Rich Food for Broke Folks: Turnip and Bok Choy Soup

It's soup weather! Funny thing about soup; I'm never that excited about it until I taste it, and then I remember, each time, how wonderful it is. This soup, for me, is just the right balance between light and rich, plus it uses turnips, which are a vegetable like that awkward item on your desk or in your kitchen. You keep trying to find a place for them, but somehow they keep turning up (GEDDIT) in the middle of the work you're trying to do. This is a place for turnips. They absorb just enough of the broth that they become tender (you won't cook them till they're mushy) and they are a great amplifier of the broth's meatiness.

Look, I know broth is turning into the new juice. Just the other day I passed a broth bar in the East Village. Thanks, Paleo people. Ignore them. No matter how much swanky places try to charge you for it, remember: broth is cheap and easy to make. It's what you make out of the ends and scraps of things in your kitchen. Today you're getting a two-for-one post, since I'm telling you how to make the beef bone broth as well as the turnip and bok choy soup. Feel free to make the soup with whatever broth you have on hand! And if you don't have broth on hand, well, you know what to do.

Recipe is adapted from Not Eating Out in NY. 

BROTH

Ingredients

Beef soup bones - 1 large, or several small.

2-3 carrots

2-3 celery bits (I use the pale hearts of the bunch, as well as the leafy tops)

2-3 green tops of leeks

knob of ginger

2 tbsp cider vinegar

dash of soy sauce

Enough water to fill up the stock pot.

Directions

Boil all those things together. Bring it up to a boil, and then turn it down to a simmer, and leave it overnight, if you can. Strain the bones and vegetables out - don't feel bad about this, you will have boiled every last micron of flavor out of them - and divide and freeze the broth. I like to put it in ziploc bags holding 1-3 cups.

But save about 3 cups worth of the broth. Time to make:

SOUP

Ingredients

2 large turnips

3-4 large leaves bok choy

2-3 thin slices of ginger

salt and pepper

3 cups broth

additional water as needed

Directions

Clean and chop the turnips into largish chunks - the size of the chunk of meat you'd want to find in your soup. Heat up the broth and throw in the turnips and ginger slices. Cook for about 5 minutes on a low boil, or until the turnips start to get tender when poked with a fork. Chop the bok choy roughly and add it to the pot; add additional water to get the density of soup you like. Cook for another five minutes. The vegetables should all be tender, but not mushy.

Don't tell the rich people about this soup. We've got to keep some nice things for ourselves.