Anne Duhon wrote:
> Does anyone have a real good recipe for this soup? I have tried a few
> receipes but find them lacking. Anne
>


Lacking in what, meat? Flavor? Texture? The trouble with most
vegetarian vegetable soups is that people tend to be reluctant to go to
the trouble of starting with a vegetable stock so they use water
instead, and the soup ends up being flavorless and thin.


For a vegetable stock, I use mushrooms and root vegetables like carrots,
turnips and broccoli stalks. I boil them all together until all the
liquid is released from the vegetables. The vegetables are strained
out. Then I reduce the stock to roughly half its original volume. THEN
I start making the soup. This seems wasteful, like making the soup
twice, but it works.


Next, brown onions and garlic in oil. You get flavor from the onions
that way. Add your vegetables that can handle long cooking: carrots,
turnips, potatoes, rutabaga, cauliflower. Simmer them until soft in the
stock that you made above. (That's NEW carrots and turnips, not the
ones that were tossed after making the stock.) When done, add the
vegetables that need quick cooking: kale, spinach, parsley, zucchini.
Serve right away.


You might find that you want the soup thicker, more like puree than
vegetables floating in broth. If that's it, put the soup in a blender
before adding the soft vegetables. You could thicken it with roux too,
but I like the blender method best.


--Lia