It’s been too long since I last did a serious recipe post from my queue, so this weekend I did two! First, I made a cherry pie, and then after that was done, I made Chef Aniceto’s summer vegetable soup, which appears in Joanne Chang’s cookbook flour, too under the heading “Autumn Vegetable with Sausage and Green Lentils” — the summer vegetable soup is a variant listed at the end, which substitutes summer squash and corn for winter squash, turnips, and mushrooms. Chang describes the original version of the soup as “hearty and stewlike”; while it did reduce substantially, I’m not sure I’d make that claim about this version.

I had a seven-ounce sausage from Formaggio that was left over from a previous recipe (kept safe in the freezer, of course), which was not quite the eight ounces called for here, but seemed like it would be enough. However, having made the soup I’m not sure how much the sausage really adds — it seems to me to be almost completely overwhelmed by the volume of vegetation and liquid to the point where you might think about making this a vegetarian soup by adding a bit more oil at the beginning and replacing the meat with some beans or additional lentils. Or perhaps going the other way, maybe it would be better with more and larger chunks of a spicier sausage like chorizo (which I suspect would complement the pimentón quite nicely).

The liquid component of the soup is surprisingly flexible, allowing for “Vegetable Stock, Chicken Stock, or water”; I chose to use commercial chicken broth, having been unsatisfied with Chang’s vegetable “stock” back when I made the pea soup and having a very busy day already — commercial low-sodium chicken broth surely must be more flavorful than water, right?

The preparation of a soup is really not much to look at, and rather uninteresting to photograph (how many photos of a mirepoix do you really need, anyway?), so all I’ve got are these two photos of the finished soup itself, first in the pot:

…and then a single serving in a bowl:

Chang’s recipe makes a lot of soup — more than three quarts — so a single serving is substantial enough for a meal. (And leaves more room for dessert!)

Nutrition