by Nancy Yos

Created on: May 30, 2009

For my family of vegetable-phobes, the way to inflict the good, health giving properties of green crunchy things (or orange or yellow crunchy things) in secret is to hide them all in soup. The vegetables, not the family.

I rely on Madeleine Kamman's New Making of a Cook (1997) for my basic vegetable soup recipe. She says that the classic way to prepare it is simply to bring a pot of salted cold water to a boil, drop in whatever vegetables you want, simmer them for as long as you want, and "that is all." Buried somewhere in her When French Women Cook (1976) is the further advice that the frugal, health-conscious, and ever-thin French woman makes it a point to rescue any greens like lettuces, spinach, or radish tops languishing in her refrigerator crisper drawer, and before they turn wet and unusable, make a broth of them to at least distill all their vitamins. If not sipped on the spot to cure a "crise de foie," this broth could go into some other recipe, or be used to cook some noodles or rice.

In making a vegetable soup, many cookbooks recommend keeping strong flavored items like cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower out of the mix, and it is true they will lend their own piquant character to any broth. But there may be times when you'd like to taste that strong, piquant character, particularly if you are using the broth not to serve up as a meal but to cook with. Savoy cabbage is an especially delicious addition. And things that we often throw away - mushroom stems, onion skins - can also go into a broth. They'll give it their nutrients and their color, and then you'll strain them out. Perhaps the only things to avoid would be bell peppers, which just don't seem soup-like. But, Madeleine Kamman says they may go in, being right for broths that will help make an ethnic dish.

And a readily made, vegetable-based broth is a good thing to fall back on, if you happen to be following a recipe which calls for a homemade meat stock that you don't have on the back burner right now -and let's say also that it's a wintry, blowy Sunday afternoon and you don't feel like rushing out to the store for two cans of beef or chicken broth. Of course your quick vegetable broth made of water and pantry gleanings will not taste meaty and will not contain gelatin from bones if that's what your recipe needs, but it is less salty and more wholesome than a quickly opened can of anything anyway. (Madeleine Kamman calls this preparation "the famous 'bouillon de legumes,' the French nectar

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>