Spiked soups

Some people like their bourbon neat. I apparently like mine warmed through, at least sometimes. Here are three soups packed with a little extra punch. Good for those days when you contemplate if the weather can be said to be a blizzard even when it's not actively snowing, just moving existing snow in a most untidy sideways manner, which was the case when this first soup was made. Then we briefly entered false spring mode, but then the snow made a triumphant return. There's at least a month and a half of prime soup weather left, so drink up. 

Spiked pumpkin soup

Adapted from Cooking Light, November 2005 issue. To restore the recipe's lightness, use cooking spray instead of olive oil and low fat milk and sour cream.  

Ingredients
I cup onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon minced fresh peeled ginger
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1½ cups apple cider
14 ounces broth
⅓ cup bourbon
¼ cup maple syrup
1 29-ounce can pumpkin puree
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground pepper
Sour cream
Chopped fresh parsley

Method

Add a drizzle of olive oil n a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, ginger and cumin. Cook for about 5 minutes until somewhat softened. Add cider, broth, bourbon, syrup and pumpkin. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.

Working in batches puree pumpkin mixture. Add back to sauce pan and stir in milk, flour, salt and pepper  Heat through, stirring frequently. Serve garnished with a dollop of sour cream and chopped fresh parsley. Serves 6.

Rating: A very pleasant soup. Dave calls it drunken pumpkin soup. I'm not sure if I detect the bourbon, but it's probably there as a background note, which seems better than having it be overwhelming forward. A fairly fast, easy fix.

Bourbon corn chowder

Adapted from Barbara Kafka's "Soup: A Way of Life." 

Note: The original recipe called for igniting the bourbon in a small saucepan and letting it flame for a minute before adding it to the soup. I'm sure that would add a lovely deeper caramel note, but I am match-averse stemming from an childhood incident when asked to do the seemingly simple task of lighting the candles on the table when company was coming over. (Don't worry, only a few of the green beans almondine got singed, so the damage was mainly psychic.)

Ingredients

4 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped small
2 (14.75-ounce) cans creamed corn
¼ cup bourbon (see note)
½ cup chicken broth
½ cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 to 3 drops hot red pepper sauce
Ground pepper to taste

Method

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Cook onions in butter over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in corn. Add bourbon (after igniting in a small pan, if desired) and then broth, cream, salt, nutmeg, hot sauce and pepper. Heat through.

Rating: While I'm not usually a creamed corn fan, this makes a quite nice soup. The bourbon is once again more of a background note, adding a sort of silken flavor, if silk can be said to be a flavor. (I'm going with yes.) A very fast fix that's pantry/bar friendly. And then part of me pondered, hmm, what would this be like if I'd made the creamed corn? Luckily, the other part of my brain told me to stop being such a pest to myself and stand down. Makes 4 first-course servings.

This recipe did not call for a garnish, but it occurred to me that if I'd had any fried shallots on hand, that would make a dandy topping for this.

Kentucky bourbon black bean soup

From "The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook" by Albert W.A. Schmid; the restaurant source was Panache, a former French restaurant in Indianapolis and the chef-owner was the late Richard Cottance.

Note: The bourbon in this recipe is by no means cooked off, since it's added as a garnish. Serves 4 somewhat skimpily.

Ingredients

¾ cup finely diced onions
½ cup finely diced carrots
½ cup finely diced celery
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh oregano
1 pinch ground cayenne pepper
1½ cup black beans, divided
3 cups broth
4 tablespoons bourbon
4 tablespoons sour cream
Diced tomatoes
Fresh cilantro sprigs

Method
Film the bottom of a heavy soup pot with a bit of oil. Add onions, carrots and celery and cook, covered, over very low heat until tender but not browned. Add garlic, cumin, oregano and cayenne and cook for about 5 minutes. Add 1 cup of black beans and the broth. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Puree soup. Add remaining ½ cup black beans and heat through.

Serve the 4 servings garnished each with 1 tablespoon of bourbon, 1 tablespoon of sour cream, some diced tomatoes and cilantro.

