Edamame Soup

As much as my roommates and I are cornbread people, we are perhaps equally soup people. Out of the five days we cooked this week, no less than three of us made soup. It is May. Yes, it's been cooling down on the weekends (enough that weather.com issued a SEVERE WEATHER ALERT for my area; I thought we were going to have freak tornadoes or something, but it turns out the temperature's just going to be in the fifties/sixties during the day and maybe in the low-ish forties at night; so I guess we'd all better hole up in our basements and prepare for the apocalypse, jeez). But not necessarily during the week, where it's been in the high seventies most of the time, if not higher. In a normal, non-soup-fanatical household, we probably wouldn't be eating soup three times in one mid-May week. But we are determined to eat as much soup as we can before the mere thought of doing so in the summer heat burns us up from the inside out.

We've even been scarfing down the leftovers. Maybe we have issues, but I'm okay with that, as long as we get to keep eating soup.

This edamame soup was my contribution this week. Somewhere between potato leek soup and cream of zucchini soup, it was surprisingly scrumptious, and very high in protein – because, if you didn't know, edamame beans are soybeans! I topped my soup with a slurry of extra virgin olive oil and sesame oil, and a pinch of caramelized onions.





EDAMAME SOUP
from 101 Cookbooks

Ingredients

1 teaspoon olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 potato, peeled and cut into small cubes
1 1/2 lb frozen edamame beans, defrosted*
1 quart vegetable broth**
2 tablespoons creme fraiche***
salt and freshly ground pepper

for garnish:
about 1/4 cup olive oil to 1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
olive oil and/or butter, for caramelizing onion
about 1/2 an onion


Directions

In a pan, saute the onion and potato in the oil over medium heat, stirring frequently. Cover and allow it to soften for about 4 minutes, until they have both softened. Stir to prevent the mixture from sticking and burning. Add the beans and the vegetable stock. Put the lid on and simmer on a medium heat for 15-20 minutes until the beans are tender. Puree in a food processor or with a hand blender. Stir in the creme fraiche, reheat gently without boiling and serve.

Mix the oils together in a small bowl, and drizzle over soup with a spoon.

For caramelizing the onion, slice onion thinly. Coat bottom of pan with olive oil or melted butter over medium-high heat. Spread onions out over pan, and stir every few minutes or so to prevent them from burning for about twenty minutes. (More instructions off-site here, if you need them.)

Serves 4.


* When reading the original recipe, I wasn't sure if that weight was with the shells, or without. With shells, I had enough, but without, I had about half the right amount (we bought a package of edamame from Costco). I went ahead with what I had, and it still tasted fine.

** You can of course use chicken broth instead, should you wish.

*** We had some leftover from the broccoli pesto salad, but I'm sure you could use sour cream instead, if you have it on hand or don't want to pay extra for the creme fraiche.