Purple cauliflower soup: fast, easy ... purple

Fall weather always makes me crave creamy soups. Maybe it's because they're so comforting and I need reassurance to face the long winter ahead. Whatever the reason, my youngest son and I decided to cook together, and the menu was to be soup and sweet potato fries. Because we are eating from our CSA box, and because our farmer loves to grow purple cauliflower, that's what I used for the soup. I was more than a little skeptical about what it would look like—I'm used to creamy white cauliflower soup—but game. I cooked it in my pressure cooker, and even though I knew I was cooking a purple cauliflower, when I opened the pot I was still surprised to see deep purple liquid and lavender cauliflower pieces. I went at it with the immersion blender, and it blended into a nice shade of purple.


Lime juice hiting the purple soup

The next surprise came when I added fresh squeezed lime juice (we have a lot of limes from our CSA fruit share) and as the juice hit the purple, it turned a bright magenta. This was getting interesting. I tasted and seasoned and wrote down approximately what I did. We ended up with a great tasting pot of weird looking soup.

Jordan made our usual oven sweet potato fries, with the addition of spicy chipotlé powder, and they were superb. In fact, we ate them before I remembered the camera!

Creamy cauliflower soup (in the pressure cooker)

• large head of cauliflower (white or purple), separated into medium chunks
• medium onion, sliced
• one stalk celery, sliced
• 2 to 3 small white potatoes, peeled and cut up (for body)
  
• water
• one clove garlic, minced fine
• 1/2 teaspoon of either truffle oil, olive oil, chili oil or no oil
• one lime, juiced
• sweet white miso, to taste
• salt and pepper to taste
• thinly sliced green onion, parsley or other green for garnish

1. Sauté the onion and celery in a small amount of olive oil in the pressure cooker until the onion is translucent.
2. Add the cauliflower and potato and enough water to come about 3/4 up the cauliflower.
3. Bring up to pressure, turn the heat down and cook at pressure for 4 minutes.
4. Run cool water over the lid to bring the pressure down. Open the pot and add the miso, lime juice and oil. Blend in the pot with an immersion blender, or in batches in a conventional blender. Stir in the garlic. Adjust seasonings. Garnish. I used baby arugula because that's what I had on hand.

Easy, creamy butternut squash soup with truffle oil

Recently, while my son was visiting from Seattle, we went to a shop I've been meaning to explore ever since it first opened. Vom Fass is a shop originating in Germany•, that sells bulk artisan oils and vinegars which are decanted from kegs. For some reason, our little city has the first, and so far only, U.S. store.

Confronted with a large room full of kegs of exotic sounding products, we just stood there and stared until the very friendly and extremely knowledgeable shopkeeper handed us small spoons and invited us to taste anything we wanted. Even that was daunting, but we gave it a shot. I tried to limit my tasting so as not to get too confused, but Aaron tasted widely. In the end, I chose a truffle oil made with extra virgin olive oil and a balsam cherry vinegar that can be used to made fizzy-water drinks as well as for more traditional recipes. There are bottles in sizes starting at 50 milliliters that you purchase with the idea of bringing them back to refill. I got 100-milliliter (a little more than three ounces) bottles.

I'm still thinking about the avocado oil I tasted. Did you know that avocado oil, in addition to being good for skin and hair, has a very high smoke point and is good for cooking? And it tastes exactly like avocado. Next time.

Now for the butternut squash soup. I made dinner the way I'm most comfortable cooking, and the way I cook most often—no recipes. The plan was to use the pressure cooker to create a fast and easy soup. (I've been making simple soups in my pressure cooker for 20 years so the basics are pretty much cemented in my mind. But you could also bake or steam the squash.) And to try out my Cuisinart Smart Stick immersible blender. I've had the blender for quite a while but never tried it! I mostly make soup in an enameled cast iron pot, and you're not supposed to use an immersion blender in that 'cause it might scratch, so using the pressure cooker was incentive to try the blender. We have winter squash from the CSA piling up so I picked the largest butternut squash. It was huge, but I wanted a lot of soup left over for lunches. I won't give an exact recipe but just general guidelines for using the pressure cooker. (I have a six-quart stainless steel Aeternum pressure cooker.) I cut the squash into large (two inch?) chunks and peeled them. Butternut has an edible skin, but I wasn't sure how the blender would deal with the skin, so I peeled off the thinest possible layer.

I sliced a medium onion and sautéed it in the pot with a little extra virgin olive oil. When the onion was translucent, I added the cut squash. I added water just below the top of the squash, and brought the pot up to pressure. I turned down the flame a bit and cooked it for 10 minutes at pressure. I brought the pressure down by running cold water over the lid.

