A lovely soup, flavored with the classic Belgian trio: leeks, thyme, and bay leaf. This was the first course at the Belgian meal with my vegetarian cooking group last weekend. We started by making a simple vegetable broth (the one I previously posted), and then built this soup following the recipe from Ruth Van Waerebeek’s Everybody Eats Well in Belgium Cookbook.
These days, it’s common to make pureed carrot soups with ginger and curry flavors, but I tend to prefer pairing carrots with fresh green herbs. Apparently, traditional Belgian cuisine highlights the best of Medieval European cooking skills. This means that they utilized fresh local European herbs before the spice trade.
photo by Joyce Hiendarto
BELGIAN HERBED CARROT SOUP
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 medium leeks, white and light green parts
1 large onion
6 cups vegetable broth (you can use my easy basic broth recipe, or used boxed broth)
1 – 1/2 pounds carrots
1 large baking potato
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, or 1 – 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 cup milk
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons fresh parsley
METHOD
Wash and thinly slice the leeks into rings. Slice the onion. Peel and slice the carrots into 1-inch slices. Peel and cube the potato. You don’t need to be precise in your chopping, since you will puree the soup at the end.
photo by Joyce Hiendarto
Melt the butter in a heavy soup pot over medium heat. Add the leeks and onion. Cook, stirring until softened but not browned, about 10 minutes.
Add the vegetable broth, the carrots, potato, thyme, and bay leaf. Simmer, covered, until the vegetables are very soft, 35-40 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool a little. Discard the bay leaf.
photo by Joyce Hiendarto
Puree the soup with a stick immersion blender. Stir in the milk. Season with salt and pepper. Reheat the soup and serve sprinkled with minced parsley.
Filed under: recipes, soups | Tags: citrus, lemon, lentils, Middle Eastern, soups, vegan
The lemony red lentil soup comes from Egypt, but it’s a common soup all over North Africa and the Middle East. I often enjoyed it as a first course when I spent time in Lebanon and Syria in the summer of 2009. It has enough lemon juice, garlic, and cumin to be interesting, but not overpowering. Don’t be intimidated by the amount of garlic in the recipe. The whole cloves acquire a mellow and soft flavor when simmered as whole cloves in the soup.
This soup is made with red lentils (masoor dal), that are orange when raw, and turn goldenrod-color when cooked. They disintegrate a bit when cooked (similar to split peas), but a quick whirr with the immersion stick blender smooths the soup out fully, pureeing the onion and whole garlic that have softened during simmering. When the potato cubes in the soup get pureed, they soften out the texture of the soup and give it body.
It’s simple to pull together for company. Because you puree the soup, you only have to roughly chop the onion and potatoes, and use whole garlic cloves. Just simmer everything, then puree it all at the end. I had friends over for lunch two days ago, and served this soup paired with olive-bread panini and mint tea. It would also be nice with a Middle Eastern salad like fattoush or this parsley salad.
EGYPTIAN LEMONY RED LENTIL SOUP
1 cup dried red lentils
2 cups roughly chopped onions
2 cups chopped potatoes
8-10 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
5 cups water
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
3-6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (to taste)
salt and black pepper to taste
METHOD
Wash the red lentils in several changes of water, and rinse. Do this in the way that you wash and rinse rice. Combine the lentils, onion, potatoes, garlic, and water in a large soup pot. Cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until everything is tender, 15-20 minutes. Remove from the heat.
In a small skillet on low heat, warm the oil until it is hot but not smoking. Add the cumin, turmeric, and salt. Cook, stirring constantly, for 2-3 minutes. Take care not to scorch the spices. Add this to the soup.
Puree the soup with an immersion stick blender until smooth. Add the lemon juice. Reheat gently and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Filed under: recipes, soups | Tags: cooking with wine, family recipes, French, herbs, mushrooms, soups
Yesterday’s rainy weather inspired me to make a pot of soup to warm up. My mom has been making my Aunt Marty’s French Mushroom Soup for as long as I can remember. Aunt Marty and her branch of the family have lived on communes over the decades, including the Hutterite variety, so it’s possible that this is a Hutterite soup. Hutterites make fruit and grape wines, so I imagine they must cook with it as well. This soup is quite similar to a French onion soup, except that it centers around mushrooms instead of onions. Since I am a vegetarian, I have substituted vegetable broth for the other, and I like to make the vegetable broth from scratch when I have time, as I did today. Yes, it’s indeed possible to make rich, dark, French-style soups totally vegetarian. How could a soup made from white wine, meltingly-soft onions, mushrooms, parmesan, and herbs not be delicious?
