To follow up on Molly's post - Broccoli cheese soup

Hi fam, 

I haven't made cauliflower soup, though I should try.  But Joy of Cooking uses the same recipe for Cream of Cauliflower as they do for Cream of Broccoli, so I always associate the two.  And tonight I made broccoli soup and thought I'd post a recent innovation that has made a nice change in our basic soup.

I don't have a super set recipe.  Here's the general idea of what I do:

- Cut a carrot and an onion and saute in some oil or butter.

- If you've got an open bottle of cheap white wine, add 1/4-1/2 cup.  The drink a glass of it.

- Roughly chop 1-2 heads of broccoli and add to pot.

- Add water to just cover the broccoli, with the realization that some of the broccoli will float.

- Add chicken base/boullion to make about 1/2 - 3/4 strength broth relative to how much water you added (ie, most chicken base says to add 1 t or 1 square/cup of water.  So, add 1/2 - 3/4 t / cup of water.

- Boil for a while until the broccoli is really tender.

- Here's my new addition:  Add some chopped kale.  It gives a GREAT flavor.  Boil until the kale is tender.

- Turn the heat way down or off.  Puree the soup

- Grate 1-2 cups of sharp cheddar cheese.  Add gradually, sprinkling some on top and stirring until melted before adding more (otherwise, you'll get a big clump of cheese and/or the cheese will separate giving you rubbery curds. - ick)

- Enjoy!

*I always used to serve this soup with fresh bread, but in an effort to up the protein content of our meal, I started serving it with popovers instead.  I've been following Kate's recipe that involves adding diced, sauteed carrots and onions to the popovers.  I found tonight that I could shorten the prep time of the whole meal by doing carrots and onions for the soup and popovers together in the food processor and then sauteing them together too.  I just separated some out for the popovers before adding the broccoli.  Since the food processor was already out, I employed the rule of not dirtying dishes unnecessarily, and just used that to chop the broccoli too.  This made for a finer chop of the broccoli than I normally used which also decreased the cooking time.