I was recently reunited with some of my old cookbooks and magazine binders that I created over 20 years ago (long before Pinterest, blogs or the Internet). I remembered eagerly awaiting the arrival of Bon Appétit, Gourmet and Food & Wine each month. I would stash the copies next to my bed like they were romance novels (right on top of a collection of cookbooks), then contemplate which recipe I would recreate first.
My love of cooking never waned, it just got pushed aside as life became more demanding. Over the past few weeks I have once again had an insatiable appetite for cooking (blame it on Pinterest and AMAZING food blogs). I just discovered With Food + Love, a beautiful, seasonally inspired vegetarian and gluten-free food blog. All week I have been obsessed with this soup recipe I found on this blog. And while my version of this soup is not vegetarian, it very easily could be (just used filtered water instead of stock).
This soup takes just 20 minutes or so to put together; it is incredible rich + will serve 4 – 6 petite bowls.
Ingredients:
- 1 large head of broccoli
- 2 medium heads of fennel
- 3-5 heads of garlic
- 1/2 pound kale leaves, ribs removed
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- few heavy pinches sea salt
- few heavy pinches ground black pepper
- 3/4 cup raw cashews, soaked for an hour {no soaking, no worries
- 6 cups Kitchen Basics unsalted vegetable stock
- pinch of cayenne
- juice of one fresh meyer lemon juice
- chopped fennel leaves to garnish
- meyer lemon zest to garnish
- toasted pine nuts to garnish
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees + line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Wash and cut the broccoli and fennel into medium sized florets/slices. Spread them out evenly on the baking sheet, with the cloves of garlic {leave the skin on} and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle generously with sea salt and black pepper. Roast for about 20 minutes. Flip the veggies and toss the kale leaves on top. Roast for about another 5 – 10 minutes or until golden brown. Let the cloves of garlic cool a bit and then pop them out of their skins.
Combine the raw cashews, stock, lemon juice and another heavy pinch of sea salt, black pepper and cayenne in the blender. Blend until smooth. Then toss in the roasted broccoli, fennel, garlic, kale and blend until smooth again. Rewarm on stove.
To serve top with a dash of olive oil, chopped fennel leaves, lemon zest, black pepper and pine nuts.
