SOUP’S ON!
Celebrate spring with five fresh recipes
After a warm February and snowy March, it’s officially spring - a time when chefs eagerly await tendrils, shoots and other tempting ingredients for seasonal soups.
“It’s all young. It’s all new. It’s all fresh,” said executive chef Tim Courtney of EatNic - Urban Farmhouse Eatery & BYOB in Paoli. “It is the break in the winter doldrums. We’ve been staring at the same color palette since November.”
As the landscape greens, enjoy his equally vibrant spring pea soup with mint, morels and crème fraîche.
“It’s one of my favorite vegetables. It’s one of those vegetables I look forward to every year,” Courtney noted. “We don’t just cook seasonally. I call it ‘micro-seasonally.’ There are transition moments.”
While he searches for “what’s coming out that week,” so does chef Jenny Young, who partners with her son, Morgan, in The Red House Catering and Love in a Bowl, Soups from The Red House - a Kimberton-based delivery service.
“It’s a wonderful time of the year,” she said. “Take advantage of what’s out there.”
Young teaches a springtime soup class at Cooking Spotlight in Phoenixville next month. Her top picks: watercress, asparagus, leek and baby turnip.
“When the turnips are very small and new and about the size of a golf ball, they’re absolutely delicious,” she explained. “I wouldn’t make it with big turnips. It is definitely a spring small-turnip soup.”
Green, of course, isn’t the only color of spring. Personal chef Lynn Lampe Lindquist of Cook on Call suggests a beautiful orange- hued Thai carrot and ginger soup.
“I think it’s the color that really strikes me as ‘wow,’ vibrant, and should we use the term? Pretty,” she described. “If I want to brighten the color a little bit, I’ll add some turmeric to it.” And that’s not all. “I always finish it with a little coconut milk, so it’s not cream-based, but it does have a little richness,” added Lindquist, also an instructor at Delaware County Community College and Valley Forge Flowers.
Soups are “so versatile, and they’re very satisfying,” she said. “Sometimes we have that chilly spring when you still need a little comfort food.”