I have improved on my aunt’s recipe by adding fresh herbs from my garden, as well as increasing the amount of white wine and garlic. Aunt Marty’s recipe calls for white button mushrooms. That’s what I used today, but I often substitute crimini mushroom instead, or use half-and-half. It’s really quite easy to pull together, as long as you have an hour for simmering.
FRENCH MUSHROOM SOUP
2 lbs. (4 blue boxes) fresh mushrooms (button or crimini, or a combination)
1 large onion
3 garlic cloves
4 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons tomato paste
8 cups vegetable broth (here is my recipe, but you can use broth from the store)
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup fresh parsley
3 sprigs fresh thyme (optional)
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup grated parmesan, plus more for garnish
croutons are optional for garnish
METHOD
Slice the mushrooms thinly. Cut the onion in half, then slice it thinly. Mince the garlic.
Melt the butter in a large soup pot. Add the mushrooms, onion, and garlic. Saute until tender, about 10 minutes.
During this time, chop the parsley and remove the thyme leaves from the stems. When the mushrooms are tender, add the herbs and tomato paste. Simmer about 1 minute. Add the white wine, broth, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer 1 hour, then serve with more parmesan as garnish, plus croutons if you like.
I’m sharing this recipe because it’s so difficult to find a good vegetarian broth recipe. Many believe the myth that good soups have to be built on a foundation of meat or meat broth. It’s possible to build a fantastic soup on vegetarian aromatics, but you might need some guidance to do it well. I’ve tried several vegetarian broth recipes over the years, but they were usually too bland or too garlicky. This trustworthy, balanced, and rich broth comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry. Of course you can used boxed broth from the grocery, but homemade broths take soups (and risottos) to the next level.
These vegetables in the photo create the broth, displayed in their cut form. The onions cook quartered with skins on, the garlic cloves are smashed but have their skins intact, and the celery, carrots, and mushrooms are sliced.
You may want to add an additional herb or vegetable, depending on what you plan to do with the broth, or use leftover scraps and stems of vegetables. For instance, this week I added the dark green sections of several leeks to prepare the broth to make leek and potato soup. Warning: I added a few brussels sprout leaves once, and the broth was good that day, but tasted too cabbage-y the next day as leftovers.
BASIC VEGETABLE BROTH
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 large onions, quartered (include the skin)
1 large carrot, sliced
4 celery ribs, sliced
8 ounces button mushrooms, sliced
1 whole garlic bulb, unpeeled, broken up, and smashed with the back of a knife
2 bay leaves
3 sprigs fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
9 cups water
METHOD:
In a stockpot over medium-high heat, warm the olive oil. Add all of the ingredients except for the water. Saute, stirring often, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the water, bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer, uncovered, until the vegetables are meltingly tender, about 1 hour. If you have extra time, you can turn off the heat and let the broth sit for another hour or two to enrich the flavor further.
Strain the vegetables, pressing down on them to extract all their liquids. Discard (and compost) the cooked vegetables.
My mom has been making this classic Julia Child soup for ages, so I have nostalgic summer memories of it. My friend and I made it last week alongside a quiche, and I made another batch last night to welcome my parents home from a long trip. My mom was astonished, saying she had been craving this particular soup during her travels and had planned to make it once she got home. This recipe comes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, vol 2. (the one with the blue cover). On the first page I see my Grandma Erna’s handwritten note to my dad: “for Rick, to add to your knowledge of the good things in life – Love, Mom.” What a treasure.
It’s a simple peasant soup, a breeze to make with basic ingredients. Since I am finally experimenting with growing herbs, I was delighted to use basil and parsley from my backyard.
Julia tells us to chop the tomatoes to make a chunky soup, but my mom always purees the tomatoes smooth before adding them to the kettle. I’m including both versions here. If you don’t have a cheesecloth for the herbs, you can simply stir the herbs into the soup and let them be. Chop the parsley and basil first, if you’re not using a cheesecloth.
