The bright green of this soup caught my eye as I was leafing through a recent issue of Martha Stewart Living. The color comes from dark green curly kale, lightened by the white of the cauliflower. It is a surprisingly hearty and flavorful soup considering it is vegan, low fat, and uses water as a base. It’s a perfect soup to get your eating back on track after the excess of the December holidays and New Year celebrations.

Both J. and I enjoyed it, and I’ll make it again. It’s an easy way to eat your veggies. This soup can be served hot or cold.

Creamy Cauliflower & Dill Soup (Vegan)
Adapted from Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Greens, Martha Stewart Living

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium cauliflower, trimmed and cut into bite-sized slices
4 c. water
small bunch of curly kale, stems removed and leaves chopped
1/4 c. fresh dill, chopped fine
1 tsp. kosher salt (or more to taste)
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

In a stock pot, heat the olive oil and add your diced onion. Stir the onions and cover the pot, allowing the onions to soften for 5 minutes over a low heat. Add the garlic, cauliflower, and water; stir and then bring the water to a boil. Lower the heat and then simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Stir in the chopped kale, cover, and simmer for another few minutes. Turn off the heat and allow the soup to cool for 5 minutes.

Using an immersion (stick) blender, puree the soup in the pot until the soup is completely smooth. (You can carefully transfer the soup to a regular blender if you don’t have an immersion blender.) Season the soup with the dill, salt, and pepper. Serve warm, garnishing each bowl with a drizzle of a half teaspoon of olive oil and a grind of black pepper, if desired.

Recently, every time I cook some sort of legume, J. thinks I’ve said I’ve cooked barley. Then he is sorely disappointed when a bowl of Slow Cooker Vegetarian Lentil Soup or Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup with Flanken appears, instead of the mushroom barley soup he thought I’d made. He is no legume lover. I finally got the hint and put the kind of soup he wanted on my menu.

I based my soup on the recipe for Zingerman’s Ann Arbor Mushroom and Barley Soup, though I omitted the flour (with the barley, I don’t think the soup needs additional thickening) and used vegetable stock rather than beef stock. This makes the meal vegetarian, and it is indeed a full meal — the barley bulks up the soup significantly, and if you have leftovers you’ll find the barley continues to expand, giving the dish the consistency of stew.

I had pearl barley in my pantry, so I used that for the soup. Pearl barley is more processed than whole barley — both its hull and bran are removed as opposed to just the hull in whole barley — so it is less nutritious. I’m going to look for whole barley next time I’m at the store; I never knew there was a whole grain alternative to pearl.

Vegetarian Mushroom Barley Soup
Adapted from Zingerman’s Ann Arbor Mushroom and Barley Soup

2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 ribs celery with leaves, cut in halve lengthwise and diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 qt. vegetable stock
1 lb. Baby Bella mushrooms (or another kind), sliced
1 oz. dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted in hot water
1 c. pearl barley
salt & pepper to taste
¼ c. parsley, chopped (a small bunch, plus some for garnish)

Heat oil in a stock pot, and add onions. Cook over medium-high heat, until they start to soften. Add celery, carrots, and garlic and saute, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes.

Add stock, mushrooms, and barley to the pot, give it a stir, and adjust heat so the soup simmers while covered. Keep the soup covered, and cook for about 45 minutes, or until the barley is done. (If the soup is too thick for your taste, try adding more vegetable stock or water about a half cup at a time.)

Season with salt & pepper and stir in the parsley just before serving.

This soup is out of this world!

I love lentils, and this soup is going into my rotation along with Pasta with Lentils, Tomatoes & Arugula, Mujadarra (Lentils & Rice with Caramelized Onions), and Crock-Pot Indian-Spiced Chicken with Lentils & Potatoes. It is incredibly quick to prep, and you may have all the ingredients you need in your house right now. Add some whole grain rolls and you are good to go: I used Pepperidge Farm Multi-Grain Stone Baked Artisan Rolls, a new freezer-to-oven product my grocery is carrying which is really convenient (keep a bag in your freezer) and made with ingredients you will be able to pronounce.

Slow Cooker Vegetarian Lentil Soup
Adapted slightly from Lentil Soup

8 c. water
16 oz. bag dried lentils, rinsed + picked through
4 carrots, diced
4 celery stalks, diced
1 large onion, diced
6 whole cloves garlic, peeled
1 tsp. dried thyme
2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. ground black pepper
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

Combine first 6 ingredients in the crock of a large slow cooker (mine is 6 quarts). Cook on HIGH for 6 hours.

Remove garlic cloves if you like (or eat them, or leave them in the soup). If you like a smoother soup, use an immersion blender in the crock for about 20 seconds until about a third of the soup is pureed, leaving some chunks. Season with remaining four ingredients, adjusting salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.

Sorry, you’re getting our leftovers. Pictures of them, anyway!

