Recipe: Harvest Vegetable Soup
This is a dish I made for Thanksgiving dinner last year. It captures the general harvest abundance theme of the holiday as it's sort of a smorgasboard of late summer/early fall veggies all thrown together into one delicious dish. It can be made in advance and reheated for dinner but it also works well alongside busy Turkey Day preparations since it's a pretty simple process: toss it all into the oven and puree when sufficiently roasted. For the purposes of this recipe I've listed specific ingredients and quantities, but really the spirit of the dish is to toss in whatever veggies look tasty. Last year we had more peppers available since the summer was less cool and rainy so I featured them heavily. However, a pepper-less soup with early fall's acorn squash turns out to be just as yummy.
Ingredients:
- 2 acorn squash
- 1 lb tomatoes (for this recipe I used 10 of the small tomatoes from this week's box)
- 3 small onions
- 1-2 garlic bulbs
- 3-4 large carrots
- a sprig of fresh rosemary
- olive oil
- salt to taste
Steps:
1. Prep veggies minimally and lay in an oiled roasting pan. For acorn squash, this means cutting in half and scooping out seeds. For carrots: chop off stems and slice in half. For onions: peel and slice in half. The tomatoes I used for this recipe are sufficiently small that I didn't bother with cutting out the core, but if you use larger tomatoes you may want to.
2. Pop the whole cloves out of the garlic bulb but don't peel them as you want them to bake inside
their own skin.
3. Drizzle veggies with olive oil and salt lightly. Bake at 375 F for 30 minutes. You may want to take the garlic out a bit early so it doesn't burn. Watch for the skins to start browning and remove from the oven immediately if they do.
4. After veggies come out of the oven throw all but the garlic in a food processor. You'll need to scoop the acorn squash flesh out with a spoon.
5. The garlic will be softened and might have a very squishy texture. Cut the cloves open and squeeze the garlic flesh into the food processor.
6. While the veggies are pureeing (this will likely take several minutes), finely chop 2-3 tsp of rosemary.
7. Move the veggie puree to a large pot and add broth or water to desired texture. For this recipe I added 3 cups of water and made about 7 ½ cups of soup in total. Heat on medium for 10 minutes and adjust salt to taste. If you use water instead of broth, don't forget to add salt to bring out the flavor in the soup.
8. Serve and garnish with whole rosemary. Other tasty finishing options include a dollop of sour cream or full fat yogurt, or 2 or 3 croutons made from buttered toast (ideally a thick, crusty bread) cut into cubes.