soup II

For the solstice, a soup with white and green and gold ingredients. Another slight variation on a Sally Nirenberg* original -- she calls for dry mustard, I like it with mustard greens, fresh or frozen. Not surprisingly, fresh greens have a snappier flavor, so start slow if you're shy about mustard's sharpness. You can always add more later, or next time.

Parsnip and Mustard Green Soup

1 tblsp unsalted butter
1 Spanish onion, coarsely chopped
1 pound parsnips, peeld and sliced
1/2 ten-ounce box frozen mustard greens, or 1/3 to 1/2 a bunch of fresh greens (If using fresh: wash, stem, blanch, and chop the greens. Freeze the rest for next time. )
5 cups chicken stock

Step 1
In a heavy saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add onion and cook until golden.

Step 2
Add parsnips and stock. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until parsnips are soft, about 25 minutes.

Step 3
Puree the soup in a blender or food processor. Return it to the pot, add the chopped greens and heat gently.

Or, you can add the greens in the last five minutes or so of step 2 and puree it all at once. I like the way the soup looks with the green lacing through the ivory broth so I add them after the power-mashing.


* Also from Recipes from the Night Kitchen.

Boil and bubble. A note of appreciation

I haven't been tagged -- and I'm not complaining about that -- but I thought I'd share a not-so secret thing about me. I love soup.

I love soup so much that I have considered starting a take-out soup business. But I also know from experience that I am not as entrepreneurial as a business needs its founder to be, so instead I play with the idea of the thing, and have a good old vicarious time of it.

I credit Sally Nirenberg with launching this wholesome preoccupation. In 1990, Ms Nirenberg published Recipes from the Night Kitchen: A Practical Guide to Spectacular Soups, Stews, and Chilies which just may be the best book of recipes of any kind ever. (The Night Kitchen was the name of the wholesale soup business that she founded and ran in Massachusetts.) She makes having a soup business sound achievable and idyllic; and her recipes for the home cook are, in fact, Practical and Spectacular -- this is not hyperbolic press puffery. I've never met her, but I am profoundly grateful to her. I've never had a bad meal from her book, or a sour moment while pretending that maybe I could have a business like that too. Ongoing food for the body and the imagination is a good return from a $10 investment amortized over 18 years. The book is still available -- new and used -- so go get one.

Meanwhile as winter taps ever more vigorously at the panes, I thought that, from time to time, I might share some of the treasures from my travels in the realms of broths and report on the many goodly stocks and consommes seen. (apologies to Keats) To wit, my variation on Ms Nirenberg's Carrot-Fennel soup (she calls for fennel seeds; I thought "why not an actual fennel?").
1 tablespoon olive or canola oil
1 Spanish onion, coarsely chopped
1.5 to 2 lbs carrots, peeled and sliced
8 cups chicken or vegetable stock
(I use half stock, half water; all stock is too chickeny for me)
1 small fennel bulb. with or without the feathery bits, coarsely chopped
(or 1 teaspoon dried fennel seed, for all you originalists)

I don't use the oil. I just toss everything into a crock pot and let it cook on low for 6 (or so) hours, then run it through the food processor. I used to use a blender but the processor doesn't completely liquefy everything the way the blender does, so the soup has a nice, very slightly rough texture.

If you don't have a crock pot -- YOU DON'T HAVE A CROCK POT? HOW CAN YOU LIVE? -- then put the oil in a 3-quart pot and heat it gently. Add the onions and carrots (and chopped fennel, if using it) and cook, covered, over low heat until the vegetables are tender.
Add the stock and the fennel seeds (if using those -- one or the other, vegetable or seeds, not both) and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes. Then run it all through a food processor or blender.

This yields about 2.5 to 3 quarts. It's also good cold in the summer. Which is one of the few good things about summer. In addition to my birthday, which is the only official holiday in August.