Cream of zucchini soup by moi

Creamy zucchini soup. Finally using some of my unemployment time creatively. Well not creatively as such. It is a borrowed recipe. But I did all the chopping, stirring, blending and pouring all on my lonesome.

The original recipe came from Taste.com.au and is really easy. Even for the kitchenly challenged like myself. The recipe below is my version.

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
  
• 1 onion, coarsely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 4 large zucchini, chopped
• 2 large potatoes, peeled, chopped
• 1L chicken stock
• 3/4 cup cream
• salt and cracked black pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large pot. The secret is to use more than a tablespoon of oil. ;-)
Add the onion, garlic, zucchini and potatoes and cook for 5 minutes making sure you don't brown the vegies because that would be burning. Burning I understand to be the antithesis to cooking.

Add the litre of chicken stock and a cup of water. You could probably use less. I added about one litre of fluid all up. I had about 300ml of fresh (well bought frozen and thawed) chicken stock. I made another 200 or 300 mls of stock out of a chicken stock cube and water and then added a cup of water. Bring this sloppy mess to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes or until the potatoes get soft. I ended up simmering the mixture for about 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and let it cool for 5 minutes. I had to go pick up Michelle from work so I let it cool for about 1 and half hours.

Blend until smooth. According to the recipe they use a hand held blender. We don't have one so I just used the food processor. Return to the heat. Return it to the pot first if you've used a food processor. Add 3/4 cup of cream and warm through stirring in the cream. Salt and pepper to taste. In our case this means lots of salt and pepper. Serve with a slice of bread and butter (on the side, not in the bowl you'll just get soggy bread). Add more cream to the bowl to make it look pretty for serving and to add an extra couple of calories for less than rotund out there.

Oh, and the soup is scrumilicious too.