Soup da loop

Love this weather if for no other reason than I can cook SOUP for just about every meal! Love it. Love love love soup. Have even bought a 2 Lt plastic container that stands upright in my fridge in the door, in which I put my Sunday night soup, that lasts for a few days of lunches or standby dinner. I thoroughly recommend this totally lazy yet ridiculously nutritious approach to winter food.

For those who have never cooked soup, are a little shy of soups, fearful of adlibbing a soup of their own, I offer the following observations of what works for me:

- Go with a colour theme for your vegie soups
Although very much not a fan of paint by numbers I am a strong advocate of cook by colours. With soups what this means is picking a basic colour (orange, white, green, brown or red being my usuals) and being quite inclusive within this limitation. Think White Stripes and how to make endless variations within aesthetic confines.

For orange I might include any or all of the following: butternut pumpkin, queensland blue pumpkin, carrot, onions, leeks, potatoe, parsnip, turnip, red lentils
For white: onion, leek, potatoe, garlic, fennel root, celery, cauliflower
For green: spinach, silverbeet, peas, zucchini, leek, garlic, potatoe
For red: beetroot, tomato, yellow capsicum, red capsicum,

Anyway, once you've picked your colour, get a few vegies that fit your theme, chop them into rough chunks, say no bigger than 5cm blocks, sautee onion and garlicin olive oil, add your chunks of veg to the onion and garlic (add more oil if neccessary) and continue to fry. THis sweats the vegies, and brings out nice flavours. Then top up with water to the tippy top of your pile of vegies, bring to the boil, put the lid on and let simmer till everything is soft through. Cool and either mash with potatoe masher for provencal lumpiness, or blend with hand help mixer for super smoothiness.

- Play with your consistencies
The style of soup above is easy because you combine flavours through the blending, and because you don't need to make stock, and don't ned to be tidy in your knifeskills.

It is also fun to make soups in broth, and feels very exotic / nourishing.

To make soup in broth you may want to make a seperate stock. This is easy peasy, don't ever be scared of making stock. For vegie stock, use all your veg trimmings including carrot, onion and celery (but not potatoe), including peels (I would always prefer to go organic, in particular here so you needn't worry about stewing the outside layers of thingsthat may have been sprayed), cook in water for about 15 mins or until it smells nice and has a light colour. Don't cook vegie stock all day like you might a chicken or beef stock - it will go bitter.

Nice soup in broth could be a mixed veg - little cubes of potatoe, carrot, pumpkin, parsnip and peas - served with pesto; a ravioli in broth with maybe some fresh cherry tommies thrown in and heated through, some wilted basil; a zany pumpkin with thin slices of pumpkin and corriander and ginger in the broth - whatever.

To do hearty asian broth soups, just make sure you add corriander stems / shitake/ sesame oil and fresh ginger to your stock, sesaon with soy/ bonito/ mushroom sauce and add hokien or udon noodles, with some spinach / bok choy leaves, udon, slices of chicken or tofu, big squares of pumpkin, slices of carrot cut on the diagonal... whatever, you get the picture. Go by taste, smell and colours.

- Know how to flavour in themes

Thai? Add coconut milk, lemongrass, coraindar to your pumpkin,
French? Garlic and tarragon in with your potatoe soup, or nutmeg, marjoram and a touch of allspice, serve with fresh cream (note - do not boil any soup that has cream or yoghurt in it)
Indian? Garam marsala in a spinach soup and serve with plain yogurt, cardomom and cumin in a carrot soup and serve with mint, scoop up with paddadams.
Texmex? do tomato and capsicum soup with fresh sweetcorn kernels, cumin, chili, beans, corrinader, lime wedges and serve with cheese quesadillas (your garden variety tortillas folded kabab stylle around a filling of cheese and toasted under the grill)
Italian? Basil in a green soup or serve with pesto folded through ricotta, white beans and mega garlic in with a white soup, sprinkle with toasted pine nuts...you get the picture.

Whatever you do, play, make it fun and happpy eating...
May you enjoy many SOUPer, SOUPurb, SOUPtastic (oh stop it) soups this winter.