COTTAGE GROVE HOUSE

According to the calendar it is spring.  However, you wouldn’t know it according to the weather.  It has been very blustery and rainy here in Seattle.  Still wearing the down coat.

I have a cookbook I have been in love with for six years.  I use this book over and over again.  I feel it is the cookbook my mom would have wrote for me.  Although my mom’s cooking was very american, this book is very european.  The recipes are very simple and the outcome is truly comforting.

Here is the book:

Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros

Since spring is here our markets are full of beautiful green vegetables.  Every imaginable leafy green, green scallions, english peas, snow peas, asparagus, the list goes on!  I stroll around the vegetable area wanting to bag it all up and figure out what I am going to do with it once I get it home.  I admit, I do shop like that often.  But, today, I remembered a soup recipe from Apples for Jam.  It seemed like it would be a perfect cold, blustery spring day meal.  This was probably the sixth time I made this soup.  It is so clean, nourishing and fresh.  Before discovering this recipe, I never imagined putting lettuce in my soup!  Oh, and here is a comment I heard at the dinner table tonight, “I have been waiting for this soup all my life!  Whenever I have wanted vegetable soup, this is what I imagined!

Here it is,

green vegetable soup with egg and lemon

• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 scallions, green and white parts, chopped
• a couple leafy celery stalks, chopped
• 4 small zucchini, cut into squares
• 2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into squares
• 2/3 cup fresh shelled peas
• 1 1/2 cups shredded lettuce (romaine or butter)
• 1 1/2 cups watercress tips
• 6 cups water
• salt
• 2 1/3 cups shredded baby spinach leaves
• 2 eggs
• juice of one lemon
• grated parmesan cheese, to serve

Heat olive oil in large heavy stockpot.  Gently sauté scallions and celery until soft, add zucchini, potatoes, peas, and half of the lettuce and watercress.

Add 6 cups water, salt well and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat and simmer, covered for 30 minutes, making sure the potatoes are soft.  Add the remaining lettuce and watercress and spinach and cook for a few more minutes.

Whisk the eggs in a bowl, add lemon juice and continue to whisk.  Add a couple of ladlefuls of hot broth from the soup to the eggs to acclimatize them.

Remove the soup from heat and add the egg mixture to the soup.  Continue to mix while putting the soup back on the lowest possible heat for just a few minutes, allowing the egg to cook without scrambling them.  Taste for salt.

Serve warm with a generous sprinkling of parmesan cheese.

Serves 6

buon appetite