The Last Of The Gnudi

Because our weather had turned more toward winter than spring, bringing us several days of unusual rain for this time of year, I decided to make a hearty soup to bathe the last of the gnudi. It was easy enough to do as I had a fridge full of veggies and the leftover sauce from this gnudi iteration, so in the morning I went to work, simmered the result for a few hours, turned it off and let it rest, then reheated it for dinner the same day.

I sautéed chopped onion, green garlic, fennel and celery in a tablespoon or so of olive oil, then added the leftover sauce and a big box of organic chicken broth, plus a healthy handful of oregano and thyme from the garden. A little later on, I decided a dollop of red wine couldn't hurt, so that went in as well. The sauce already had some spicy Italian sausage, mushrooms and zucchini, enough to make the soup hearty.

When all that simmering had been accomplished, I added a handful of fresh peas, boiled another pot of salted water for the gnudi and, when they were done, dropped them into the bowls of soup. Somewhere along the line, the soup got plenty of salt - no need to add any - but we did grind some fresh pepper and grate a light sprinkle of ParmReg into our bowls, just to add to the deep funkiness.

The rain was running down the windowpanes and the wind was tossing the treetops around outside as we sat down in a pool of yellow light in the warm house to steaming bowls of gnudi soup.

Like An Eight-Day Clock

One of the best things about a big ol' pot of soup is that you cook once, then rest on your laurels. You might adjust the seasoning or tweak it a bit for variety, but the basic work is done and you can get on to whatever else you need to do.

After that first meal, I leave the covered pot on the stove and just reheat the whole thing when I'm ready for the next serving - I don't even refrigerate it.*

I figure that as long as I bring it to a boil and keep it there for 10-15 minutes, any nasties lurking in the pot will be destroyed. I haven't poisoned anyone yet and it makes the soup taste soooo good when it has had all that extra time to mingle. Like a good cocktail party, everyone has a chance to meet everyone else and they have all made connections.

This time, I added some kale leaflets to this soup that I made a while back. I had never used this curly kale before; when I tasted it raw, it was very green and a little bitter. I'm pretty sure this is the stuff our mother forced us to eat when we were kids. But, immerse those frills in a pot of soup for 10 minutes of serious simmering and it turns into a whole different character. It softens and sweetens while retaining the ticklish texture that makes it so interesting.

The best thing about a big ol' pot of soup is that you can keep it going like an eight-day clock.

*Professional fool in a closed kitchen - do not attempt this at home.

Hot Ticket

Rather than another whine about our slow-to-arrive spring (although I'd have been fully justified to do so), I decided to make the most of it by making soup. I had a whole fridge full of ingredients just begging to be turned into a heavenly soup, so I granted their wish.

When building soup, it's always a plus to start with great broth. This time, mine was a gmish of the goozle left over from this meal, plus some broth made from the bones of a smoked turkey breast that I grilled on one of those precious few warmer days combined with a soupçon of lamb stock simmered from the skeleton of a gorgeous quintet of chops that we devoured last week. (Don't be afraid to mix your bones when making stock - it leads to all kinds of interesting combinations). With all those barnyard denizens taking part in this soup, it was bound to be stellar.

To flesh out a good soup, you also need lots of veggies that lend their flavors, textures and aromas, but it hardly matters which ones you use. I was aiming for an Italian sort of combo, so I started with garlic, five cloves of it, coarsely chopped and sizzled in some olive oil before adding chopped onion, fennel, celery and spring onions (red ones).

Once they had softened, I added the broth, sliced in two pre-cooked spicy Italian sausages and picked the carcass of a little chicken we had earlier in the week to add shreds of that to the pot, as well as some fresh thyme and oregano from the pot on my front steps. Oh, and a can of diced tomatoes.

All that simmered together for the better part of an afternoon. When I was ready to serve, I put a handful of frozen peas into the pot to thaw and lightly cook just in the heat of the broth. I had thought to add some pasta to the soup for extra body but I always regret it when the pasta gets too soft in subsequent servings. Instead I grilled slices of herb slab bread and rubbed them with cut garlic cloves, balancing them on the edge of the soup bowl for dunking.

