Soup du Jour ... Or Not

Rachel here: Ok, so obviously soup was the name of the game for this post. My mom and I seem to both really enjoy soup (which is sort of funny since I don't recall eating it much when I was growing up, but anyway) and when we were caucusing last week about this week's posts and I was stressing out about my looming midterms, soup seemed like the perfect meal to make. It would have been, too...

So, the other afternoon I decided that I would make soup with the various vegetables in our fridge that were about to turn or of which we just had awkward bits left. Things started out spectacularly as I sauteed celery, carrots, shallot and a bit of onion in olive oil (with a little butter for good measure). I felt so pleased with myself for retaining some of the information I've been made privy to living with John, with this as a really great way to start soups as an example. I was thoroughly enjoying my break from studying, too, and so when I looked in the fridge and discovered a mere half-cup of chicken stock I didn't bat an eye. If I could tackle 3 midterms and a paper in addition to a million pages of reading this week, I could certainly overcome a serious stock shortage. I looked in the door of the fridge and saw a bit of tomato juice and thought, "Eureka! All will be well."

HA!

I added my chicken stock and whopping cup of tomato juice to the soup and things were smelling pretty good, though I was acutely aware of needing to come up with way more liquid if this had any hope of not just being a pot of mushed vegetables. Out of the corner of my eye, on top of the refrigerator I eyed an opened bottle of red wine. "Jackpot," I thought.

Now, in case you were at all curious, you can't make soup with wine. You just can't. I poured almost half a bottle of wine into my soup pot and the next morning my house still smelled like a sorority. Sure, a little wine can be a lovely thing in a soup, but using it as the bulk of your stock (ok, obviously there is no such thing as wine stock and this should have been a major clue to me prior to my generous pour) is just nasty. Like, really, truly, awfully nasty. All I can say is, should you find yourself in a similar situation, I suggest pouring yourself a glass of wine and ordering take-out instead.

And so, I abandoned the soup. In a moment of total type-A-ness, I planned on making soup the next night so I could save face for this post. I told my mother (much to her cackling delight) about my faux pas, though, and she and I agreed that we're not here to blow your mind, we're here to tell you about our lives through recipes. Let's just say this is a recipe that, if all goes according to plan, won't be making a reappearance in my life. My ma's recipe below, however, looks absolutely scrumptious.



Janet here: Soup is my go-to supper when I want to make sure there is something tasty for dinner sometime later in the week. It's easy to make ahead, uses up all kinds of ingredients (if that's part of your intent), and it's cheap. One of my favorite soup cookbooks is Soup Suppers by Arthur Schwartz. This is a man who fully understands the heft a good soup can have as a meal. Just add a little salad, maybe some bread and cheese, and you are good to go. Now that's my kind of weekday meal.


Tuscan Bean Soup
serves 6-8

Ingredients
1 pound dried cannellini
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped (about one cup)
1 medium carrot, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)
1 medium potato, cut into 1/4 inch cubes (about 1 cup)
1 3/4 chicken or beef or vegetable stock
2-3 fresh sage leaves, 2 teaspoons dried leaf sage or 1/4-1/2 teaspoon marjoram
3 large cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
6 cups water
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 of a 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach or kale, defrosted or 2 cups finely shredded kale or 2 cups finely shredded Savoy cabbage


Method
Soak beans overnight in cold water to cover (or at least several hours)
In a 4-6 quart saucepan, warm the olive oil and saute the onions and carrots until tender, about 10 minutes. Add the potato, broth, sage and garlic.

Drain the beans and add them, along with enough water to cover, about 6 cups. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, partially cover and simmer steadily for 40 minutes to one hour until the beans are very tender

Ladle out half the beans and pass them through a blender or food processor. Add them back to the soup. Continue to simmer. Season to taste. Add the spinach or kale or cabbage and simmer about 15 minutes more.

Serve in bowls topped with thin croutons and a drizzle of olive oil.

Slurp! Soup!

