Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Another Successful Failure

Well I just wrote about a really successful dinner....everyone said so and there were very little leftovers, even though I cooked for an army...people even had seconds!

Naturally, I can't have you all thinking I'm perfect...so a little story about what was supposed to be lentil soup with some roasted vegetables. I still had a bunch of beautiful heirloom carrots and another bunch of interesting beets. If you squint, you can actually see that these aren't your typical round beets, they're long and I couldn't resist them at the market.
So I decided to make a hearty, healthy lentil soup with roasted carrots and beets...plus a few potatoes that didn't make it to dinner either. I roasted the vegetables...so far so good.
And that's when I did it...did what, you ask?....well, stopped thinking about ratios and just threw the entire batch of roasted veggies into the pot along with 2 liters/quarts of chicken broth and started using my favorite "neat" kitchen toy...the immersion blender.
What can I say....probably should have kept half the veggies aside for another use. But, seriously...the reason for this post is to show how you can make lemonade out of lemons...or in this case, pureed roasted vegetable soup with a small can of canneli beans for some protein, instead of lentils. This batch filled my big Dutch Oven as it was. Adding lentils would have meant adding another liter or two of broth and make way too much soup, even if I invited all the neighbours twice! And although the beets certainly took over the color of the soup...who could resist such a cheery bowlful?....they didn't overwhelm the taste.
So what's your cure for an "oops" start to the cooking process?

3 comments:

La Cuisine d'Helene said...

That looks so good, I love the color.

Alisa - Frugal Foodie said...

Definitely a nice save. It is inspiring me to finally invest in some beets!

Katie Zeller said...

I love the beets - and the color.
Cannellini can fix almost anything in my kitchen.....