Whew! That’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?
I didn’t have much time to photograph my soups, so apologies for the awkward presentation. I rather like keeping my soup in jars; it means you can store it in nice manageable portions, plus it looks much prettier than tupperware.
Anyway, fennel was one of the things I didn’t mention earlier which I also had in my garden. I had planned on doing one of my staple dishes – fennel risotto with black olive pesto – but discovered I didn’t have any sundried tomatoes for the pesto. So I settled on soup instead.
I got inspiration for a carrot and fennel soup from a magazine somewhere, but for the life of me cannot remember which one. After getting the first stages of the soup underway, I realized that I only had two carrots – hardly enough to make a proper carrot soup! Therefore I adapted my plan to use what I had on hand – some kumara (nz sweet potato), kohlrabi (also from my garden) as well as the two carrots and fennel bulb.
The recipe is roughly as follows:
olive oil, butter or margarine
1 large onion, finely diced
1 fennel bulb, finely diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 large kumara, peeled and diced
2 kohlrabi, peeled and diced
approx. 3-4 cups vegetable stock (though you could use chicken or another stock, if preferred)
cream, to taste
salt and pepper, to taste
Have your vegetable stock heated and ready, I keep mine at a bare simmer. Heat the oil, butter or margarine in a med-large saucepan. Add onion, cook until soft but not browned. Add the diced fennel and let it cook for a few minutes also. [You could probably add some spices here, if desired – like curry powder or cumin – but I found the soup fine without any.] Add the rest of the vegetables, stir quickly and add the stock. Bring to the boil; reduce to a comfortable simmer and leave until all the vegetables are cooked through – test this with a fork or knife. Once cooked, blend with a blender stick (very handy, that way the soup can stay in the pan) or if you don’t have a blender stick, use a food processor. Return to pan, season with salt and pepper. I prefer to use a very strong flavoured stock so I often find I don’t need to season. Add cream as desired and serve!
Note: this is one of the few times I haven’t included garlic in the recipe. I always put garlic in my soups, even when recipes don’t include it. However here I thought it might compromise the lovely fennel flavour and distract from some of the other subtler flavours going on with the kumara and kohlrabi.
After buying some carrots, I made the same soup again, only this time the vegetables used were 5 carrots, 1 fennel bulb and 1 potato. However, I found I actually preferred the first version, even if it didn’t have such a pretty colour.