Rachel here: The recipe I'm sharing this week is from my grandma on my dad's side (my grandma on my mom's side is/was my grandy). The last time that I had it with her was a few years ago when I brought John to Connecticut for the first time to meet my family. We went to my grandparents' for lunch and this was on the menu. I had started gathering recipes from my grandma a little bit earlier and so, after lunch, I followed her into the kitchen and asked her for this one. Chicken soup is one of the great simple foods, I think, when it's done well. So often, though, it's a mediocre product. My grandma's recipe (which she would want me to reveal she learned from her brother's former wife because she was humble like that), however, gives chicken soup all of the tlc it needs to turn around and give that tlc right back to the person eating it. It is at once complex and familiar, hearty and basic. When my kitchen began to smell like my grandma's house, I was transported back to that afternoon copying her recipe while she chattered about how nice John seemed while putting the lunch dishes away. I could see the sunlit snow through her windows and hear the quiet calm that always hugged her home. My house smelled like my grandma's house last night and, frankly, as I come close to the one-year anniversary of her death, it is nice to know that she is a part of my home and my new family, that something as simple as chicken soup--and with it, my grandma--can be carried and woven and traced throughout my life.

Grandma's Belgian Chicken Soup
Ingredients
1 roasting chicken (3 1/2 to 4 1/2 pounds)
1 large onion, sliced
2 medium leaks, cleaned and chopped
4 stalks of celery, chopped
3 small carrots, sliced
1 parsnip, sliced
4 c. water
1 1/2 c. dry white wine
4 sprigs of parsley (plus extra to garnish)
2 tspn. fresh thyme (I used lemon thyme)
1 bay leaf
2 whole cloves (I used 1 tspn. ground cloves instead)
1 T. instant chicken bouillon
2 tspn. salt
1/4 tspn. pepper
1/4 tspn. nutmeg
1/4 tspn. cayenne
2 egg yolks
1/2 c. half-and-half
1/2 lemon (or, one small lemon) thinly sliced

Method
Combine the first eight ingredients (my grandma's recipes always give instructions this way and I find it nice and concise), from the chicken through the wine in a large pot. Make a bouquet garni with the parsley, thyme, bay leaf and cloves (or don't...I didn't, but if you are not going to then definitely go with ground cloves and don't forget to fish out your bay leaf when the soup is done cooking). Add to soup pot along with bouillon and spices (by spices I am referring to the ingredients from the salt through the cayenne). Bring this all to a boil, then reduce the heat and cover, letting simmer for an hour or more until the chicken is tender.

About halfway through, rotate the chicken if it is not entirely covered by the liquid. When chicken is tender, remove from pot. At this time, if you have used one, you should also remove the bouquet garni. If you didn't go the garni route, this would be a good time to find that bay leaf and pull it out. Remove skin from the chicken and cut the meat from the bones into bite-sized pieces. Skim the fat from the chicken broth before returning the now bite-sized chicken to the pot (if your chicken is on the larger side you may not need to add all of the chicken back into the pot which means you will have some very yummy meat for sandwiches...in fact, it's so delicious that I would recommend erring on the larger side for your chicken in the name of having leftover meat).

Combine the egg yolks with the half-and-half and stir this mixture into the soup. Heat until hot, but do not boil. Stir in your lemon slices. Sprinkle each serving with chopped parsley, put some hearty fresh bread on the table and dig in.

Seriously? I think this soup is perfection. What do you think? I also think the stock would be a great base for other soups, though I've never tried it because this recipe is so good that I never want to not make it.



Janet here: As the older of this duo, I love reading how much cooking with her grandmother means to Rachel. It makes me feel so heartened to see the story continues even after the death of the cook.

Making soup always makes me feel so cozy. The process is so relaxing — cutting up the vegetables and other ingredients — and like baking cookies on a cold rainy or snowy day, it just makes me feel so safe and warm. This roasted vegetable soup is my adaptation of a recipe I first made from one of the Barefoot Contessa's cookbooks. I hope you like it. As with most of what I do, there's room for variations and individual ideas. Enjoy!

Roasted Root Vegetable Soup
makes at least 10 servings

Ingredients
20 ounces of turnips, peeled and cut into cubes
5 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
3 large carrots, peeled and diced
3 large potatoes, skin on and cut into cubes
64 ounces of chicken or vegetable broth
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Method
Heat oven to 400 degrees.
Put the vegetables into a large bowl. Dribble with olive oil and salt and pepper. Mix well.Put onto a roasting pan. Cook for about 40 minutes until the vegetables are done. Turn at least once in the middle to make sure all sides get roasted well.

After the vegetables are cooled, add to a blender a little at a time with some of the broth and puree. I happen to like my soup just one or two steps above mashed potatoes, but if you like it soupier, then you'll want to perhaps use more broth in general.
Heat and serve when you're ready. This is soup with substance, so all you need is some bread and maybe a salad to have a complete winter meal.