Creamy Spinach Soup

I spent a couple of hours this morning humming along in the kitchen, making soup and baking a cake for a friend who is recovering from surgery. Now, there are SO MANY recipes for both soup and cake that I have tried and loved. But I have this hopeless and maddening addiction to trying new recipes (searching for some hypothetical "perfect" recipe...I don't know), and sure enough, I found new ones to try this morning.

I wanted to use a nourishing vegetable such as spinach for the soup, and wanted something smooth and creamy in texture, and this recipe from Mark Bittman's blog looked perfectly simple and delicious. I was curious to see how green onions would work in the recipe. The only modification I made was to reduce the proportion of cream, add some flavorful parmesan and finish the soup with some bright lemon juice which did SO much to bring the flavors together.

The soup came together so quickly and effortlessly. I seriously HEART my stick blender- I've owned mine since 2001 and use it almost everyday. You can puree the soup right in the pot. The result was fantastic- maybe I will make this recipe again and again ;)

Creamy Spinach Soup

Adapted from Mark Bittman's recipe, makes a BIG pot (10 servings or so), easily halved.

1. In a large pot, combine
   8 cups water,
   3 tablespoons mushroom stock base,
   2 1-lb bags of chopped frozen spinach,
   2 bunches coarsely chopped green onions.


2. Bring the mixture to a boil then simmer for 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender.


3. Turn off the heat, add
   ½ teaspoon nutmeg,
   salt and pepper to taste.


4. Blend the mixture in the pot using a stick blender (or wait for it to cool and blend using a regular blender).


5. Finish with
   1 cup heavy cream,
   ¼ cup shredded parmesan cheese,
   juice of ½ lemon. Reheat and serve.

For the cake, I chose one of my own childhood favorites- marbled cake, with random swirls of chocolate and vanilla running through the loaf.


I used this recipe from Martha Stewart. That page has a little video showing this cake being made, and the interesting bit is that the baker, John Baricelli, demonstrates how to get beautiful swirls in the cake by running a skewer through it (the swirling but is about halfway through the 9 minute video). I tried his swirling method but I'm giving away the cake intact so I really won't know how well it worked. That only means I'll have to make another one soon, strictly for research purposes!

Have a great weekend, everyone. We're going on a mini-hike tomorrow and we're supposed to have perfect weather (you better be right, meteorologists!) so I am excited.