Creamy Spinach Soup #KitchenMatrixCookingProject

Today is our first February post in our year-long project that I'm calling the Kitchen Matrix Project, after Mark Bittman's Kitchen Matrix cookbook. You can read about it: here. I'm very excited about the dishes and the bloggers who are joining me. This month, Wendy at A Day in the Life in the Farm picked the recipes. I can't wait to follow along with her choices.

This week, She picked 'Vegetable Soup + 12 Ways' for the group which means we could make any of the creamy soups, brothy soups, earthy soups, or hearty soups he shared...along with any variations or adaptations that we needed or wanted. I opted to make a variation of his creamy spinach soup this week, but can't wait to try the others.

The Other Soups

An InLinkz Link-up

Creamy Spinach Soup

very slightly adapted from Mark Bittman's recipe

I decided that I wanted more tang, so I added preserved lemon peels and freshly squeezed lemon juice into my soup and garnished with fresh lemon slices. This soup is so fresh. It tastes like Spring in a bowl. I'll definitely be serving it again soon.

Ingredients makes 6 servings

• 2 shallots, peeled and thickly sliced
• 1 small onion, peeled and quartered
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 5 C vegetable stock (you can use water if you wish)
• 1 T preserved lemon rind (one of my recipes here)
• juice from 1 organic lemon
• 20 ounces of baby spinach
• 1/2 C fresh parsley
• 1 C Greek-style yogurt + more for garnish
• freshly ground salt
• freshly ground pepper
• thin slices of lemon to garnish
• Also needed: blender or food processor

Procedure

Place shallots, onion, and garlic in a large pot. Pour in vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the onions and shallots are softened, approximately 10 minutes. Add in the lemon rind, spinach, and parsley. 

Cook until the spinach is tender and wilted, approximately 3 minutes. In batches, blend the spinach-broth mixture with yogurt and return everything to the pot. Whisk in the lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To serve, ladle soup into individual serving bowls. Add another small dollop of yogurt and float a lemon slice on top. Serve immediately.