Turnip Soup, Take Two

Emboldened by the rousing success of the Indian turnip & chickpea soup, I decided last night to try a turnip soup without the help of Indian spices. Unfortunately, I really didn't have enough turnips to pull anything off; P remarked that he'd never heard anyone say "I don't have enough turnips" before, and he doubted he would hear it again. But that didn't stop me from trying! I left out the carrots, the chickpeas, and the curry powder from the other version -- and added a few cloves of garlic and some black pepper instead.

We sliced up some delicious bread from the farmers' market to eat with our soup, and set to eating.


It was a far cry from the deliciousness of the last soup. I thought it was . . . fine. Edible, anyway. But not good. P didn't even think that highly of it. He said it was like someone made hot cocoa, only instead of chocolate, they used turnips.

I ate my bowl anyway, but P was not about to eat his. And I was not about to let the soup be a waste. His main complaints were that it was too thin . . . and that it tasted like turnips. So I doctored up the soup: thickening it up with some cornstarch, then adding a can of chickpeas and some curry powder that my friend Charlotte sent me.

As you can see, the soup looked a lot different after that. Yellower, lumpier, thicker. Also, spicier and tastier.


So I guess the lesson was learned: if I'm going to make turnip soup, it had better not be just turnips.

Indian Turnip & Chickpea Soup

I have to start off with a confession: I am totally afraid of turnips. Or I was anyway -- until tonight's soup changed all that. It's not that I never had turnips before, it's that I never liked how they were prepared. So tonight I gave turnips one more chance -- but I was still skeptical.

To use up half of the turnips from this week's share, I decided to make an Indian-flavored soup featuring chickpeas and turnips; Indian food is my favorite, so I figured that if anything was going to salvage turnips . . . Indian spices would be it!

Still, just to be safe, I fried some tofu in an Indian sauce to make sure there would be something else to eat in case the soup turned out horribly wrong. It turns out my precautionary measure was totally unnecessary -- the soup was awesome.

All four of us -- me, P, my dad, my brother -- had seconds; some of us even had thirds. The tofu got eaten, but only as an afterthought. Let me say it again. The soup. Was. Awesome.

Granted, it isn't terribly photogenic . . . but I am willing to forgive it on that point. You can see a bit of the tofu peeking out from behind the bowl, as if trying to remind me that it was there. Sure, sure. I see you, tofu. But getting back to the soup . . .


Indian Turnip & Chickpea Soup

• olive oil
  
• 1 spring onion bulb, chopped (regular onion would be fine too)
  
• about 2 cups of turnips, chopped into small chunks
• 2 15-oz cans of chickpeas, drained
• 2 small carrots, chopped
• about 2 tbsp curry powder, to taste
• a dash of salt
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 1/2 cups plain soy milk
  

Drizzle a bit of olive oil in the bottom of a pot big enough to hold the soup, sautee the onion until brown. Add the turnips through the salt, stirring to make sure the spice is distributed well; add the vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then allow the soup to simmer covered for at least 20 minutes until the turnips are soft and tender. Remove two cups of soup to be pureed in a food processor or blender, then return to the soup. Add the s'milk and mix everything back in. Gently warm up the soup to make sure it is heated throughout, then serve.