VEGETABLE SOUPS
My Description
Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen
I think that soup is maybe the perfect food. Especially vegetable soups. All the good foods that benefit us so well —the vegetables, the grains, the legumes—seem to fall together effortlessly in a bowl of soup. A single vegetable can be featured, such asparagus or peas, but finished in so many different ways that one soup becomes three —or even eight, as in the Spring Pea Soup Eight Ways. One of the more enjoyable ways to take in grains and beans are in soups, like those built on wild rice, barley, faro and quinoa or instead around lentils of all kinds and beans both canned and cooked from scratch.
Soups are mostly pretty fast going —most cook in less than a half-hour. Most taste better the next day, which is great for the lucky person taking soup to work in a thermos.
They are pretty low-cal, and they’re just plain pretty. Soups are warming in winter and cooling in summer. They can be as fresh and delicate as a spring day or as hearty and robust as a winter storm. Soups mirror every season and it’s produce —there’s simply not a time when soup isn’t good. Fortunately water is often the best medium for vegetable-based soups as it lets the vegetables flavors come forward. But if you’re a cook who likes to use chicken stock or fuss with a more elaborate vegetable stock, that option is certainly yours. Soups lend themselves well to improvisation. Pureed barely becomes silky-creamy. Radishes, peas and asparagus can swim in a delicate spring sea. Rutabagas do surprisingly well in soups as do roasted sweet potatoes. Bread and tortillas added to broth add texture and flavor, while ancient soups based on just one or two ingredients plus water can, with tweaking, be brought right into our modern times. There’s no end to what soup can be.
One of the types of soups I took pains to develop in Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen, are ones that you don’t usually find as vegetable based options: broths and restorative soups (otherwise known as bouillon and chicken broth). These light broth-like soups are nourishing and flavorful enough to stand on their own. You’d be surprised what can be done with lentil, white beans and black bean broths, or how cabbage or broccoli cooked with garlic, ginger and white miso will rescue you from a cold.
You can probably tell I’m enthusiastic about soup. I admit. I’m a believer. After all, what’s not to like about soup?
