Saturday, June 14, 2008

Lunch

Mongrel soup with chickpeas and greens.

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Shopping: none

As often happens, this soup started with a handful of greens from the garden that had been blanched and tossed in the refrigerator. Add a trip to the freezer, where, in the process of a quick clean-out, I discovered a four-cup container of turkey stock and a four-cup container of duck broth. Once upon a time I had visions of this duck broth as the basis of some grand dining experience. Now it was merely filler for the soup pot.

I wanted to make this a bean soup, but the best I could find were some old chickpeas that had been kicking around the pantry. Sweat an onion and a couple of carrots, diced small, along with some parsnip that had been sitting in the crisper drawer too long. Season with thyme. I made the soup a couple of weeks ago. It gets better with age. Now it's just a matter of re-heating.

This is one of those soups that can only be considered my personal food. No one else in the family will touch it.

"It looks like dishwater," says the wife.

Ugly but good.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

my father used to make something similar from ground elder leaves. It didn't look pretty...
It also smelt bad.
Does this smell better?

Chef Jeena said...

This sounds very healthy.

Ed Bruske said...

Charlotte, there's no problem with the smell. But I have to admit it's a bit unusual, probably not to everyone's taste. We make soup with what we have, not with what we wish we had.

Jeena, this soup is full of healthy goodness.