Its hard for me to get into baking and cooking when it is warm outside. But once the weather turns cold, I can’t wait to get into the kitchen. What motivated me even more is that I have signed up to receive a fall Community Supported Agriculture or CSA box once a week for the next eight weeks. That box I received this week really got me thinking I need to cook and eat these vegetables! Thanks Sharkar Farm for wonderful fall vegetables.
I knew I would be running errands, going to Dr. appointments and I needed something to cook that didn’t need a lot of attention. So I had to get my creative juices flowing – just kidding! This was probably one of the easiest things to do is to make a vegetable soup. I used to get really intimidated to make a soup that had flavor and tasted good! My mom would make chicken noodle soup and it always tasted so good – but when I tried to make it as an adult it was very watery. I have tried to find ways to add more flavor – like oven roasting the vegetables or the chicken legs; adding herbs and adding my own homemade chicken or vegetable stock. But we do buy boxes of chicken broth or vegetable broth whenever we find it on sale!
I was given a lot of kale (thanks Farmer Sharon for that beautiful kale) and I haven’t used it in very many recipes. My husband isn’t crazy about it since I used way too much last year when I tried making some soup. He told me as long as I didn’t use too much kale and if I could chop it really fine he would try it! I decided to make a chicken soup with the vegetables and kale in my CSA box. I had 5 chicken thighs in the freezer that I had thawed in the refrigerator the day before.
I roasted the chicken legs with olive oil and S&P (salt and pepper) for 45 minutes at 400 degrees. I washed the vegetables – 4 carrots, 6 potatoes, 6 stalks celery, 2 turnips (yep!), 2 large leaves of kale, 2 onions, and 3 cloves of garlic – all from my CSA box! Once the veggies were washed, I cut them up small – I did peel the turnip so no one would notice the color but I left the skins on the potatoes and carrots. I tore the kale up into small pieces. I sauteed the onion first, then added the carrot, celery, turnip, potato and kale. I did find that sauteing the kale did help to break it down and not be so tough. I added the garlic last so not to burn it. I have started using coconut oil in cooking – so I used about 2 tablespoons mixed with olive oil and 1-2 Tablespoons butter.
Once the vegetables were cooking for 5-10 minutes, I added the chicken I tore off the leg bones, and 1 box of vegetable broth and one box of chicken broth and then I let this come to a boil and turned it down on very low for about 4 hours. My husband helped with this recipe by adding a can of great northern white beans. During the last hour I added some fresh thyme from my potted herb garden – about 4 sprigs.
This soup tasted so good! The flavor was fantastic and my husband had two bowls full! Now if I can just find another recipe to use for the kohlrabi in my CSA!
Perfect fall weather meal – soup, crusty bread and a glass of white!
Living Local 