Soup du jour

Veggies, fresh or left over, can be put to good use

Veggies, fresh or left over, can be put to good use

No matter that it is hot. It is time for soup on the table and in the freezer.

Many vegetables are edging past their prime. August's butter beans and lady peas hastily put in the freezer are ready to be incorporated into something to bring out their best. The onions of this spring are getting older, their skins thick and papery. The basil is signaling that it wants to flower and go to seed, no matter that there are days ahead when it will not freeze.

Carrots, too, are getting coarse and woody. The inferior small Chinese garlic that now floods our grocery stores (a pox on it!) is sprouting. But in soups, the small imperfections are swallowed up and out comes something satisfying, substantial and beautiful.

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

Vegetable and Sausage Soup is chock-full of the garden's bounty and made even heartier with vermicelli pasta.

Of course, some vegetables are still at their finest. Take beets, for instance. When I married my husband, he said he would eat anything but beets. "Beets," he said, quoting a text he had read, "are only fit for fodder." Still, I had hope.

A dozen years ago, we were in Washington, D.C. We walked outside to a street barbecue. There, hanging around the slaw, was then-Secretary of Education Dick Riley. We were invited for a spontaneous lunch with him and his wife, Tunky, the next day.

The table was beautifully set in their Washington dining room. The piece de resistance of lunch was borscht. Tunky, a wonderful cook, had used the recipe from "The Silver Palate" cookbook. I wondered what my husband would do. I'd never seen him turn down any food before. He did not know what this beautiful crimson — dare I say beet red? — soup was, as he had never eaten it before. I kept quiet.

As is his wont when the food is good, he finished every drop. He even had seconds. We were all replete. It was only when it was over that he realized it was beet soup. Of course, there were other goodies in the soup — cabbage, onions, sour cream and Tunky's deft seasoning.

I was secretly smug. He ate beets. I never let him forget it. But he never ate beets I cooked.

This week, Erin Ragon, the winner of the Nathalie Dupree Scholarship at the Culinary Institute of Charleston, helped me prepare a number of soups, including a new kind of borscht. We purchased both yellow and red beets and proceeded to make a pot of each using the same basic recipe. When it was time to serve, we poured some of each into the bowls.

Guess what! He didn't know it was beets, and he ate every bit.

Recipes

This soup is easily changed to a totally red or totally yellow soup by using only ingredients of the same color.

Gold and Crimson Beet Soup

Serves 6-8

2 to 3 quarts chicken stock, fresh or canned

2 tablespoons oil

1 red onion, chopped

1 yellow or white onion, chopped

3 cooked and peeled red beets, sliced (see cook's note)

3 cooked and peeled yellow beets, sliced (see cook's note)

1/2 red cabbage, finely sliced

1/2 green cabbage, finely sliced

White wine or balsamic vinegar, or lemon juice

Red wine or balsamic vinegar

Salt

Freshly grated pepper

Sugar (optional)

1/2 cup sour cream

1 green scallion, chopped (optional)

3 heaping tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill (optional)

Cook's note: To cook beets, remove the greens and most of the root, but don't cut into the flesh of the beets. Wrap each color separately in aluminum foil and bake at 400 degrees for about 1 hour. Remove when soft. Cool, remove peel and slice as desired.

Bring the chicken stock to a boil. Meanwhile, divide the oil in two separate pans. Add the red onion to one pan, the yellow or white to the other. Cook until soft and opaque. Add the beets to the same color onion, and follow similarly with the cabbage. Cook until soft. Pour in the hot chicken stock and simmer 25 minutes or until soup is finely incorporated. Puree the yellow beet soup first, then the red. Taste for seasoning. Add vinegar (white vinegar to the golden beet, red to the crimson beet) to taste to each pan. Season to taste with salt, pepper and optional sugar. Serve with sour cream. Garnish soup with chopped green scallion and fresh dill, if desired.