The view outside the windows was socked in with fog right down to the water and a misting rain was wetting the deck but indoors the soup was warmly brown and filled with a welcome heat, both from the stove and from the spicy sausage. It was a hot ticket for a cold, gray day.

Basic Soup

I was so excited about my veggie soup, so full of goodies that I anticipated a wonderful flavor. To some nice chicken broth, I added sautéed onion, garlic, leek, (at this point, I was thinking Potage Parmentier), a whole head of cauliflower, (or maybe cream of cauliflower?), fresh thyme, a couple of spuds and a small roasted kabocha squash (that soup was delish - maybe I'll head over there?).

Perhaps all that indecision was the flavor killer but it ended up tasting like... actually, it ended up not tasting.

Oh, maybe there was a little veggie-ish sort of a hint, but it was basically blah. When I added salt and pepper to wake up the flavors, it tasted like salt and pepper. I was discouraged. Disheartened. Downhearted. I had a whole enormous pot of nuttin'.

But then I thought, "Wait a minute!" This will make a great base for future soups, soups into which I will add whatever ingredients my appetite is craving at that moment. It will be like having canned soup on hand, only home made and frozen in small batches so I can resurrect it as needed. Soup base - what a great idea! A blank canvas on which I can create a future masterpiece.

Soup From Scratch

I set out to make onion soup from scratch the other day. Two days later, we actually sat down to eat it.

I had read about roasting bones to make beef stock and wanted to see how much better it might be than the usual canned broth I use. So, I collected some soup bones from my butcher, roasted them along with some aromatic veggies, then made broth by covering them with water and adding more veggies (carrots, onions, celery, bay leaf) and simmering them until they yelled "uncle!"

The resulting broth was nicely colored but not really very flavorful by itself and it only made one quart. I decided to forge ahead, hoping that the broth would add vitamins to the soup, if nothing else.

The onion soup recipe I used was Julia Child's classic from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volume one. Julia seemed to feel that canned broth was not a terrible sin; made me wonder why I had been so gung-ho to create my own broth. Never mind, onward!

The long, slow cooking that Julia suggests for the onions did take a considerable time, as she warned before I began. Nearly an hour later, they were limp and golden brown, really quite lovely. I covered them with the boiling broth and simmered them for another 40-50 minutes, adjusting seasoning and adding wine and cognac as the recipe suggested. Ladled into bowls, it was topped with crunchy garlic croutons and a few batons of Gruyère strewn across the top to droop down into the soup, and served steaming hot. The first two pictures I tried to take fogged my lens.

My Beloved, who is the onion soup aficionado in our family, loved it. He remarked on how rich it tasted, and how layered. He usually peppers everything that goes into his mouth but he left the soup alone, just ducking his head and slurping his way through his bowl. I served some buttered herb toasts alongside and he used his last toast to chase the rest of the broth and the last few onions around his bowl.

I'd call this soup a big success, except that it took about 20X longer to make it than it took to eat it, not my favorite ratio. Next time, I'd go for canned stock to see if we could truly taste the difference. What's good enough for Julia is usually fine by me.

Peaceful Soup

In a comment on my previous post about parsnips, Morgan had suggested using them in soup, which seemed nothing short of brilliant to me, so I set out to make a pot. As usual, I didn't have all the ingredients for the soup recipe I had researched online and with a stinky head cold I wasn't inclined to go out in search of them, but I have discovered that that isn't always necessary for success.

Contemplating soup construction, I just think about what flavors I'd enjoy together if they were arranged side-by-side on a plate - and then chuck them all in the pot with liquid. This time, parsnips sounded like the perfect accompaniment to shallots, leeks and apples and, since I had all those things clamoring to be used, I decided to give them a shot.

Lots of peeling and chopping ensued, but when all the chopping is done, the rest of the preparation is dead easy. I sautéed the chopped shallots and leeks in butter until they were soft, then added the rest of the ingredients and let them simmer together for about 20 minutes before blending. Once blended and back in a big pot, I added just a touch of half and half to smooth it and adjusted the seasonings with salt and pepper.

The soup is nothing to look at but the flavor is sublime. Not as sweet as butternut soup, but there's a hint of sweetness. Not as savory as leek and potato soup, but there's a savory layer in there. The celery leaves lightened it up a bit and gave it some spark without being the dominant flavor. It was like a peaceful kindergarten class where all the children are playing nicely together and no one is snatching all the toys.

