The Soup Topic (2013–)

[MelissaH]

1 hour ago, ElsieD said:

I just found this topic and here is my contribution - Italian Wedding Soup.  Made this yesterday.

That looks delicious. Would you be willing to share your recipe?

[Okanagancook]

Italian wedding soup with tiny sausage/pork meatballs, yum.  When I worked at the hospital that was my favourite soup at lunch.  They put it on about every three weeks.  Never made it myself.

[Darienne]

I'd like the Italian Wedding soup recipe also.

 

[FrogPrincesse]

On ‎12‎/‎8‎/‎2016 at 11:41 AM, shain said:

 

You can add some sweet potato for sweetness, curry, ginger, cilantro (if you like it) and finish with some orange juice. This is a soup I like a lot (but I usually use other squashes, spaghetti squash is not my favorite). 

Thanks! I didn't have a sweet potato on hand, but I followed your recommendation and went with curry & ginger (I only had dried); leeks for the aromatics.

 

No cilantro so I garnished with fresh basil and a little bit of basil-flavored olive oil. It was pretty good. A little more interesting with a bit of crumbled feta...

 

 

Then the next day I tried it again garnishing with chives and espelette pepper, arbequina olive oil. I think I liked that version slightly better.

 

 

 

[ElsieD]

Below is a link to the Italian Wedding Soup recipe.  I didn't follow it exactly in that I doubled the amount of celery, onions and carrots.  I left the rest of the quantities the same.  As for the meatballs, I got lazy and just used mild Italian sausage meat which I made into very small balls, about the size of my thumb nail.  I think I got about 60 out of a pound of meat.  I stuck the meatballs in a 325 oven for about 20 minutes then added them to the soup at the same time as the pasta.

 

 

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/italian-wedding-soup-recipe.html

[Jacksoup]

@ElsieD  that's the Italian Wedding Soup recipe I always use.  The dill adds a nice spark.

Edited December 14, 2016 by Jacksoup
Spelling (log)

[Shel_B]

On ‎12‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 2:10 PM, MelissaH said:

That looks delicious. Would you be willing to share your recipe?

 

 Yes, I, too, would love it if you'd share the recipe.  The soup looks to be quite hearty ... yumm!

[FrogPrincesse]

Yesterday was a clean-out-the-fridge soup.

 

Here are the things I had to use: celery, leek, onion, carrot, parsnip, kale, arugula. I added a couple of potatoes and sundried tomatoes in olive oil that had been forgotten at the back of the fridge. I was thinking blended soup. However as I was cooking it, I realized I had re-created a minestrone of sorts. So at that point I looked for oregano. I didn't have any so I used some weird herbes de provence that I have that are heavy on oregano (weird because they also contain lavender so I rarely use them), also a pinch of Emeril's essence (another effort to use long-forgotten ingredients; the predominant flavors are dried garlic and paprika for a subtle kick). I garnished it with a robust olive oil and a generous sprinkling of parmesan cheese. The result was nice for something that was initially random.

 

 

 

[ElsieD]

3 hours ago, Shel_B said:

 

 Yes, I, too, would love it if you'd share the recipe.  The soup looks to be quite hearty ... yumm!

 

It 's two posts up from yours.

[Okanagancook]

This like the one the Hospital used to make:  Italian Wedding Soup:  http://www.goodinthesimple.com/favorite-soup-italian-wedding-soup-recipe-cant-beat/

 

[chromedome]

Does anyone know the history of Italian Wedding soup? I presume it's an Italian-American thing...my first-gen Italian-Canadian classmate from culinary school swore vehemently (and at some length) that it was not from Italy. 

[shain]

Spicy "orange soup" - butternut, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, carrots - all roasted until caramelized and rich. Parsley root, onion, ginger and garlic - sauteed. Thyme, cinnamon, fennel seeds, chili, parsley. Blended smooth. Topped with savory-sweet and cinnamony granola, pumpkin seeds, sour cream and some paprika for color.

 

I usually top this soup with only those seeds in order to hint of the pumpkin & squash used in it (and because it's crunchy and tasty)
I love to add those seeds to granola, and considering the cinnamon in the soup, topping it with crispy granola seemed quite right

Edited December 18, 2016 by shain (log)

[cyalexa]

On 7/4/2016 at 2:16 PM, blue_dolphin said:

 

Very pretty!  I like the ice cube idea.  Eating a lukewarm soup that should be served quite cold is much worse to me than one that should be hot. 

I was experimenting with cooking then freezing beets and processing them from the frozen state into soup. I never quite got it the way I wanted it but will probably go back to the drawing board once summer returns.

[shain]

1 hour ago, cyalexa said:

I was experimenting with cooking then freezing beets and processing them from the frozen state into soup. I never quite got it the way I wanted it but will probably go back to the drawing board once summer returns.