Rating: Bizarrely, adding a swirl of bourbon as a garnish actually works, at least if you're not concerned greatly about alcohol consumption. I was afraid it would be too in-your-face boozy, but stirring into a warm soup mellows it immediately. I appreciated the fact that there were actual beans in the soup as well as the pureed variety, which I think helps with the overall appeal of the soup. It was overall fine and worth trying, but I'll stick with another bourbon soup recipe from that same book that has a lot of the same flavors (see below.)

Also, too

I'll add a shoutout to this bourbon chili recipe I've made before, and like a bit better than the black bean soup above.

20 garlic cloves and 5 ingredients yields 1 slow cooker supper

 

The recipe suggests Italian bread to sop up the sauce; we opted for rice since we had it on hand.

Sometimes I forget how wonderful it is at the end of a weekend to have supper already simmering away and ready by Sunday evening. But then I remember my crock pot again.

Beef shanks with red wine and tomatoes

From "The Italian Slow Cooker," by Michele Scicolone. I've dipped into her French slow cooker book for years, but just ran across the Italian version. Same premise, that slowly simmered classics are well suited for taking advantage of what crock pots are truly good for.

Ingredients

20 garlic cloves, peeled
2 cups dry red wine
1 14-ounce can Italian tomatoes
1 4-inch rosemary sprig
3 pounds bone-in beef shanks

Method

Put garlic cloves in the bottom of a slow cooker. Add wine, tomatoes and rosemary. Salt and pepper the beef shanks and add to pot. Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours until the meat is falling off the bones tender. 

Rating: A fuss-free way to get a hearty Sunday supper ready. The garlic is beyond spreadable at the point the meat is done, so you get a very nice sauce, and strangely not one that's overwhelmingly garlic flavored. It's not like roasted garlic, which is kind of sticky pasty, but instead almost silky. I don't know that I would call it company food, and I wouldn't call it cheap, since even shanks aren't free, but we ate it happily. 

Four takes on red sauce

The Splendid Table recipe specifies spaghetti, but the day I decided to make this I didn't have any on hand so I cheated and used the penne I did have.

A bowl of red sauced pasta is such a wonderful known quantity, even when they're all different. Here are four options for comfort in a bowl that demonstrate the variation that can be had around a common theme. The guest star ingredients range from salami to pancetta, and ground beef to mushrooms so there's a vegetarian option. So pull out a big can of San Marzano tomatoes, an even bigger pot and have garlic at the ready. The sauces are good to make ahead and reheat. One guess what's for Valentine's Day dinner.

Classic spaghetti with tomato-red wine sauce

A Lynne Rossetto Kasper "Splendid Table" recipe as published in the Minnesota Star Tribune Taste Section, first in 2007 and then again in 2025 when Rossetto Kasper was auctioning off some of her culinary collection. You can see the original recipe here. It's very precise and specifies things such as  5 quarts of salted water in a 6-quart pot. Very, very precise.

Ingredients

2 medium onions, diced
2 celery stalks with leaves, thinly chopped
2 ounces Italian salami, cut into ¼-inch dice
¼ to ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 large garlic cloves, minced

2 "generous" tablespoons tomato paste

⅓ cup dry red wine
½ torn fresh basil leaves

1 (again, generous) tablespoon dried basil
1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes with juice, plus 1 14-ounce can, drained
1 pound spaghetti

Grated cheese for garnish, such as Parmesan, Asiago or Pecorino

Method
Put a large pot of salted water on, ready to bring up to a boil when needed.

Film the bottom of a large, deep skillet with olive oil. Add chopped onion and celery, season with salt and pepper and cook until onion is golden. Add salami and pepper flakes and cook for 2 minutes, Add garlic, tomato paste, red wine and the basil. Cook over medium high heat, stirring often, while red wine is nearly cooked off. (Now would be a good time to crank up the heat under the pasta pot.)

Add the tomatoes to the salami onion mixture, crushing them as you add them. Simmer until mixture thickens, about 8 minutes. 