Peaceful Soup

2 parsnips, peeled and finely chopped
3 large shallots, peeled and finely chopped
1 large leek, white and pale green parts only, carefully washed and chopped
2 Pink Lady apples, peeled and coarsely chopped (I suspect just about any nice apple would do)
3 Tbs. or so of fresh celery leaves, roughly chopped
4 cups chicken broth (I used the organic kind in a box)
2-3 Tbs butter
1/4 cup half and half or light cream
salt and pepper to taste (I don't cook with salt, only add it at the table. It's important in this soup, which was a tad bland until we added a light spritz of Hawaiian red salt and a nice pinch of freshly ground pepper).

Sauté the leek and shallots together in the butter (in melting my butter, it got a little brown, and that was a good thing) until they are softened, then add all other ingredients except the half and half. Simmer together, covered, for about 20 minutes. Let cool slightly, then blend in batches in a blender, (or use one of those nifty hand blenders if you have one) pouring the blended soup into a large clean pot. Once all is blended, heat the soup gently and add the half and half, stirring to mix it in. Serve hot. Some croutons or cheese toasts would be a nice accompaniment.

Life Saver

Thank heaven for broth! When you've got broth in the freezer, you've got dinner. No matter how crazy the day gets or how forgetful I become in my late middle age, I can make dinner in a flash if I have broth.

Chop an onion or two, slice some celery and carrot, cube some squash, brown a small handful of leftover hamburger, add garlic, splash in the broth - in this case, beef left over from crockpotting - (if it's frozen, it will thaw in the hot pot), sprinkle in a generous dash of Penzey's Northwoods Fire seasoning (a blend of hot and black peppers), some s&p, yadda yadda and less than one hour later, you have tasty, filling, sustaining dinner for a household. The dog will circle the table twice before reluctantly settling down with a heavy sigh as close to your chair as she can get. Discreet slurping noises will be heard. The next day, lunch will be even better than dinner was.

The moral of the story is: Make broth, not war. You listening, President Obama?

Muscleman Soup

Brawny. Vigorous. Hearty. What are the best words to describe soup made with lamb sausages, cranberry beans and assorted tasty veggies? Whatever the word, this soup is it.

My Beloved and I made it to the Marin farmer's market last Sunday for the first time all summer - we had been taking advantage of having our own small market in our little town. Now, that market has packed it up for the winter so we need to go farther afield. What a pleasure it was, too, as the Marin market is much, much larger and more varied than our local one was, with all kinds of interesting victuals available. It was also a lovely, crisp fall day and early enough in the morning that the pushiest of the goal-oriented Marinites were still abed.

Our first stop was at the Prather Ranch booth where we scored some lamb sausages. I was already dreaming of this soup as I left the booth. After a really good cup of coffee and a shared Belgian waffle at a little table in the sunshine, we collected veggies to go with the sausages and headed home via the park where we walked an excited Cora along the lake, actually less of a walk than a constant battle to deny her to either a swim in the water or an invigorating chase of the waterfowl. After that much unexpected exercise, hearty soup is just the ticket.

At home, I squeezed little lamb "meatballs" out of two of the sausage casings and browned them in my soup pot with a little olive oil, poured off the excess fat, then added chopped celery, onion, carrots, anise and fresh corn cut off the cob to cook in the same pot until they were softened. I added a quart of organic tomato soup that I had in the pantry and two cups of water, s & p, and about two cups of Full Belly Farm cranberry beans and brought the whole gmish to a boil. Once the boil was reached, I lowered the heat to a simmer, clapped on the lid and left it all to get acquainted for a couple of bubbly hours.

I always think soup is best the next day, so we waited to taste it until the following lunch. Brawny. Vigorous. Hearty. Deeply, deeply satisfying, it fueled all kinds of muscular activities around here from laundry and dog walking to sales calls and painting touch ups.

Rollercoaster Soup

I started constructing this soup weeks ago when we had a cooler shift in the temperatures and I thought fall was on the way. I bought shell-on shrimp then, only to have a heat wave, so I prepared the shrimp for a late summer cocktail. Of course, then it got cool again and I was suckered into buying more shrimp. Then I didn't have all the ingredients, having used some of them in subsequent meals.

