Vegetable Soup

I’m moving to Seattle in a few weeks, so I figured it was about time to clean out the ol’ fridge and pantry. According to cooking God Alton Brown, soup is a pretty good way to accomplish this, so tonight, for the first time in my life, I made vegetable soup.

We start with the fresh weeks old veggies.

I start prepping my mirepoix (soup base of onions, carrots and celery) by julienning my veggies. These will be finely chopped and sweated in a pot with olive oil. Off to the side, are my diced leeks.

Next, I roughly slice up some leftover zucchini and porcini mushrooms. In the back of the cutting board, I have my secret ingredients… vegetable stock, butter and a Bouquet Garni of oregano. I didn’t have any butchers twine on hand (which is what you’re supposed to use for this), so I cut up an onion bag and stapled it shut. Yeah, just call me McGyver.

Good Eats fans should know what this thing is.

It’s wine time. I put in about 2 cups of white wine to brighten up the flavor a bit.

At this point, I got tired of taking pictures, so you’ll have to imagine this next part… The following was added: - 4 cups of veggie stock - 5 cups of water - The rest of the fresh veggies (mushrooms and zucchini) - Half a bag of frozen green beans - A box of Barilla shell pasta - A can of great northern beans

I set the thing to simmer, and went out to the driving range for an hour, since it was in the upper 60s in Central Virginia today.

After getting back, I finished it off with about a half a stick of butter (for flavor and richness), salt (kosher of course) and pepper.

I also added a bit of shredded gruyere on the finished product, and ate by myself in my lonely little apartment, accompanied by a glass of 2001 Merlot and Norah Jones playing on winamp. So lonely

The soup came out better than I expected.