Autumn Vegetable Soup

I get a recipe emailed to me every day from Fine Cooking.  Let's see, I also get The Dish from Food and Wine and a newsletter from my favorite wine guy - aka the Wine Guy at Grapevine Cottage.  Plus, about five other email newsletters, 10 cooking magazines and a couple hundred ideas on Foodbuzz.  I own over 1000 cookbooks.  Plus, I regularly come up with ideas for new dishes. And, we can't forget our old favorites.  All in all not a dearth of recipe ideas!  More like a tsunami!  When I clip recipes I sort them into immediate, soon and later, knowing that I might as well toss the laters :-)  Consequently, a recipe has to look pretty darned good to me to make it to the menu list.  Even then, there's no guarantee it'll get made.  This autumn vegetable soup sounded so good that it immediately made it to the top of the list. 


A couple of weekends ago, I made one old favorite - Eggplant Involtini, a standard (thank you, Molly, it's all your fault) - chili and this newbie - Autumn Vegetable Soup.  The eggplant was for dinner, with leftovers for Connie a couple of evenings this week while I'm at grip and grins.  (Smile broadly, hold your hand out to shake and say, "Hi, I'm ______"  That's what you do at a grip and grin.)  The chili and soup were for lunches during the week.  I got the Autumn Vegetable soup recipe a couple of weeks ago in the Fine Cooking email.  It stayed on my desktop until I was ready to make it last weekend.  I'd decided to make it since we have a lovely kale plant out front and had a great volunteer butternut squash vine.  Then, we got a huge bag of kale in the CSA box Saturday.  Ok, time to get it made. 


What did we think?  This is great and will be even better after sitting in the fridge for 24 hours.  I added a can of pumpkin puree to the soup.  It kicks up the flavor without making the soup cloying.  I'm tempted to try adding a bit of cinnamon or nutmeg to the leftovers - or I may just increase the amount of allspice.

One funny note - it's tough to see her, but Annie is sitting on the rug back by the bar.  She knows no dogs are allowed in the kitchen and that it's wise to stay out of my path to the pantry when I'm cooking.  So, she sits back on that rug just hoping there's a dog treat somewhere...


Autumn Vegetable Soup


Ingredients:

2T olive oil
3 medium carrots, chopped
1 large onion, diced
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and diced (2 1/2 cups)
1/4 t ground allspice
pinch cayenne pepper
1/2 t thyme
14 oz can pumpkin puree
4 c chicken stock (or chicken broth)
2 c coarsely chopped kale
14 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed


Directions:
Saute the carrots and onions in the olive oil in a stock pot.  After about 10 min when they have softened, add the butternut squash, seasonings, pumpkin and stock.   Simmer for about 15 minutes until squash is cooked.  Add the kale and chickpeas and simmer until the kale is softened.   Serve with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese.

adapted from Elie Krieger on Fine Cooking