Winter Soup

Fortifies you against winter chill.

This soup tastes of winter. The best kind of winter—warm, cozy and sweet—not blistering winds, snow plows, and buffeted cheeks. We're talking deep flavors, dreams of skiing, fluffy sweaters, and far off harvests in a bowl of steaming soup. Top it with a fine grating of parmesan and you can bring on the blizzards, especially if someone else agrees to do the shoveling. Hey, that’s fair if you’ve made them this soup, right? This soup will get you through February.

Everything in this soup is winter-appropriate. I didn’t want to put in anything that you couldn’t get mid-winter, just so I could get a true taste of the season. With foods shipped in from all over, it’s hard to find a real winter flavor. This meal is all storage vegetables, stock I made this summer and froze, jarred tomato sauce, and chick peas that I made from dried. In other words, things you can find in the middle of the winter in your own home. I even added a bit of mid-winter greenhouse goodness (from my Red Fire Farm deep winter CSA!).

But first, we need to talk about the massive cabbage fail. I had three heads of cabbage from the end of the CSA season. I packaged them up and stored them in the fridge; they’re supposed to keep for a long time. OK, probably not as long as I kept them, but I didn’t have time to make the cabbage things I wanted around the holidays…life got complicated…I thought they were going to call me…I lost their number. In short, three gorgeous cabbages that probably could have lasted, didn’t make it. When I wanted to make this soup, it was crying out for cabbage, but the cabbage was too far gone. I opened it up and it was dreary, flaccid, and off-color. Next year I’m going to have to get even better at storing veggies. Over the year, any of our CSA food loss (which still wasn’t much) came from food that had just started to go bad but still conspired to make head, body and allergies rebel. (I'm just super sensitive to food mold, even when it's invisible, blast it.) The cabbage, though? I kept it in the hopes that under the top leaves it was fine. Sigh. Next year’s goal? To store veggies even better. It will take some research.

I have a little section of the pantry that is our version of a root cellar. Onions, squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, shallots, garlic, and more in near darkness with plenty of air circulation. Every now and then I find an onion or a potato that gave up the ghost, but for the most part, we’re progressing through the winter using up the fall’s harvest slowly. This soup was inspired by a need for a hearty meal to combat the onslaught of February, as well as a chance to use a relatively large amount of veggies that wouldn’t have lasted much longer.

In the fridge I had carrots and celeriac and even some radishes left from my Siena Farms CSA. The onions and potatoes in the pantry made a strong showing and made it to a dish before losing their firmness. The Red Fire Farm deep winter CSA (which I have delivered through Metro Pedal Power, by the way) had a massive, gigantic parsnip this week. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looked like some prop from a Harry Potter movie, to be honest. (Look, I went a little crazy with OnDemand movies when I was under the weather recently. Let’s blame the cabbage.)

Whoa. Alarmingly large parsnip. And yet, so sweet.

I stood it up and used a knife to peel down the sides. Then I cut it into massive rings and cut the tender flesh off of the woody, hard center. Some of it went in the soup, and some of it went in the roasting pan with a bunch of other lovely veggies. The celeriac, another beauty, got the usual treatment—peel it with a knife, like you would a citrus you’re about to supreme and then chop chop chop. I love celery in a soup. Seeing as how green celery is not a winter crop, though, I opted for the root, which I think is sweeter and nuttier. Since the cabbage was not meant to be, I used some of the greens from the CSA. You could use cabbage, kale, escarole, or lettuce. The chick peas I added were made from dried, which I cook with carrot, onion, and a bit of parmesan rind. Since it’s low-salt and so good, I use the liquid, too. If you use canned, drain the liquid away because it tends to be bitter. You could use any number of beans grown locally, too. For this soup, I think the white beans work best.

Winter Soup

• frozen stock, about a pot of soup’s worth
• 4 potatoes, cubed
• part of one alarmingly huge parsnip, cubed
• 8 carrots, cubed
• 1/2 celeriac, cubed
• 4 watermelon radishes, cubed
• 1/2 red onion, chopped fine
• 1 cup jarred tomato sauce, plain or with basil
• 1 cup chick peas
• 3/4 c. hearty greens, chopped

1. Heat the stock.
2. Add the cubed potatoes, carrots, celeriac, parsnip, and onions. Cook until the veggies are getting tender, but still have some tooth.
3. Add the jarred tomato sauce.
4. After it comes back to a simmer, add in the chick peas.
5. Right before it’s done, add in the handful of greens. Don’t over cook them or they will not be pleasant. Kale and cabbage can withstand a bit of time and heat. More delicate greens will only take a minute.

Ladle it into a bowl that fits nicely in your hands. Grate a bit of good parmesan on top and watch it melt like snow on the window. Toast up some rustic bread, grab and deep spoon and enjoy.

Now I’m wondering. What are your food storage secrets?