Pot Luck

Some of the best things in life are accidents. You take a chance, follow your nose, not sure how things are going to turn out — but that's the adventure. I'm a city girl, but I ended up part of the year on a farm in the south of Chile. We're talking sheep, dirt roads, ox carts, pickup trucks, and pigs at the local pool parties. Like Green Acres, in Spanish.

I'm a cook, too, and a long-time student of The Silver Palate, Chez Panisse and Gourmet cooking bibles. Give me a recipe, and I can cook just about anything — as long as I can forage for in- and out-of-season ingredients, no matter how rare or obscure, at my neighborhood Whole Foods, Safeway or Molly Stones.

Ah, that's the challenge. We do have supermercados here in Chile, in our small town at the bottom of the world, but what's available depends on the day of the week, the weather, the haul of the fishing boats and the luck of the farmer. You just never know.

The day before yesterday, for example, on a late-winter September day in the Southern Hemisphere, I was browsing the local produce aisle for inspiration, daydreaming about broccolini, bok choy, arichokes, and haricots verts. But what I actually found in the bins were four simple, seasonal vegetables: pumpkins, carrots, onions and leeks.

So I roasted them up, found some chicken stock, wine, cumin, rosemary and a bit of Parmesan in my kitchen, found an apple in the fruit bowl for a little sweetness, found my hand blender in the back of a drawer and stirred up a pot of Found Soup, just the thing to take the chill off a Chilean winter evening.

Found Soup

2 onions, sliced
4 medium chunks of fresh, seeded pumpkin
1 lb. carrots
1 apple, quartered
2 leeks
1 tbs. butter
1 tbs. olive oil
1 tsp. cumin
1 tbs. rosemary
2 cups chicken stock
1 quart water
Finely grated Parmesan cheese (or a Parmesan rind, if you have one)
1 cup wine, white or red (or both)
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. On a baking sheet, toss the onions, pumpkin, carrots and apple with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast until soft and browned. Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large soup pot. Saute the leeks until softened. Add the roasted vegetables, chicken stock and water. Puree with a hand blender. Add the Parmesan and bring to a simmer. Add the cumin, rosemary, wine, salt and pepper to taste. Add anything else that will make it delicious.