Back when I was doing veggie duty at the cafe in Brooklyn, one of my favorite tasks was making the day’s soup. If I got into the cafe early enough, I’d have an hour or two to myself to chop the aromatics and get everything in the pot and simmering away nicely before people starting trickling in, on their way to the F train, for a shot or two of the fair-trade coffee we peddled.

Luckily, two years of making vegetarian food for other people for six to eight hours a day didn’t squash my love for cooking, and making soup is still one of my improvisational cooking favorites. (And I’m pretty good at it, I think. Dan agrees.)

There was a bit of a chill in the air on Friday night here in the Berkshires, and I found myself craving a soul- and body-warming soup, thick with vegetables. When we woke up Saturday morning to a brisk high-fifties temperature, I knew exactly what I needed: fresh, local vegetables for simmering.

As the afternoon wore on, the temperature rose, but I stuck to the soup plan anyway, knowing that by dinner time, the sun would be setting and the temperature would happily dip into the seventies, or lower.

I made the soup several hours before dinner, so that it could sit, the flavors mingling and deepening while we finished our various weekend chores (Dan: paining the dining room a cool blue; me: reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, finally — some chore, right?).

Since I had no premade local vegetable stock, the key to flavor was letting those alliums cook slowly in olive oil over low heat for a good twenty-five minutes. Once the onions, leeks, and (non-local) garlic had softened and sweated into a translucent mash, I added a tablespoon or two of flour, stirred, then poured in some local whole milk. A simple roux base is the best way to start any kind of thick, creamy soup, and that’s just the sort of soup I was craving. Next, I tossed in a bunch of diced new potatoes and a few cups of water. Once this had simmered for half-hour or so, I tossed in the rest of the vegetables and cooked them for another half hour. Finally, I whipped out the trusty immersion blender, and gave it a couple of spins. I was going for a kind of country-style texture. Not too smooth, not too chunky.

It was delicious.

What went in:

• Leeks
• White onion
• Parsley
• Chard
• Zucchini
• New potatoes
• Corn

On the side we had an herbed challa loaf from the co-op (baked on-site), St. Paulin cheese from Berle Farm, and a salad of baby greens, spicy sprouts, and yellow cherry tomatoes.

All the vegetables are from Peace Valley Farm and other vendors at the Williamstown Farmers’ Market [5 mi]. The sprouts are from the Gill Greenery [Gill, MA - 45 mi].

Non-local:

• EVOO
• Salt, pepper
• Whole wheat flour
• Bragg’s
• Nutritional yeast