French Vegetable Soup

I made the most fantastic soup last night! This one was a ton of work but worth every bit of it. The weather was rainy and cold (hardly a surprise) so I decided that soup would be perfect for dinner. Nat, Dave and Nessa came over for dinner so a big pot of soup was definitely in order.

I decided to make French Vegetable Soup from my "A Beautiful Bowl of Soup" cookbook because the ingredients looked so wonderful. The recipe allowed for store bought stock or homemade stock. I must have been feeling highly motivated because I opted to make my own stock which was actually kind of fun. The initial preparation is fairly easy because the vegetable chopping doesn't need to be precise; which is right up my alley. Tomato, parsnip, carrots, celery, onion, leeks, garlic, parsley, thyme, basil, bay leaves, whole black peppercorns and olive oil are the required ingredients. The ingredients simmer for an hour, cool to room temperature and then stock is poured through a fine mesh sieve while pressing on solids with the back of a spoon to extract flavor . This was the first part that was labor intensive because I only have a fairly small sieve. This meant I had to do this step in several batches. A larger mesh sieve is now officially on my cooking tool shopping list.

Once the stock was made, the preparation became more involved. Lots of vegetables to cut including russet potato, sweet potato, fennel, onion, carrot and celery. The ingredients also included fresh minced herbs, corn, and 2 tablespoons of butter. I didn't realize the soup needed to be pureed in the food processor prior to adding spinach (by the way, it takes a long time to de-stem spinach). The pureeing added several minutes toward the end of preparation because it had to be done in several batches. There was also one more component that took some time; mushrooms. The mushrooms ended up being very tasty and actually complimented the pureed soup beautifully. They were sliced and sauteed with olive oil, garlic, sweet paprika, dry sherry, lemon juice, minced flat leaf parsley, salt and fresh ground pepper. They were then added, along with fennel frond, to each bowl of soup right before serving. A bit of gruyere cheese was finely shredded on each bowl and dinner was served.

The soup got rave reviews from everyone involved. We decided the only thing we would change is to double the amount of mushrooms. They were so good that we all wished there were a few more in our bowl. Not a bad problem to have. As you can see below, this dish was also very pretty, which is always a bonus. One more side note: I served the soup with Dave's Killer Bread loaf. If you haven't tried Dave's Killer bread yet, check it out. It comes in several different types of sliced loaves (each one is a different color) and in the whole loaf that I served. Brad eats a slice of toast from the sliced loaf that comes in the yellow bag for breakfast every morning. This type is his favorite. My favorite is the whole loaf, heated in the oven for 10 minutes. It goes with nearly everything and it is tasty with a capital T. If you click on the title of this entry, it will take you directly to Dave's Killer Bread website. The background story is interesting, to say the least. Okay, a second side note and then I'm done: I used 100% organic ingredients for this meal. I love it when that happens!