Sweet Potato Ginger Soup Plus Variations Recipe

How to make it

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• Chop up the onions, the cloves of garlic, and the sweet potatoes. Grate or mince the ginger.
• Heat olive oil in a stockpot; saute onions for several minutes, then add ginger, garlic, and a dash of white pepper (plus cayenne if you want).
• Stir-fry another minute, then add all the sweet potatoes, stirring to lightly brown a few in the oil.
• Cover with vegetable stock and put to boil. Lower to fast simmer and simmer until sweet potatoes are edibly softened. Add some apple cider and dry sherry, and let boil another minute.
• Season further with shoyu or other soy sauce to taste.
• Garnish with lots of fresh chopped flat-leaf parsley.
• VARIATIONS:
• Thai-inspired: Roast the oiled-up sweet potatoes and one quartered onion, with some pieces of lemongrass and thai basil. Saute the grated ginger with the other onion and the rest of the garlic (both chopped), some pieces of lemongrass, and some thai basil (plus a couple of red chilis if you like). Then add the roasted veggies and vegetable broth. Skip the cider and sherry. Heat to serve, fish out the lemongrass sticks and the quartered onion, and season with fish sauce. For a super-to-die-for version, stir in a can or two of coconut milk at the very end. You'll think you've died and gone to... well, back to Earth again, because the Thai are mostly Buddhist. But anyway. Oh, garnish this one with thai basil.
• Roasted sweet potato soup (leave out the ginger for this one): It's really rich if you roast up the veggies first. Toss them all in olive oil, salt and pepper in a roasting pan and roast on about 400 degrees until they are browned, stirring a few times. Then you don't boil it much; you just add the liquids (preferably already steaming hot) and boil a minute to cook the sherry out somewhat. When I do it this way, I usually only quarter the onions, and leave the garlic cloves just halved. Then I throw a whole bunch of fresh sage in with the roasting veggies, and puree up the big chunks when it's in the stockpot. When you do it that way, just garnish with some fresh sage leaves instead of parsley. It smells so much like a roasted dinner that you would swear there was turkey in it! You can finish it with a chunk of cold butter to make it even more decadent.