NAVSA and Chunky Winter Soup

I had the pleasure of visiting New Haven, CT and Yale University for the North American Victorian Studies (NAVSA) conference last week.
While I was there, my housemate, who occasionally fancies she's my husband, panicked and demanded I come home to make dinner. Rather smugly, I told her she'd find chunky winter vegetable soup in the freezer. It's amazing with toasted pumpernickel bread. She apparently found it, because there's none left!

This recipe comes from the rebar: modern food cookbook associated with the fantastic restaurant in Victoria, B.C. I picked up this goodie last year, October 2007, in Victoria when I was attending (what else?) the annual NAVSA conference.

I started with some golden nugget squash from Trapold Farms in Portland, OR. I chopped up four of these gorgeous creatures, and bagged half of it in 2-cup quantities to freeze for future use.

The soup starts out with a basic saute of olive oil, 1 chopped leek, 1 yellow onion, a few bay leaves, some red chile flakes, 1T salt, 8 minced garlic cloves, and some dried sage and thyme.



Then I stirred in the salt and the squash, along with 1 cubed rutabaga, some kale and a couple carrots. I added 8 cups of vegetable stock and brought this to a boil, and then let it simmer for 10 minutes. When the vegetables were tender, I added 1 can of white beans, 4 heaping T of nutritional yeast, 1 12-oz. bottle of dark beer, a lot of freshly ground pepper, and 4T of apple cider vinegar. Next time I make this, I won't add quite so much apple cider vinegar. This simmered a long while, and this is how it turned out:



Yep.