Interesting story about dinner last night!
I decided to make a big pot of creamy veggie soup. I have assorted
recipes: potato-cauliflower, broccoli cheese, etc, but I had this
memory of a pale orange soup I'd made once before that had a really
rich veggie taste. I rummaged around my files and found some notes on a
soup I called "A little bit ofeverything soup" I also looked at the
Witer vegetable Soup posted here last week by Michael, and kind of
combined the 2 recipes.
I sauteed an onion, a leek, and 3 shallots in olive oil. Then I added 3
peeled, chopped potaotes; 1 peeled diced turnip, about 1/3 lb chopped
baby carrots, 3 ribs of celery, 2 tomatoes, 1/4 lb green beans, 1/4 c
minced parsley, 1/2 a zucchini, a handful of cauliflower florets, and
added to it 4 c of veggie stock and some thyme. Then I decided to dump
in the remaining half a can of tomato paste in my fridge. Simmered it
all down for half an hour or so, with the intention of pureeing it to a
velvety smooth goodness and adding a touch of cream.
Well, it musthave been the tomato paste that did it. When I returned to
my soup pot half an hour later, lo and behold, I found a lovely pot of
minestrone waiting for me! I pureed half of it and used it as cream of
veggie soup for dinner, but the other half a potful got a can of white
beans and a bunch of orzo added to it, plus a rind of parmesan. It gets
to sit in the fridge for a day or two and then it will be dinner
.....I'll make bruschetta with it, using an artichoke topping and
parmesan cheese.
The cream of veggie ggot served with a loaf of rosemary-black pepper
soda bread, and a gorgeous salad of romaine, apples, mushrooms, roasted
salted almonds, green onions, and small cubes of sage derby cheese. It
was dressed with a light buttermilk-lemon-dill-garlic dressing. Yum,
yum, yum!
I'm still a litte confused by the whole experience, though. I've never
gone into the kitchen thinking I was cooking one thing and found
something completely different butequally delicious waiting for me!
(PS, one of the reasons I don't make minestrone that often is that i
get a little lazy about all the chopping. Ha! Joke's on me I guess!)