Add pasta to boiling water and cook until al dente Drain and add to sauce. Serve with grated cheese for garnish.

Rating: Yep, that's a classic for a reason.

Pasta alla Carla

It might seem incongruous to choose an Italian recipe from a cookbook called "The Little French Bakery Cookbook," but it's a recipe author Susan M. Holding learned on a trip to Tuscany from a woman named Carla. Holding trained on pastry at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and runs a cooking school in Wisconsin. 

Note: The basic gist of this recipe is that the vegetables get chopped so finely that they more or less disappear into the sauce when cooked, so when you think you've chopped them enough, keep chopping, and then some more. I contemplated using the food processor but worried I might turn them to liquid. The original recipe lists 1 to 2 pounds of pasta, and suggests starting with 1 pound. Since 1 pound was all I had of any one type, I went with that. My sense is that if you like your pasta drenched with sauce, that 1 pound would work, but if you prefer it to be more nearly dressed than drowned with sauce, that 2 pounds would be closer to the mark if you want to use up all the sauce. I just opted to save the extra sauce to use later on more pasta. I'd say this could serve 6 as a main dish using 1 pound of pasta.

Ingredients
1 (28-ounce) can San Marzano or plum tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 ounces pancetta, diced
1 red onion, finely minced
2 celery stalks, finely minced
1 carrot, finely minced
3 large garlic cloves, finely minced
1 cup parsley, finely minced
1½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon ground pepper
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 cup water

1 pound (or more) long pasta, like fettuccine or spaghetti (I opted for linguine)
Grated Parmesan for garnish

Method
Drain tomatoes, reserving liquid. Run tomatoes through a food mill, or if you're like me and don't have one, puree them in a food processor and drain through a fine mesh sieve. (I reserved the tomato sludge for another use; great to enrich a vegetable soup.)

In a large deep pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add pancetta and cook until crisp and golden. Add onion, celery and carrot and cook until softened, but not browned. Add garlic and cook for a minute. Stir in parsley, salt, sugar, ground pepper, pepper flakes and tomatoes. Add 1 cup water to the reserved tomato liquid and add that to the pot. Bring mixture to a simmer, and cook partially covered for 30 to 45 minutes until sauce is noticeably reduced and thickened, then cover and keep warm while pasta cooks.

While sauce cooks, heat up a large pot of salted water for the pasta and cook until al dente. Drain, return to pan to dry the pasta and toss with some of the sauce to coat. Transfer to serving dish, top with more pasta and serve with Parmesan for garnish.

Rating: No idea if I diced it fine enough since there was no Carla standing over me to judge. There's an unobtrusive background hint of heat from the pepper flakes and the pancetta flavor comes through. Dave approved. I don't know that I'm blown away by it, but it is a nice, basic example of a simple classic pasta sauce, which has a sort of clean quality to it. If you've got the time, it most certainly beats anything out of a bottle.

Black bean Bolognese

This is the cover recipe from the Winter 2026 issue of Bon Appetit. The black beans in question come in the form of black bean garlic paste, which I tracked down at Kowalski's without having to venture into any more exotic source. Serves 4.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 1½-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes
¾ dry white wine
1 pound ground beef
⅓ cup black bean garlic sauce
2 teaspoons brown sugar
12 ounces pappardelle, bucatini or rigatoni
3 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks
Green onions, chopped for garnish

Method

Heat olive oil in a large deep pan over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger and cook until softened and fragrant. Add tomatoes, crushing them a bit as you go. Bring to a simmer and cook for 20-25 minutes until sauce is very thick. Add wine and cook until almost evaporated. If there are still larger chunks of tomatoes, try to mash those smooth. Add ground beef, black bean garlic sauce and brown sugar. Cook until beef is cooked through and simmer for 10-15 minutes to allow the flavor to develop. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove 2 cups of the sauce and set aside.

Cook pasta until just before al dente. Drain, reserving liquid. Toss pasta with sauce in pan and butter. Add sauce and cooking liquid as needed until the pasta is coated. Serve garnished with green onions.

