Hearty, comforting and healthy soup. There’s no cream in it – the broccoli provides the creamy texture. I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. Read on . . .

Rarely do I watch The Chew. The show is so fast-paced (frantic almost, like The View which I refuse to watch at all because they all talk over each other) and loud that I will only watch it on occasion and rarely do I ever try one of the recipes. A few over the years . . . but I know the show is well liked by many. When we were on our trip I happened to turn on TV and I tuned in to the program and Stacy London [a TV fashionista and co-host of the show What Not to Wear, another show I don’t watch] was making a soup. She had someone come to her home to cook for her and this recipe was borne of that professional relationship, as I understood it. Apparently, she had leftovers of both a healthy pureed broccoli soup and one with white beans and sausage and Stacy decided to combine the two. She loves it so much that she learned to make it herself and eats it by the gallon.

It’s no secret around here that I love soups. Not only for their ease (a meal in one pot) but soups are comforting and provide infinite variety. And often I add a little jot of cream to soups. This soup looked like it had cream in it, but it doesn’t. Nary a bit of cream or dairy at all. Basically you make 2 soups – a broccoli soup in one pot (which gets pureed and becomes the liquid in the other soup) and the spicy sausage and cannellini bean soup in the other. Once the broccoli soup is cooked through (takes no time at all) it’s whizzed up in the blender and then that’s added to the other. Because I had some mushrooms on hand, I added them, and I think I added some zucchini too, though neither of those were in the recipe.

The only fat in the entire soup is a tablespoon or two of olive oil to sauté the onions, the same for the chicken sausage soup plus whatever intrinsic fat is in chicken broth and the chicken sausage (not much, in other words).

Adapting the recipe a little, I added some fresh mushrooms and zucchini to the soup. Why not, I said? I wanted more veggies and texture since the broccoli is completely pureed. The recipes serves 8, and that’s about right – we had 2 dinners and 2 or 3 lunches out of the one preparation. I’m sure it would freeze well also.

What’s GOOD: I like that it’s a very healthy soup. I really had to work at it to taste the broccoli (and I like broccoli) since it’s pureed. You honestly think it’s a cream soup! My DH liked it a lot and told me each time I served it that it was really good. I felt the same way. A keeper. It’s not gourmet. It’s not over-the-top with flavor, but it’s just wholesome and good. It’s thick – you can see that from the photo. If you wanted a lighter soup, add more chicken broth and thin it some.
What’s NOT: nothing at all that I can think of.

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The phone rang . . .

“Hi Carolyn, this is Cherrie. [we chatted, then] Do you have a good recipe for a broccoli cheese soup that I could make to take on our camping trip?”

At first, I said I didn’t, but then a light bulb went off . . .oh yes, I do. But I haven’t made it in years and years. I went to my computer to look at my MasterCook recipe files, and yes, there it was. Hiding in my soup section, lost and forlorn. It was old enough that I didn’t have a photo of it (I really only started taking food photos about 10-12 years ago).

When I tell you this recipe is EASY, trust me. Someone in my office, back in the early 90’s made this one day for a potluck Thanksgiving lunch we did. She brought it in in her crockpot and just let it sit on warm until lunchtime and we all had some. Everybody loved it, and once I got the recipe, I realized how incredibly easy it is to make. You can use frozen chopped broccoli (the original recipe did), but I use fresh. You can find lots of variations on the theme all over the internet. Some people use garlic powder, some use different kinds of milk or milk powder, others have little or no onion, some use American cheese (which is really a lot like Velveeta, which is what the recipe calls for). This is a first here on my blog – the Velveeta cheese. Not something I ever – EVER – have on my pantry shelf! It contains a little bit of trans-fats. Not so good, but that cheese is just what you want in this soup. I’ve never tried it with any other kind of cheese – Fontina is a good melting – and disbursing – kind of cheese. If you don’t want to use Velveeta, try Fontina. Don’t use cheddar, as it doesn’t melt well. Don’t use mozzarella either. So many cheeses do melt, but then clump. Not what you want. If you want to upscale it, Gruyere probably would work also as a melting cheese, since it’s a frequent cheese used in fondue.

Here’s what you do – melt some butter, add chopped onion and cook 3-4 minutes, adding a clove of garlic at the last. Add broth and bring to a boil. Add the egg noodles (original recipe called for more noodles, I prefer less) and cook 3-4 minutes. Then add the chopped broccoli stems; a couple minutes later the chopped broccoli tops. Cook that a couple minutes, then add milk (original called for 6 cups, I use 4) and cheese. Stir constantly until it’s smooth and all the cheese has melted. (The photo above I took just after adding the cheese which hasn’t melted yet.) Done. Serve. This soup comes together in about 20 minutes tops. If you want, serve with a piece of cheese toast, a roll, an English muffin.

