Friday open thread: soup season

[dolorosa_12]

Actually, it's not really soup season ('high soup season'?), given that it was 16 degrees celcius today and the crocus bulbs are starting to bloom. However, this has been a very soup-heavy winter, and a prompt like this is about all I can manage at the moment, and thus:

What are your favourite types of soup?

My favourites are definitely the flavour- and texture-rich soups of southeast Asia: laksa, pho, and so on. I'm not such a fan of cooking them myself, however — but if they're available, I will almost always eat them.

When it comes to soups I can cook myself, I have various variants of chicken-noodle soup (Chinese, Malaysian, and Indonesian recipes) which I enjoy a lot. I also love various Turkish soups involving lentils, minestrone soup, a variety of takes on borsch, and a nostalgic, vegetable-and-legume-heavy soup that my mum used to make in industrial quantities throughout the Canberran winter when I was a child (ingredients included dried mixed legumes, potato, green beans, parsnip, carrot, leek, and barley), which I ate for lunch at school in a thermos flask, and as afternoon tea to fuel an evening of gymnastics training, and which a friend of mine with whom I used to carpool to gymnastics still raves about, because she ate so much of it at my place en route to the gym.

I could probably go on, but I think that's enough of a starting point. Talk to me about soup!

Comments

[luzula]

Well, yesterday I made green pea soup, which is supremely simple and also good. Chop and fry some onions and garlic in oil, then add frozen green peas and vegetable stock. Bring to the boil and then blend it smooth. I spiced it up with lime juice and a little chili, and ate it with dollops of yoghurt and pan-roasted sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.

But I like all sorts of soup! Here are my regular ones: yellow pea soup, nettle soup, kale soup, borscht, potato/leek soup (with optional Jerusalem artichoke), goulash-inspired soup, onion soup with grilled cheese and croutons, Thai-inspired rice noodle soup, bouillabaisse.

I mean to try making zurek one of these days. I had it in Poland and it was delicious.

[dolorosa_12]

I love all of those soups! I would never have thought to add those toppings to green pea soup, but they sound delicious. I made a similar type of green pea soup recently, although it also included frozen broad beans, spinach, coriander, parsley, dill, and crushed cumin and coriander seeds, plus red chili and lemon juice to serve. It was great!

[luzula]

Ooh, that also sounds great.

[morbane]

with optional Jerusalem artichoke

You are singing my song! I love Jerusalem artichokes in soup so much. Such a nice creamy texture when blended and such a lovely subtle nutty flavor.

[luzula]

Yes! Also very nice mixed into mashed potatoes, or grilled in the oven.