Rating: Dave was emphatic about expressing how much he liked this dish, so it's not unlikely we'll make it again. It's not your traditional Bolognese, but it's a tasty entry into the genre. 

Leftover note: My package of pasta wasn't 12 ounces, so we wound up not needing much of the reserved sauce.  Good to use on another pasta or to turn it into a soup. I'm itching to try this recipe from Amy Sheppard that uses about 3 cups of Bolognese sauce, about a quart and a half of stock and Boursin round for creaminess, topped with a sprinkling of what looks on IG to be parsley.

Rigatoni with quick mushroom Bolognese

From Taste’s Sunday Supper in the Minnesota Star Tribune, taken from “Mostly Meatless,” by America’s Test Kitchen. The only adaptation I made was upping the amount of tomato paste by a tablespoon, partly because it looked like it could use it, and partly so it would get used, since I happened to have 5 tablespoons in a jar in the frig that would be good to use up. Oh, and another clove of garlic so I possibly could actually detect it.

Ingredients
1 pound rigatoni, cooked until al dente, 1 cup cooking liquid reserved
1 pound cremini mushrooms, trimmed and quartered
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
¾ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons tomato paste
4 garlic cloves, minced
¼ cup white wine
¼ cup grated Pecorino Romano, plus more for garnish
Chopped chives for garnish
Crushed red pepper flakes for garnish

Method

Pulse mushrooms in food processor until finely chopped, about 10 pulses. Heat oil in a large deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms, onion, carrot and salt and cook until mushrooms have exuded their liquid and that liquid has cooked off.

Stir in tomato paste and garlic. Cook about 3 minutes until mixture has tightened. Stir in wine and cook until evaporated. Add cooked pasta, ¼ cup cheese and reserved 1 cup cooking liquid and stir well. Serve garnished with more grated cheese, chives and red pepper flakes.

Rating: If you're looking for a meatless version of a traditional Bolognese this sort of gets at that texture. It comes together fairly quickly once you get everything chopped. It's not a wower, but it's fine enough.

Also, too

All good choices. And instead of making me sick of red sauce, it makes me want to dust off  this Marcella Hazan recipe. So elemental, and so good.

Turnip soup that doesn't taste like turnips

 

I'm working to break the refrigerator cycle that I fall into annually at the end of the year. A frig packed with farmers market and garden bounty like cabbage and root vegetables that I haven't yet managed to cook my way through has to accommodate all the fixings for holiday madness. Eventually it gets to the point where I can cram all the ingredients I need in, but have no room to store any dish I make with those ingredients, and I have to slowly break the stalemate. 

I am very much hoping that more time to cook will alleviate the boom cycle, and doing my best to cook my way out of any lingering obstructions. Some turnips from the farmers market last fall had somehow survived the Rubik's cube phase of refrigerator storage without moldering, so I found this recipe in my file of soup recipes to try. So one thing out of the frig and one thing out of the clipping pile. 

Silken turnip and potato soup

From Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, adapted from “The Gift of Southern Cooking” as published in the November 2023 issue of Food & Wine

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter
3½ cups sliced yellow onions
5 cups peeled and sliced turnips
2 cups peeled and sliced russet potato
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3¼ cup chicken stock, divided
⅛ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, plus more for garnish
Basil or other fresh herbs chopped for garnish

Method

Melt butter in a large sauce pan. Add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened but not browned. Add turnips, potatoes and salt and stir well. Cover and simmer on low until vegetables are almost tender, about 20 minutes, adding ¼ cup broth if it starts to stick. Add remaining broth and bring to a simmer. Cook until vegetables are tender. Cool and puree mixture in a food processor or blender. Reheat along with nutmeg and salt to taste. Garnish with a sprinkling of more nutmeg and chopped herbs if desired. The original recipe calls for a garnish of thinly sliced basil, but my house is not conducive to growing basil in the winter, so I opted for sage, since it holds up quite well under the grow lights in the basement. I think basil or parsley might have been a better choice since they're less assertive and less likely to detract from the fairly delicate soup flavor.

