recipe: carrot, leek and apple soup
A perfect recipe for the autumn months, when all three main ingredients are readily available at the farm markets.
Carrot, Leek and Apple Soup
(from The New American Plate Cookbook)
1 lb carrots, sliced into 1/2 inch pieces (peeling is optional)
1 leek, white part only, finely chopped
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1 apple, chopped (preferable a tart variety - the more tart, the better)
1 tbs. olive oil
3 cups chicken or clear vegetable stock
salt (to taste)
black pepper (to taste)
dried ginger (to taste)
fresh mint (garnish - optional)
our market basket runneth over
We haven't been home a whole lot in the last few weeks so our cupboard was reminiscent of Mother Hubbard's.
We trekked out into the perfect Indian summer late-Sunday-morning sun to find something to fill our tummies and our souls.
We came home an hour later with:
- A new kind of soap the scent of which Ruth Ann's daughter Rachel described as lying down on a forest carpet of pine needles and fall leaves
- A half-gallon of whole milk (Rudi has promised me tapioca this week)
- A half-gallon of apple cider (because the house smells so nice when it's cooking on the stove)
- Jicama (a South American root vegetable that I'm eager to try)
- Turkish eggplant
- Peppers in fall colors
- Tomatoes from a greenhouse
- Broccoli for soup
- Leeks for soup
- Gigantic red beets (almost as big as your head!)
- Suncrisp apples
- A yellow onion
- Young, fresh garlic
- Brussels sprouts
- Mascarpone
- Blueberry scones
Next week I'm going to pick up nuts (if they still have some) and winter squash. I just wasn't ready to switch seasons quite yet!
farmers’ market bumper crop
Rudi went off on a bike ride this morning, leaving me to go the farmers' market myself. This was a mistake.
I started off with the best of intentions and self-restraint, but as the morning wore on (and I got hungrier), the basket began to get heavier until finally it overflowed and I was forced to accept a bag or two, as well.
I came home with:
- blueberries (the last of the season)
- peaches
- nectarines
- two kinds of lettuce
- Red Malabar spinach
- red and orange cherry tomatoes
- a yellow tomato
- two green tomatoes (for frying)
- seconds tomatoes (for gazpacho)
- Thai eggplants
- a giant head of cabbage
- beans (they might be something closely related to a cranberry bean, but I can't remember what kind they said they were)
- corn on the cob
- leeks (the first of the season; of course, I forgot to buy brocolli to make soup with)
- squash (five pounds -- including pattypans, bicolors, dark yellows, and star-shaped ones -- it got cheaper the more you bought and I figured I could make five pounds stretch to two, maybe three, weeks)
- blueberry scones
- milk
- a giant double sunflower