It's official, I'm in a cooking rut. I attempted to blame this rut on many things, including but not limited to: I'm trying to buy locally grown produce which leaves me cooking exclusively with tomatoes, zucchini, okra, peaches and some snap beans every week, Brian and I have sports games at least three nights a week so we end up making one thing and either eating it leftover for several days or attempting to repurpose it over the course of the week, and I made two flop dishes last week and elected to eat them all week long instead of cutting my losses and moving on. The underlying reason I'm in this rut is that I'm cheap, or frugal if I'm being nice to myself. I just won't throw food away and I'll only buy things on sale, hence all my other excuses for this cooking rut. Big sigh. There's my confession for the week, if you can even call it a confession because everyone who knows me at all knows about my epic, sometimes debilitating, cheapness. Alas, I perserve. I hit up my local farmer's market in a baptist church parking lot where I suffer through tirades from one very nice farmer about the lack of pesticides creating 'God's blueberries' and picked up some zucchini for this tasty Zucchini Zuppa.
For this simple zuppa, you'll need: an entire head of garlic, two shallots, a few hot peppers of your liking, three medium zucchini, a mess of basil, a can of white beans, a bit of white wine and broth.
Start by roasting the head of garlic. Preheat your oven to 400 or so. Then lop the top of the garlic head, coat in olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Put this in an oven safe dish and roast for about 40 minutes. My oven safe dish may look remarkably like the soup bowl I often use, and it is. But it's a magic soup bowl that can also go in the oven. I ♥ it. I made two heads of garlic because I wanted to eat some and planned on using the rest during the week, but you only need one head for this soup. In the pursuit of accountability, I stole this recipe/technique from CJ. Meanwhile, chop up the rest of your veggies. I started by coarsely chopping the shallots and hot peppers. The hot peppers were more of an afterthought because they came out of my garden a few days ago and were starting to shrivel a bit and and I didn't want to waste them (epic cheapness). The bowl these are in looks huge, but trust me, it's just two shallots and two thin, short hot peppers.
Then, the zucchini. I sliced two and a half zucchinis in thin pieces and used a super cool julienne tool to julienne the remaining half zucchini. The julienned pieces are mostly for garnish so don't waste too much time julienning if you don't have a cool tool. Did you know the word julienne could be so many different parts of speach? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's all grammatically incorrect.
Lastly, chiffonade the basil. I'm also pretty sure chiffonade shouldn't be a verb and some French chef is going to show up at my door and beat me for using it in this manner. Oh well!
Still waiting on the garlic to finish roasting? Maybe put together this blueberry-peach cobbler found on Smitten Kitchen because you have friends coming over later and have it ready to go in the oven the second the garlic is done. Yes, that is what I did with my time. By now, it's probably a thousand degrees in your kitchen because your epic cheapness thought turning the a/c up to 81 degrees during the day is a good idea since you usually aren't home during the day, and it smells like garlic. Lovely, lovely garlic. Pull that roasted goodness out of the oven and let it cool until you can touch it without burning your hands. Using a fork or just your fingers, get the garlic cloves out and set aside. Pop a few in your mouth as well.
Now, it's cooking time. Heat some olive oil over medium heat in your soup pot of choice. Once the oil is hot add the shallots and peppers. Cook these for about 3 minutes.
Next, add the zucchini and cook for about 5-8 minutes, stirring often.
Throw in a splash, about half a cup of dry white wine. If it's a wine appropriate time of day, have some yourself too. I was making this at 11 AM which I do not deem a wine appropriate time so I just put the rest of the wine back in the fridge for later.
Next, toss in the garlic. If you like garlic like I do, throw in the entire head of roasted garlic. If you aren't trying to ward of vampires and that much garlic makes you a little ill, just tone it down a bit. While you're at it, throw in the basil too.
Finally, in go the rinsed and drained white beans. I put beans in to add a bit of protein and make the soup a little heartier. If you want something really light, just leave them out, but this girl needs more calories in her soup than vegetables alone provide. Let all the veggies simmer in the wine for about 15 minutes.
Lastly, add 4 cups of broth, bring the soup to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Let this simmer for anywhere from 15-60 minutes. I was hustling around the house cleaning and doing other random chores, so I left mine on the stove for about 40 minutes. Give it a taste to see if it needs anything. I liberally salted and peppered my roasted garlic so the soup itself didn't need much. If you're happy with the taste, blend it up with your stick blender or other blending device.
To serve, throw in some of the julienned zucchini pieces. This would probably also be good with some raw julienned carrots for a color contrast. It makes an absolutely perfect lunch when paired with some tomato-mozzarella salad. The salad is doubly good because those are garden tomatoes and basil (the epic cheapness strikes again). Enjoy!
I'm trying something new with printable recipes, so here's the first go. I fully intend to write printable recipes for everything on here, but sounds like a winter project so hopefully all 10 of you who read this can wait.
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