Turnip and Turnip Greens Soup

I love when my CSA basket tells me what to have for dinner. As I was driving home from pick up in the rain, I thought of all the soups I could make. Potato soup sounded good, but I didn’t have any potatoes. I wondered if I had any recipes for turnip soup in my cookbook collection? Luckily I found one in the first book I picked up.

You’ll notice from the photo that I used white or “baby” turnips, which are available in the spring and fall (the storage, winter variety are a bit harder and require peeling. These did not.) I also discovered that I didn’t have quite enough turnips themselves. Last week when I received a bunch of these turnips I used half of them in the mixed roasted roots. No matter, I decided to add a few radishes to make up for them. That’s right, I’ve decided that radishes are just pink turnips. I seem to be able to use them up faster that way 😉

Turnip and Turnip Greens Soup

Source:  The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution. (my new favorite cookbook)

Ingredients:

• 2 bunches young turnips with greens (washed; turnips sliced thin, roots trimmed,  peel if needed, remove stems from greens and cut the greens into 1/2-inch strips or so.)
• 3 Tbsp butter or olive oil (I used a butter I just discovered at a local organic market; it was delish!)
• 1 onion (sliced thin; since I had just picked up a bunch of leeks at my CSA pickup I substituted 3 small leeks, sliced)
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 thyme sprigs (I was able to go out in the rain and pick a couple out of my yard, but you could probably substitute a dash of dried thyme if you don’t have fresh on hand)
• salt
• 6 C chicken broth (can also use water. I had a box of organic stock from Costco that was 4 C so I just used that plus 2 C of water. Alice Waters suggests adding a couple of Tbsp of oil or butter at the end of cooking for richness if using all water.)