Roasted Beets with Feta hardly needed a recipe. I boil my beets rather than roasting them: I find this preparation to be neater, and I don’t notice a decrease in flavor at all. In fact, this batch of beets (from my farm share) was particularly flavorful, earthy and sweet. I followed the proportions given for the dressing in this recipe but made significantly more, since I poured it over three times as many beets plus a large bowl of salad. I sliced a brick of feta and served it on the side. This is a salad that can stand up to brisk weather, especially when paired with soup.

I tried a Crock-Pot Butternut Squash Soup from A Year of Slow Cooking (love that blog). I made several adjustments: 2 smallish squash (from my farm share), only 1 onion, only 1 apple, and turmeric instead of coriander because I didn’t have any. I used vegetable stock. Since I had my oven on to bake Brownie Roll-Out Cookies, I decided to roast the squash and onion rather than putting them into the crock raw or microwaved. They were fully cooked before they even joined the other ingredients in the slow cooker. I did use my immersion blender at the end to make it smooth and creamy, and needed to add an additional cup of water to thin it out a bit. This is a keep recipe for us — though none of the kids would try it (including my niece), I think they might be persuaded to in the future. Even J. had it later that night and thought it was very good.

Along with dinner rolls, this soup and salad combo was a well-received dinner (by the adults eating it — my various in-laws and me and J.) and a welcome lighter alternative to some of the meals I’ve been cooking for them lately.

We received braising greens for a couple of weeks in a row from our farm share, and I hadn’t used them up. These greens are tough! They’re some sort of combination of mustard, kale, chard and other somewhat bitter, hearty greens, and they looked just as good after two weeks in my fridge as on the day I’d picked them up. When it comes to deep dark greens like kale and this braising mix, my thoughts immediately turn to soup — I find them palatable cooked this way, whereas I still haven’t come around to enjoying them simply sauteed.

I followed the recipe for Ribollita on 101 Cookbooks, as I usually find success with Heidi’s recipes. This is a simple, rustic recipe but because it involves a lot of vegetable prep, it took me quite a long time to prepare. I can’t help it, I’m slow with a knife. I used my braising greens instead of the Tuscan kale, and canned cannellini beans instead of dried.

I did have a bowl the night I made it, but served most of the soup the next day, “reboiled.” (That’s what ribollita means in Italian.) It was good. I can’t be more effusive because I just don’t adore the ingredients, but it was pleasant to eat and I think the adults eating with me all felt similarly. If nothing else, it was good for us! The lemon zest was a highlight, freshening up the deep, heavy flavors of the greens and beans.

While I was zesting the lemon, my five year old came into the kitchen to hang out. I told him the soup I was making had an interesting name, “Ribollita.”

“Oh,” he said. “That sounds French because of the ‘a’ on the end.” Pretty close, my man! Pretty close.

Carol’s recipe for Hot & Sour Soup is perfect for a cook like me: it’s evocative of a dish I enjoy in restaurants, but it’s simplified so it’s easy to find everything you need to cook it on your regular grocery run. I like the chance to cook with authentic ingredients sometimes, but for me at least a reasonable approximation of an ethnic dish is usually just fine. (Kevin at Closet Cooking researched traditional recipes for his Chinese Hot & Sour Soup, which includes harder-to-find ingredients such as dried lily buds, if you are able to get your hands on specialty groceries.)

I used my homemade chicken stock and generally followed Carol’s recipe, though I used .75 oz. of reconstituted shitake mushrooms in addition to a couple of cups of baby bellas. I also used 2 Tbsp. of ground ginger (from a jar), added straight into the soup for flavor. The scallions aren’t just for garnish, they add a nice bite to the overall flavor so don’t leave them out.

Overall I really enjoyed this soup, and with the egg, tofu, and very generous amount of mushrooms it’s very filling. I don’t think I’ve ever used vinegar in a soup before, so the flavor was very different than what I usually make and I really enjoyed that change. It definitely reminded me of hot & sour soup from a Chinese restaurant, though not as gelatinous and much more mushroom-y (for me, that’s a good thing). Next time I will tone down the mushrooms and add bamboo shoots as well. You can also garnish with additional red pepper flakes for a little more heat — I did, and my gums still feel a little warm from it!

The other day A. was feeling a little under the weather, so I let him choose dinner and he asked for noodle soup — my homemade chicken soup, strained until clear, with thin egg noodles cooked in the broth. Luckily I had one more container in the freezer, and he (and G.) happily slurped up those noodles as if he knew they’d make him feel better.

That virus is still lingering, so he stayed home from school today in that weird in-between where you’re not quite well enough to go to school, but you certainly don’t feel sick enough to stay in bed (or even nap, dammit). He had plenty of energy to act like a loon with his brother, scarf down three full meals, and still have room for ice cream.

