Curried Vegetable Soup

Winter time is a perfect time for a big, delicious pot of soul-comforting soup. It not only makes your whole place smell incredible (especially to husbands and loved ones coming through the door after a long day at work), but is so simple, and a great way to use up a lot of ingredients that may be getting a little long in the tooth. There's a long standing family joke about my grandfather's recipe for soup referred to only as "Old Delicious", based loosely on beef barley with a staunch "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it came to the actual ingredients. Grampie was a magician when it came to stretching his ingredients to feed his eleven (yes, you read that correctly) children, and it's a trait that has been passed down through the generations. This frugality is a personal point of pride for me, and I love being able to make excellent food out of seemingly simple and inexpensive ingredients. This recipe for Curried Vegetable Soup is extremely versatile and is a lot of fun to play with until you get the perfect combination of ingredients to suit your palate.

Curried Vegetable Soup

-2lbs. Assorted vegetables (such as onion, celery, garlic, carrot, eggplant, mushroom or whatever else you have hanging around, sweet potatoes are also a great addition!) chopped into uniform 2" pieces.

-Olive oil

-Cracked pepper

-Salt

-Curry powder

-Vegetable stock or water (stock will add more rich flavor)

-Hot sauce (optional)

-1 1/2 Cups grilled chicken, cubed or grilled shrimp (optional)

-Toppings: Greek yogurt, toasted pine nuts, chopped cilantro, roasted red pepper strips

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss veggies in enough olive oil to coat (if using eggplant, use more, as it will absorb a lot!), and a generous amount of salt, pepper and curry powder. Personally, I toss ingredients together in a large heavy duty dutch oven, which cuts down on the amount of dishes used, as the dutch oven can be transported directly from the oven to the stove top. Roast veggies for 20-25 minutes in the oven, until flavors begin to meld, but veggies don't burn. Pull out of oven and transfer to stove top over medium heat. Add in stock or water to cover all veggies and bring to a low boil. Use a good sized wooden spoon to scrape off any "drippings" from the bottom of the pot- there's a TON of flavor in 'em! Adjust seasoning as needed, adding more curry, s & p or hot sauce, depending on your preference. At this point, I usually use an immersion blender to create a beautifully velvety texture, but if you prefer it chunky, leave it as is. A great aspect of blending the soup is that it creates a deceptively rich texture, and you can fool yourself into thinking it has some sort of cream base when it doesn't, sneaky! If using chicken, add in after blending. Allow the soup to sit and come together as long as possible (or as long as you can stand it!) to really get the most out of the final flavor. Top with Greek yogurt, roasted red pepper strips, toasted pine nuts, cilantro, extra curry or whatever suits your taste. Relax with a big ol' bowl, and watch the snow drift by.

This is also a great soup for freezing- since my husband is out to sea a fair amount, I usually make large freezer friendly dishes to portion out and freeze for later. I throw a good size portion of cooled soup into a freezer friendly zip bag, squeeze out the air and freeze. In the bags, they're easy to pull out as needed, are less likely to fall victim to freezer burn and take up less space than regular plastic containers.