Low Fodmap Italian Gypsy Soup

While I am not sure if this soup has Italian origins, I certainly saw enough gypsies in Italy to prove this COULD be an Italian soup. I love this low fodmap Italian gypsy soup because I can use the oddest ingredients (think all the overflow veggies you bought at the farmer’s market), use only water as a base, and still end up with a garden scented,  richly flavored, vegetable soup.

I first read a similar recipe for gypsy soup in an old vegan cookbook (maybe Moosewood?) and of course I had to switch out the ingredients for what I had on hand, but one of the ingredients – a diced sweet potato – turned out to be a very special ingredient. I would never have thought to use it, for fear that sweet potato in a soup would clash with traditional Italian vegetable soup flavors.

I am happy to report that it does not. Instead it works and tastes like any other root vegetable and is indistinguishable from a turnip, a parsnip or even a carrot. I felt so happy and relieved that I would no longer be adding to the landfill with my wasted sweet potatoes. You laugh now, but when our world looks like that of Wall-E, my sweet potatoes will be blameless.

You can, of course, adapt the vegetables to whatever you have on hand. If you don’t want your soup to be vegan (mine is because I am taking it to my daughter’s B Day party and some of her guests are vegans), you may use chicken stock, add cooked chicken or add whatever you want to add. Just keep the water proportions the same so that the intensity of the vegetable flavors isn’t lost.

Ingredients:

1 can of diced tomatoes

2 tbsp mild olive oil, first infused with sliced garlic according to directions below.

1 /2 to 1 cup light green scallion or green onion stems, diced up

3 peeled garlic cloves, sauteed in 1 tbsp olive oil to infuse it with garlic flavor

2 cups diced sweet potato

3 medium size, mixed-color carrots, washed, scraped, cut into small dice

2 medium parsnips, washed, scraped, diced

1 tsp salt

1 dash each of dried basil and thyme or herb de Provence

2 dashes cayenne pepper (optional)

1 tsp mild paprika

2 tbsp finely shredded fresh basil

1 stalk of celery from the heart or center including the leaves, finely diced

1 can of cannelini beans, liquid included or chickpeas

3 cups water mixed with 1 low fodmap vegetable bouillon or 3 cups vegetable stock (I use Fody Food’s powdered vegetable bouillon)

Directions:

Get all your ingredients ready before making the soup. Dice the sweet potato,  the scraped and diced up carrots and parsnips, the diced tomatoes, the scallion stems, the pepper, the celery and whatever else is in the ingredient list, and set them aside.

Infuse the olive oil with the slices of garlic by sautéing them in the hot oil. Set aside until needed.

Open the can of cannellini beans or chickpeas and have it ready to add to the soup when needed.

Roll up a handful of basil leaves like a cigar. Cut across the “cigar” to finely shred the basil and set that aside.

Shake your spices including salt and pepper into a small bowl to add to the soup when needed.

Take out a heavy Dutch oven or similar pot and place on medium high heat. Place the sliced garlic into the bottom of the dutch oven. Add 1 or two tbsp olive oil and heat to shimmering. Stir the garlic around until the oil smells garlicky and seems infused with flavor. (Garlic can become light gold, but NOT dark brown or it will taste burned.) Remove the garlic slices using a slotted spoon.

Turn heat to medium and  throw in the onion stems, celery, diced carrots, diced parsnips and diced sweet potato, and sauté over medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring carefully so the vegetables become coated with oil, but don’t get scorched. Add in all the spices including salt and pepper, and stir with a spoon so that all the veggies are coated with all the spices.

Add diced tomatoes and their juice, and simmer 5 minutes more, continuing to stir. Then add in the bouillon-infused three cups of water or three cups of vegetable stock. Add in the beans or chickpeas with their liquid. Bring soup to a boil, cover, then turn down to a low simmer and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until the veggies are soft but not mushy. Test the veggies after 15 minutes.

Remove the pot from the heat. You can serve the soup with all the veggies in their diced up condition or you can puree the soup into a creamy smooth piree.

To puree the soup, ladle a few ladles heavy with vegetables and some liquid into a blender about 1/3rd of the way up. Clap on the blender top and hold it down as you blend the veggies into a creamy puree. Do the rest of the veggies and a few ladles of soup until all the veggies are a puree.

Stir all of the puree into the remaining liquid left in the pot. Taste for seasoning. Serve this lovely, creamy carrot, sweet potato soup with parmesan croutons or broken up crackers. Be sure to give the soup a generous sprinkle of parmigiana reggiano cheese.

This makes two quarts of soup. Serve some now and freeze the rest for another day. Hope it brings out the gypsy in you. Yield: 3 – 4 servings

Toppings: I have used Greek yogurt instead of cream, or toasted croutons sautéed in olive oil and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. I always sprinkle this soup with lots of parmesan cheese and keep some in a bowl at the table so every bite will have some. I am a bit obsessed with it.