I started a fresh pot of chicken soup at noon today, and let it simmer all afternoon so that he could have noodle soup for dinner again (his request). And now I’m restocked. I keep these containers in the fridge overnight, skim off the fat, and then freeze them. Hopefully I won’t need another noodle soup dinner as medicine anytime soon.

I saw flanken at my kosher butcher several months ago, and knew back then that I wanted to make it with split pea soup. Flanken are thinly-cut beef short ribs; Beth has a great photo of them on her site. Flanken-cut ribs are sometimes called “Korean style” as well — they’re usually barbecued, while kosher flanken is usually cooked low and slow. Perfect for the Crock-Pot.

I used Stephanie O’Dea’s CrockPot Split Pea Soup Recipe as a starting point, and to get the liquid to solid ratio right for my soup. I had the bag of dried peas in my pantry and the flanken in my freezer, so although I hadn’t shopped for the other ingredients I decided to pull it together from what I had on hand. It was so delicious, I’d probably make it the same way next time!

We wound up not eating this for dinner (J. and the boys had way less enthusiasm for trying this soup than I did), but I have been enjoying it myself one bowl at a time. I did freeze a good portion, and after removing the flanken from the bone, shredded it and put it on top of the soup. I’m going to defrost it and serve it for dinner tomorrow night, when my parents are here — I think they’ll love it too.

If I’d had enough vegetable stock in the house to do so, I would have eliminated the veggie stock cube entirely and just done 5 cups of broth. I might have also added some chopped carrots.

I found the consistency of the soup was smooth enough for me without blending, but you can certainly use an immersion blender to get it more uniformly creamy. Just don’t forget to remove the bay leaf and flanken first!

Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup with Flanken

1 lb. flanken-cut beef ribs (or a little more)
1 medium onion, diced
1 lb. bag dried split peas, rinsed and picked through
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. kosher salt
10 grinds black pepper
1 vegetable stock cube (I use Telma), crushed
1 c. vegetable stock
4 c. water

Add ingredients in the order listed to a 6 qt. slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Remove bay leaf, discard. Remove flanken and set aside until it is cool enough to handle. Remove meat from the bones, and shred. Serve soup with a small portion of flanken on top, or stir it back into the pot.

This recipe is one of the first recipes I ever posted on Chick in the Kitchen, more than two years ago! I make it a couple of times a year, and unlike many soups it doesn’t need a long simmer time. So, it’s perfect for a quick dinner during the cold months. I didn’t have any white wine on hand so I added a couple of tablespoons of sherry instead, which worked really well.

As with most soups, you can play fast and loose with the combination of ingredients — substitute a different herb; omit the dried mushrooms if you want a less intense flavor; add some of the soaking liquid from the dried mushrooms if you like it as mushroom-y as possible.

I served the soup with Sweet Potato & Buttermilk Corn Bread, and J. declared it to be a really good dinner. My parents and I agreed.

Wild Mushroom Soup
Updated from November 22nd, 2007

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 garlic clove, crushed
1 lb wild mushrooms, sliced (I like shitake and oyster)
1 oz. bag dried mushrooms (such as porcini), reconstituted + chopped
5 cups veggie stock
2/3 cup dry white wine or a couple of splashes of sherry
2 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
salt and black pepper to taste

In your soup pot, sauté onion and garlic in oil until they are soft and golden. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. (The mushrooms will cook down considerably!)

Add the stock, wine, and thyme. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer up to a half hour. Add salt and pepper to taste.

A couple of weeks ago I sent out a call for slow cooker recipes, and I got a terrific response. Thank you again! This recipe comes from reader Rebecca in DC, who adapted it from something she found on RecipeZaar. Rebecca calls it minestrone, and I would agree… except that there’s barley in it instead of pasta. To me, minestrone must have ditalini or similar, those small tube-shaped pasta pieces in it. So for my own reference, I have to call this a vegetable and barley soup. If you like minestrone, though, you will love this version. It is rich and velvety, even though it’s vegan. It is my favorite soup I’ve made in my slow cooker in recent memory. And, best of all, it uses up kale from my farm share. I thought it was delicious right out of the Crock-Pot, but Rebecca says it’s even better the next day, reheated.

Slow Cooker Vegetable Barley Soup
Adapted from Rebecca’s version

1 28 oz. can fire-roasted, crushed tomatoes
2 Tbsp. tomato paste
2 small zucchinis, skin on, diced
2 large carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1/2 c. barley, rinsed
1 large onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
1 15 oz. can cannellini bean (or any white bean), rinsed
1 cup curly kale, roughly chopped
1 vegetable bouillon cube (I used Telma brand)
1 Tbsp. seasoning mix (I used Mrs. Dash)
6-8 cups of water
salt and pepper to taste

Add all ingredients up to and including 6 cups of water in a 6 quart or larger slow cooker. Cook on low for 8 hours. If needed, added additional water to thin, and season with salt and pepper.