I added a blob of sweet white miso to the pot and went at it with the immersion blender. In no time at all and with virtually no effort, I had a pot of ultra creamy squash soup. I couldn't believe it—no messy blender to wash; no multiple filling and emptying into an extra pot. As I've said before, pressure cooked vegetables are so flavorful that not much is needed to season them, so I took a minimalist approach. I added a scant teaspoon of truffle oil, a few grinds of black pepper, the juice of one lime and some minced parsley.

A co-worker groaned when I told him about the oil and said it was way too much. What do I know? It was a large pot of soup, and it tasted sublime. There was a faint earthy mushroom flavor that was not at all pronounced or overwhelming.



To go with the soup, I put brown basmati rice into the rice cooker with chopped up red Hungarian peppers and a teaspoon of dried chipotlé powder. When it was cooked I added a large handful of baby arugula and a small amount of grated Teese.

On the side we also had some steamed broccoli Romanesco; just about the weirdest looking vegetable I've ever seen, but the CSA grows it. It looks like it was created in a math lab. (Yes. MATH lab.) It was sweet and delicious and served unseasoned. Unfortunately, the photo didn't turn out.

•note #1: For terrific Wisconsin-made vinegars, I recommend Colleen's Tough Times.

note #2: Don't have an immersion blender? No Problem. I used to make this soup using my regular blender. Just blend it in batches and pour it into a second pot.

note #3: Usually when I make this soup, I don't cook the onion in with the squash. Instead, I sauté three or four onions in a separate pan and then blend them with the squash once it is cooked. You get a rich onion-flavored soup this way. Or use the pressure cooker for the onions and then remove them to cook the squash.

Potatoes on a plate

Sometimes I'm just amazed at how the simplest food preparation can produce such wonderful results. I wanted to use up some potatoes that were getting kind of old, and I was thinking of all the different ways I could prepare them when I settled on peeling, cutting into large hunks and pressure-cooking for five minutes. The resulting potato chunks were put on a plate, sprinkled sparingly with salt, dusted with freshly ground pepper and drizzled with a bit of olive oil. Perfection.

The pressure-cooker really is a time saver, a flavor enhancer and an invaluable aid to lazy cooks. I will start using it more to cook vegetables and beans. In the case of the potatoes, I put about one inch of water into the cooker with the potato chunks, brought it to pressure, turned the heat down a little and set the timer for five minutes. When the timer went off, I turned off the flame and let the pressure come down. The result was full-flavored, perfectly cooked potatoes.

Creamy cauliflower-carrot soup

It's been a rough week for various reasons I won't go into, and I've been eating weird combinations of leftovers instead of cooking. Finally, on Friday night, I needed to cook something. I'm the only one in the house right now (counting humans) as my husband is lecturing and attending a conference in Brazil, so cooking a lot of food was not really reasonable. After such a long and tiring week, I also needed something easy to prepare — and easy to clean up. I decided to make a creamy cauliflower and carrot soup in the pressure cooker. I used to make a similar soup for the kids when I was too tired or short on time to prepare a larger meal. I could give them a nourishing vegetable soup and maybe peanut butter or hummus sandwiches and they would be perfectly happy. In fact, on many occasions when I was searching for something to make for dinner, one of the kids would ask for this soup! It was a family favorite. (When I made it for the kids, I didn't load in the pepper.) I also use this method for similar soups such as broccoli, winter squash or carrot, and sometimes I add celeriac or parsnips to one of the vegetables to add depth to the flavor. Carrot and celeriac is a really good combination, and adding grated fresh ginger after the soup is blended makes it special.

This soup, though simple to make, has a lush and velvety texture that belies its humble beginnings. And the color, a gorgeous shade of pale orange, is comfort for the eyes. You can intensify the flavor with grated fresh ginger, or other herbs and spices of your choice, but the plain version, with fresh dill, was just what I was looking for. I accompanied the soup with avocado spread on crackers.

Creamy cauliflower and carrot soup

• 1 large head cauliflower, cut into large pieces
• 2 very large carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 quart water (or enough to come just to the top of the vegetables)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (or more to taste)
  
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons Sucanot or sweetener of your choice
• lots of freshly ground black pepper
• fresh dill, parsley or cilantro

1. Place veggies and water in cooker and bring to pressure.
   
2. Turn heat down a little and cook five minutes.
   
3. Turn off heat and wait for pressure to come down.
   
4. With an immersion blender, purée the soup in the pot. If you don't have an immersion blender, blend the soup in two batches in a regular blender. Blend until completely smooth and velvety. If too thick, thin with low-sodium vegetable stock.
   
5. Add lemon, sweetener, salt and pepper. Check seasonings. Garnish generously with dill and serve.

note: Substitute low-sodium vegetable broth for some or all of the water, for extra flavor.