Vegan Radish Greens Soup

It's happened.

SOUP MONTH has returned. As it's gotten colder, I've become obsessed with soups again. I forgot how easy and delicious they are.

So, quick Soup 101:

Almost all European-style savory soups begin with what's called a mirepoix (a French word pronounced meer-ah-pwah), which basically means onions, celery, and carrots sauteed with butter or oil (and usually with some combination of spices added). They create this bangin' set of flavors that create the base to most soups, stocks, and sauces. Without them, your soup just won't taste as hearty unless you're making an Asian-style soup or curry, in which case the flavors are going to be coming from other ingredients (like ginger, chili, curry, garlic, etc).

Next, you just add your main ingredients to your mirepoix, add some water or stock, blend it up, and go. Super easy.

So, this next dish isn't 100% from the dumpster because I had the chance to go to a pick-your-own farm near my house. I ended up getting pumpkins for my curried pumpkin and potato soup (and to put out at Halloween for the kiddies), sweet potatoes, beets, broccoli, and a bunch of daikon radishes, which I had never used before.

I ended up using all the daikon radishes (typically used in Asian dishes) for my first experiments with kimchee (a Korean fermented snack/condiment) and pho (a Vietnamese soup)...however, I was left with a bunch of daikon radish greens that I didn't know how to use. I came up with this recipe, which you can actually apply to a lot of different types of greens if you're over-stocked. The radish greens are especially great, though, because they have a nice peppery flavor to them already. Plus, I had all the ingredients for soup that I had recently dumpstered, so this was a perfect solution for using them.

Unfortunately, there's no picture for this soup because I threw it in a container to take to work right after making it...and then promptly ate all of it for dinner with some bread. Several people saw me eating it and asked for the recipe, so I figured it was worth the share. Plus, my boss is really allergic to dairy, so he appreciated the fact that it was vegan (bonus points)!

VEGAN RADISH GREENS SOUP

This soup makes like 5-6 cups with these proportions, so you'd have to double or triple them if you were going to make a lot for a family:

Ingredients:

- 2-3 tbsp olive oil or butter (vegan with oil)
- 1 medium-large potato
- 1 red onion
- 2 long celery stalks
- 1 medium carrot
- 4 cups daikon radish greens (or chard, kale, spinach or some other kind of yummy leafy green - if it's beet or radish greens, there'll be more flavor since both of those are kind of peppery. For other kinds of greens, you'll probably need to adjust the seasoning of the dish)
- 1-2 red or daikon radishes (optional - I didn't use them because I had used them all up in my kimchee)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 tbsp fresh sage
- 1 tsp fresh parsley
- 1 tsp fresh thyme
- Salt & pepper to taste
- 1 bay leaf (remember to take it out before you blend it up)
- 4 cups chicken or vegetable stock or broth, warmed up (I used 4 cups water with chicken bouillon because I was out of everything else)

On medium-high heat, heat up the onions, celery, carrots for a few minutes. Add the potatoes, radish greens, garlic, and spices.
Warm up the broth in a separate pot while the other stuff is cooking.
Add the broth, then boil everything. Turn to medium-low and simmer for 5-20 minutes.
Remove the bay leaf.
Put everything into a blender. DONE.

Ingredients not dumpstered, donated, or picked/grown myself: Olive oil/butter, bouillon cubes, bay leaf, garlic, salt/pepper