soup — Blog — uprooted kitchen blog

The oldest trick in the parent book is sneaking vegetables into foods and your kids being none-the-wiser. They love it, they ask for seconds, and you secretly give yourself a high-five on the way back to the kitchen. Some daring parents will even reveal the supposedly disliked/repulsive ingredients after their kid is on their third helping and it's already packed for their lunch for the next day. "Guess what you just ate...and liked!" (That would be me.) Sometimes it backfires, sometimes it does not, and sometimes it just gets them to eat the above-mentioned four portions (which I'll take!).

This soup is one of those recipes that you can hide at least two other vegetables within. Technically, this is a tomato, red pepper, squash soup but I simply titled it Tomato Soup in case a child or husband sees the recipe pop up somewhere (you're welcome!). I prefer using squash for this soup (kabocha, butternut, or any other rich, sweet squash) but this time I used a pumpkin because we had leftover from a pumpkin stout my husband was making.

Ingredients:

2lbs tomatoes (fresh or canned)

1lb red sweet peppers

2lbs (or roughly 2 cups after it's cooked) squash (kabocha or butternut are best)

10 fresh sage leaves (or basil or cilantro)

salt and pepper to taste

To bake squash: cut in half, deseed, add about 1/2 inch water to pan, and bake for about 1 hour or until cooked through. This time around I discovered a new way of cooking my cucurbitaceae. I deseeded it, cubed it, put it in our cast iron dutch oven, added about 1/2 inch water, put the lid on and baked it for 45 minutes to an hour.

Deseed peppers and slice. Slice tomatoes. Combine tomatoes, peppers, squash (I left the peel on but you can determine how much effort you want to put forth), and sage in blender until desired consistency. You'll probably have to blend in batches. Pour blended mixture into a stockpot, simmer for about 20-30 minutes, and salt and pepper to taste.

Sometimes soups can be less than filling for me, so I often fortify mine with any grains or beans I have around. Suggestions are rice, quinoa, buckwheat, black beans, or garbanzo beans.

Pimento peppers from Alvarez Farms. These are my favorite peppers!

A first blog post generally requires balloons and confetti, but I’d rather not have to clean up after that garbage so let’s get right to the good stuff.

Last week the Pacific Northwest suddenly decided it was fall, seemingly overnight, thus deeming it soup weather once again. So, I made one of my old-reliables.

Ingredients:

2 pints (approximately) shiitake mushrooms

2 cups red lentils (rinsed thoroughly and drained)

2 T minced fresh turmeric

1/2 cup fresh chopped basil

1 can (13.5 oz) coconut cream (preferably with the least ingredients; mine had only coconut and water)

1-3 cups vegetable stock

salt and pepper to taste

Peel and mince the turmeric. Add to stockpot with mushrooms, lentils, basil, and coconut cream. Cook until the mushrooms start to get juicy and the coconut cream completely melts. Then dilute with as much vegetable stock as you prefer. You can make it more of a stew with less liquid, or more of a soup by adding more. Salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for about 30 minutes or until lentils are cooked through.

A note about the mushrooms: I generally use shiitakes in this recipe because they’re heartier and a nice, meaty mushroom. This time I also used about a cup of blue oysters as well. You can use whatever mushrooms you’d like. This week, I got my mushrooms from Cascadia Mushrooms at the Everett Farmers Market.