Soup's on

Turnip, rutabaga, carrot, corn, red bell pepper, collards, onion, diced ham, diced chicken, and brown rice. I had all these things in the refrigerator, so it was time to make soup. Never throw anything away... if you can possibly help doing so.

There's always a container of broth lurking in the freezer. This time is was what I'd call "pot liquor" — the liquid left after you've cooked greens. This was a by-product of cooking a mess of collard greens and I had saved the "liquor" and a few stray leaves specifically to use as a soup base. And then over this past weekend I poached and  roasted a chicken for Sunday dinner, so that gave me several liters of chicken broth plus half a cup or so of diced chicken. The ham was half a slice left over from recent pizza-making.

The turnips, rutabagas, and carrots were already cooked — left over from a recent lunch of confit de canard (slow-cooked duck). Turnips and rutabagas (yellow turnips) are especially good with duck — blanched and then sauteed in duck fat. Carrots are good with just about everything. The corn came out of a can, and the roasted red pepper was the last one out of a jar of them that we had bought at the supermarket.

Much chopping and dicing was required, but the only soup components I actually had to cook on soup day were the brown rice and the onion. They simmered in the broth while I sliced and diced all the pre-cooked ingredients. Then all those went into the broth just long enough to get good and hot. Those are cilantro leaves (feuilles de coriandre) floating in the soup, but they could have been any other fresh herb, added at the last minute.