. I picked these rutabagas during the gleaning of our CSA fields in November so I knew they would be sweet rather than bitter like the waxed examples that populate the grocery store. They’re simply too old. If you are suspicious that your rutabaga’s over the hill, add a white potato or a carrot to mellow it out and finish with milk or cream.

Rutabaga Soup with Bacon and Apples

2 lbs rutabaga (about 3 small-medium roots)

1 large onion, chopped

1 tbsp butter or vegetable oil

Optional: cubed carrots and/or white potatoes

4 c chicken stock

Water if needed

Salt and pepper

Optional: a tablespoonful or two of heavy cream or ¼ c milk

Garnish: cooked and crumbled bacon, slivered red apples

Peel and cube the rutabaga. In a large saucepan over medium heat, slowly sauté the onion in the butter or oil until it softens. Add the rutabaga (and optional carrots and/or potatoes) and stir to coat all surfaces. Add the chicken stock and bring the mixture to a simmer.  Adjust the heat to maintain a simmer, cover the pan and cook until the rutabaga is soft, about 20 minutes. Puree until smooth in a food processor or use an immersion blender. Add salt and pepper to taste, and cream or milk if desired. Serve hot garnished with bacon and slivered apple. Makes about 6 servings.

Read Full Post »

Spicy Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup

We have a weekend soup habit. A late Saturday pick-me-up. A Sunday lunch. Leftovers stashed to cart to work during the week, or frozen for doling out to starving artists and graduate students. It’s a nice habit since it gives us the opportunity to improvise with whatever’s on hand and have something ready to eat when we are. During CSA season, we take the opportunity to cook down whatever doesn’t fit in our fussy fridge.  Now in early winter we are working our way through the storage vegetables, the squashes and cabbages and sweet potatoes from the fall harvest.   

Every growing season produces a surprise. You can’t be sure that the cabbages will keep, or the pumpkins and squash. There have been years when I am finally cooking up the last cheese pumpkin, a squat beige beauty that’s been adorning our counter all winter – in March!  Not so this year.  Some of our cooking pumpkins barely made it to Halloween, which was cancelled anyway because of the hurricane. Some limped along to Thanksgiving and others simply imploded. So I oven-roasted what was left and turned it into soup.

The pumpkin flesh was flaccid and mild, insipid even, not inspiring. Although it was a cooking pumpkin, its flesh resembled that of a jack-o-lantern. I therefore gave the soup some body and flavor by using equal parts of sweet potato and pumpkin. Since my liquid would be water instead of a flavorful broth or stock, I added plentiful spices: curry powder, ground cumin, cayenne pepper and salt, and smoothed it all out with a tablespoon or so of heavy cream.  Topped with pumpkin seeds and sautéed apples, this produced a delicious repast for a busy weekend preparing for the holidays.

Spicy Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup

1 medium onion, chopped

1 tbsp butter or olive oil

2 tsp curry powder

1 tsp ground cumin

½ tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp salt

2 c roasted pumpkin flesh

2 c peeled and chopped sweet potato

2 c or more vegetable broth or water

2 tbsp heavy cream (or more to taste)

Additional salt and cayenne pepper to taste

Garnish: roasted hulled pumpkin seeds, sautéed or raw apple cubes

Slowly cook the onion in butter or oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the curry powder and cook, stirring, until well combined and aromatic.

Add the remaining ingredients, except for the cream and garnish, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to medium or medium low and simmer, partially covered for 30-40 minutes or until the sweet potato is thoroughly cooked.

Puree with an immersion blender or in a food processor and adjust the seasonings.

Garnish with pumpkin seeds and apple, wither raw or sautéed in a little butter.

Serves 4-6.

Read Full Post »