Finally, finally, I thought I had it all together and the weather was right for soup.

You build this soup layer by layer, almost like building a house. For the foundation I used clam juice in which I simmered the shrimp shells and basil stems (the chowder has potatoes in it so I thought corn was redundant) for about 20 minutes, then strained into the pot where I had crisped the bacon bits and sautéed the chopped onions, garlic, fennel, carrots, just a smidge of red pepper flakes and celery (the recipe called for additional butter to sauté the veggies but I just used the bacon fat left in the pot).

Simmered all that together for a few minutes to mingle, adding fresh chopped ripe tomatoes toward the end, then added the shrimp at the last minute to cook in the residual heat from the broth. Despite the salty clam broth and shrimp, it needed some additional salt and some pepper to make it perfect.

Ladled it into a big bowl, topped with basil chiffonade and bacon bits. The flavors were subtle but distinct, the aromas complex and interesting, and the soup was surprisingly hearty despite the delicate ingredients. I think I'd use fresh corn next time instead of the spuds but that's nitpicking, really. It was worth the ups and downs and the wait for perfect Rollercoaster Soup weather.

The Italian Job

When I made the Tortilla Soup last week, I thought nothing could ever be better than that. It was literally one of the best meals I have ever made. My Beloved and I were sorely tempted to abandon all the table manners our mothers had worked so hard to instill when we were children and to drink it straight from the bowl - it was that good!

Luckily, there was a little left over. The chicken was all gone but the broth with some of the veggies was tucked carefully away in the fridge to re-emerge the other night for a second go-around.

This time, I browned some mild Italian sausage in small "meatballs" until it was all caramelized and a little crispy on the outside. Warmed the soup, poached some sliced fresh green beans and additional fresh corn in the broth, then added the sausage bits at the last minute.

Now I have two contenders: Mexican or Italian? It's a tough decision when both are the Best Soup I've Made, Ever!

Tummy Settling Soup

Oops, My Beloved seemed to have eaten something that didn't agree with him, so he was on the binnacle list for a day or two (he's fine, now). Wanting to give him something fairly bland to quiet his upset stomach, I remembered the turkey soup I made from our smoked turkey and busted it out of the freezer for a comeback.

It was really nothing but turkey broth made with a few veggies and with the pickings from the turkey thrown in, so I added a handful of Frenched green beans, some salt and pepper, and some of the onion-and-chicken-brothed Camargue red rice to the pot. The instructions from the red rice had me cook it with extra liquid and then drain off the excess; that seemed like a waste of good goozle, so I saved the overflow and added it into this soup, just because. A slow simmer and it was ready to serve.

Tasted good, very turkey and rich, but a little flat, somehow. The idea came to add a squeeze of lemon to the pot and that woke it right up! I have another couple of containers of this soup in the freezer, so I'm going to write right on the lids - "Jazz it up with lemon!"

It may not be a miracle cure for an iffy tummy but he ate it with pleasure and, like a good doctor, it did no harm.

Sopa de Camarones

This bowl of soup, brimming with fragrant broth, nearly a dozen good-sized shrimp plus a plethora of chunky vegetables and a spritz of sprightly lime juice, was the perfect antidote to a gray, misting California winter day. I enjoyed it, or rather half of it, at Cazuelas Grill, a no-nonsense Mexican food restaurant in, of all places, the Hilltop Mall in Richmond.

Hilltop is a sprawling shopping center on the shaved-flat crest of a hill surrounded with brand new housing tracts and apartment complexes and ringed with so many empty acres of blacktop that it would make a great place to teach a kid to drive. I have never been there when even a quarter of the spaces are filled - one wonders how they can keep the place going. They have tenants like JC Penney and Macy's but I think the store that really brings 'em in is Cazuelas. It's a fun place to meet Cookiecrumb and Cranky for a quick bite and a visit.

The soup could have been improved in three ways. First, the shrimp should have been shelled, at least down to the tails. Second, the veggies were pretty soft and should have been cooked a bit less to leave them more integrity. Third, the shrimp should have been slipped into the broth for just the last few minutes as they were a bit rubbery. Still, you'd hardly have guessed that these shoulds were running through my mind if you'd been at the table watching me eagerly spoon up the rich, tasty broth. There was so much, I brought home half to share with My Beloved, who had been there just minutes before we arrived and missed us. Rats!

