Four Hearty Vegetable Soups

Image Gallery Leona Farquhar, proprietress of  vegetarian restaurant and health food store The Merry Miller. MARTIN FOX

In Three Delicious, Nourishing, Meatless Sandwiches (July/August 1977), we introduced you to Leona Farquhar, proprietress of The Merry Miller — a vegetarian restaurant and health food store here in Hendersonville — and natural foods chef extraordinaire.

Well, after the initial arm-twisting that went on before we were allowed to feature some of Leona's sandwiches — and once Ms. Farquhar found she wouldn't be besieged by so many new customers (as a result of the publicity) that she'd have to close up shop (after all, summer tourists may double Hendersonville's population, but this is still a small town) — we had an easier time of it when we set out to persuade Leona to share some of her soup recipes.

Leona Farquhar makes one soup per day, from scratch and, while she varies her ingredients so that a given pottage is never quite the same from one making to the next, the results are always predictably delicious.

Without further ado, then, here are the recipes for four of The Merry Miller's good soups.

Black Beans Supreme

Pick over and wash 1 pound of black (or turtle) beans, soak them overnight, and then cook the legumes about 1 1/2 hours (until they're soft but not mushy). Add 1 medium-sized carrot, cut into thin strips 1 inch long; 2 finely chopped medium-sized onions; 2 well-chopped stalks of celery; 2 minced cloves of garlic; about 1 1/2 cups of tomato puree; 1 teaspoon of sweet basil and about 1 tablespoon of vegetable salt (Vegesal is one available brand). Allow the soup to simmer until the vegetables lose most of their crunch. If the beans haven't broken up and the soup seems thin, add 1 tablespoon of arrowroot starch — stirred into a little water — to thicken it. Serve with a slice or two of fresh lime (lemon will do in a pinch).

Millet-Mushroom Soup

Pour 1 cup of hulled millet into 2 quarts of boiling water and let simmer about 20 minutes. Then chop and add 1 green pepper, 1 medium-sized onion and 1 stalk of celery, plus a couple of minced garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon of sweet basil, 1 tablespoon of vegetable salt, 6 fresh tomatoes (peeled and cut up), and about 1 1/2 cups of tomato puree.