Provençal Vegetable Soup

This recipe (Barefoot in Paris) was a great way to get a great serving of vegetables in the middle of winter, and it also served me by helping me to clean out the freezer.  There are a few things that separate this from ordinary vegetable soup:  it includes pistou (like pesto), and it contains both potatoes and pasta, so it’s a bit on the starchy side.  I used frozen CSA green beans in place of haricots verts, so this was probably a little more sloppy than it should have been, but I didn’t mind.  I used yellow potatoes, which may have added to the starchiness, but either the potatoes or the noodles could have been eliminated if you didn’t want that much starch.  Instead of making the pesto fresh, I dug out some beautiful arugula pesto that I made from our CSA arugula last summer.  I mixed it with some tomato paste (also from the freezer!) to make the pistou.  Just a little bit of the pistou gave the soup a great flavor, and I’ll definitely use that trick again.

I found some great rosemary ciabatta rolls in the freezer section of the grocery store, which rounded this out nicely, along with the Chive Risotto Cakes.

Lentil Vegetable Soup

Lentil Vegetable Soup (Barefoot Contessa Cookbook) is the perfect New Year’s Resolution meal:  it’s inexpensive (budget resolution), it’s ridiculously healthy (weight loss resolution), and it can use up vegetables that have been lingering in the refrigerator (organization resolution).  Besides, it’s warm and comforting, and dried lentils don’t take nearly as long to cook as dried beans.  I can’t feel too virtuous, what with fish and chips and all the other butter-laden goodness that’s come out of our kitchen lately, but I figure that this and the steel-cut oatmeal I down almost every morning, I might be starting to make up for some of the other indulgences.  I love cumin, but I know some of my friends aren’t crazy about it:  if you’re one of those unfortunate souls, try substituting mild chili powder and/or paprika instead.

Roasted Vegetable Soup with Brioche Croutons

Made with leftovers from Roasted Winter Vegetables, I whipped up a half-batch of this soup the next day for lunch.  It tasted terrific, but I need to say this right now:  hot liquids, my food processor, and I do not play well together.  I don’t know what it is, but every time, it makes a monumental mess that usually ends with the dog licking the floor.  Said dog and I spent the morning at the vet’s office with a too-nasty-to-describe-here ear infection that day, and then we spent the rest of the morning running errands with The Rest of the World on the Saturday before Christmas, leading to a gigantic sinus/pressure headache.  All in all, it wasn’t a good morning to make soup, but I was s.t.a.r.v.i.n.g., and this project isn’t cooking itself.  Theoretically, however, this soup is a breeze, and it would have been if I had just kept the damned hot liquids out of my food processor.  I don’t know what it is – it’s not like I have a cheap knockoff from QVC or something.  It’s the real deal – a Cuisinart, grown-up food processor.  Ah, well.  It tasted good.  And the brioche croutons made it that much better.

Roasted Vegetable Soup:  p. 33, Barefoot Contessa Family Style

Brioche Croutons:  p. 34, Barefoot Contessa Family Style

Lentil Soup with Sausage

Hearty soup on a cold winter’s night?  Don’t mind if I do!  This soup was so tasty, and not at all intimidating to cook, even though it’s from Barefoot in Paris (pp. 90-91).  The hardest work, as with any soup, was chopping all the vegetables.  Lentils are ridiculously healthy, the soup is loaded with vegetables, and I used turkey kielbasa for a trimmed-down version of this soup.  So, all in all, not a bad antidote to cold winter weather and holiday sweets!

Rosemary White Bean Soup

If you’re sensing a soup theme here, you’re not imagining things.  It’s been cold and rainy here, and soup seems just right for dinner.  The Rosemary White Bean Soup on p. 83 of the Barefoot Contessa cookbook was simple and tasty, and I think it would be a great first course for a winter dinner party.  Best of all, it’s easy enough to keep all of the ingredients on hand, and it’s healthy enough with main ingredients of beans and chicken stock.  This recipe also had the added benefit of using up some fresh rosemary from my herb garden, which even if brought indoors, is certain not to last the winter.

Roasted Potato Leek Soup with Crispy Shallots

I will admit to being afraid of cooking with leeks.  Every recipe I read that calls for leeks includes instructions to carefully wash between the leaves, as dirt can get trapped in the tight spaces between them.  I saw a demonstration of cleaning leeks that included filling the entire kitchen sink with water and giving the leeks a bath to get out all of the dirt.  I’m not sure I could bleach my kitchen sink enough to be comfortable with that process.  Our food does not touch our kitchen sink, knowing how many times we wash our hands there.  Furthermore, most recipes calling for leeks were for potato leek soup.  It sounded good, but I already had a potato soup recipe from my native Wisconsin:  potato cheese soup, of course.  The recipe I’ve used in the past was from the (in)famous Tee Pee Supper Club in Tomah, Wisconsin.  My dad owned it when I was born, and we ate there quite a bit when I was growing up.  My birth was apparently celebrated there with many, many drinks.  My dad’s brief experience as a restauranteur led him to talking me out of a culinary career when I was thinking about ditching the whole law school gig:  ”But sweetheart, you don’t have a drug problem, or even a drinking problem.  I’m not sure you’d fit in at cooking school.”  (Be sure to check out the Tee Pee’s web page, by the way, especially the mission statement and the “testimonial.”  It’s now owned by Ed Thompson, the Billy Carter/Roger Clinton of Wisconsin.  Strange story, good soup.)

So, as tempting as potato leek soup sounded, I had never actually made it.  And then a leek showed up in our CSA box, along with some beautiful yellow potatoes.  I found a recipe on pp. 63-64 of Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics and got to work.  The leeks were actually not that difficult to clean – I cut off the large green ends first, and then washed them.  This recipe called for roasting the potatoes and leeks, which filled the house with a heavenly aroma.  It also called for arugula, which we’d grown to like quite a lot this summer.  The end result was fantastic, and when I left to spend a few days with my parents the next day, my husband ate an obscene amount of leftover soup for lunch.  The shallots were a really nice addition, after being crisped on the stovetop.  This soup was so satisfying that even my meat-loving husband turned down bacon as an extra topping.

Roasted Potatoes, Leeks, and Arugula

Ready to eat, with shallots and parmesan as garnish

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

We’re in a brief but wonderful intersection of seasons here in Minnesota, where the air is crisp enough to want hot soup for dinner, but the frost hasn’t gotten the last of the summer tomatoes yet.  During the first few days of cooking for this project, a dear friend asked if I wanted some of the extra tomatoes from her garden.  My answer was a definitive “yes.”  It just so happened that the beautiful tomatoes she brought were the perfect amount for Roasted Tomato Basil Soup (The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, p. 84).  This recipe also calls for a great deal of basil, which (despite my woeful lack of a green thumb) always seems to grow plentifully on my deck.  I’ve never been much of a fan of Campbell’s Tomato Soup, so I spent a long time thinking that I didn’t like tomato soup at all.  This soup changed my mind about that, and it’s especially good with warm rolls on the side.  The leftovers were great with grilled cheese sandwiches the next day for lunch.

The soup in the food mill