What’s GOOD: how EASY it is. Very tasty and relatively low calorie too, although with the cheese, it does have some fat. Texture is not thick, but it’s not thin, either. Just right. The night I made this, it was a cool summer evening and the soup was perfect. My DH loved it. Obviously I did too. The recipe makes a lot of soup.
What’s NOT: gee whiz, nothing. Easy to make. Tasty. A transfat cheese may not be what you want to eat, so substitute Fontina. I’ve never frozen this soup – it might be just fine. Let me know if you try it.

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With a huge cauliflower in the refrigerator, I’d planned making the Cauliflower Soup with Olive Oil Drizzle, a cold soup that we devoured just a few weeks ago. It was SO good. But then I ran across another cold soup recipe . . . well, you know how that goes . . .

Now my trouble will be which one to make in the future – we liked both of them. A lot. This one came from a new blog: Williams-Sonoma Taste. I think I read about the blog on someone else’s blog, since I rarely go to the store’s website. Anyway, up came this recipe for cauliflower soup and it just sounded perfect. And easy. And we love curry. The recipe came from one of the store’s cookbooks: Williams-Sonoma Cooking for Friends: Fresh ways to entertain with style

I did make a few minor detours: (1) I did not sieve the soup to remove all of the cauliflower and apple pulp (I just didn’t know why I should do that since the solids are good for us); (2) instead of milk, I added half and half because I had it in my frig and needed to use it up; and (3) I served it warm (only out of expediency as it didn’t have time to chill – but we ate it cold the next night and it was just as good if not better).

The soup is very easy to make, as long as you don’t count the step of having to puree it in the blender (it took 2 batches for me). Steaming the cauliflower took awhile as I had a lot of it and I didn’t want to cook it over too high heat, but once done, it was pretty cinchy easy to puree it. I added the half and half in the blender, along with the yogurt. I was lazy and didn’t toast the almonds.

What’s GOOD: the altogether flavor of the cauliflower and apple, and the curry. The crunch of the almonds on top. It was just wonderful.
What’s NOT: zero – it was really good. A keeper.

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It always comes as a surprise to me that some people (yes, that includes you, my friend Lynn!) don’t like cauliflower. It’s such a bland vegetable, yet it has a unique taste. And anything you put with it just enhances it. At least that’s my take, and I’m sticking to it.

Over at Food52 I read about this recipe and went right on by it the first time. Then I saw it on a couple of blogs, so went back and revisited it. Mine started out as Paul Bertolli’s version – and that one contained not a smidgen of dairy. After I made it, though, I tasted it. Hmm. Tasted it again. Added more salt. Added some white pepper. Hmmm. Added a couple T. of olive oil and stirred it around. Hmmm. Still not what I was expecting. So I sank into the dairy and added some heavy cream. Swirled that all around. And decided that I liked it cold. Very much.

Are you having summer yet? Gosh, we sure are, and have been for about 3 weeks. Way too early to feel that awful humidity here in California. So this soup has been a fabulous cooler-off-er before dinner. I’ve fixed it as my lunch twice. We’ve had it with dinner twice, and I still have some left. I’ve been loving it every single time.

If you want to make this true to Paul Bertolli’s recipe, by all means do. But if you want it to be off-the-charts, then go with my version with some added cream. I tried to drizzle just a tiny bit of EVOO on top, but I should have used a spoon. Instead I drizzled it out of the bottle and got a bit too much. Then I gave it several grinds of black pepper too.

What’s GOOD: the creaminess of it – of course yes, it has cream in it, but I mean the smooth-ness of the soup base itself. A blender makes easy work of it. It keeps for several days too. And I suspect you could freeze it easily enough too.

What’s NOT: nothing at all. I liked it a lot. The soup itself was very easy to make.

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Really tasty red pepper soup (there’s no cream IN the soup, just drizzled on top) that’s very easy to make, and it’s topped with fresh basil shreds, some fresh corn, and then the drizzle of crème fraîche.

Sometimes when I’ve made a red pepper soup, the pepper part was just too acidic, or on the bitter side. It’s not the capsaicin, since that’s the hot factor, and bell peppers have just about nil of that. I don’t know what it is. But THIS soup didn’t have that, which was a good thing! Maybe it was the peppers themselves – their source, the soil, the time of year? Anybody an expert on bell peppers?

