Cooking in a Winter Wonderland: Annalena makes Martha's Root Vegetable Soup

Annalena has a long relationship with the cook and cookbook writer, Martha Rose Schulman.  When Annalena was a young vegetarian, Ms. Schulman's cookbooks were key to her development as a cook.  Later, and still today, her bread book has become core to what Annalena does in the kitchen with yeast.

Years take their toll. Neither Ms Schulman nor Annalena are as young as they used to be, and the days of blithely ignoring calories because 'IT'S VEGETARIAN!!!!"   are gone.  Both Ms. Schulman and Annalena now eat animal protein.  And they both worry about health and calories.  And, Ms. Schulman has an amazing column in the New York Times, called "recipe for health," which Annalena URGES all of you to read, because, let's face it, none of us are as young as we used to be, and we all have to be concerned about things like calories, nutrition, cholesterol, etc.

When Annalena saw this soup, she thought it was brilliant.  There are many root vegetable soup recipes out there; however, in Annalena's experience, most of them suffer from an issue endemic to the starting ingredients:  root vegetables are loaded with sugar.  There are very good reasons for this, which need not be addressed here (do some research), but the result, of course, is a sweet soup.  Not all of us care for that earthy sweetness that one gets with the root vegetables, when they are cooked.  Ms. Schulman's solution, a brilliant one, is to add leeks:

Leeks are undervalued, and overpriced in American cooking.  See those two bunches of organic leeks?  They cost Annalena 10.00.  Yup, 10.00.  Ultimately, for what else is going into this soup, it doesn't matter, as everything else is very inexpensive.  Around Europe, leeks are valued, and they are not nearly as expensive.  They are one of the features of every home garden (l'orto, as per Annalena's semi native tongue).  French women learn to make potato leek soup as their first dish.  And they are wonderful.  But... let us have a show of hands:  when was the last time any of you used leeks?  

Uh huh.  Well, you're going to use them now.  And you are going to be SO glad you did.   So, here we go.  

First, you need a pound and a half of the lovely vegetables.  This is approximate.  Unless you are going to make your own soup stock, or you have a compost pile,  you are going to lose those tough green leaves at the top.  We only want the white, and light green portions for this soup:

Now, for some more chopping.  Get ready.  This is like the all star roster of winter vegetables. You will need to dice about 3/4 pound of carrots (the big soup ones are ok),  a stalk of celery (or two), about 3/4 pounds of turnips, a pound of potatoes, which you should peel  (if you use the food mill option discussed below, don't bother with peeling them, but do dice them).   Finally,get a bay leaf and a few sprigs of thyme, and two cloves of garlic, chopped fine.  

This is what Annalena's "work station" looked like when all the veggies were done:

Now for the "hard part."  Think you can handle this?  Put them all in a big pot, with a couple teaspoons of salt (we'll come back to this), and a quart and a  half (six cups) of water:

Now,  bring this to a boil, and when it gets there, lower the heat, cover the pot, and go away for 45 minutes.  You want the veggies to be VERY soft.  If they do  not seem real soft, then go away for another 15 minutes:

These look much firmer than they really are.  You want to let this cool for about 15 minutes, maybe longer, before you go to the next step.   Now, you COULD eat this as it is (after you pull out the bay leaf), but it's so much nicer if we go forward.  You are going to need one of:  a food mill, an immersion blender, a blender, or a food processor.  If Annalena had her druthers, she'd pick the food mill first, the blender second, the food processor third, and the immersion blender last.    And if you are using anything BUT the mill, get out that bay leaf, and any thyme sprigs you can find.   This is important:  bay leaves cut, and the machines will essentially give you "leaf shrapnel."  So get them out.  

If you use the food mill, you don't have to worry about peeling the potatoes in the early steps, because the mill will hold back any skin.  For the others, you may want to do some kind of straining.  Up to you.  In any event, process these veggies, in small quantities. Remember that if you overload either the blender or the food processor, you are going to get a mess. Trust Annalena on this: you will essentially have a soup explosion.    And in terms of the creaminess of your final soup, the food mill will give you some texture.  The food processor, will give you less, and the mixer, even less.  Annalena used a food mill to give her this:

Taste this.  You will want to add salt and pepper.  And if you stop here, you have a vegan soup that is fat free.  Look back ragazzi:  we didn't saute' anything, did we?    But if you want to do the finishing touch which really does push this soup over the top, stir in anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 cup of creme fraiche (or, heavy cream if you don't have the creme fraiche around).  You won't see much of a difference, but this is what you get:

And you will get 2.5 quarts of it.  Taste it again, after the dairy goes in, to see whether or not you need more salt.  You might.  

The leeks were worth it, weren't they?  After all, you really have all of these veggies in your house, or if you shop locally, these veggies are what you'll find.  You may even find some leeks from a local farmer,  who has them stored in his or her root cellar.  

Please make this soup.  How much better can it get