First Soup of the Season

I just noticed that I was nominated for for Best Cookbook Blog over at My Friend Amy's book blog awards. Wow! That is really lovely, thank you to those who nominated me. I was going to review The Likeness by Tana French today, and post this next week, but in honor of this nomination, and visitors who may be looking for a cooking blog, I will offer this instead.

Have I mentioned that it's freezing here? Yesterday the high here was 64 degrees, and since I had a refrigerator full of vegetables, and plans to return to the farmer's market 2 days later, I decided to make soup. I was inspired by all my vegetables, as well as the chapter on Soups I'd been reading in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

If you want to be elegant you could call this soup Late Summer Vegetable Soup, or if you want to be more practical you could call it clean-out-the-refrigerator-soup.



First, I made a stock for this soup using Madison's instructions. I sauteed onion, carrot, garlic, the greens of leeks, and potato peelings in a bit of oil, then added water, bay leaf, salt, and peppercorns and simmered around 1/2 hour. Madison states that water is fine to use instead of stock but I just felt like trying this. The flavor was unexpectedly wonderful!

I then began the soup by sauteing onion, carrots, garlic, a poblano pepper (seeded) and leeks in butter and olive oil, then adding diced potatoes and zucchini. When everything was tender, I pureed a few cups of the soup to add body and added it back in along with some green beans. I was pretty impressed with the flavor of this soup. I didn't even add herbs because I was too lazy to go outside, so the only seasonings were salt and pepper. I think leeks add something really special to soups and other dishes and plan to use more of them in my cooking.