Monday, October 4, 2010

Veggies Are My Friends -- Part Two -- Soup

This is what we had for supper tonight, Veggies Are My Friends, Vegetable Soup version. It is based on a recent post on Pioneer Woman Cooks. It caught my eye because some of the vegetables are roasted, and I do like roasted vegetables. I've heard of people roasting summer squash and tomatoes, but had never tried it until today.
My proportions are different than PW's, but it's soup, so it doesn't really matter. I put one zucchini, one yellow squash, half a box of mushrooms and a few leftover tomato pieces in a bowl, drizzled it with a little olive oil and threw in some salt. Tossed it, put it on a cookie sheet lined with foil, and put it in the oven at 500 (!) degrees. The recipe said 5 or 10 minutes, until the pieces start to brown.
I think I didn't put it on a high enough rack in the oven, because I left them in for about 15 minutes, and they never got very brown. Didn't matter, they were good. I kept snitching pieces off the sheet while I was cooking the rest of the soup. Once they're done just let them sit until the end. I had some spinach so I grabbed a big handful and chopped it up and added it at the end, also.
These are the usual soup base characters ... celery, onion and carrots. I chunked them up and sauteed them for a while (5 or 10 minutes is good), then added the chicken broth. I added a few cups of hot water eventually. There's plenty of flavor, so it didn't water it down at all. I also added a bay leaf when I added the broth.
Once the pot looked like this, I added the chicken broth and cooked another 10 minutes.
At this point I added the tomatoes, green beans, cannellini beans and a cup of pasta (pinto beans work too, or black beans.) I rinsed both of the beans. I probably could have used less pasta and more beans and it would have been even better. Some whole grain pasta would be good instead of what I used. I let it simmer for 10 or 15 minutes or until we were ready to eat.
Shortly before we ate, I tossed in the roasted vegetables and the spinach, and let it sit for a few minutes. I added a heaping teaspoonful of tomato paste to thicken it up and make a richer broth.
I've gotten a little tired of bean salad, so I think I will be eating this with my lunch for a while instead. The roasted vegetables really do add a ton of flavor to the soup. I have two big plastic containers of it left -- fortunately, veggies are my friends.

1 comment:

Jimi said...

Nice assortment of veggies. I may have to give this soup a try later this week. TT