Well, that got me to thinking about a book I have that is a wealth of information about fruit and veggies. I’ll do a write-up on Tuesday about peppers in general. Glancing at the chapter on peppers I see 4 recipes: roasted red peppers stuffed with tuna, salad of roasted peppers and ricotta salata, peperonata (a kind of bell pepper sauce), and chile and zucchini braised in cream. I’ll make one of those. The author recommends the first recipe.

Back to the soup. It was so easy, except for roasting the red peppers and jalapeno. If you want to make it easier, cut the peppers into flat-type pieces, lay on foil, oil them a bit and bake them at 400° for 20-30 minutes, turning them a couple of times. Let them cool so you can handle them, then peel off the skins and trim the ribs off, plus discarding the seeds if there are any remaining.

While the peppers are roasting start the soup: sauté the onions, adding the garlic toward the end, then add the seasonings. You can use fresh tomatoes if they’re really in season – otherwise use super-tasty canned tomatoes (I like San Marzano, Muir Glen or Cento from Italy). The soup is simmered for a short time (30 minutes) then pureed in the blender. Reheat it, taste for seasoning, then pour out into serving bowls. The best part about this soup is the garnish – fresh corn cut off the cobb, fresh basil shreds and a drizzle of crème fraîche.  This recipe came from a cooking class with Tarla Fallgatter.

What’s GOOD: the fresh taste from the red bells and the garnishes. Loved the corn. Also the little bit of heat from the jalapeno pepper. Altogether delicious.
What’s NOT: absolutely nothing.

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Ultra-lemony chicken soup. All the descriptors are present for Avgolemono (a Greek lemon and egg soup) but with added vegetables and this time with pasta, not rice, which is more traditional.

What I had was about 3-4 cups of cubed chicken from a store-bought one some days ago, and I sure needed a chicken soup that would use it all up. With lemons on our trees, what better combo could there be but Avgolemono, an egg-lemon soup. It’s probably common on Greek-American menus, and it’s really very simple to make. Since I don’t often follow a recipe exactly, sure enough, I decided to take a slight fork in the road. I wanted to eat all the vegetables, not just use it for flavorings and then throw them out. Checking on wikipedia, I discovered that my desire to enjoy all the vegetables is not all that unusual in Avgolemono.

First I went to my one and only Greek cookbook, Festival of Greek Flavors; A Mediterranean Culinary Adventure and used that as a guide. It’s just that the recipe I consulted had you strain out all the vegetables – therefore it only contained the pasta. Period. Too boring for me! Its recipe also called for starting with a whole, raw chicken, and obviously I wasn’t doing that, so I had to make a variation, but I kept true to nearly all of the rest of it. I sautéed onion and celery in olive oil, then added bay leaves, dried dill, chicken broth and let that simmer for awhile. Then I added small pieces of thin capellini pasta and cooked it until barely tender. Meanwhile I started on the egg-lemon sauce. This is essential to the soup, and really gives it its true lemony flavor. In a blender I combined fresh squeezed lemon juice, whole eggs (I had very small eggs, so I used 4 instead of 3) and whizzed it up until it was very, very frothy. That’s an essential part of this soup too – once you combine it in the soup pot, you want to retain some of that eggy froth. By the time I took a picture of it, though (above) the froth had all disappeared. Anyway, you add some cornstarch dissolved in a little bit of water and lastly a cup or so of the hot broth out of the soup pot – this is done to temper the eggs – otherwise you’d have cooked eggs in the soup. Not good! The lemon-egg mixture is poured into the soup and brought to JUST below a simmer. I added in the chicken and allowed it to heat up very gently and then scooped about 1 3/4 cups into each serving bowl. It looks like there is cream in this soup, but there is none at all – it’s the egg mixture that gives it that creamy look.

Just as added information, the cookbook had 3 different egg and lemon sauce variations – one using whole eggs (the one I used), one calling for dividing the eggs and whipping up the egg whites, which would definitely keep some of that frothy meringue kind of quality to the soup once combined; and thirdly a sauce made only with egg yolks. I was into making it easy for myself, so did the first option. Such a sauce is used in various ways in Greek cuisine – as a sauce on fish (that would be delicious with its lemony flavors) or vegetables.

