Green Soup

I’m back! My long haul of work is over for the moment, and I’m now enjoying some breathing space before the next truckload of assignments gets dropped at my kitchen threshold.

Pictured above is a chard-based soup that I cooked today for a friend who is recovering from cancer surgery. Food is an essential part of my friend’s healing, and I’m doing what I can to help out.

As you may have read in one of my posts a few weeks ago, I was researching cancer-fighting foods for a magazine article. When deciding what to cook for my friend, I took my knowledge of anti-cancer “super foods” and fused it with my friend’s macrobiotic vegan diet and came up with this soup.

“Green Soup” is what I’ll call this purée. It started out being a chard soup, but quickly progressed to being a soup with just as many herbs as chard. I love its “green” flavor, enhanced by fresh basil, parsley and dill.

Leafy greens are incredibly good for you, and they contain folate, carotenoids and potent antioxidants that help stave off cancer. Plus, chard and other greens are in season right now, so I thought this would be the perfect soup to make for my friend. Here’s roughly how the “recipe” goes:

Ingredients:
Swiss chard
Onion
Garlic
Vegetable Stock
Jerusalem artichokes
Dill
Basil
Parsley
Lemon Zest
Bread

• Sauté onion and garlic until beginning to soften, then add several handfuls of chard leaves and enough vegetable stock to create some nice steam. Cover and cook until the chard is tender.

• Meanwhile, scrub a few Jerusalem artichokes, then boil them in salted water until very tender. These will help thicken the soup and bring out its “green” flavor.

• Put the cooked chard and Jerusalem artichokes into a blender. Remove stems from a few handfuls of parsley, dill and basil (cilantro would also work nicely), then add them to the blender. Toss in some freshly-grated lemon zest. Puree, adding enough stock to let the soup process easily.

• I happened to have some leftover crostini in my kitchen, so I covered them with water to let them soften, then added them to the blender. This is a nice way to thicken a soup without using cream. Of course, not everyone has extra crostini hanging around their kitchen; soaked fresh bread will also do the trick.

• Stir in extra salt and stock if needed to get the right flavor and texture. Finally, strain the soup to remove any fibers or stray chunks. The soup is delicious eaten hot or cold.