Sibling Cutlery

Zucchini is a really wonderful vegetable. Well, I suppose it’s actually a fruit, but it’s savory, so we’ll call it a vegetable to avoid the gut wrenching heartache of a poor kid with taxonomically rigid parents opening his lunch box to find a raw zucchini instead of something normal like an apple. Anyway, the other day I found myself with a large quantity of good zucchini in imminent danger of becoming a large quantity of bad zucchini.  The obvious solution was to whip up a couple of zucchini based recipes. Sort of like a zucchini battle on Iron Chef, but without the puréed shark heads or oak-aged eel farts (or that creepy bell-pepper munching Japanese host dude).

So, for the first recipe I asked myself, “how can I prepare a vegetable in a manner guaranteed to be delicious?”. No, not by deep frying, but that’s a good guess. I decided to douse it in cheese and cream, and this rich and satisfying soup is the result. It’s not really soup weather here in Phoenix, but I figure I can sympathize with all of you lost souls up in the Frozen North for a few minutes. Then go sit on my patio on a perfect 85° afternoon.

Ingredients.

Melt the butter in a medium pot and fry the onions until cooked through and in focus.

Stir in flour, hopefully ending up with more roux and less goo than pictured (add the flour slowly while whisking).

Whisk in milk, cream, chicken broth, and spices.

Shred your zucchini…

… and stir into the soup. Cover and simmer until zucchini is tender.

Stir in cheese until melted.

Serve with a salad.

As with just about any soup that consists mainly of cream+cheese+vegetable, this is awesome. I suppose you could blend the whole mixture, but I like leaving the shredded zucchini as-is for texture. Either way, it’s real-deal comfort food, and even better as leftovers. There is no good reason not to make this. So, you know, go make it.

Creamy Cheesy Zucchini Soup (inspired by Taste of Home)

Ingredients:

1. 1/4 cup chopped onion
2. 3 Tbs. butter
3. 2 Tbs. all-purpose flour
4. 1 cup milk
5. 1 cup heavy cream
6. 1 cup chicken broth
7. 1/2 tsp. salt
8. 1/2 tsp. pepper
9. 1/2-1 tsp. powdered chili pepper (optional)
10. 3 cups shredded zucchini
11. 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Melt butter in medium pot and fry onions until tender. Whisk in flour slowly until well mixed. Add milk, cream, and chicken broth, then salt, pepper, and chili pepper. Bring to a boil and cook about 2 minutes, until it begins to thicken. Add shredded zucchini. Cover and simmer until zucchini is tender (~ 10 minutes). Stir in cheese until melted.

About 4 servings