What’s GOOD: everything about it. A definite make-again soup. I liked the texture of the barely cooked carrots (I added those later just so they’d be that way). The flavor – wow – so very lemony and creamy. But there isn’t a speck of cream in it. Altogether delicious and EASY.

What’s NOT: nothing, really.

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By chance do you still have some ham in your freezer or refrigerator left over from Easter? And you really need to make a tasty but healthy soup for a weeknight?

What I had was a big honkin’ ham bone, and some black lentils. I had those whole, round urad dal kind of black lentils that I bought at an Indian market. They needed to be used up anyway, so was glad for an opportunity. After doing a recipe search, I found one at the Food Network that would work with a few adaptations. This soup came together in a hurry, actually, although you do need to take the time to cook the beans. I used my handy-dandy Bean Cooking Chart to tell me how long to cook the beans [Urad Lentils (whole), 25-30 minutes] in the traditional way (i.e. not pressure cooker or slow cooker this time as I wanted the beans to soak up that ham flavor).

First I removed all the meat from the ham bone and stuck it back in the refrigerator. Into a big pot I briefly cooked some onion, celery, pancetta and bacon for awhile. Then I added the bone and broth (I used a pork broth, but chicken is fine) lentils and spices. Simmered that for about 20 minutes or so, then I added in some carrots and cooked the mixture further (about 10+ minutes because I wanted the carrots to be just barely tender and bright colored). I removed the ham bone, pulled off any further ham I could from it. Tasted it for seasoning and added in the ham cubes I’d removed at the beginning. It was VERY tasty – hearty, heart-warming. Freezes well too.

What’s GOOD: Healthy, hearty, stick to the ribs kind of taste. Delicious. Loved the thyme in it – but then I’m a fan of thyme anyway. After a couple of days it was even more tasty and I added water to thin it out some.

What’s NOT: Nothing at all.

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If you like thinking outside the box when you make soup, this will tick all the items for soup-making for you. Chicken, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), artichoke hearts, Kalamata olives and couscous with an apricot hint. It’s delicious.

No credit is due me on this recipe – it’s all Phillis Carey. She was inspired by an online recipe at food.com for this, but it certainly was way outside my box, but oh-s0 good and worth it. Do not, under any circumstances, be dissuaded once you look at the ingredient list. Half of the items are spices. This soup is healthy. Hearty. Chickeny. Comforting. It could be the Moroccan version of chicken noodle soup. I might like this better than that, actually. If you make a batch for freezing, go ahead and cook the couscous, but put it in a separate plastic bag and seal it inside the larger bag of soup. You can still freeze it all in one gallon bag, but with the smaller well-sealed bag inside.

The soup (the broth part) contains onions, ginger, garlic, all the spices, some white wine, chicken broth, the garbanzo beans and a can of diced tomatoes. It needs but 10-15 minutes of simmering to be ready. Meanwhile, get all the add-ins ready (canned artichoke hearts – no, not the marinated kind – the Kalamata olives, shredded chicken) and on the side some cilantro and almonds.

Then, make the couscous in a separate pan – it uses chicken broth, a little bit of honey (yes), oil, lemon juice, zest, salt and some diced up dried apricots. Phillis did say you could use dried cranberries or currants if you don’t have or want to use apricots. Couscous takes no time at all – just add it to the hot broth mixture, cover and let sit for 5 minutes. Fluff it up just a little.

Back to the soup – add in the additions to the soup (so they heat through), get a soup bowl ready, scoop in some couscous, then, if you can and are willing to be patient, carefully pour the chicken and chickpea soup around the outside of the mound of couscous. It looks really pretty that way. Otherwise, just add the soup and couscous to a bowl and garnish with cilantro and almonds. And one Kalamata olive on top.

If you’re a lover of spices and flavor, this one is IT. If you’re intimidated by all the spices, maybe mix those up the day before and keep them fresh in a little sealed jar. Don’t make more than you need – remember, mixed spices lose their flavor after about a month.

What’s GOOD: the myriad of flavors in this soup. I love soup in all shapes and sizes. And this one – the flavors. Loved them all – the artichoke hearts, the beans, the apricot couscous. Wow. All delish.
What’s NOT: can’t think of any down side to this flavorful soup. Worth doing, even if you do have to dig out all of your spice bottles to do it!

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Ever notice how flavorful butternut squash can be? And yet it’s such a nuisance to cut (sometimes I can’t even do it myself) and peel. But this soup is worth the hassle.

