This week’s recipe has a cute story to go with it – about making soup out of a stone…of course adding a “few” other ingredients to make it more flavorful. Basically using pantry ingredients to end up with something yummy and warming.
I really like vegetable soups, and so was looking forward to this recipe. As it turned out, it was a pretty simple one. I took Dorie’s suggestion and in addition to carrots, added a sweet potato as co-star in the soup.
Unfortunately this time I didn’t have any fresh herbs on hand, so this really was a “pantry” kind of recipe. The vegetables all get prepped. One of the things I can totally get behind is Dorie’s method of prepping celery. My mom does this too – stripping all of the strings out of it so that it’s not tough. That way you can enjoy the flavor more. Once prepped, they get tossed in a bit of olive oil or butter in the soup pan.
From here, the veggies and flavorings get covered and cook slowly for a bit to soften (I used some chipotle here to spice things up). I have to admit that I must have gotten sidetracked while doing this – the vegetables shouldn’t get browned – mine got a bit more than that and had to be rescued! 😦 Once through that process, the stock is added and cooked until the vegetables are soft, and then I used my immersion blender to make a smooth soup.
This seemed like the kind of soup perfect for a fall day, sipped out of a mug.
This was certainly easy, though wasn’t as wonderful as I’d hoped. That was probably in relation to the amount of effort I put into it. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks with the groundbreaking of a new facility I’m building in Pennsylvania and going-live with a year-long+ software project I’ve been working on! So, hopefully next time will be better, though I have to say I will probably stick with another version or two that I typically make for a soup like this. That said, cute story. And it will be fun to see how others in our French Fridays group fared with this one!
dulceshome 
I am really starting to enjoy pureed soup, makes everything look extra special. Is that
sour cream on top, looks good. My recipe for cheese sandwiches is nothing special, two
slices of Italian bread with provolone cheese in the center, dipped in beaten egg, and fried
in oil. Drain on paper towel, and enjoy. It’s pretty good hot or cold. Great for snacks
when cut up. My mother in law made these when we were first married, and 58 years later
I am still enjoying them.
Thanks Nana! I will definitely try that out. Sounds so yummy especially with a cup of soup! Good things stand the test of time!!
Sent from my iPhone
Your puréed version of the Vegetable Soup looks wonderful – it has a great color and a velvety texture – I kept “the chunks” in my soup. What a nice way to serve the soup in a múg, comfort food style!
Have a good weekend!
I like the idea of putting a sweet potato in the soup. It adds to the velvety texture of the soup. Hope your week goes well and slow down a bit.
I love the flavors of sweet potato and chipotle together. Nice combo for soup! Good luck with the work stuff. Sounds like you have your hands full.
Next time I will puree and put it in a mug! Hope things slow down for you~
There is something very soothing about soup in a mug 🙂
Hope your work stuff runs smoothly. Those types of things can be both stressful and exciting all at the same time…
the chipotle spice you added sounds delicious, smokey chile flavor…
I thought about adding sweet potato instead of the regular one, but had to save it for this week’s tagine. I was also out of fresh herbs, except for some parsley, so a shake of the good ole Italian seasoning container did the trick.
Sounds like an exciting yet stressful time at your job! I’m sure you’ll take it all in stride.
sweet potatoe must have tasted great in it! Well, maybe this will inspire you to make some other kind of veggie soup that really rocks your world! 🙂
With everything you have going on, two rather impressive projects, I just salute you for cleaning out your fridge and putting it in the pot. Somewhere, bringing home the bacon could be added to this. I needed to use more spices in my soup, and perhaps fresh spices have more of a punch in this, let’s give it another go. Different time. Different stresses. Different produce in refridgerator.