Rating: It is indeed silken, and quite tasty. Despite the fat that turnips are involved, for some reason I was mainly struck by how it somehow tasted of parsnips and reminded me of this Parsnip Apple Soup recipe I make about once a year. The potato seems to mellow the turnip flavor, which is a plus for those of us who generally like turnips to play a supporting role rather than in a star turn.

Another year, another chili

It seems like every year the Super Bowl ads get less funny, effective or otherwise useful as a sales tool. If Guy Fieri and a cute horse are your only slightly memorable bits, well, that's saying something. And you know you're going to have the requisite clop-clop horse ad.

But at least there's always a big pot of chili for half time. Dave gleefully dubbed this chili con corny.

Chipotle corn and two-bean chili

Adapted from Cooking Light, July 2006 issue.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
¾ teaspoon salt
1 pound ground beef
1½ cups chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano leaves
2 (14.5 ounce) cans chopped tomatoes
1 can corn, drained, liquid reserved (or use 1½ cups frozen plus 1 cup of water)
1 cup chopped zucchini
1 tablespoons chopped chipotle in adobe sauce 
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 (15-ounce can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
Chopped green onions
Shredded Cheddar cheese
Sour cream

Method

Combine chili, cumin and salt in a small bowl. Put ground beef in a large pot (it filled my second largest pot, and I've got big pots to choose from). Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of spice mixture over beef. Break up with the back of a spoon and cook over medium heat until beef is browned. Remove from pot and set aside.

Add onion to pot and cook until tender. Add remaining spice mixture, garlic and oregano and cook for a minute. Add tomatoes and corn. Add enough water to reserved corn liquid to make 1 cup and add that to the pot. Bring to a simmer and cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add beef, zucchini, chipotle and beans. Cover and simmer a half hour to give flavors time to blend.

Serve topped with chopped green onions, Cheddar and a dollop of sour cream.

Rating: I had a strong suspicion that this recipe was one of those that benefits from being made ahead, since it's basically a ton of canned goods waiting to absorb flavor. I didn't get around to it in advance, so I just assembled this before the game started, turned off the heat after the final simmer and then reheated it at half time. Decent flavor. Comes together with very few dishes, aside from all those cans. The chipotle gives it some heat but not an overwhelming amount.

Did I really need to try yet another chili recipe? No. But that way at least there's some innovation each year to keep me entertained amid the game Dave rightfully labelled puntorama.

Strata with prosciutto, rosemary and sun-dried tomatoes

Strata recipes are a great way to use up stale bread and all those ends of loaves that would otherwise wind up green and fuzzy. So in theory, they're frugal. Even though they use a lot of eggs, and egg prices have become more carefully monitored than the stock market in some quarters, eggs are still comparatively cheap protein given the price of a lot of animal sources of protein, at least in our community. So, still frugal-ish. 

But then practically every recipe I run into loads up the strata with some of the most expensive ingredients: truffles, imported Italian cured meats and cheeses, etc. My longtime go-to strata recipe for brunch guests is a case in point: Goat cheese, artichoke and ham strata from Bon Appetit in 1997 is packed with expensive cheese and other goodies. It is also intensely tasty.

I googled cheap strata, and aside from a bunch of guitar pictures (that would be strata, various), I got some AI hallucination that thinks mushrooms and sausage are cheap. Again, regional price differences might account for that apparent puzzling disconnect. (Also, I'm going to ignore the fact that technically strata is already a plural noun in other use cases and avoid that rabbit hole of stratas.)

This recipe definitely falls into the price (and calorie) stuffed category, but I made it anyway.

Fresh mozzarella, sun-dried tomato and prosciutto strata

Adapted from Cooking Light, June 2005. To make it lighter, opt for fat-free milk.

Note: The amount of bread cubes and dairy might seem like more than you'd think would fit in the baking dish, or at least I worried it would be, but the bread shrinks down a lot when it soaks up all that dairy.

