(Sorry for the delay, technical difficulties....)
My vegetable of choice at the grocery store was organic turnips. I love turnips and it seemed like time.
They sat in my refrigerator for a few days until I had formed my plan of action. I realized that I did not want to roast their tender and subtle flavor. I felt that moist heat would serve them best. I also had a half bag of organic potatoes in my pantry and after the pumpkin sauce, I also had a half container of vegetable broth. This signaled only one thing: Turnip Potato "Stoup" (thank you Rachel Ray).
As for protein? With soups like these, its easy to throw in a handful of quinoa toward the end and call it a meal. Quinoa is one of very few vegetarian sources of 'complete protein' and is quite easy to cook. As always, choose your protein of choice, or just enjoy a lower protein meal!
Soups are very easy and when you know the blueprint you are then free to make any kind of soup you can imagine. 1. Saute 2. Add liquid 3. simmer until done. (Please note, sometimes soups can be done even easier with just boiling, or canned vegetables and a blender)
1. I started with the standard french 'mirepoix.' A saute of onion, celery, and carrots with enough olive oil to cover entire bottom of pot. This can become technical with exact ratio's etc. But like usual, I like to keep it simple and use however much I want or have, omitting or adding as wished. I also added half of the garlic I chopped.
After this has time to 'get happy' (thank you Emeril Lagasse) and has started to soften, add the chopped potatoes and turnips. I add salt, pepper, and my hardy herbs and spices now so they have a chance to open their flavor in a saute before adding liquid. Because I think garlic's flavor can get cooked out sometimes, I waited and added the rest of it now so there would be less total cooking time.
The somewhat sharp horseradish flavor of turnip made me think of pickling which made me think of dill and then dill seed. Perfect! I had just dried and stored a jar of dill seeds last weekend and was wondering how I would use them. They have a slight caraway flavor and I thought it would be tasty. At the end I would add dried dill weed and fresh parsley.
You can get creative here potatoes, and probably turnips too, are very open to many flavors. I'm sure thyme, rosemary, basil, sage would also be good. You could also go Eastern and try Indian spices like curry powder, turmeric, cumin, etc. Go with what you have and/or feel like.
2. Once everything is starting to get soft and stick to the bottom nice and good, add your liquid. This can be stock or even plain water. I usually use a mixture of both since store bought broths tend to have almost too much flavor/salt for my taste. Add enough to cover everything in the pot and turn up the heat a bit.
Quinoa takes approximately 15 minutes to cook. So I estimated when that would be (pretty soon after adding the liquid) and threw in 2 decent handfuls.
3. Once its boiling, turn down the heat to a simmer and sit back until everything is tender and delicious. Now you can add even more layers of flavor. I added a little bit more dill seed so that some would taste 'fresher' than the first batch. Also added chopped fresh parsley. I waited until nearly done before adding dill since it is a much more fragile herb. Again, use flavors you feel like.
At the end you can also choose to add a splash of cream to make this a 'creamy' soup or keep it vegan. Another choice is to
blend or not to blend? I always appreciate some texture to soups but like the thickness blending offers. So I usually use my immersion blender and blend half of the soup. This basically creates a thicker base for the 'stoup.' You can also use a blender if you don't have an immersion, and blend as much or little as you like!
I blend about half of the soup.
Delicious, hearty, and healthy!