I've had the posole there and now the sopa de camarones - I can recommend either one to fortify a California wuss for the rest of an afternoon of errands and chores.

Inspired Addition

After an emotionally draining morning closing My Beloved's mother's apartment, he treated me to lunch in tiny Chester, CT at the River Tavern. Chester has changed from the blue collar mill town of my girlhood, where the now-defunct Otto's was the local eatery serving plate-sized, thin-cut steaks for a song, to a weekend getaway town for New York celebs such as Morely Safer. The food at the River Tavern is far more sophisticated than Otto's was, but I enjoyed each in its own way.

As it was a cold, cloudy, raw winter day, I ordered the butternut squash soup as soon as we arrived and was agreeably surprised when it arrived at the table almost immediately.

The soup was lovely. There was a little spicy heat to the mellowness of the squash - I don't know what the chef added but it was perfect - and it was garnished with one-inch squares of bacon (we've already established that bacon improves everything), a sprinkling of cilantro and a drizzle of truffle oil, all laudable additions, but what really set it apart was the grating of Grand Padano cheese in the center of the bowl.

Grand Padano is similar to Parmesan cheese, but a little rounder and richer. It's savoriness added an unexpected note in a familiar dish and raised it above the ordinary. I would not have thought to add cheese to butternut squash soup, but I'm glad the chef did. A great warmer for a cold, sad day.

Happy New Year! Aren't you glad 2008 is gone? I am!

Has-Beans

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a single pound of beans can just about wipe out world hunger - and when there are only two in the household, they last a long, long time.

We loved the hearty beans but I have to admit that I may have cooked a teensy bit too much. By the time we were nearing the bottom of the pot, we were more or less beaned out for the foreseeable future.

Another oops I made was to purchase a local smoked Cornish game hen, supposedly ready to eat. It was so hideously salty and almost slimy in texture as to be inedible and, believe me, not many foods fall into that category around here; we are the kind of people who stretch the Five Second Rule, despite the state of our kitchen floor.

I bundled the hen into a baggie and fridged it although, frankly, it was so salty I doubt if it could have spoiled, hoping to be inspired with some way to use it in subsequent meals.

The inspiration came a day later when I thought of dilution as the solution to all that sodium pollution. I decided to try making soup stock from it and leaving out all salt from the broth. I covered the hen with water, threw in an onion and some celery and simmered it until the meat was firm (and no longer glutenicky {new word}), boned it and returned the bones to the broth for a longer simmer with the veggies. When strained, the stock was richly yellow, full of flavor and only lightly salty. Returning the meat to the broth along with some diced carrot, onion and green beans, I remembered the last two cups of beans that had been simmered with the ham shank, so I threw them in as well to simmer with the veggies and smoky chopped hen.

The resulting soup is rich with flavor layers, one of the loveliest soups I have made, enough for lunch today and some nice leftovers for the freezer. We made piggy slurping noises, enjoying the last of those has-beans.

Marital Discord

My Beloved and I are compatible - normally, we agree on 'most everything, from politics to clothing styles to what color to paint the bathroom (orange). We start and end each day wrapped in each others' arms and we hate lengthy separations. We have a lovely harmonious life together.

Except for this soup. When he first tasted it, he gave me The Look, the one that says, "Wow, you've done it right this time!" and dug down into his bowl with a concentrated enjoyment.

Maybe it's because I was tasting it all afternoon as I made it or maybe it's because my head of cauliflower wasn't spanking fresh, but to me it was "meh," okay but not spectacular. It's a pretty simple soup, just cauliflower and onions cooked together in butter before adding veggie stock, simmering and pureeing. Adjust seasonings, yadda, yadda. The recipe called for cream at the end but I had an extra carton of creme fraiche in the fridge so I substituted that instead.

I think it was the creme fraiche that did it for him. It smoothed and gentled the brassica edge while adding richness to what might otherwise have been a lean and healthy soup. I guess a little individuality is good in a marriage - makes for interesting discussions at table.