Ingredients

1 pound focaccia, cut into 3/4-inch cubes, about 15 cups
3¼ cups milk
¼ cup crème fraiche or sour cream
8 ounces egg substitute (or 4 large eggs plus one egg yolk is a close approximation)
1 garlic clove, minced
¼ cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes
4 ounces prosciutto, chopped
4 ounces fresh mozzarella, cut into narrow strips
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread bread cubes on a large baking sheet in a single layer and toast for 10 minutes.

Combine milk, crème fraiche, eggs and garlic in a large bowl. Stir in toasted bread and let stand for 5 minutes.

Grease a 9-by-13 pan. Place half of bread mixture in the bottom of the pan. Top with prosciutto, mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes and rosemary. Top with remaining bread cubes. Cover and chill 8 hours or up to overnight. 

Uncover and bake in 350-degree oven for 20 minutes. Top with Parmesan cheese and return to oven to bake for another 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand 5 minutes before cutting and serving Serves 8.

Rating: Really pleasant rosemary flavor, which complements the prosciutto and Parmesan nicely.  Fast to assemble compared with some more elaborate strata recipes. Worth making now and again as a splurge. And like all strata dishes, having something prepared you can whip out of the refrigerator for brunch or dinner is priceless at that moment. Plus, lots of leftovers that reheat just fine in the oven. 

I'm thinking the next time I have a pile of bread cubes lurking in my freezer I'll have to try a strata with some of the frozen roasted farmers market vegetables I stash each summer. Layer in some feta and mozzarella and it might still qualify as frugal-ish.

A trio of soups to warm our hearts

 

Cream of spinach soup

When I signed up for a buyout at work, everyone seemed to wonder what magnificent plans I had. My internal response was something like "Plans? I'm required to have plans??) My external response was that making a big vat of soup and curling up under a mound of covers with a good book sounded like a great winter break to me. 

But first came Christmas and New Year's cooking/baking hoopla, and I found myself in January with no prepared soups or finished books to my credit and somehow not the inertia to get started on either front. So to get out of my rut, I turned to three women with bona fide credentials, all three of them with an ode to soup cookbook under their belt: Barbara Kafka, Mollie Katzen and Betty Rosbottom.

So now my refrigerator is stuffed with soups to weave into the weekly menu, and I've been making a slight dent in the stack of books at long last, although now punctuated by breaks for doomscrolliing. They may not all be chicken soups, but they're still good for the soul, and we need that right now. I love my adopted city of Minneapolis, and it needs all the soup and good will it can get. It has been supremely weird to not at least be on the sidelines at work during this crisis. and I wish my former coworkers all the vibes in their work to share truth. Covering a persistent, pervasive, mutable story is a sort of journalistic death march where the ground heaves beneath you while you get insufficient rest and still debate and refine every word choice. Wishing them all the soups.

Cream of spinach soup

Adapted from Mollie Katzen’s “Soups.” Serves 6 to 8 as a soup plate size serving.

Ingredients

1 large onion, chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
3 cups water
2 teaspoons salt
10-16 ounces of fresh spinach leaves, stems trimmed (I used 2 5-ounce boxes)
5 medium garlic cloves, peeled
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1½ cups hot milk
Pinch of white pepper
Pinch of nutmeg

Method

Place onion, potatoes and salt in a large pot. Add water and bring to a simmer, cooking covered until potatoes are tender. Add spinach and garlic and set aside until cool enough to puree the mixture.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a medium saucepan. Stir in flour and cook a minute. Slowly add milk, whisking as you go. Cook and stir over low heat until mixture is smooth and slightly thickened. It makes a thin white sauce. Stir into pureed vegetable  mixture and heat through before serving.(Alternatively, you can skip the butter and flour step and just stir the hot milk directly into the soup if you want to make it gluten-free.)

Rating: This makes a dandy soup I would make again. Tasty, and a bright, vibrant green. If you were looking for a garnish, maybe a dollop of savory whipped cream would do. It's reminiscent of this heavenly spinach vichyssoise recipe, but heavier on the spinach than the potato. I just used a stick blender, but if I was serving this for company, I'd recommend using a blender or food processor to get a finer texture.

