Cream of rice soup

The soup of a convalescent seems similar to baby food: easy to digest, pureed, striped of spices, very simple. Still, the thought of baby food is not that appealing. This is a quite grown up soup I would even eat in other circumstances.

A basic soup of rice, carrots and some winter squash, pureed once the ingredients are soft and then flavored with sage and fresh mint and a dash of garlic and Parmesan (both optional). The herbs are thrown in whole and removed once they flavor the soup. Wonderful fall soup!

Cream of Rice soup (2 portions)

• 1 quart chicken stock (best home made)
• 1 carrot, peeled and diced
• 10 oz winter squash (such as butternut, delicata or sunshine) (peeled, deseeded and diced)
• 1/3 cup quick cooking white rice
• 1/2 garlic clove, peeled, grated
• 1.5 teaspoon vegetable bouillon
• 2-3 whole sage leaves
• spring of fresh mint
• some grated parmesan cheese

Heat the chicken stock, and simmer the diced carrot, squash and rice for about 15 min on med-low in a cast iron pot until rice is cooked. Cool the soup.

 Puree the soup in a blender (or use immersion blender if you don’t have time to cool the soup first). Pour back into pot and reheat. Add the herbs whole (they will be removed later once they flavored the soup!), bouillon, and garlic, and reheated for about 4-5 min. Remove the herbs from the soup. Serve soup with some grated parmesan cheese.

 Good add-on: shredded boiled chicken.