A mother-daughter conversation on food and cooking (mostly)

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Vegetable-Herb Soup


Especially with the oven broken, this October is definitely soup season.

I made sweet potato-peanut stew over couscous earlier in the week.

Another night, I stewed some chicken legs with New Mexican red chiles (soaked in water then pureed), tomatoes, beer, cinnamon, cumin, and nutmeg; we ate that with homemade flour tortillas.

And recently I made a simple vegetable soup from leeks, potatoes, carrots, garlic, white beans, and a small bit of bacon. Fresh rosemary and thyme and bay leaves made it smell big and herby. And because we had some leftover pesto, I put a small mound of that on the soup to stir in, pistou-style.

The soup was actually a little better the next day, minus the pesto.

I want my oven back. But for tonight we have seeded sourdough bread from Heather's Artisan Bakery, and I will make another soup to go with it. Something containing collard greens, I think.

1 comment:

Kris said...

What happened to your oven, anyway? I remember that you replaced the element (yourself! I was proud) a year or two ago.

Aunt Susan in Texas really wanted a gas cooktop so they installed a propane one, and it is Beautiful. Big, industrial-looking burners that can be turned down as low as you want, and very easy to clean.

They ran a propane line to a modest-sized tank outside the kitchen wall.