day of soup

[cellio]

Friday night at services one of the people who coordinates the congregation's food program (for congregants) told me that they'll be delivering food to our rabbi's family soon. (He just got out of the hospital a few days ago.) He mentioned this to me specifically because I am one of the few active congregants (and contributors to this program) who keeps kosher, and so does the rabbi. So I said that even absent the kashrut reasoning I would be delighted to cook some food for them, and asked if there are specific types of food that are needed. I'm told that they specifically want soups, so I spent part of the afternoon trying to meet that need.

I made the following two soups. (Apologetic note to celebrin: both contain tomatoes, but at least in the latter they could easily be omitted. For the former, you could omit them if you add more water/stock, I would think.)


Pumpkin-Vegetable Soup (summarized from Pillsbury Classics, January 2005)

1t olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced

2C frozen mixed veg [I used frozen peas, frozen corn, and fresh carrots]
1 can pumpkin (15oz)
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained (15oz)
1 can chicken broth (14oz) [I used 2C water with parve buillon]
0.5C water
0.5t sugar
1.5t curry powder
1t paprika

Saute onions and garlic in oil for a few minutes, then add everything else. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally.

(I doubled the recipe and ended up cooking it for closer to 20 minutes. It takes a while for the liquids to cause the pumpkin to thin out enough.)


Vegetable-Rice Soup (adapted from Easy Kosher Cooking by Rosalyn F. Manesse)

0.5C green beans
0.5C peas
1 small onion, diced
2 carrots, sliced
1 large potato, diced (I used a sweet potato (not a yam!))
1 small tomato, diced
8C water
3 large chicken buillon cubes
1t salt
some pepper
0.5t marjoram
~0.5C uncooked rice

Put everything except rice in pot, boil, cover and simmer 20 minutes, add rice, simmer 10 more minutes. The original recipe called for noodles, but I had some rice I wanted to use up. I thought I might need to cook it longer (rice usually takes more than 10 minutes), but it was actually fine after 10 minutes, 12 at the most. Anyway, you cook until your final additive is done.

Both were tasty and have now been packed up for delivery. The pumpkin soup made about 2.5 quarts and the vegetable soup was about 2 quarts.

For dinner we then joined friends at a Japanese restaurant, where everyone else got sukiyaki. :-) It smelled very good. I'd like to figure out how to make it someday.

On a different note, while I didn't make it today I want to mention the nominally-African peanut stew I've made in the past, because someone on my friends list was asking about stews recently.

I don't make soup very often, so I'd welcome links to other good recipes.

Comments

[cellio]

I assume it would, though I've never tried. You might want to delay adding it by a few minutes in that case to avoid over-cooking.