Old Honey And Roasted Veggie Soup

[peteyfrogboy]

So we've been cooking a lot this week. Last weekend pork loin was on sale, so we picked one up and it became pork and veggie soup, char siu, and garlic-studded roast (the roast was the winner). This weekend we got the boneless skinless chicken breasts that were on sale, but didn't have any definite plans for it. We also has a huge bottle of honey that had become inconveniently crystallized. At lunchtime today part of it became (kind of crunchy) honey butter, and a bunch of it joined forces with some deli style mustard to make honey mustard chicken. A fine fate for old honey. There's still some left that we haven't yet found a use for.

A while back we were looking for new ways to eat veggies, and grinnellian2001 had suggested a vegetable soup that was more of a technique than a recipe. I didn't exactly follow her playbook, but the end result turned out pretty darn yummy.

Roasted Vegetable Soup

• 46 oz. chicken broth (32 oz. box + 14oz. can)
• 3 sweet potatoes
• 1 medium sized zucchini
• 1 small (but potent!) onion
• 1 clove garlic
• cumin
• tarragon

I peeled the sweet potatoes and cut them into 1 1/2" rounds. Those went in a 450° oven for 40 minutes, coated with olive oil and seasoned with a little kosher salt and pepper. When they came out (nice and brown on the bottom), I chucked them in a stock pot with the box of broth and mashed them with a masher. While that was heating, I washed and quartered the zucchini and gave it the same roasting treatment. After about 5-10 minutes, I took the zucchini out and added it to the pot . It seems that I should have roasted them longer, since they didn't really mash very well. After a little while in the pot, I took them out, cut them up into little pieces, and put them back in.

Meanwhile, I actually looked at the recipe and saw that there was onion involved. I cut up an onion and a clove of garlic and sauteed them for a bit, then into the pot they went. At this point I got out the immersion blender and went to town on the soup. With the zucchini cut up, it blended just fine. I put in a few shakes of cumin and tarragon and hoped I knew what I was doing. It seemed a little thick at this point, so I added in an extra can of chicken broth, which brought it to a nice consistency. 

We had the soup with rolls and the honey butter we made at lunchtime. It really wanted some beef to go with it, but the burgers I'd gotten out of the freezer hadn't thawed yet. The main flavor I ended up tasted was cumin; not overpowering to taste bad, but I didn't taste much of anything else. Maybe it'll change some in the fridge. There is also potential for this to be a good cold soup.We've got some in the fridge, and some in an ice cube tray in the freezer. This is definitely something we'll experiment more with later!