Fixin' What the Kohlrabi Did

In the final month of the harvest this year, my CSA was doling out large quantities of leeks, carrots, parsnips and turnips. I was pretty happy about that though since I'd saute up the leeks in a little olive oil then add the root vegetables roughly chopped and enough water to cover - simmer until everything was tender and then puree it all in my blender. It was so delicious I was making it in copious amounts and eating it all - a little every day.

Then one fine autumn day, I found two Kholrabi in with the rest of my veggies from the Farm and I blithely peeled and chopped them and threw them in the soup. What harm could it do, right?! Ugh! I'll never make that mistake again. The soup turned out very bitter and medicinal tasting and nobody wanted to eat it - including me. Worst of all I had made a huge batch and there must have been a gallon of it in my fridge.

I thought about it for a few days. Should I just eat it as it was? Like some kind of soup penance so I'd learn my kohlrabi lesson? Or was there some way to fix the soup to make it edible? delicious? palatable? Hmmm. I thought and thought.

Here's what I ended up doing:

The fix:
1 cup chopped yellow onions
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Macoun apples peeled and chopped
1 heaping teaspoon sweet curry (Penzey's or other good quality)
1 peeled and roughly cubed butternut squash

I sauteed the onions until transulcent, added the curry and stirred for a few minutes. Added the apple and the squash and stirred to coat everything with curry and oil. Add water to cover and simmered until very tender. Then pureed in my blender.

Now I had one bitter orange soup and one sweet and richly spicy orange soup. I combined the two and voila! The sweetness of the butternut squash and the apple with the complexity of the curry completely masked the bitterness of the kohrabi.

Of course, now I had two gallons of soup, but it was absolutely delicious. In the end two gallons of yummy soup is a lot easier to eat than one gallon of yucky soup. Plus it freezes really well (I froze half).