Vegetable Chowder
This handsome one-bowl meal features winter roots and tubers in a milky broth that’s been steeped with aromatics. Bread, toasted and covered with Gruyere or Cantal cheese, sits beneath the vegetables and their broth, building up the soup’s heartiness and flavor.
Ingredients
The Aromatics
- 2 cups milk
- 4 large parsley branches & 2 bay leaves
- 1 large thyme sprig or 2 pinches of dried thyme
- ½ onion, sliced & 1 garlic clove, halved
- 10 peppercorns, lightly crushed with 5 juniper berries
The Soup
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 4 leeks, about an inch across, white parts plus 1 inch of the greens, sliced diagonally about 1 inch and rinsed
- 8 to 10 cups of vegetables -- turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, leeks, potatoes, a few celery stalks, and celery root are all candidates for inclusion. (You needn’t use all at once, but try to include some of the golden-fleshed rutabagas and light green celery.) Be sure to cut everything in large, handsome shapes
- 2 cups or 10 ounces carrots, peeled and left whole if only about 3 inches long, otherwise cut into large pieces
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
- Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
- 6 large slices country bread, toasted
- Grated or sliced Gruyere or Cantal cheese to over the toast
- Chopped parsley or tarragon or a mixture to finish
Cooking Instructions
Bring the Aromatics ingredients slowly to a boil in a medium Cook on Clay Casserole, then turn off the heat. Cover and set aside while you prepare the vegetables.
Melt the butter in a large Cook on Clay Casserole. Add the vegetables, bay leaves, and parsley and sprinkle with ½ teaspoon salt. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes or so to heat them up, gently moving them about the pot.
Stir in the flour and add 5 cups water. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer, partially covered, until vegetables are tender but still a tad firm, 15 to 20 minutes.
Strain the milk into a blender, add 1 cup of the vegetables, and puree until smooth. Add the puree back to the soup. Taste for salt, season with pepper.
To serve, lay a piece of toast in each bowl, cover it with grated cheese, spoon the soup with its liquid on top, and sprinkle with chopped herbs.
Recipe published from Vegetable Soups, with permission by Deborah Madison.
Recipe Submitted by Deborah Madison
About Deborah Madison
Growing up in a California walnut orchard and having a dad who grew a great garden meant that farms and food were in Deborah Madison's sights from the start. She first put that awareness into motion at the San Francisco Zen Center where she was a student for eighteen years. Deborah held a host of kitchen positions there, from head cook, to guest cook to private cook for the abbott and his guests. What began as a mild interest in cooking grew to a passion that included stints at Chez Panisse and the opening of Greens restaurant, one of the early Bay Area restaurants to have a farm-driven menu. Since her years at Greens, Deborah has been known as a cook, write,r and cooking teacher whose specialities are seasonal, vegetarian recipes with strong emphasis on farmers market produce and heritage varieties. Connecting people to the food they eat, its source and its history has long been her work, and writing is one way to reveal the deeper culture of food, whether through recipes or through profiles of farmers and ranchers, producers and cooks, and even a humorous book, called What We Eat When We Eat Alone. Madison's interests lie with issues of biodiversity, seasonal and local eating, farmers markets, and small and mid-scale farming. She is on the board of the Seed Savers Exchange, has been involved with Slow Food for over a decade, and is presently co-director of the Monte del Sol Edible Kitchen Garden in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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