Zucchini Garlic Soup

 Zucchini Garlic Soup with home-made Sourdough Bread

This soup makes excellent use of surplus zucchini. It's easy to make, although allow an hour to make it (most of which is simmering time), or an hour and a half if you are going to make your own vege stock for it, as suggested. It is a quite 'creamy' soup, despite have only 2 tablespoons of butter in it. If you want it creamier, use more butter to start with, or swirl a spoon of thick natural yoghurt or heavy cream through each bowl when serving it. 

I had some peas in the pod that needed using up, so I added the peas to the soup and the pods to the stock pot, giving extra flavour and colour to the soup this way. But they are not necessary if you don't have any to hand. The recipe makes enough for a substantial lunch for two, or a dinner starter for four.

Zucchini Garlic Soup

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
1 white onion, sliced
8-9 large cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
600g zucchini, peeled if necessary, and sliced
1 potato, peeled and diced
100-200g green peas (optional)
4 cups vegetable stock*
½ teaspoon ground ginger
salt and pepper to taste

Method

Melt the butter in a large, heavy pot over medium heat. Add the sliced garlic and onion and cook on a low heat for about 10 minutes, or until the onion is soft and translucent.

When the onions are soft, add the zucchini and potato and cook until softish. Then add the peas (if using) and the stock and bring the soup to a simmer. Simmer at a low heat for about 40 minutes.

Let the soup cool slightly, then blend it with an immersion blender until creamy, or transfer to a blender or food processor to puree in two or three batches, until creamy.

Return the pureed soup to the pot, taste and season it with ginger, salt and pepper, and gently reheat it. The soup will improve in flavour if left overnight in the fridge.

* Quick Vegetable Stock
You can use vegetable stock powder for this recipe, but the soup will be tastier if you make a real stock for it. Simmer together a chopped onion, a clove of garlic, trimmings from the zucchini, tender pea pods, a chopped potato, some carrot, celery, leek, silverbeet, green beans (whatever veges you have, except for the strong flavoured members of the cabbage family, or ones which that will affect the colour of the soup, like beetroot), a bay leaf and some fresh herb sprigs (parsley, thyme, marjoram, dill, basil - whatever you fancy) in 1.5 litres of water for 30 minutes. Strain and use in the soup recipe.