Soup ingredients are as near as the vegetable garden

Cool weather in the near future means it’s soup time. Do we want to keep making and eating the same old soup recipes, or do we want to try a variety of exotic tastes supplied by vegetables plucked fresh from our gardens?

In the winter, I concoct different soups almost every night, and by concoct Imean I take a look inmy refrigerator and walk into the garden and choose some things I thinkmight work together. Sometimes the soup turns out to be amazingly delicious, and other times it is just so- so. Almost every one ofmy soups begins with sautéing onion, garlic and ginger. After that, anything goes.

The key is to have a garden full of enticing vegetables and herbs. For the fall season, in addition to the leafy greens and root vegetables, I plant parsnips, sorrel, rutabaga, leeks, cilantro, mildmustards, arugula, cress and chervil as flavors thatmake soups interesting.

Sorrel has a strong, potent lemon flavor that goes well with a red lentil carrot soup. Parsnip goes in every soup except tomato, and maybe even that. Leeks can be substituted for onions in any tomato- based soup. Any time you want a spicy soup, try mildmustards, cress and arugula with any legume or grain base.

Cilantro can go in almost anything at the lastmoment, as can chervil, which has an anise/ licorice flavor. Rutabaga can form the base for a soup, along with onion. Freshly harvested, it provides a sweet flavor and adds thickness to the soup.

These are only a few examples of what can be used. Of course, kales, collards, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, chard, beet and turnip greens are all vegetables that can be added in the last one to twominutes of simmering to give plenty of nutrition. Following ismy favorite winter soup: Saute in two tablespoons of olive oil— one large chopped onion along with five to six diced cloves of garlic and three healthy slices of ginger chopped finely.

After a couple of minutes, stir in one overflowing teaspoon of curry powder, half teaspoon of nutmeg, and a large pinch of fenugreek.

After aminute or so, add one large diced parsnip, one large diced carrot, one large diced Irish potato of your choice, and two cups of red lentils— stir together and cover for one minute.

Then add six cups of water or vegetable stock, bring to a boil, turn to low and simmer for about 20 minutes.

While the soup is simmering, finely chop a hefty mixture of sorrel and kale. Stir this into the soup when the vegetables in the soup are tender. Add salt to taste, and the juice of one large or two small lemons.

Optionally, stir in a can of coconut milk at the same time as the sorrel mixture. One minute later, the soup is ready. The key is to grow your own vegetables so you can walk out into the garden at any time and select what your palate is hungry for. Now is the time to plant, so hurry out with seeds in hand.

Ray Sher is a gardening and permaculture instructor, vegetable and fruit garden consultant, and works his large intensive home vegetable, fruit and herb garden using organic methods. Contact him at RayInTheGarden@ gmail. com. This column is sponsored by Urban Harvest. To find outmore about community gardens, school gardens, farmersmarkets and gardening classes, visit www. urbanharvest. org.