Recipe: Spring Vegetable Soup

Recipes title

Spring Vegetable Soup

Although this soup is teeming with vegetables, its distinctive peppery nature comes from none of them. In fact, it's only after the soup is puréed with the watercress that its true springlike personality emerges. As a soup ingredient, the pungent streamside herb enjoys international fame from the French veloute cressonniere and potage de sante (a sophisticated health food soup) to an old Yankee dish, known simply as Vermont spring soup.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 scallions, trimmed and sliced
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 small turnips, peeled and diced
2 new potatoes, scrubbed and diced
2 carrots, diced
1 spring fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
6 cups vegetable stock or chicken stock
1/2 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 cup peas, fresh or frozen
1 bunch (6 ounces) watercress, leaves only
2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar
Salt and pepper

In medium saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add scallions, garlic, turnips, potatoes, and carrots. Cover and cook until vegetables are starting to soften, about 5 minutes. Stir in thyme, parsley, and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes. Add asparagus and peas and cook another 5 minutes. purée half the soup with watercress and return it to remainder of soup. Stir in tarragon vinegar, taste for salt and pepper, and serve.

Recipe from:
A GOOD DAY FOR SOUP
by Jeannette Ferrary and Louise Fiszer
Chronicle Books
Published 1996
$16.95/paperback
ISBN: 0-8118-0467-4
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.