The Kitchen Made

I am blessed to have an “in” at the local farmer’s market in the form of my lovely friend Cat who is all-knowing Vegetable Duchess in blogland.  She brings me overflow from Frog Song Farm (Mt. Vernon) and Flying Tomato Farm (Snohomish), both based here in beautiful Western Washington.  She has a key to my home so every now and then when I get back from work I will open my fridge door to find it stuffed to the gills with delicious organic vegetables.  Yesterday she brought this beautiful haul:

In the far back is some local celery!  Cat tells me they don’t grow quite as large here in Washington as they do other places.  The result is a more fibrous and flavorful midget-size version of what you buy at grocery stores.  I am ashamed to admit that I’ve never cooked with shallots before so I was excited when she brought me some.  Also pictured are delicata squash, zucchini, Japanese salad turnips, easter egg radishes, stupice tomatoes, Italian flatleaf parsley, and jalapenos.

What to do with all these vegetables?!  I poked around online looking for recipes and discovered the glory that is Choosing Raw (blog).  I have never been inspired to attempt raw “cooking” but I am really going to try incorporating more into my diet.  Through her blog I found my way over to Kristen’s Raw and a recipe for harvest soup.  I knew what I was going to make for dinner!  I don’t have a large food processor so I blended this in my trusty Oster blender and it wasn’t as finely pureed as I would have wanted it, but I guess this just means I will have to go buy myself a fancy food processor.  Darn!

My four year old was less than pleased with the outcome, but he was a trooper and ate it with some toast.  Here is the recipe from Kristen’s site with my substitutions:

Kristen Suzanne’s Harvest Soup
Yield 6 cups

1 cup water
1 large zucchini, chopped
3 medium tomatoes, quartered
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 cups carrot, chopped
1 tablespoon agave nectar
1 small shallot
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup olive oil
Blend all of the ingredients, except for the olive oil, on high speed in your blender. Then, while the blender is running on low speed, add the olive oil. Continue blending, at a higher speed, for another minute or less. Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Recipe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.