JULIA CHILD’S TOMATO RICE SOUP WITH BASIL AND LEEKS
3/4 cup leeks, or a combination of leeks and onions
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 lb tomatoes (fresh or good-quality canned whole plum tomatoes)
4 large garlic cloves
5 cups light vegetable broth
1/4 Cup raw white rice
The following tied in a cheesecloth:
6 parsley sprigs
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon thyme
4 fennel seeds
6 large basil leaves
a large pinch of saffron threads
salt and pepper
few pinches of sugar
1 teaspoon or more tomato paste
salt and pepper
2 or more tablespoons fresh basil, minced or sliced
METHOD:
Thinly slice the leeks. Heat the oil slowly in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Cook the leeks slowly in the olive oil until the leeks are tender but not browned.
Meanwhile, either chop the tomatoes or puree them in a medium bowl with a hand-held immersion blender. Mince or mash the garlic. When the leeks are tender, add the tomatoes and garlic and stir over moderate heat for 3 minutes.
Then add the vegetable broth, bring to a boil, and then add the rice. Add the herbs and saffron. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes.
Carefully taste for seasoning, adding pinches of sugar to bring out flavor and counteract acidity, and small amounts of tomato paste if needed for color and taste. Remove the herb bouquet if using a cheesecloth.
Julia recommends serving the soup either hot or chilled (I’ve only had it hot), sprinkled with fresh basil.
Filed under: recipes, soups | Tags: citrus, greens, Indian, lentils, soups, vegan
A clean, earthy,vibrant, and restorative soup. This makes an intriguing first course for an Indian meal, and can also stand on its own for a healthful supper. This evening I ate two bowls of it in the backyard.
I adapted this soup from a dal recipe in Yamuna Devi’s cookbook, The Best of Lord Krishna’s Cuisine. I have doubled the amount of spinach which I have proclivity to do. I also have substituted lime juice instead of lemon, and have quadrupled the amount of the juice. You are welcome to serve this over rice, but because of its thin consistency I prefer to eat it straight as a soup.
A small amount of asafoetida powder gives this soup an intoxicating twist. You might need to visit an Indian deli/grocery to find it. Be forewarned that when you unscrew the lid of the jar, the raw asafoetida powder will smell a little weird. But relax: once the asafoetida cooks, its weirdness will calm down, and dissolve into the soup as merely assertive and interesting.
This soup calls for split “mung” (or “moong”) dal, which is apparently the most popular dal in Northern India. If you can’t find split mung dal nearby, you can easily substitute normal orange lentils. I’ve done that substitution a few times in a pinch, and it works fine.
SPINACH DAL SOUP WITH LIME
2/3 cup split mung dal
6 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoons grated ginger
quick dollop of olive oil or vegetable oil
1 lb. fresh spinach (Yamuna Devi uses 1/2 lb.)
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil or vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon asafoetida
1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne
juice of 1 lime (roughly 2 tablespoons)
METHOD:
Sort, wash, and drain the mung beans. Place them in a heavy saucepan, along with the water, turmeric, ground coriander, grated ginger, and a quick dollop of olive oil. Stirring occasionally, bring to a full boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low, cover with a tight-fitting lid, and gently boil for 1 hour. The dal should be soft and fully cooked.
While this is cooking, roughly chop the spinach. I admit that I rather enjoy getting out my big Chinese cleaver and chopping a huge pile of spinach. The movement feels as soft as cutting marshmallows, and works well to calm the nerves.
When the dal has cooked for an hour, off the heat, uncover, and add the salt. Beat with a wire whisk or hand-held immersion blender. Add the fresh spinach, cover and boil gently for 5-8 minutes more.
Have your cumin, asafoetida, and cayenne measured out so that you’ll be able to work quickly. Heat the 2 tablespoons of oil in a small saucepan or skillet over moderate to moderately high heat. When it is hot, pour in the cumin seeds and fry until they are brown. Add the asafoetida and cayenne, and fry for just 1-2 seconds more. Then quickly pour the fried seasonings into the soup. Cover immediately.
Let the seasonings soak into the hot dal for 1-2 minutes. During this time, juice the lime. Add the lime juice, and stir. Taste for salt. I often add 1/2 – 1 teaspoon more salt at the end, but it’s safer to start with less, and work up to what you need.