I'm not sure why cabbage gets top billing in this recipe title since zucchini provides the largest share. 

Cabbage-dill potage

From Barbara Kafka's "Soup: A Way of Life," a truly lovely title. Serves 6 to 8 depending on preferred serving size.

Note: The recipe calls for using a zucchini base that you have made ahead in summer during its abundance and stashed in the freezer to pull out one of several soup recipes in the book that utilize it, but you can also just make it at the same time as the soup. Kafka calls for a food mill as the first choice for processing the vegetation, but I don't have one so I stuck with the food processor.

Ingredients
4 medium zucchini
1 tablespoon butter
½ pound mashing potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (about two medium potatoes)
Half a small cabbage, chopped small, about 2 cups
2 large leeks, whites and 1-inch of pale green parts, cleaned and cut into ½-inch pieces
4 cups water
2 tablespoons chopped dill, plus more for optional garnish

Method

Peel zucchini and slice into quarters lengthwise, then ½-inch chunks. Heat butter over low heat in a large saucepan. Toss zucchini with butter, cover and simmer for 45 minutes. At this point you can puree the mixture and freezer it until ready to use, or proceed with the recipe.

Combine potatoes, cabbage, leeks and 4 cups water in a large pot. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, covered. Transfer cooked vegetables to a food processor to puree and then return to liquid in pot along with zucchini puree. If, like me, you're making it all at once, I just added the cooked, chopped zucchini to the soup pot and used a stick blender to mix the entire lot at once. 

Add chopped dill and salt and pepper to taste. (The original recipe called for 5 teaspoons, but I found 3 teaspoons to be a great plenty.) Drizzle with some olive oil if desired and garnish with extra dill.

Rating: Decent soup, flavorwise. Rather thick, but that's not a horrible thing in a soup in January by any means. Like many soups, the flavor improves with time. The zucchini base approach has merit worth revisiting in summer. My version of that is to chop up a zucchini with whatever else is in season and roast them, then freeze 3 to 4 cups of the mixture to add later to a frittata or to mix with beans, broth and pesto for a soup.

Forgot to put on the garnish when I was photographing the leftovers so you'll just have to imagine that bit.

Colorado chicken soup with black beans, corn and pepitas

From "Soup Nights" by Betty Rosbottom. Serves 8 heartily as main dish servings.

Note: Choose the biggest pot you've got for this one. I opted for a pretty big pot, but my Le Creuset #32 Dutch oven (aka Mega Blue)  was barely big enough to contain all of it so I wished I'd chosen the one we refer to as Bigger than Blue.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
⅔ cup chopped celery
½ cup diced carrots
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1½ teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon Spanish smoked paprika
6 cups chicken broth
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes and their juice
1 4-ounce can green chilis
4 cups shredded cooked chicken
2 cups fresh corn kernels, or frozen and thawed

½ cup roasted pepitas, optional
½ cilantro leaves

Method

In really large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, celery, carrots and garlic and cook until just starting to soften. Add oregano, cumin and paprika and cook for about a minute. Add broth, tomatoes and juices and green chilis. Bring to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Add chicken and corn and heat through.

Optional garnish: Combine pepitas and cilantro in a food processor and use as soup topping. Or just garnish with chopped cilantro.

Rating: If I were to make this soup again, I'd either cut the amount of chicken in half or leave it out altogether. Dave, of course, was fine with the abundance of chicken involved since it made it very filling, but for me, the soup had an odd disconnect between the super thick chicken and beans and the thinness of the broth portion of the soup. I found that when I took bites that didn't have any chicken in it I liked it more, so I think it would make a not bad vegetable bean soup. I would opt for just using chopped cilantro as a garnish next time or else add oil to the pepitas and cilantro to make a pesto; as it is, it didn't really work for me as a garnish. The cilantro flavor is a nice addition, but if you're one of those who finds that off-putting, chopped parsley would do. It is a comparatively fast fix and pantry/freezer friendly, so it has that in its favor.

Soup's on. Stay warm, stay whatever safe looks like to you and carry on.