Today I made some soup! I got the recipe from another great cooking blog, Amuse Your Bouche (amuse-your-bouche.blogspot.com.au). It is called Veggie Pot Pie soup. Basically it is the filling of a pot pie (only veggie of course), but without any crust or pastry to go with it. And not baked, but cooked on the stove top. I expected it to be a bit thicker, but it was still quite good and it is very possible I made the white sauce part wrong.
So. First I assembled the ingredients.
So. First I assembled the ingredients.
Now the original recipe calls for half a head of broccoli, one medium carrot, a full onion, and sweet corn from a can. I used what I had/what I could find at Trader Joe's. So about a third of a bag of broccoli florets, sweet frozen corn that I steamed in the microwave before adding to the soup, only half an onion since I am not a big onion fan, and about 4 peeled baby carrots. Also I realize that I have salt in this picture, but never actually used it! A full list of ingredients and their amounts are available at the original blog with a link at the bottom of this post.
Then I chopped up the veggies as per instructions. Broccoli cut into about bite size pieces, carrots into slices, half the onion diced, and 2 gloves of garlic minced.
Look at all those beautiful veggies!
Next you put all of the vegetables (except the corn) in the pot with the olive oil and cook covered with occasional stirring for about 10 minutes. Nothing magical, they should be about cooked and tender by the time 10 minutes is up.
While those were cooking up I cooked the corn. If you buy canned corn or, even better, fresh corn when it is in season you would have to treat it differently. Regardless the corn should be cooked before going in the pot. After that is cooked, add it plus the cup of vegetable broth, a bunch of pepper, and the quarter teaspoon of oregano. I put in the full amount of oregano suggested and when eating the soup found it a little overwhelming. Next time, less oregano for me.
There it all is, before stirring all together of course. Stir it up, turn the heat down, and leave it be while working on the white sauce.
Now this sauce gave me serious trouble. Maybe because I have absolutely no experience with it. But I did it with no idea if I did it right. There are no pictures because it required way too much attention and stirring for me to pick up a camera. Basically you melt butter and add flour to it, stirring a lot and continuing to stir for 1-2 minutes. When I did this as soon as I put in the flour it clumped like crazy and I just stirred clumps around a pot for a few minutes. Then I added the milk a bit at a time stirring like crazy and trying to work out the lumps. So I guess it worked out? Like I said, never done it before, not idea how it should have gone or if I did it right.
Finally put the two mixtures together and stir. The recipe says to then add hot water until it gets to the consistency you would like. I felt it thin enough already so didn't add any. Maybe this was the wrong idea, maybe I messed up the flour part, who knows, but I didn't add more water. Just stirred it a bunch and called it done!
How it looks in the pot! Not super beautiful, but still good.
I poured out some into a bowl, and the rest into some tupperware for leftovers! I paired it with a homemade roll toasted a little in the microwave and called it a meal! Here are a few pics of the final product.
Yum! Pretty proud of myself, it turned out quite well I think.
The only thing left was dishes. Yuck.
Hoped everyone enjoyed my first attempt at cooking and blogging about it! As you may have been able to tell, I had no idea in what person I should write this in, first, second, or third. I'll get the hang of it and hopefully pick one soon! Here is a link to the actually recipe. Keep in mind it is written in Australia so you have to convert the grams and milliliters before using!
Later this week I am going to try risotto I think. Gulp!