Tips: I have not always enjoyed immersion wands, or blenders, particularly those that require deep immersion into the broth. Recently I acquired a Kitchen Aid immersion wand, and it was truly easy to puree both soups. Normally I would remove the solids with a slotted spoon and puree them in a food processor blender, adding some of the stock as necessary to aid the pureeing process.

The vegetables in this soup are just a guideline. An end-of-summer soup should be made of what you have on hand. Leave something out if you like, or use turkey instead of pork sausage.

Vegetable and Sausage Soup

Serves 10 as a main course

3 quarts chicken stock, preferably homemade

1 ham bone, cured or smoked

1 cup salt pork, diced

6 tablespoons butter

4 medium onions, chopped

6 to 8 cloves garlic, chopped

3 ribs celery, chopped

2 medium carrots, sliced on an angle

1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped

5 tablespoons fennel seed, crushed

2 medium zucchini, sliced

2 medium yellow squash, sliced

2 pounds Italian link sausage

3 to 4 cups shelled butter beans, lady peas, or white acre peas

1/2 pound vermicelli, broken in pieces

1 (28-ounce) can chopped tomatoes, or 6 fresh peeled and chopped tomatoes

2 cups coarsely shredded fresh turnip greens

1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

2 cups freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Thick artisan-type bread (French, Italian), sliced thickly and toasted

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Simmer the stock with the ham bone for 30 minutes to add flavor to the broth and for adding to the vegetables.

Meanwhile, fry the salt pork in a large pot until crisp. Drain off the fat, leaving the salt pork in the pot. Add the butter, and heat until melted. Add the onions and half the garlic and cook until translucent. Add the celery, carrots, red bell pepper and fennel seed. Lower the heat, cover, and cook 5-8 minutes. Uncover, raise the heat, and add sliced zucchini and squash. Toss over high heat for 3 minutes. Pour the hot stock and ham bone over the vegetables. The vegetables should be fork tender. Remove the ham bone.

Meanwhile, prick the sausage in several places and brown on all sides in a hot frying pan. Remove the sausage, cut in pieces, and add to the soup along with the butter beans. Cover and cook 20 minutes.

Add pasta and tomatoes, and simmer until the pasta is done. Stir in the shredded greens. Remove from heat. (The greens will wilt and cook.)

This may be made ahead and refrigerated at this time. If possible, wait to add the basil and cheese. If not possible to serve later, add to the soup now, but reheat soup carefully to prevent burning cheese. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Variations: Sauteed sliced mushrooms, or fresh or frozen sliced okra may be added with the greens. Also, the salt pork and ham bone may be omitted. Turkey or chicken link sausage may be substituted for the Italian link sausage.

This delicious soup can be varied just by peeling or not peeling the apples. Leaving the peels on gives you a much chunkier texture and additional color. I prefer it that way, but some people object to the peels. Try it both ways and decide for yourself. When I am in a hurry, I don't puree the soup. For fancy occasions, I do.

Apple-Fennel Soup

Serves 4 to 6

1/4 cup butter or oil

2 medium onions, chopped

1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced

2 Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apples, cored and sliced

6 cups fresh or canned chicken stock or broth

1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese such as Saga or Stilton

Fennel fronds for garnish (optional)

Heat the butter or oil in a 5-quart casserole. Add the onions and fennel, and saute, stirring occasionally, until translucent and tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in the apples and cook a few minutes more.

Heat the stock in the microwave or another pan. Add to the onions, fennel and apples. Cook slowly over low heat for 45 minutes.

Before serving, stir in the cheese. Garnish with a fennel frond, if desired.

Variations: I spontaneously added some peeled shrimp to this a few minutes before serving. It was delicious. Also, pears work as well as apples.

Nathalie Dupree, who lives in Charleston, is former director of Rich's Cooking School in Atlanta and author of eight cookbooks, including "Nathalie Dupree's Comfortable Entertaining" and "Shrimp & Grits." She may be reached at nathalie.com.