Filed under: recipes, soups, starters | Tags: cooking with wine, fruit, herbs, soups
A sophisticated chilled fruit soup for a summer dinner party.
Yesterday I served this chilled melon soup as the first course at my sister Judy’s birthday dinner. The soup is clean and refreshing, yet also complex and mysterious because of the infusion of mint and dry white wine, making it perfect for a special occasion during hot weather.
I’m not a raw-tomato-and-vegetable-chilled-soup kind of person, but I find chilled FRUIT soups to be divine. They usually consist of ripe fruit, wine, lemon juice, and some fitting herbs or spices. My Russian-Mennonite friends might think of this as a sophisticated take on “plumemooss” or “cherrymooss.”
I discovered this recipe in Anna Thomas’ newest cookbook Love Soup. She is a veteran, trustworthy cookbook author. Over the years, I have found her recipes to be exciting, reliable, and exquisite.
This chilled soup can be made with any dense-fleshed variety of melon, including but not limited to honeydew, Persian or Saticoy. I examined most of the melons in my local market, searching for the sweetest one. I happened to choose an “Orange-Flesh Desert Owl” melon, which looks like an orange-flesh honeydew.
My 4-year-old niece Nadia excitedly watched the soup preparation, and announced at the table, “This soup has no vegetables — only fruit!! It’s a fruit soup!”
CHILLED MELON SOUP WITH MINT
1 cup (200g) sugar, plus more to taste
3 cups (750 ml) spring water or filtered water
1 large, ripe melon (roughly 6 lbs or 2 1/2 kg)
2 cups (500 ml) dry white wine, such as riesling, pinot grigio, or sauvignon blanc
1/2 cup (120 ml) strained fresh lemon juice
pinch of sea salt
4-6 Tbs. finely chopped fresh mint
1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream (or 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1/2 cup greek yogurt)
METHOD:
Combine 1 cup sugar in a saucepan with 3 cups (750ml) spring or filtered water, and bring it to a simmer. When the sugar is completely dissolved, simmer the syrup for another 5 minutes, then allow it to cool completely.
Seed the melon, cut it into wedges, and slice away the rind. Cut the soft, ripe flesh in pieces and puree the melon in a blender or food processor. You should have about 5 cups of puree.
Pour the melon puree into a medium mixing bowl. Stir the wine into the melon puree. Add the sugar gradually, starting with a half a cup and tasting as you go, then adding even smaller amounts as the sweetness becomes pronounced. You might use 1 1/2 cups of syrup, maybe more, but you don’t know until you do the final balancing act of sugar syrup to lemon juice.
When the sweetness begins to assert itself, add 2 tablespoons of the strained lemon juice and a pinch of sea salt. Taste again. Now add a tablespoon of lemon juice or a tablespoon sugar syrup, tasting each time, until you achieve just the right tart-sweet balance without overpowering the melon flavor.
Stir in 2 tablespoons of fresh mint.
Remember, every melon is different, every lemon is different, every wine is different. Find the right individual balance for this combination. Use the leftover sugar syrup for cocktails, sorbet, or lemonade. Use the leftover lemon juice for salad dressing, or just about anything.
Chill the soup in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours. It is helpful to put it in the freezer for the last hour or so before serving.
Just before serving, add 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint to the cream, along with a little sugar if you like, and beat the cream with a whisk until it just begins to thicken. Taste, and add more mint if you like.
Serve this beautiful soup very cold, in chilled bowls, with a spoonful of the soft mint cream in the center of each serving.
It’s been 3 full years since a rattlesnake’s skin was found in my front yard rosemary, but I’m still cautious about fetching the herbs. The rosemary bush has grown over a stone wall, and apparently the rattlesnake squeezed between 2 stones to shimmy out of its skin. To this day I still approach the rosemary bush with a yardstick and massive kitchen scissors. The nice thing about rattlesnakes is that they warn you by rattling — as long as they sense you approaching are not caught off-guard. So I stomp around awhile as I approach the rosemary, and pause to listen for a soft rattle. Maybe I’m going overboard, but rattlesnakes are not pals.
That said, a recipe featuring rosemary has to really put me over the edge before I’m willing to venture out into my front yard desert habitat. I felt this recipe was worth it, a rosemary potato soup made with a simple garlic broth.
