Experimenting in the Kitchen

You may recall I decided to make vegetable stock amid canning my marinara sauce this past Fall.  I fully admit it has been sitting in my freezer without any further thought on my part.  I was so busy making my usual fare of soups, and then the holidays came along, that I honestly forgot about it.

I decided I better survey my freezer this week so I can purposely plan meals.  There were the lonely vegetable stocks in the basement freezer.  I at once started to review my various cookbooks for ideas.  In the end, I made a “kitchen sink” type of vegetable soup with our favorite vegetables such as onions, celery, carrots, yellow pepper, mushrooms, lentils, butter beans and ring noodles.  

I will say this is not a vegetarian vegetable soup.  I had prosciutto in the refrigerator for another recipe I am trying later this week, so I opted to sauté my onions with the extra prosciutto.  In addition, I added two cans of chicken broth to tone down the strong tomato taste in the broth.  We added plenty of salt and pepper and placed the entire thing in the oven to cook in the Dutch oven for three hours.

It was not traditional, but it turned out to be an outstanding soup.  It gave me great satisfaction to have the “meatiness” of the various items to give us a hearty soup.

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