Green Soup

This Monday, group 2 started their blogging marathon. I am joining them in the marathon for couple days, today and tomorrow, sticking to my soups theme. Today’s soup is green soup which I made cooking spinach, green peas, celery and cabbage in some stock, and then pureed it. Green vegetables give this soup a nice green color, hence named it green soup. I made this soup last week and was not completely satisfied with the outcome.  I held back from posting it. The picture came out great though 🙂 ! I liked the picture a lot and made  the soup again last night with some changes to the recipe.  The result was good and here I am with the recipe. I did not take pictures yesterday and am using the picture from last week. The only change I made this time was skipping mint. Last time I used 5-8 mint leaves and it was a little minty. The taste was good but something wasn’t right. Last night, I completely omitted it and the soup was perfect to please my taste buds!

Total Time: 17 – 20 minutes (excludes cooling time)
Preparation: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 12 – 15 minutes
Serves: 1 – 2

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp. Oil
• 1 Green Onion chopped
• 1 small Green Chili Chopped (opt.)
• ¼ – 1/3 cup Celery sliced
• ¼ – 1/3 cup Cabbage chopped
• ¼ – 1/3 cup frozen Green Peas (I used the ones from the Indian store)
• ¾ cup loosely packed chopped Spinach
• ¼ – 1/3 cup chopped Cilantro
• 2 cups homemade Vegetable Stock or store bought stock
• Pepper to taste
• Salt to taste

Preparation:

• In a sauce pan, heat oil. Add green onions, green chilies and sauté for a minute.
• Add celery, cabbage, green peas and sauté for couple of minutes.
• Add spinach, cilantro and sauté until spinach wilts.
• Add stock, bring it to boil and cook until the vegetables are cooked. Make sure green peas and celery are tender. This step should take about 7 minutes.
• Cool the soup and run it in a blender to puree the mixture. Or, if you are lazy, impatient like me and can’t wait to let the mixture cool completely, use an immersion blender to puree the mixture.
• Strain the soup and bring it back to boil and cook it for couple of minutes on medium flame. Season the soup and serve hot. Be careful when seasoning the soup. The amount of seasoning required for the soup depends on the stock and if the stock is well seasoned, you need not season the soup at all.

Substitutions:

• If using water instead of stock, add some ginger garlic paste to the tempering and season the soup accordingly.
• Straining the soup is optional.  I used  a strainer that has a not very fine mesh as I wanted a thick textured soup.  This way, I can retain some of the fiber from the vegetables.

This goes Akhila’s Dish Name Starts With G.

Recipes I posted this month in 2009 and in 2010.

Soups I posted so far for this marathon are:
Group 1, Day 1 – Vegetable Corn Soup
Group 1, Day 2 – Sausage White Beans Kale Soup
Group 1, Day 3 – Hot & Sour Soup
Group 1, Day 4 – Tomato Soup
Group 1, Day 5 – Bok Choy & Mushrooms Soup
Group 1, Day 6 – Turkey Dumpling Soup
Group 1, Day 7 – Homemade Vegetable Stock

Let see what my follow marathoners have for us –
Diabetes Diet/Management: PJ
Kid Friendly Recipes: Suma, Priya Suresh, Divya
Seven Days of Soup: Ila, Smita P
Seven Days of Indian Bread: Monika
Seven Days of Cakes: Bhagyashri
30 Minutes Meals: Archana
Seven days of Condiment: Kamalika, Srivalli