I’m falling in love with Bryant Terry’s new cookbook Vegan Soul Kitchen, a healthy and passionate “remix” of southern classics. If you’re familiar with how I cook, you would understand that I can’t help be swept away with a cookbook that is healthful, ethical, and sustainable, while also being sensual, vibrant, and sexy. He wants to push African American cuisine into a more “creative, cutting-edge, and refreshing” direction. I’m smitten.
This soup looks like a traditional rich cream soup, but is completely vegan (no butter, no cream, no cheese). I think it actually has more flavor because it is built on aromatics instead of dairy. I’m not a vegan, but I love pureed vegan soups that are rich and smooth, having fluffy pureed vegetables camouflaging as dairy.
This soup starts with a garlic broth, the easiest one I’ve discovered: just garlic, water and salt. After simmering an hour it has a soft gentle aroma, and perfumes the whole house.
Yukon Gold potatoes are the potatoes of choice here. If you haven’t used this variety yet, the flesh is a rich butter yellow color, and they make fantastic mashed potatoes. If you can’t find them, red potatoes would work, but the soup would end up paler in color.
GARLIC BROTH RECIPE (makes about 6 cups)
4 whole garlic bulbs, unpeeled, broken up, and smashed with the back of a knife
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
9 cups water
METHOD:
In a large pot over high heat, combine these 3 ingredients. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer, uncovered, for about 1 hour. During this time, the liquid will have reduced to about 6 cups.
Strain the garlic cloves, pressing down on them in the strainer to extract all their liquid, and discard (compost) them.
YELLOW POTATO SOUP WITH ROSEMARY
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 2-inch sprigs of rosemary
2 large yellow onions
1 teaspoon cumin
coarse sea salt
3 cloves garlic, minced
6 cups garlic broth
2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
white pepper
METHOD:
Remove the rosemary from the sprigs. In a large saucepan over high heat, warm the olive oil until hot but not smoking, about 1 minute. Turn off the heat and immediately add the rosemary to the hot oil. Cook until crispy, shaking the pan to ensure that all the rosemary is covered in oil. Remove the rosemary and set aside.
Turn the heat back on to heat the oil again. Add the onions, cumin and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Saute until soft, 5-10 minutes. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant, 1-2 minutes.
Add the garlic stock, potatoes, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium, and simmer, covered until the potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes.
Bryant then purees the soup in a blender, then presses it through a strainer or sieve. I prefer to just use a “stick” immersion blender. Use what works for you. Season with salt and white pepper to taste. Add additional stock to thin, if necessary. Serve hot, garnishing each bowl with crispy rosemary.
I’ve been making this soup for years, an Indian adaption of the British classic. It’s steeped in spices, savory and lemony. My version is inspired by Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East Vegetarian Cooking. My departure from her method lies in increasing the spices and aromatics, and from time to time swapping half-and-half instead of her heavy cream. You can make your own decision regarding milk-fat-percentage.
I consider the lemongrass optional, since I’ve lived in places where it’s tricky to find. In that situation I simply add more lemon juice at the end. Lemongrass infuses a more subtle fragrance than lemon itself, but please don’t feel like its absence makes the recipe prohibitive. In fact, half the time I throw together an all-lemon version.
However you really should try your best to procure some curry leaves. They make the soup distinctive. Fresh leaves are best, but dried will do. They look a bit like bay leaves, and have a deep, earthy savoriness. These days even sweet ol’ Bakersfield has some serious Indian delis, so I’ll just bet you can find curry leaves if you look for them.
This is truly one of my favorite soups, and that’s a serious statement coming from me. I remember a conversation with my friend Katy last summer in which we discussed why we would never get tattoos. One of my top reasons was that my favorite things in life would look silly as tattoos… like a bowl of soup. I don’t think you want to imagine a bowl of soup tattoo on my ankle.
Which is to say that I’m serious about soup, and this is one of the best. Even my tomato-hating mother now adores it. The curry leaves and the cumin won her over.
INDIAN CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP
28-ounce can whole plum tomatoes
1 tablespoon sliced lemongrass (optional)
1 tablespoon curry leaves
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, sliced
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup heavy cream or half-and-half
2 1/2 cups milk
2 teaspoons whole cumin seeds
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2-4 tablespoons lemon juice, to taste
METHOD:
Combine the tomatoes, lemon grass, curry leaves, ginger, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 cup water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Cover, lower the heat, and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Uncover, turn heat up to medium, and simmer another 15 minutes.