If you’ve visited Costco lately, then you likely have seen their package (2 pounds) of cubed, peeled butternut squash. Yippee for me! The only thing is – once you buy it, you need to cook it within a few days. Once cut, the squash doesn’t keep forever. So, given that, buy yourself one and make this tasty soup. Trader Joe’s also carries (sometimes) a similar package of butternut squash. And occasionally I see it frozen at some regular grocery stores. Or, if you’ve got some good muscles, do buy the fresher whole squash and do it yourself! This came from a cooking class I went to recently (Tarla Fallgatter) but I found the recipe online from Food and Wine, and it’s credited to Dean Fearing.

I happened to have some fennel on hand, so with the butternut squash all ready to go, this soup was very easy to make. The squash is roasted in the oven for 20-30 minutes (until tender). Meanwhile, gently sauté onion, fennel and fresh ginger in butter. Add the squash and chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you’d prefer a vegetarian soup) and cook until everything is tender. The soup is pureed (by blender or immersion blender), then gently reheated with the addition of a small amount of heavy cream. Toast some pecans, chop them, whip up just a little bit of heavy cream, add a sprinkle of cayenne pepper (yes, really) and dollop those on top. Makes for a lovely taste and a lovely presentation too.

At right is a photo I took at the class – see the difference in color? When I made it myself, I had a couple of bulbs of fennel. I like fennel. So I decided to add one whole medium-sized fennel to this soup. It calls for half of one. And when I roasted the butternut squash, I likely didn’t roast it long enough – I cooked it through, but it adds a lot of flavor if you allow the butternut squash to caramelize. So, you’ll notice from the photo at the top, mine is a much lighter color – both from the lack of caramelization and from the addition of more fennel. But as for flavor – it was wonderful both times. The ginger – I probably added a bit more than called for and it was only mildly warm. One day I ate the soup cold (because I was just lazy) – it was wonderful! That’s the photo at top – I didn’t whip the cream, I just drizzled about a teaspoon of cream on top, then added the toasted pecans.

What’s good: the additions of the fennel and ginger give it a lovely nuanced flavor. And the topping just kind of puts in a higher realm. It would make a very nice company first course, or add a sandwich or salad and it would make a nice dinner too. The fresh ginger gives this soup just a little bit of heat – I liked that part. I really liked the texture of the soup – using an immersion blender I didn’t completely puree the soup (which was fine by me) so with the addition of the pecans, there was bit of crunch and the fennel didn’t completely disintegrate either. Lovely, really.
What’s not: nothing at all. It’s good all around.

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I know – this doesn’t look like much. A milky blah-looking soup. It isn’t blah. Yes, creamy – but creamy from milk, not so much cream (some half and half used). Perhaps you can vaguely see little specks of orange (carrots) and green (celery). There’s also a lot of cauliflower in it, which gives the soup a very mellow flavor and certainly a white color!

Veggie soups are a favorite of mine, and I don’t have very many that aren’t enhanced significantly with carbs – either beans, rice or potatoes. And since we do try to limit carbs around our house – when I saw this one that’s strictly veggies (except for the carrots, but there aren’t many in there), I knew I’d try it. The recipe came from The Pioneer Woman. You know, of course, that even vegetables have carbs – even ordinary ones like onions and celery. Not all that many, but some. And flour (used to thicken the soup) is pure carb, so there ARE carbs in this soup, but it’s not carb-centric. An entrée serving contains 28 grams of carbs.

Right off the bat I’m telling you this isn’t a wow kind of soup. It’s hot, it’s comforting, it’s mostly smooth (because I whizzed most of it in a blender, contrary to Ree’s recipe) and it’s filling, especially with a little open-faced toasted cheese sandwich I made on some super-thin bread. It’s tasty. But it’s not something you’re going to go raving to the world about. But yes, I’d make it again – probably with more cauliflower in it. I might add fennel to the veggie mix. Or perhaps some leeks. AND, I’d sprinkle in a bunch of grated cheese at the end and merely stir it in (no more cooking once you do that). But otherwise, it’s a fine soup. Relatively easy to make (it does require 2 pans, one for the soup and one for the creamy gravy base you add to it) too. A little bit of sour cream is added in at the end (I used Mascarpone because that’s all I had) which adds just a bit of richness. I froze half of it and will serve that later, or maybe I’ll give it to a dear friend who has just had shoulder surgery and she’ll be hard pressed to cook much in coming weeks.

What’s good: just the wholesomeness of it – simple ingredients, a good soup for a cold winter’s day. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult. Not exceptional, but it’s good.
What’s not: nothing really.

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