What meat-eater hasn’t had a revelation along the lines of: “If all vegetarian food were this good, I’d give up meat today”? I’ve had a few over the years, the most recent being a vegetable stock I discovered when looking for a good mushroom soup recipe.
In a large roasting pan, put three onions (unpeeled, quartered), a few carrots (washed put not peeled, split lengthwise), a handful of celery ribs (broken in half) and their leaves, and two unpeeled heads of garlic, sliced sidewise to expose all the cloves. Toss all these goodies to coat with three tablespoons of vegetable oil and 1/4 cup of Tamari soy sauce, and roast for one hour at 350F. The smell of roasting onions and garlic will drive you mad with desire, ditto anyone you live with. Turn the veggies into stock: 2-3 quarts of water, 1/4 cup whole peppercorns, a couple of bay leaves, salt to taste. Don’t forget to deglaze the roasting pan with some of the water and get all the stuck bits. Bring to a boil, back down to a simmer for 30 minutes, cool, strain, voila. The soup itself was anticlimactic after the amazing stock.