leeks and assorted veggies

First let me say that this is what I burned my hand on. More on that later, but my hand still stings, and I am rather annoyed that this was the cause of it.

So, one of the cookbooks I picked up was The Moosewood Restaurant New classics.  I hadn’t made anything from it, but I had a fennel bulb that was looking to be cooked, and figured that their fennel leek soup would fit the bill.  It helped, too, that I had some leeks. I was missing other things, such as the potatoes and used chard instead of spinach, but figured it would all work out.

• 1 fresh fennel bulb
• 10 cups of water
• 3 leeks
• 1 1/2 cups of coarsely chopped carrots
• 4 cups coarsely chopped potatoes (I had only one potato, so made do with that)
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme (I used fresh thyme)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of fennel seeds (I used fresh)
• 2 cups spinach (I used chard)
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill (I used dried dill)
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (that I had)

This was interesting, because the stuff was put in in bits. First all the fennel except the  fennel bulb went into the pot, then the leek leaves, then the carrots and potatoes.

veggies in the pot

While that was all simmering, I put the fennel bulb and leeks into a pan and cooked them, then added them to the stock.

I threw in some garlic, as I think garlic makes everything taste better.

I cooked it all for about 45 minutes, and even tasted it. I could see where the potatoes would have helped, but it didn’t taste bad, just thin.

finished soup

And here is how I burned my hand. The next step was to pour the soup, a little bit at a time, into the food processor. While I was transferring, I poured it on my hand.

Then it was so hot that the top of the food processor got soft, and the top fell in while I was running it, so the first batch had bits of chopped up lid in it, and I didn’t think that would taste right.

Once that was all cleaned up, I finally got the soup together, and tasted it. It wasn’t bad, but, as I said, it could have done with the extra potatoes.

soup in the blender

Once I got the mix off the pot, I had to blend it again, with the apple sauce I had made the other day.

Problem was that it was quite hot, so I couldn’t just reach my hand in and move things around, not that I didn’t try, and keep discovering how hot the mixture was. It was supposed to be soup like, but it never got much thinner, no matter how much I mixed it in the blender.

Finally, I decided it was as mixed and as blended as it was going to be, so I poured it into a bowl, and stuck it in the fridge for four hours, which is what the recipe called for.

Cartoonist said, what? Four hours? She was hoping to eat it that night, but we couldn’t do that. It was already late, and I didn’t want to stay up any longer.

Finished soup

The next day, when it came time to taste the soup, we finally added the sparkling cider, and we both said it didn’t taste like soup, but rather really reach apple sauce.

I let my book keeper taste it, and she said it tasted really good, and wrote down the recipe, but I explained what we had changed, and said she might find hers would turn out more soup like than ours did, especially if she used apple juice, rather than the apple mush like things we used.

So now, we can use this for apple sauce on the next thing we make.

Mixing the apples to make apple juice

We decided, because of the weather, to make Chilled Apple and Carrot Soup. We had most of the ingredients, and those we didn’t have, that we didn’t get, were just those for the garnish, which we weren’t too worried about.

Two things the recipe called for were apple sauce and apple juice, both of which I figured I could make. Well, I had made the apple sauce the week before, so didn’t have to buy that, and we had made apple juice by accident before, so figured it wouldn’t be to hard to make on purpose.

I found the best way to get it to work in the blender was to first grind it up int he the mini-food processor. That worked ok, but seemed to be an extra step, and I would get frustrated, and try to make it go faster, which it didn’t want to do.

cutting up carrots

Meanwhile, Cartoonist was cutting up the other ingredients.. She cut up the 4 apples, and the 3 large carrots, and the 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest (which was about one lemon) and the juice of the lemon, while I was still grinding up the apples.  Once I had the apple juice sort of ready, we added it all together to simmer.

The sachet in the pot

We had gone to the store to buy clove and stick of cinnamon for the sachet, but hadn’t thought what I would put it in. I had not bought cheese clothe. So I took a napkin, and tied it up in that, and that seemed to work just fine. I have never used a sachet before, but liked how it gave a nice flavor to the mixture, without having to fish it out when it was all done.

Cartoonist kept worrying that the clothe was going to catch fire. I told her it wouldn’t, and it didn’t.

Once everything was cooked, we were thinking it would be all done, but no, there was going to be more to making this soup.

Here is what the recipe was:

• 5 apples, peels and cored and cubed
• 3 large carrots, peeled, and cubed
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon of lemon zest.
• 2 cups of apple juice
• 1/2 cup of apple sauce

The sachet had

• 1 small stick cinnamon
• 1 close
• 1 sprig fresh thyme