Spring Onion Soup

This soup needs no introduction (...except to tell you that it was adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe).

Spring Onion Soup
Serves 4


2 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
2 pounds spring onions (and I'm thinking Martha meant to add 'just the bulbs', since her soup doesn't have the slightest hint of green in it...)
5 sprigs asparagus, ends trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 tsp sea salt
1 1/4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups water
chopped fresh dill

Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.  Add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent but not brown, about 15 minutes.  Add asparagus, salt, broth and water.  Bring to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Using an immersion blender, carefully puree until smooth, 1 or 2 minutes.  Ladle into bowls and top with dill.

The dill really adds a nice, fresh flavor to the soup and it complements the deep onion flavor so well.  Try not to leave it out if you can help it!

Next on the list:  Curried Lentil Soup ~ Coming Soon!

Soup Spoons

I've been washing a lot of spoons lately.  That's probably because I've been making a lot of soup lately.  It must be the weather.

Since my last soup entry (Zucchini-Asparagus Soup with Basil), I've made several more.  The first was Spring Onion Soup, mostly because I'd gotten almost a dozen of these in my weekly box:

It's hard to make green soup look appetizing!  In fact, I'm wondering now if this was actually supposed to be made with only the bulbs of the red spring onions... Either way this was surprisingly delightful.  I was sure that anything prepared with that many onions, and not a lot of other ingredients, was bound to overwhelm even my taste buds!  Why I imagined it would taste like biting into a raw onion, I don't know.  Instead I found the taste of the onions to be subtle and almost sweet, even creamy.  

The next night I made a Curried Lentil Soup that seemed to get better with each reheating.  

The same could be said of this Lentil Barley Soup...

We had leftovers today and the flavors had fused together perfectly.  Pictures with no recipes...am I evil or what??  Here's one, with more to follow very soon (I promise!).

Lentil Barley Soup

Serves 8

2 Tbs olive oil

2 carrots, peeled and diced

1 onion, diced

1 medium parsnip, peeled and diced

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 tsp cumin

10 cups vegetable broth

3/4 cup barley

1 (14 oz.) can diced tomatoes, no salt added

3/4 cup lentils

1 bunch kale, cute into 1" thick strips

chopped fresh dill, for garnish

Heat oil over medium heat in a large soup pot and add carrots, onion, parsnip and garlic.  Cook, stirring frequently, for about 7 minutes.  Add cumin and cook 1 minute.  Then add vegetable broth and barley and bring to a boil.  Reduce to simmer and cook, partially covered for 25 minutes.  Stir in tomatoes with their juices and lentils.  Continue to simmer another 30 minutes, or until barley and lentils are tender.  Add kale and simmer 10 minutes.  Garnish with dill and serve.

*If you're eating macro and avoiding tomatoes, they can easily be left out of the recipe, but you'll need to add another cup or so of vegetable broth so the soup doesn't get too thick.