Painterly Soup

While we were painting the bathroom, I made a big pot of turkey soup from the bones of a roast I made for cousin Sherry's combination retirement and birthday party. That's the nice thing about soup - lots of time to paint while the bones simmer with the onion and render their goodness into the broth. Strain out the bones and pick off the meat to return to the pot.

I threw in some green beans and zucchini slices from the garden, frozen white corn, fleur de sel, dill weed, fresh ground pepper and some bright red strips of sweet pepper to cook for just a few minutes at the end. Such bright colors to rival what we are doing in the bathroom - and such fresh flavors.

Trug Soup

I have an active imagination. When I began my garden, I imagined myself wafting out to my productive little patch, probably wearing a floaty Loretta Youngesque sundress and a picture hat, romantic-looking trug in hand, to harvest all the wonders that Nature would have provided.

Right.

The reality is that I do my harvesting in baggy pants and without a basket, romantic-looking or otherwise, as my two pockets and a single handful pretty much fills the bill. I was pretty resentful of that fact, too, until I made soup one day from the contents of my imaginary trug.

Okay, I did add two red potatoes, a large onion, three garlic cloves, two (Chilebrown) chili peppers, a fennel bulb, four ears of corn and a quart of veggie stock that didn't originate on my property but the fresh thyme, greenie beanies and zucchinis were my very own.

The preparation was the usual for soup - soften the aromatics in olive oil, add the thyme until it becomes fragrant and dump in the stock and the rest of the chopped veggies (except the corn, which I reserved until the end - I like crisp corn) and simmer until you can't wait any longer to ladle it into a bowl for the first taste. Add salt and pepper as you like.

It was dreamy.

Now my romantic vision is of a perfectly set table with the sun setting behind My Beloved's shoulders as we slurp our Trug Soup, holding hands by candlelight. This fantasy is far more likely to come true.

Summer Soup

One of the great things about life in the Bay area is that even the summers are relatively cool. That means we can happily eat hot soup year 'round, with only a few days being too hot for a bowl of broth.

Corn chowder is a favorite of mine, especially when made with the sweet, crisp kernels of fresh summer corn. My recipe comes from Elna, my first husband's mother, who had it from her mother, who had it from her mother, and so on back into time. Elna was a marvelous cook and a generous one - she shared all her recipes with me.

This is actually pretty basic corn chowder, made by sauteing five slices of chopped bacon in a heavy soup pot, then adding the chopped celery and onion until they are soft, followed by milk and red potato dice, raw corn kernels removed from the cobs, salt and pepper, and cooking it all together on simmer for about half an hour. You can enrich it with cream if you like but it's pretty nice just as is.

Over the years, I have tweaked the recipe a little. I now add fresh thyme from my garden, just the leaves of a few nice sprigs to round out the flavors, and I reserve the bacon bits rather than cook them with the soup, sprinkling them on at serving time to add a little bit of crispy crunch to the bowl.

I served it to Jan and Ted, friends visiting this week from St. Louis who came in late and starving from their flight - there is nothing remotely edible on airlines these days - and they loved it! Summer can be such a fine season for soup!

Painted Soup

My choice for the second course at FarrahOlivia was their Painted Soup, a savory-sweet mixture of two kinds of soup decorated with a green swizzle of herbal oil. The pale yellow side was yukon potato with gruyere cheese and leek cream; the orange swirl tasted of gingered carrot. Each taste was as distinct as its color and yet they complemented each other wonderfully. One of those dishes where you hate to dip a spoon in and spoil the perfection but the scents wafting up from the bowl are irresistible temptation. The whole meal was pure self indulgence so what the heck!

Stoup

Too chunky to be soup and too juicy to be stew, this is what I made from the lamb scraps left over from "Frenching" a rack of lamb.

After gleaning all the good meat from the scraps, I browned the lamb in a pot 'til it was well caramelized, then added chopped green garlic, mild Maui onion and fresh thyme from the garden, cooking until the garlic and onion were soft. Added a cup of homemade chicken stock and stewed it for a little while, then dropped in the Full Belly Farm cranberry beans that I had soaked overnight and boiled for about half an hour. During the last five minutes I added about a cup of frozen peas and pearl onions, simmering just until the peas were done but still brightly green. A final seasoning with salt and pepper before ladling it into stoup bowls.