Customer Reviews

Love Soup: 160 All-New Vegetarian Recipes from the Author of The Vegetarian Epicure

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have lots of cookbooks sitting on the shelf gathering dust - but not this one. I've already used it 3 times in as many weeks, and as the weather gets colder I anticipate trying more recipes.

There's a whole chapter on "green soups" that use those dark leafy greens the nutritionists are always urging us to eat (unsuccessfully in my case). In my first attempt vast quantities of kale and spinach almost overflowed the soup pot, but after being cooked down and pureed with seasonings the greens were transformed into a delicious soup that was creamy without the need for butter or cream. It was so good I made it two weeks in a row.

Next I made the zucchini basil soup which uses a full 2 cups of basil to 2 pounds of zucchini - easy and delicious.

I am not a vegetarian! My family loves meat. Yet, I know that I need to offer meat-free meals at least twice a week that are satisfying and filling. This cookbook has those meat-free satisfying meals in the form of soup. My family and friends could not believe that I didn't put heavy cream in the "Winter Squash, Yam, and Poblano Pepper" soup that I made. It was that filling. Only roasted veggies and vegetable broth was used. Every soup has a little story behind it. I really enjoy that aspect of the book. You can't go wrong buying this book. Next up for this family: The Original Green Soup. Just a little side note. My daughter does not like veggies, but when they are pureed in these soups, she will eat them. A healthy bonus for us.

A follow-up to "The Vegetarian Epicure", Love Soup is a compendium of delectable vegetarian broths, soups, gumbos, and more, from "Pea Pod Broth" to "Creamy Potato and Roasted Garlic Soup", "Green Soup with Ginger", "Winter Squash and Yam Soup with Poblano Peppers", "Cauliflower Bisque", "Three- Bean Vegetable Chili", and even holiday-themed treats like "Chestnut Soup". Many of the proffered soups have a theme or flavor meant for the different seasons of the year. Featuring easy-to-prepare vegetarian (and many vegan!) soups for almost every occasion, "Love Soup" is enthusiastically recommended for vegetarian and vegan cooks everywhere.

I recently purchased LOVE SOUP after it caught my eye on the table at a local book purveyor's. Ages ago, a dear friend had gifted me (complete with inscription with doodly bugs and googly eyeballs) with Anna Thomas's THE VEGETARIAN EPICURE. It remains a favorite. But LOVE SOUP, if you love the soup, and who does not love soup?, is da bomb.

Seriously, in less than a week I have made three of her recipes (Carol's Finnish Pea Soup with Apples, Red Lentil and Squash Soup & Roasted Kabocha Squash and Celery Root Soup) and each one has been a joy to prepare and divine to eat/slurp. Serving sizes are generous so luckily we have lots of leftovers to freeze and enjoy later.

Even if someone is not a vegetarian they would be hard pressed to not be wowed by the delicious flavors and heartiness (particularly regarding the colder weather soups).

I look forward to making my way through all of them, very ambitious I know, as thus far I have yet to read one that does not appeal to me.

Another aspect of this cookbook is the fact that in addition to stating how many, the user is offered the weight. Medium to me may be another size to someone else and I have been off eyeballing it but because a weight is also offered I am saved. My kitchen scale get quite the workout when I prepare one of these recipes.

Thanks Anna for the great tasties!!!

The introduction of this book was excerpted in Yoga Journal last fall and I was instantly hooked (you can still find it on their web site -- just google "Anna Thomas Yoga Journal"). Anna Thomas' ability to paint a picture with just a few simple sentences is nothing short of awe inspiring and I wasn't surprised to find out later that she is an award-winning screenwriter. I ordered it immediately and couldn't wait to "read" the rest of it . . . which is all I did when it arrived a couple of days later. The stories with each recipe are so engaging that I really enjoyed reading the book but was too intimidated by the recipes to actually try making any of them. Before this book, my typical veggie soup consisted of carrots, onions, and celery with a few herbs, a can of crushed tomatoes, and a box of organic vegetable broth. At first glance, many of the recipes seemed like you need to buy out the produce section of Whole Foods in order to make them and I had never worked with fennel or parsnips or dark leafy greens before -- I was intimidated.

A few months later we joined a CSA for the summer and I found myself baffled by what to do with the swiss chard that arrived with our bi-weekly basket. I tried a couple of chard recipes I found on the internet but kept finding myself being drawn back to "Love Soup". I finally realized that, as long as you already have broth on hand, many of the recipes just involved chopping up 3 or 4 different kinds of vegetables and pitching them into a pot with some herbs -- in other words, no more effort than the veggie soup I've made for years, just with some different vegetables. And, after all, didn't we join a CSA in the first place to try new vegetables?

So, I set off to make the basic light vegetable broth from the book. We cook a lot so I already had all of the herbs on hand, the carrots and celery and onions. The chard was from my CSA basket, so I found I only needed to buy the leeks, fennel and parsnips. I could handle that. Anna Thomas says in the book that "making your own broth is both a big deal and not a big deal at all" and I now completely understand what she means. I am a product of the hamburger helper generation, even though I moved away from that as soon as I could cook for myself, but the idea of making vegetable broth from scratch seemed needlessly indulgent. In the end, it really wasn't much effort but the end product is light years away from any mass produced broth I've ever had. In short, a big deal but not a big deal at all.

