"Marry Me" style-recipes have been floating around blogs and social media for a bit now. I'm not sure that I love the premise (this recipe is so good that the person eating it will immediately want to marry the chef?!?), but as far as I can tell they have a common theme of creamy base, protein, and oftentimes sun-dried tomatoes?
I decided I'd try out the trend with this Marry Me Tuscan Vegetable Soup . A few notes:
- The recipe didn't specify smoked or sweet paprika, and I only had smoked on hand so I used that. That said, my suspicion was that sweet was the preferred choice, so I only used half (still 1 Tbl.!) of [smoked] paprika. It was plenty smoky/flavorful! I think that I'd use sweet if I had a re-do. Not bad smokey, but sweet paprika likely would 'go' with the soup better.
- I made and used cashew cream (linked from recipe) which was harder to get creamy than I expected (though ultimately it worked with a bit more water in my Vitamix). I made the savory vs. sweet cashew cream (1 garlic clove instead of the maple syrup).
- I used a full 16 oz. package of shelf-stable but not dried gnocchi.
- I did add kale at the end.
This is a very hearty soup between the gnocchi, chick peas, and cashews in the creamy broth – plus the veggies. It is also a different flavor combination than I'm used to (I rarely cook with leeks or sun-dried tomatoes these days). There's a lot going on with it! I *do* really like the use of cashew cream in the soup broth, so I may seek out other recipes that use this technique in the future.
Today is a snowy blustery day in Denver so this soup was a great fit. I'm not sure that I love it (let alone prepared to drop everything and marry whoever serves this to me...) but I'm glad that I tried it and expect that I'll appreciate eating off it for leftovers this week.
