Vegetable Soup (With Broth)

Typically, when I am in the kitchen chopping my veggies, cooking my lentils and quinoa, and generally messing around with my herbs and spices, the dog keeps her distance.  Zero interest.  Now,  on the holidays,  when there are carnivores mucking about in my kitchen, she is glued to that room and their sides like she is made from velcro.  Her head basically smells like whatever juice or sauce that gets dripped on it from Thanksgiving through Christmas.

But the poor little thing was born with a bad tummy, so occasionally, we need to dial back the diet and introduce some brown rice along with bumping up the healthy veggies (she prefers carrots, green beans and peas, thank you very much.  She loves broccoli too, but it does not love her back.  Too much of that and she could give a skunk a run for their money!)  She actually does not mind this diet, and when I made this soup, it must have smelled particularly enticing because she was begging for a bowl!  That, however,  does not stop her from scavenging food from other sources.

Whenever I take her to visit a friend of mine, who also has a dog, the first thing she does is make a break for his dish.  He is given kibble, and is not really a foodie, so there is usually a portion of whatever his last meal was hanging around in his dish.

He greets her excitedly at the door with the nicest invitation to play and she slams past him like she is trying to make the winning touchdown with two seconds left on the clock.  She might be small, but I’m convinced if you put a piece of bacon in the end zone and could get her to hold the ball, she could outrun the best players in the NFL.  The list of teams wanting to sign her would be longer than my arm.

She bolts down whatever she can before someone can get there an take it away, even though when we tried to give her kibble as a puppy she looked at it like we were offering her moldy bread soaked in cod liver oil.  She outlasted us on that one too.  She has perfected the big, sad eye look and we cave every time.

So here is my recipe for vegetable soup, dog approved (although I sadly did not let her taste it since there are things in it that she cannot eat).

Ingredients:

• 8-10 carrots (4 cups, chopped)
• 1 head garlic (smashed)
• 2 onions (about 3 cups)
• 4 stalks celery (chopped)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3-4 sprigs thyme
• 2-3 sprigs rosemary
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 small tomato, chopped
• 8 cups water
• 2 cups of mixed veggies (I used a frozen mix of carrots, cauliflower and broccoli)
• 1 1/2 cups thinly sliced leeks, white and light green parts only
• 4-5 mushrooms, thinly sliced (optional)
• 1 (8 oz) package of orzo, cooked according to package directions

All ingredients after the water are optional.  You might want to do a veggie mix of green beans, carrots and peas, or throw some kale or spinach in there.  Instead of orzo, you might prefer cooked lentils or rice (wild, brown or white), or some kind of pasta.  You could replace the leeks with green onions or sweet onions.  Once you have the basic broth made, you can add whatever vegetables to customize the final soup to your own taste.

Directions:

1. Prepare the vegetables for the stock (carrots – celery) by chopping them into small pieces.  The smaller you chop them, the more they will brown, but you don’t need to spend a lot of time dicing them.  A small rough chop will do.  To prepare the garlic, separate the cloves, lay them on a cutting board and with the flat side of your chopping knife, smash them (I literally put the knife on the clove, make a fist and pound the knife–one swift hit should do it), and the paper is easy to peel off what is left of the clove.
2. In a large pot over medium low heat, heat up one Tablespoon of olive oil.  Put the carrots through the celery in the pot, sprinkle them with the teaspoon of salt.  Give them a stir to coat the veggies with the oil and salt, then cover the pot and cook for 20 minutes to half an hour,  stirring occasionally, until the bottom of the pot has a little bit of brown on it.  Don’t be tempted to turn the heat up higher as you don’t want to burn the vegetables.
3. Add the chopped tomatoes, bay leaves, thyme and rosemary (stem and all — you are going to strain the veggies out of the soup so you don’t need to worry about eating them), and the water.  Stir, cover the pot again and cook for about 1 – 1 1/2 hours at a simmer.  Again, don’t be tempted to boil, as it does not give the broth the flavor that you will want. (Tried that and ended up with a very weak broth).
4. When the broth is done, pour it through a strainer into a bowl, or another pot and discard all the veggies as they will be quite mushy at this point (One thing I do to not feel bad about tossing perfectly good veggies is to have a container that I keep in the freezer and whenever I use carrots or celery and cut off the tops or leafy parts, I put them into the container.  Pretty soon, I have enough to make this broth and maybe only have to add a few carrots and maybe a stalk of celery.  Since you are after the flavor here, it doesn’t matter how the veggies look)
5. At this point, you can add your cooked orzo, lentils, rice, pasta, etc, and other veggies.  What I did was to saute the leeks in a splash of oil till they were soft, then I added water and the orzo and cooked it according to the package directions.  I drained it of the excess water before adding it to the soup.  I also added a mix of frozen veggies which I defrosted, but did not cook since just by putting them into the broth and have them simmer in there for a few minutes cooked them to a crispy but not raw consistency, just the way I like them.  Warning: mushrooms will all float to the top when you add them (raw, since they do not take much heat to cook) and if you add too many, it will look like a sea of mushrooms and everything else will be buried underneath.
6. Season with salt and pepper and serve!

Enjoy!