Market Finds and French Cauliflower Soup

Since we moved house, we've started buying our fruit and veges from the CERES market. I've really been enjoying it. It's a wonderful and novel experience to shop under blue (or grey) skies instead of fluorescents, the smell of manure from the animals in the next paddock wafting to your nostrils. The food tastes much better than supermarket produce – in part because it hasn't been sitting in cold storage for months, waiting until their nutrients reach the ideal state of degredation.

Part of what I love about market shopping, though, is finding food that you don't find in supermarkets. Here's what we found last week:

Oranges

See that on the right, with the slightest hint of a blush? That's a ruby grapefruit. See those segments on the left? See the half fruit sitting to the back? That's all an orange. You can't tell from the half (curse perspective), but the segments give it away: it's the same size as the grapefruit. Enormous, well-fertilized oranges. Mmm. We bought one each and they were some of the sweetest oranges I've had in some time.


Potatoes



I'm used to having two choices for potatoes at the supermarket: white or brown. A few weeks ago I was shopping at the Queen Victoria Market's organic section, and found a selection of about eight or nine different varieties, with a sign posted to let you know what the different varieties were good for (I think we got Kipfler, in the end).

These are a type of potato I'd never seen before. The market labelled them as "King Edward, also known as Pink-Eye", but the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries and Water notes King Edward and Pink-Eye potatoes as two different cultivars. It's probably a Pink-Eye, based on the description given by DPIW.

Steph didn't appreciate their little dark pink eyes. She found them creepy. I read Neil Gaiman, myself, and write stories featuring fortune-telling dead men. I enjoy creepy.

Romanesco


This vegetable lurking in a rather sinister fashion in the shadows is called a romanesco cauliflower – or broccoli, or cabbage, depending who you speak to and what language you're speaking in. It's a brassica, like cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli, and I can confidently state that it tastes similar to cauliflower when cooked. I first heard of it on the SurviveLA blog on a post about purple cauliflower (!) and have wanted to try it since. I was thrilled to find it sitting nonchalantly on a barrow at the market last weekend.

I find Romanesco so fascinating because its structure is fractal – a small part reflects the whole:

Steph found this creepy, too. She said it looked like an alien creature that was going to come and eat us in our sleep. I have no explanation for her strange fear of vegetables.


I have noticed that I tend to post an inordinate amount of soup recipes, and as we're moving into winter, that is, frankly, unlikely to change. Perhaps I should write a recipe book: 365 Days of Vegan Soup.

This one is a French-influenced creamy soup with cauliflower and romanesco. There is, perhaps against type, no onions in it, as my girlfriend had just made an onion tart the previous day. The herbs were meant to be thyme, rosemary and basil, as I had just learnt from Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila Latourrette that these are the Provençal herbs. My education was furthered by discovering we had no thyme nor basil in our pantry. This has since been remedied. If you wish for authenticity, you can use the Provençal herbs. I promise it tastes good both ways.

French Cauliflower Soup


1 cauliflower head, chopped
1/2 romanesco head, chopped
2 potatoes, cubed
7–8 garlic cloves, chopped finely
2 L vege "chicken" stock
2 tsp pepper
generous pinch each dried marjoram, sage, rosemary and basil
2 tB mustard
1 1/2 cups oat milk (or other non-dairy milk)

Combine the vegetables, garlic, stock and herbs in a large pot, and simmer until vegetables are tender (about 10–20 minutes – I must confess I'm not much of a one for watching the clock). Stir through the mustard, puree, and stir in the oat milk.

Serve with a little more black pepper sprinkled on top.

Serves 6.