In my previous post I alluded to some recent recipe disappointments. The soup above was a little heart-breaking trickster. I made it because I think that photograph (by Romulo Yanes for Gourmet) is really lovely. Those are some beguiling zucchini tendrils. There seems to rarely be a midpoint in food styling between "rustic" and "poncy" but I feel that the casual elegance of this bowl gets it just right. I'm a sucker for a good sense of line. And for green. I think green is the nicest colour to live with.
Now, I was skeptical when I read the ingredients. There's not a lot to this soup. It's basically boiled zucchini with some basil thrown in. It doesn't even use stock and that always makes me nervous. But all of the reviews on Epicurious were really positive and I believed the masses. 90% of them would make it again!
Stupid philistines.
Even though I made a compensatory spicy nut mix to go on top and even though we added some grated cheese as well and even though we ate it with very nice bread and lots of butter it was B-O-R-I-N-G. In describing her recipe, Shelley Wiseman says:
"This smooth puréed soup manages the near—impossible feat of being velvety and creamy without any cream. Ribbons of zucchini add a final soupçon of elegance."
I'm respectfully disagreeing. Some cream would have been pretty good, actually, and those elegant little ribbons would have been more useful had they imparted a soupçon of taste. We were unenthused. So much so that we left the remainder to languish in the fridge were it grew a million new friends and J almost died when he cleaned out the remains. His nose is still scabbed and scarred from the caustic fumes it inhaled. Metaphorically.
Then this soup came along and healed all our wounds.
The picture for this recipe is appealing because it efficiently conveys how this will be the most delicious and satisfying thing you will eat in the near future. You won't ever remember the composition of this shot, but you may remember how nice your kitchen smelled while it was cooking.
It's a minestrone-esque vegetable soup with sausage and pasta that made good use of some aging produce, my diligently saved parmesan rinds and our last batch of chicken stock. I bulked the recipe out a little: one extra zucchini, a whole spiral of cumberland sausage, probably more pasta than a handful. And although the recipe says it serves two, these small additions fed three of us two servings each and there was still a bowl of leftovers the next day. That was not relegated to the depths of the fridge. We ate it greedily, standing up, half an hour before dinner.
You can find the beautiful and dull zucchini soup recipe on epicurious.com here. Millions love it, but unfortunately they are wrong.
Or, you can try out Allegra McEvedy's charming little bowl here. This recipe will be your pal. (Perfectly good photo by Linda Noland for the Guardian.)
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