Remove the ginger and lemon grass slices. I like to count my slices going in, so I know I catch them all at the end. I’m smitten with the curry leaves, so I let them stay in the soup (whilst Madhur Jaffrey removes hers). Puree with an immersion stick blender. Keep the tomato mixture on a soft simmer.
Meanwhile toast the cumin seeds in a small skillet on medium-low heat. When they darken and smell lovely, mash them lightly with a mortar and pestle.
In a second saucepan, melt the butter. Add the flour. Stir and cook the flour on low heat for 2-3 minutes. You don’t want the flour to taste raw, but you also don’t want the other extreme of letting it turn brown. So keep an eye on it.
Now pour in the hot tomato juice, stirring all the while. Add the cream or half-and-half and the remaining 3/4 salt. Stir to mix and bring to a simmer. Add the milk, cumin, black pepper, and cayenne, and raise the heat to medium. When it is almost to a boil, turn off the heat and add the lemon juice. Make sure the soup is hot before you add the lemon juice, or the soup will curdle, which is less than cute.
Filed under: recipes, soups | Tags: butternut squash, garlic, herbs, soups
My kitchen was fragrant this weekend from garlic and acorn squash roasting in the oven. This lovely autumn soup is based on a recipe from Deborah Madison’s cookbook Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.
Halves of winter squash are roasted face down with garlic cloves in their cavities. This technique allows the garlic to slowly infuse the squash with warm garlic steam. When soft, it all is added to a pot of browned onions, herbs, and broth. After simmering a bit, a stick immersion blender purees everything smooth.
I strayed from Deborah’s recipe in increasing the amount of garlic from 6 to 10 cloves. Feel free to even go further. The roasted garlic is soft, rich, and almost sweet.
Deborah Madison recommends pairing this soup with blue-cheese-walnut crostini. That was decidedly fantastic, creating a perfect trio of soup, crostini and red wine. It made a lovely meal with my friend Floriane. The crostini recipe also follows below.
ROASTED WINTER SQUASH SOUP WITH SAGE
2.5 to 3 pounds winter squash (I used 2 acorn squash)
1/4 cup olive oil, plus extra for rubbing on the squash
10 garlic cloves, unpeeled
12 whole sage leaves, plus 2 tablespoons sage chopped
2 onions, finely chopped
chopped leaves from 4 thyme sprigs, or 1/4 teaspoon dried
1/4 cup chopped parsley
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 quarts vegetable stock
fontina, pecorino or parmesan for garnish
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 375F. Halve the squash and scoop out the seeds. Brush the surfaces with olive oil. Stuff the cavities with garlic, and place them cut sides down on a baking sheet. Bake until very soft and tender, about 30-35 minutes.Meanwhile in a small skillet, heat the 1/4 cup olive oil until nearly smoking, then drop in the whole sage leaves and fry until speckled and dark, about 1 minute. Set the leaves aside on a paper towel. Using a rubber spatula, transfer the sage-infused olive oil into a heavy soup pot. Add the onions, chopped sage, thyme, and parsley. Cook over medium heat until the onions are browning on the edges, about 15 minutes.
Scoop the squash flesh into the pot along with any juices that have accumulated in the pan. Peel the garlic and add it to the pot along with 1 1/2 teaspoon salt and the broth. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, for 25 minutes. Puree the soup with a stick immersion blender. Taste for salt. Ladle into bowls, and garnish with cheese and fried sage leaves.
BLUE CHEESE AND WALNUT CROSTINI
baguette slices
4 ounces, Roquefort, Maytag, or Danish blue
3 tablespoons butter at room temperature
1-2 teaspoons cognac
1/4 cup finely chopped walnuts
freshly milled pepper
finely chopped parsley
METHOD
Toast the baguette slices under the broiler until nicely browned on one side, then a little less so on the second. Cream the blue cheese and butter until smooth, then work in the cognac, walnuts and black pepper. Spread on the paler side of the toasts, then broil until the cheese is bubbling. Remove, and dust with the parsley. Serve warm.