I don't know what texture you are after, but if you want it to be smooth, than I think you will have better result by blending it before freezing. 

You know gave me an idea to use cubes of frozen buttermilk or beet juice instead of ice. I'll try it next summer. 

[cyalexa]

2 hours ago, shain said:

I'll try it next summer. 

Yes, let's reconvene then!

[robirdstx]

A very rainy New Year's Eve day - almost two inches have fallen in the last five hours - so a perfect day for making a big pot of Ham and Bean Soup!

 

 

 

 

[suzilightning]

Made chicken stock the other day so added some roasted chicken and Cornish game hen, carrots, onion, bay leaf and, for Johnnybird, a ton of thin noodles.

Edited January 1, 2017 by suzilightning
to add "Cornish game" to hen (log)

[liuzhou]

23 minutes ago, suzilightning said:

roasted chicken and hen

 

roasted chicken and hen?

Surely, hen is chicken unless specified that it is some other bird?

 

Confused.

[heidih]

Her post mentions chicken and Cornish game hen....grrrr

Edited January 3, 2017 by heidih (log)

[suzilightning]

7 minutes ago, heidih said:

Her post mentions chicken and Cornish game hen....grrrr

 

eh...@heidih  I had to edit my post to add the Cornish game part because I had goofed and left that part out at first...

 

my bad

[liuzhou]

2 hours ago, heidih said:

Her post mentions chicken and Cornish game hen....grrrr

 

 

It didn't when I posted.

 

1 hour ago, suzilightning said:

eh...@heidih  I had to edit my post to add the Cornish game part because I had goofed and left that part out at first...

 

my bad

 

Thanks Suzi, It really had me baffled! But, then it's not difficult to baffle me !

[suzilightning]

Cool and drizzly today...I feel tomato soup and a toasted cheese sandwich coming on........................

[heidih]

Internet posts about Persian New Year soup Ashe Reshteh like this one on Food 52 compelled me to order some to go from a local place. Comfort food

 

https://food52.com/recipes/32708-persian-new-year-s-noodle-soup

[suzilightning]

not soup YET...but cleaned the upstairs fridge's freezer and found yet another bag of chicken bones for broth.  Broth going now and since we have just entered the polar vortex so the outside freezer  will be employed later.   Hmmmmm.......what kind of soup should I make?

While cleaning the freezer I also unearthed 2 pints of split pea and 3 of minestrone.  Sent one minestrone up to Po-town with Johnnybird and pulled a split pea out for me for tomorrow's lunch.

[liuzhou]

This was a labour of love and a half.

 

I was browsing through All Under Heaven, the new cookbook from Carolyn Phillips who only occasionally posts here now, and I came across a recipe for Yunnan Ham and Wild Mushroom Soup (page 263). I read that and browsed on. A few days later, I remembered it and set out to make it, but without re-reading the recipe, my usual chaotic technique.

 

I am fortunate in that, unlike Carolyn, I do have access to real Xuanwei ham from Yunnan province, one of China's finest hams, rated up there with the best Spanish hams. I also have a selection of dried Yunnan mushrooms, specifically matsutake and cèpes.

 

Rather than use the chicken stock which Carolyn suggests ( I checked later), I took some bones from the foot end of the whole cured ham:

 

 

and simmered them for a couple of hours with onion, ginger, carrot and celery. Drained that through muslin. All the solids were discarded.

 

I had soaked and cooked some mushrooms a few days earlier and had the soaking liquid in the freezer. That went into the ham stock, making it up to just under a litre. I reduced that to 200ml. The stock smelled very intense and tasted like a umami bomb.

 

Then I soaked some new mushrooms - matsutake, cèpes and shiitake. Here they are rehydrated.
 

 

Finally I took some lean Xuanwei ham, cut it into strips and fried them in rendered fat from elsewhere on the cured leg,

 

 

added the mushrooms, the stock and the second batch of soaking liquid. Seasoned it and cooked for about half an hour. Sensibly, Carolyn suggests finishing it off with green onion or coriander leaf/cilantro, but I forgot to buy either, so went without. Damn!

 

She also suggests using bamboo pith fungus which I do have, but I think they are too delicately flavoured for this soup, so left them out.

Bamboo Pith Fungus

 

I prefer to use them in the very delicate, but lovely Jade Web soup with quail eggs and bamboo pith fungus which is in Fuchsia Dunlop's Sichuan cookbook and which I posted here back in January 2013.

 

Served with home made bread.

 

 

For the sake of the photograph, I deliberately plated this with less soup than when I actually ate it, to let you see the ingredients better. 

The whole process from reading the recipe which I then ignored until eating the soup took about three days. In about three minutes it was all gone!

 

With apologies to Carolyn for ignoring the details of her no doubt excellent recipe.

Edited January 8, 2017 by liuzhou
later? earlier? time is an illusion. (log)