Our weather here in the Willamette Valley is keeping Eugene on its toes. My garden’s mini daffodils are finally in bloom, and I see more varieties pushing through the earth. This would mean its spring, right? And yet- we just had snow flurries on Wednesday!

These chilly spells have sent me looking for warm soupy comfort, and dumplings are marching hand in hand with our slurp of winter vegetables.

My recent experiments with finding a dumpling recipe led me to the realization that my recipe for flour tortillas works well in this capacity. The tortilla recipe is made up in a food processor, with extra liquid added, and then dropped by rounded tablespoon fulls into hot soup to cook. Further experimentation with frozen vegetables has brought to light how flexible this recipe is with the inclusion of processed vegetables. Whirling in frozen peas yields bright green dumplings that a extremely light and fluffy, a wonderful match to chicken soup, stew or chili.

This injection of bright springlike peas into our hearty winter soup’s dumplings have given us a perfect transition meal that reflects our weather being both winter and spring like.

I’m taking the time to enjoy winter’s opportunities for culinary comfort a little bit more. Spring will be here in full… soon.

Bright Green Pea Dumplings

In a food processor, combine:

• 1/2 cup ap flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt

pulse to combine the dry ingredients and drizzle in

• 1 Tbs fat (oil, lard or butter)

Add to the processor

• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• 1 green onion
• 3-4 fresh mint leaves

pulse the food processor till thoroughly combined and gradually add

• 1/2 cup warmed milk (soy, milk, or buttermilk) or broth

Bring your pot of soup to just below a simmer and drop in tablespoons of the dumpling batter. I find that a small ice cream scoop works very well for portioning dumplings.

This may take one to two batches of cooking, depending on how much soup you have to comfortably fit the dumplings in. I cook for two and therefore have a smaller pot of soup. So I break this up into two batches of dumplings- the second one cooked for leftovers.

Put a lid on the soup and turn the soup down to your lowest setting and cook for 13-15 minutes, till a tested dumpling reveals itself to be light and cooked in the center.

This recipe makes 18 – 20 tablespoon sized dumplings.

Enjoy!

More Dumpling Recipes from Fellow Food Bloggers

• Delicious Days: Pretzel dumplings with creamed chanterelle mushrooms
• Lex Culinaria: Fish Dumplings in Lemon Garlic Broth
• Bakingsheet: Blueberry Dumplings

Roasted vegatable soups are a nice hand in hand compliment to feelings of hibernation. They simultaneously make you want to leap out into the rain puddles and burrow in deeper under your quilt covers.

Thick, sweet, with a slight tang this soup is a wonderful dish. Basic and simple, non fussy. and quick…

Roasted Bell Pepper Soup

Preheat your oven to 425F.

Assemble in a glass baking dish:

• 4 red bell peppers
• 1/2 onion cut chunks

Roast the vegatables in the oven till the peppers are charred. Remove fromthe oven and cover to let the vegatables steam 10 minutes.

When cool to handle, peel just the outer plastic like skin off of the peppers. Remove the seeds and stem, placing the peppers, pepper juice and onions in a blender or food processor. Puree smooth adding broth to thin, about 2-3 cups. Season with 1 Tbs vinegar, and salt and pepper.

Pour the pepper mixture in a saucepan and add 1 ounce of shredded parmesan. Gently melt the cheese and serve with garlic rubbed bread toasts.

The next night I made this great inpromtu Butternut Squash soup that was very speedy, thanks to my pressure cooker. We devoured our soup with a loaf of Eugene City Bakery Emmenthaler with red Onion Sourdough.

Our beloved neighborhood bakery has brought out their schedule for specialty breads, many of which have been successfully tested by us for their soup worthyness. The Multigrain Sourdough wowed us this weekend when we brought it over to our friends’ house for soup. Thick, nutty, chewy, it was perfect when just slightly toasted and then dunked into our salmon soup. I have my eye on the Chocolate Cherry Sourdough, as this recipe has been calling me from Nancy Silverton’s bread book on my shelf.

