What to EAT on a Snow Day? Roasted root vegetable soup with thyme and avocado.

So, it’s a Snow Day... one of the few days of respite in a central Indiana winter. What magic can you create in the oven that will soothe, warm, and comfort those shovel weary muscles. Look to the pantry (or root cellar clear I suppose if those still exist), to the bottom, behind everything. You probably have some or all of the following: potatoes, parsnips, carrots, celery, celery root, beets, onions, dried herbs... you get the idea.

So, what to do with all this? Roast it in a roasting pan until all soft and caramelized, and from there, you do with it what you like. It’s a soup, a soup base, a stew, a sauce, a stock, a side (I know 'it slices, it dices')...

So on today's snow day, I did the following and it turned out wonderfully.

Ingredients: White onions, carrots, olive oil, water, salt, pepper, celery, avocado, canned whole tomatoes, dried thyme., garlic powder (my potato not only had eyes, I think it had legs it was so old; so it got recycled)

Yes, I believe this is Vegan, which is why I'm so impressed it came out so rich and had such a depth of flavor; I think I cheated with the avocados, but magic is just like that, unexpected.

Process:

I peeled the onions and put them whole or sliced in half in the roasting pan. (Pan - about 8 inch by 16 inch in steel with ceramic coating with a 2 inch lip) I put the whole peeled canned tomatoes in as well (they are canned at peak season, so much better than the hydroponic tomatoes you can buy in the winter). Celery whole in the pan. Carrots peeled but whole. Avocadoes pitted and cut in half (I didn't peel them but you can depending on what you intend to do with this. Since I was going to blend the whole thing I knew the leathery avocado peel would soften and blend, and add a nutty bitterness to the soup.

I put with this group of vegetables (and fruits?), 4 cups of tap water, about 1/2 cup of olive oil, 3 tbs of thyme, 2 tbs pepper and 2 tbs garlic powder and a generous salt dusting. Of course the salt and thyme and pepper were adjusted to taste about half way through the roasting process.

Oven to 350 and roast away. At about 90 minutes I pulled out roasting pan and cut the onions and avocadoes into smaller chunks so they could get roasted throughout. After another hour in the oven I checked the veggies. They were soft and several had caramelized brown sections on them, but none were burnt or totally dried out. I added about 2 more cups of water at 90 minutes in as well.

After 2 and a half hours I took out the roasting pan and transferred in two batches to my blender. With another 2 -3 cups of tap water to both cool down the mixture a bit and add some more liquid to give it a soupier complexion.

I used the blender on 5... 5 out of 16 I believe, which is 'grind' on my blender, but any faster and it didn't blend and any slower and it didn't do much of anything. So some finesse is required in this step. About 4 minutes per batch was enough to get the consistency to that of a thin split pea soup or a thick chili.

This is where you could strain it or blend further or put it over a roast or deglaze the pan or a number of fancy things. I just filled a bowl with soup and this is how I finished it...

I could tell it was going to be rich... really rich... so I squeezed one half of a lemon over my bowl and fresh cracked pepper and sea salt... mixed and enjoy. Warm, rich, roasted vegetable soup with the flavors of southern France and Greece. The sun came out around the same time the soup was done. Cheesy? Oh Cheese! Snap I forgot Cheese! Maybe next time, and that's the fun of cooking.

Grant Z Price
1-28-2009