Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Beau – ootiful Soo – oop!
Beau – ootiful Soo – oop!
Soo – oop of the e – e – evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!
Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Beau – ootiful Soo – oop!
Beau – ootiful Soo – oop!
Soo – oop of the e – e – evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!
—Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
To beguile away the hours while alternately freezing and heating the crippled back, I pulled some of my favorite cookbooks off the bookshelves. Gosh! there are some great recipes in there! Trouble with knowing how to cook is you tend to forget about following recipes.
Cucina Rustica, an alluring book of rustic Italian recipes collected by Viana La Place and Evan Kleiman
I was gonna pick up fennel on the last trip to Sprouts, but instead decided to get leeks. I love leeks. But then, I love fennel. Why didn’t I get both? Probably an innate response to the cheap gene.
So decided to substitute leek for fennel and fines herbes for the fresh basil (although basil may go in near the end of this process, possibly in the form of pesto), and add a few carrots (nutrition!!). Here’s how it fell out:
Get yourself…
• an onion, coarsely chopped
• olive oil
• 2 to 5 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
• a couple of leeks, coarsely chopped
• a stalk or two of celery, chopped
• a couple of carrots, coarsely chopped
• a can of tomatoes (mine is unsalted and only 14.5 oz — the largest I could find in the low-sodium variant)
• a dash of red or white wine (probably optional)
• some tasty herbs (I used dried fines herbes & probably will add a little fresh basil, thinly sliced, whenever I get around to it)
• chicken broth (preferably low-salt or home-made salt-free); or beef broth; or vegetable broth; or water
• a dash of cumin or home-made curry powder (optional)
• a squeeze of fresh lemon or orange juice (optional)
• a little more wine or sherry (to taste; optional)
Skim the bottom of a nice, big soup pot with a little olive oil. Heat over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes. Add the onion and turn the heat down to a fast “medium” level. Allow the onion to cook, stirring occasionally, until it’s getting transparent. Then add the leeks and the herbs. Stir well. Allow to cook a few more minutes. As the leek turns bright green and starts to soften, add the garlic. Stir well.
Cook gently until the onion starts to brown. You’d like it to just be starting to caramelize. Resist getting carried away.
Right around in here, add some cumin or some home-made (or salt-free) curry powder. Take it easy with this. I used about a teaspoon. You can always add more if cumin lights your gustatory fire.
Stir well and cook until the carrots are tender all the way through.
Now add the liquid: that would be the canned tomatoes and juice and the chicken stock. Add enough to fully cover all the veggies and then some. It’s supposed to be soup, after all. If you have some wine laying around, add a splash of that — I tossed in about 1/4 cup of Rotgut Red.
Turn up the heat until the pot comes to a very slow boil. Promptly turn the heat back down to medium-low and maintain it at a slow simmer.
Go away. Write a blog post or whatever you do to keep yourself amused. After about half an hour or forty-five minutes, return to the kitchen.
Taste the broth. (Don’t be an idiot about this. It’s freaking hot! Blow on a spoonful until you can taste it without inflicting third-degree burns on your tongue). Add whatever you think you would like to round out the flavor: a little wine, some sliced-up basil leaves, a squeeze of lemon juice, more wine or sherry — whatEVER. Soups are amazingly forgiving, so fool with it as you please.
Once you’re done with this magnum opus of the culinary art, run the stuff through a blender (or whack it up with a mini-blender, or use a food press). You should now have an extraordinarily delicious purée that you can advertise as soup.
If you are not on a diet, THE way to serve this amazing concoction is by placing a slice of delicious Italian or French bread (it can be a whisper on the stale side) in the bottom of a bowl and ladling the soup into the bowl, to fill.
If, on the other hand, you’re trying to be saintly about carbs, simply dish up a serving in a bowl.
Either way, sprinkle a little Parmesan or feta over the top.
Very little. Aged cheeses are highly salted. Just take it easy with that stuff and if you use it, don’t add salt to the soup.
Good. Very, very good.
Finishing touches:
Dietetic
• Squeeze of lemon, lime, or orange juice
• Dollop of fat-free yogurt
• Very small amount of Parmesan or feta cheese
Forget the Dietetic
• Another splash of wine, sherry, or brandy
• Salt to taste
• Swirl of heavy cream
• Real yogurt
• Real sour cream
I’ll have to give this one a try! Sounds delish =)
I love that cookbook too.
Never seen this book before might need to get it. You had me all the way up to the adding the tomato to the soup. I just don’t like tomato based soup. I agree with the age cheeses i see people load it up with cheese then wonder way the dish is salty.
Possibly because you’ve never tasted a real tomato. Many Americans haven’t, which is a shame.
This particular day I had a bunch of real garden tomatoes fresh off the vine, given to me by a friend. The closest approximation to a real tomato that you can get in a grocery store is a variety called “Campari” tomatoes (I think it’s a brand name). They’re smaller than the cardboard tomatoes you see but larger than the tough-skinned little cherry tomatoes;
In fact, you can make this into a kind of carrot soup by adding two or three more carrots and holding the tomatoes. Carrot soup is wonderful!