Eugene City Bakery’s Specialty Bread Schedule

1607 East 19th St. 334-6906
Monday – Friday 6:30 am-6 pm, Saturday 7 am-5 pm, Sunday 7 am-4 pm

Monday

• Multigrain Sourdough
• Walnut Campagne

Tuesday

• Emmenthaler with Red Onion Sourdough
• Walnut Red Onion Campagne

Wednesday

• Sweet Potato Pecan Sourdough
• Walnut Campagne

Thursday

• Potato with Red Onion Sourdough
• Walnut Red Onion Campagne

Friday

• Sour French Rye
• Sour French Rye with Pecans and Cranberries
• Grafton Village Cheddar Sourdough
• Walnut Campagne

Saturday

• Pane Siciliano
• Sesame Semolina
• Walnut Campagne
• Multigraine Sourdough
• Chocolate Cherry Sourdough

Sunday

• Sweet Potato Pecan Sourdough
• Apricot Pecan Campagne

Butternut Squash Soup with Apple and Roasted Hazlenuts

Hazlenut Oil
This is a nutty oil to drizzle across the surface of the soup. While entirely optional, it lends a nice roasted flavor to the squash and apples.

In a shallow pan, roast 2 Tbs of hazlenuts in a 350F oven until the nuts are a toasted tan color and aromatic. Add the nuts to a blender and cover with olive oil and a pinch of salt. Leaving the skin on the nuts lends a darker color to the oil, and slight dark flecks. Blend thoroughly till the nuts are pulverized in the olive oil. The aim is to make hazlenut flavored oil, as opposed to a nut butter. More oil may need to be added to the blender to make this pourable. Decant the flavored oil to a new container.

Butternut Squash Soup with Apple

In a pressure cooker, saute 3/4 of an onion with a generous sprinkling of dried thyme and 1/4 tsp of salt.

When the onions have cooked through, add a splash of a white wine, one chopped apple, 11 oz of chopped butternut squash (the size of bag of frozen chopped butternut squash I had in my freezer), and enough chicken or vegetable stock to cover.

Lid the cooker, bringing to pressure and cook on low for 25 minutes.

When time has elapsed, (the contents are soft and break down easily), allow to cool slightly and then puree in a blender. Season with salt, pepper and your favorite flavored vinegar.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a drizzle of the hazlenut oil, and enjoy while curled up next to a rainy window.

Using a variation of my onion jam recipe, I’ve been enjoying the ease of homemade instant soup. The general idea is to make a highly flavored concentrate that is stired into stock on a per serving basis. These concentrates keep for a week in the refrigerator or can be frozen in ice cube trays for single serving portions.

Sweet Onion Soup Concentrate
To a sauce pan over low heat add:

• one Tbs olive oil
• smidge of butter
• 3 thinly sliced small red onions
• 3 tsp thyme
• 1 Tbs sugar
• a good glug of red wine, 1 cup
• and a good seasoning of salt and pepper

Slowly simmer this on low with a lid on for 30-45 minutes.
Pressure cooker variation: add ingredients to pressure cooker and cook for 40 minutes to break down the onions.

Then remove lid and evaporate liquid off by stirring frequently over medium- medium high heat. This step adds alot of color to the onion mixture and thickens it into a jam like paste. To finish off the cooking of the onion concentrate season with:

• 2 Tbs balsamic vinegar or sherry vinegar

Allow onion concentrate to cool completely and either store in the refrigerator for up to one week or freeze.

To Make Into One Serving of Soup:

Bring to a simmer:

• one cup of stock

Stir in:

• 1-2 Tbs of Onion Soup Concentrate

, and allow to simmer approximately 2 minutes. Possible garnishes: horseradish cream, lemon zest, sour cream, or fresh ricotta.

Cream of Jalapeño Soup

Saute over medium low heat:

• 1 Tbs butter
• 1/3 onion, finely chopped
• three jalapeños, seeded, and minced
• two cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1/2 tsp salt

for about 5 minutes until the ingredients are nicely softened.

Add to the saute:

• 2 cups of stock**
• 1/3 cup of crushed tomatoes
• 1/2 tsp of chipotle puree [one can of chipotle in adobo sauce whirled in the blender]
• 1/2 avocado, diced
• 2 cups of half and half or cream

and stir constantly while bringing the mixture to just under a simmer over low heat.

** According to McGee’s On Food and Cooking a creamy soup will separate if one tries to make it less fatty with stock and half and half, like I did. And what do you know, he’s right. It will taste good, but won’t look like a full fat soup. Using entirely heavy cream for your liquid will decrease you chances of separation significantly due to the close proximity of fat globules suspended in the cream.

Cook the soup down while stirring occasionally, allowing it to reduce by 1/3. How to tell if it’s reduced? Check out this tool!

Season to finish and add 1/3 cup of chopped cilantro.

Enjoy!