Since the broth recipe only uses the tops of the fennel and the leeks, and just the stems from the chard, what to do with the rest of it all? Luckily, "Love Soup" has probably the best index of any cookbook I've ever used. I looked up "leeks" in the index and had more than 30 recipes to choose from. I had yukon gold potatoes on hand so made the Rustic Leek and Potato Soup, which is hands down the best soup I have ever had, and that's saying something. I made White Bean and Garlic Soup With Greens with some dried beans and the leftover chard and discovered the secret to tempering the bitterness of chard is to pair it with carmelized onions. Beets arrived with our next CSA basket and I still had some leftover leeks and parsnips and fennel so I made Beet Soup with Ginger - fantastic! Beet soups had never appealed to me because of the earthiness of beets, but this time they were perfectly balanced by the other ingredients.

Now completely trusting the brilliance of Anna Thomas with making any vegetable, no matter how healthy, taste like a treat, we threw all caution to the wind and made Green Soup last night. You put an enormous pile of kale and chard in a pot with some green onions and cilantro, a bit of salt, and a chopped up potato and watch it all boil down, thinking all the while "there is no way this is going to taste like anything other than the ground". Meanwhile you carmelize an onion and brown some garlic, then dump it in with the pile of cooked-down greens, along with a few ladles of broth. It cooks for a couple of minutes and then you puree the whole mess in a food processor (or blender), add some cayenne and lemon juice, and doubtfully eye the very green results. Of course, we should have had more faith because it tastes amazingly good, as in I could eat it twice a day for a week and not get tired of it.

One caution: I think that Anna Thomas didn't include pictures because she doesn't want people to get caught up in what the soup "should" look like. She encourages you to make the soup your own. However, I strongly recommend you trust the recipe the first time around. Many of her soups have garnishes that are an integral part of the soup, and she takes care to point that out when it applies. For instance, I tasted the Rustic Leek and Potato Soup and thought it was very good but that there was a bit of something missing. I looked at the recipe again and realized she tells you to add 3 Tbsp of heavy cream to the entire pot right before serving. Once I did that, I tasted it again and the difference was significant. Just that little bit of cream finished the soup (and was cups shy of the amount of cream most potato leek soups include!).

I cannot recommend this cookbook highly enough. Anna Thomas has made all sorts of vegetables you know you should eat into something you actually want to eat. My husband is the definition of a die-hard carnivore and he has loved each and every one of these. The brilliance is that the soups in this book are so delicious that it is only as an afterthought that you realize they are low in calories and fat, jam packed with nutrition, and cost very little per serving. Also, many of them have only 1 tsp of salt in the entire pot but don't sacrifice any of the flavor.

Next up - roasted poblano soup!

1. It respects the reader by giving super-detailed instructions, including measurements 2 or 3 different ways.
2. I made the Parsley Soup tonight in the Green Soups section and it's superb. You'd think a "green soup" might be a turn-off, but the flavor is wonderful.
3. The soups are made with a minimal amount of oil so you can drizzle fresh olive oil on top of each serving right before eating. It's part of the recipe, it finishes the soup. I love this way of thinking about olive oil as a seasoning.
4. The material in the intro is informative and inspiring. This is the type of cook book where you'll want to read every word.
5. It has an excellent section on making broths, but many of the recipes don't require homemade, you can use canned. However, she talks about the importance and ease of making your own sometimes.
6. It's arranged by seasons starting with Fall/Winter. The recipes are very seasonal, encouraging you to use the veggies that are best in any given month.
7. Many of these recipes are vegan, or easily tweaked to become vegan. She gives a "shout-out" in the book to her two vegan sons.
8. From reading the cook book and looking through the recipes, I can tell this is a person who knows soup and I look forward to trying more and more of these recipes.
9. Oh, almost forgot to mention the beautiful design. It's humble, not too showy; nice use of two colors for the text; nice square format; playful, "naive" illustrations. Yay!

This is a great cookbook! So far, I have tried four recipes and they were all delicious and winners with the family. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. I'm just beginning to cook more wholesome and healthy foods and these recipes were not intimidating. It is a keeper for me.

Many vegetable soups come down to this: cook vegetables in liquid until soft. Puree. What could you really add to that? With such reductive ideas floating in my head, I was initially skeptical that this book would really add much to my soup repertoire, but I was wrong. Anna Thomas's "Love Soup" is filled with useful recipes and ideas for soup-lovers. Thomas recognizes that the difference between a good soup and great soup usually comes down to a few small details: a small squeeze of lemon in a white bean soup, a dollop of cream cheese in a cauliflower bisque. These are little details, but they added a level of delicious complexity to everything I made from here.

Although "Love Soup" focuses heavily on one kind of food, Thomas makes this a worthwhile book for most cooks by offering soup recipes for every season and by including recipes that use unusual ingredients alongside soups based using items you'll find at any grocery store (even in Chicago, where we don't have the year-round access to fresh Californian produce that Thomas enjoys).

Can hardly wait for the Farmer's Market to begin. Although most of the recipes are easy and quick enough to make for "right then" serving, I double or triple the recipes and freeze. All I have tried freeze easily and my friends bless the day I bought this book!

I had Ms Thomas's first cookbooks as my introduction to vegetarian cooking. I am loving the new soup cookbook! Recipes are shared with you in a social context, you feel like entertaining & recreating her cozy senarios with soup & bread, friends & wine. Thanks.