Celebrate Spring with A Quintessential Springtime Vegetable Soup

This comes from the time I lived in a converted Spanish-style two-car garage. The space was light and airy, out the front door was a small walled garden enfolding silence and beauty, and next door a rooster welcomed mornings. Perfect for Cakes and me. However, the garage had been converted into a meeting room. There was a fine bathroom but cooking space was a passageway to the bathroom consisting of two counters cum electric outlets. But I was so enamored of the ambiance I talked the owners into letting us live in it. Thus Day One from Sears I brought home a microwave oven, a toaster oven, an electric coffee maker, and a small fridge. Heck, I’d been cooking since I was eight. If I couldn’t wrest delight from what Bill later called my “galley kitchen”…

No question the most delightful dish from that kitchen was this soup, cooked purely in the microwave oven.

Now when I was researching said machine for the 1985 edition of The Joy of Cooking, I learned a great deal about microwavery, principally that the process preserves color, flavor, texture—i.e., freshness. Ideal for vegetables. Thus a beautiful array of spring vegetables, each cooked individually, renders a soup that’s the essence of the season.

I later learned more about microwavery when I discovered Barbara Kafka’s Microwave Gourmet.

A couple of Kafka gems: “A little fat can accelerate the cooking process…” and “Vitamins are much less affected by rapid microwave cooking with very little liquid than they are by any other kind of cooking…”* Both apply to this soup.

And it’s easy prep, the sort of pleasant, esthetic composition that loosens knots.

You begin with the beets…while the beets are cooking you prepare the cabbage …while the cabbage cooks you prep the potatoes and carrots…and so on. As you go you tuck each veggie in a Pyrex bowl, anoint with a little olive oil, add a splash of water, set the bowl in the oven, cover it with a microwavable plate, touch the Time then the On buttons, and whoosh…! An hour with Mother Nature well spent.

The broth you create to your taste. I keep it Vegetable, simple, pure, golden.

When finished, the soup is covered and refrigerated then heated for serving a day or so later in the microwave.

It’s also delicious cold with sour cream in the manner of a Springtime Borsht.

Both Bill and Cameron (imagine, a sixteen-year-old pronouncing Vegetable Soup deelicious!) love it.

N.B. I’m giving the timing for my microwave oven, so perhaps start with the beets and compare mine to yours, then adjust times down the list.

Quintessential Springtime Vegetable Soup from the Microwave (Makes 4 quarts~6 or more servings)
3 unpeeled 2-inch golden beets
1 small Savoy cabbage
3 medium unpeeled** blue potatoes
4 medium unpeeled** carrots
1 small fennel bulb, white part
4 ounces sugar snap peas
2 medium stalks celery, leaves included
2 plump scallions, tender leaves included, sliced ¼-inch thick
AND THE SOUP’S GLORY: 4 green garlic bulbs
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, a few tablespoons (drizzled or from a spray bottle)
2 quarts vegetable broth (Better than Bouillon Seasoned Vegetable Base?)
2 tablespoons tomato paste (Italian from a tube)
Juice of 1 lemon (ideally Meyer)
Freshly ground black or mignonette—black and white–pepper
Salt as necessary
Small bunch fresh dill, chopped

Place each vegetable in its turn in a broad microwavable 1.75- to 2-quart bowl, spray or drizzle with a little olive oil, a splash of water, tightly cover with a microwavable plate (no plastic wrap these days)…check at half time and stir or turn. When cooked, add to a big bowl.

Beets: cook whole 8 minutes–turn after 5 minutes–then peel if skin is tough, slice ¼-inch thick, cut slices in half
Cabbage: cut in half, trim out core, slice crosswise into ¼-inch ribbons, cook 4 minutes
Potatoes: slice ¼-inch thick, cut slices in half, cook 4-5 minutes
Carrots: slice on the bias 1-inch thick, cook 4 minutes|
Fennel: slice ¼-inch thick, cut slices in half, cook 3 minutes
Snap Peas: cook 2 minutes
Celery: slice ¼-inch thick, cook 2 minutes
Scallions: slice ¼-inch thick, cook 2 minutes
Green garlic: white part, slice ¼ -inch thick, cook 2 minutes
The Broth:
Compose a delicate broth with the boiling water and your favorite paste or cubes, whisk in a concentrated form of tomato–just enough to deepen the flavor, then brighten with lemon juice, add pepper for point and taste for salt. Stir the broth into the vegetables.
To Serve:
Cover tightly and refrigerate until serving time (it keeps at least one day), then reheat in each soup bowl in the microwave. Serve sprinkled with snipped fresh dill.

*Kafka, Barbara. Microwave Gourmet, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1987, page 36.
**I never never peel carrots and potatoes…didn’t you also learn along the way that valuable nutrients in vegetables lie in and just under the skin? Besidewhich there’s earthy flavor there …. Beets, however, are a different matter—when their skins are tough, off they go… but if the beets are young, keep the skin.