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Tag: soup recipe

November 22, 2024

countdown. . .

i clambered up from the basement yesterday morn, and found myself face-to-face with a whiteout. snow falling in thickets. snow whirling wildly. snow, snow, and more snow for hours and hours and hours. 

it was all the currier & ives i needed to supercharge my countdown clock. the one that’s percolating at quicker and quicker clip as the days turn closer to wednesday a week, the eve of thanksgiving itself, when not just one but both of the boys i so love will––for the first time in almost a year––unfurl their dreams on the pillows of their long-ago boyhood beds, all nestled cozily under this mostly dependable, nearly centenarian roof. 

and i will savor the joy of kissing both on the forehead as i trundle off to bed hours before my wide-eyed night owls, or should we all stay up till the same insensible hour i will give it my best waltons’ bedtime holler, and call out from under my bedsheets and across the hall and down a few stairs, “good night, will. good night, Bear. good night, old house. sweet dreams, my beautiful boys.”

it’s been a long hard autumn, held in the vise of worries and fear the likes of which i’d not recommend. and so this coming thanksgiving is the emotional equivalent of frank lloyd wright’s trademark compress-and-release, in which the great architect intentionally magnified the vast spaciousness of a room by first pressing in the walls and the ceiling of the space leading into the room, so that upon stepping through the tight corridor and into the vaulted chamber the sense of openness would be perceived as vaster than ever. 

and so it is with the human dynamic of fear, grace, and gratitude: to walk through unbearable days, days that stretch into weeks, and weeks that stretch into more than a month, and then to find yourself falling into the arms of the human beings you most long to hold onto; it’s the pinnacle of paradise on earth, to be released from the vise and enwrapped in a love without end. 

cancer sharpens that point. cancer sometimes brings on seasons of uncertainty that are quickly populated with ghosts and demons that defy containment. i’m learning the undulations of cancer that are colored in shades of gray. interminable shades of gray. questions that come without answers. doctors who call with unwelcome news. and barely stay on the line long enough to answer a single question. and then you hang up and feel the floor drop out from under you. sometimes––if you’re me––you take the short road to doom. because that’s what worriers do. we worry. we pray for holy release.

in time, we get a grip. regain our bearings. hold our chin high, dry our tears, practice at being brave. whistle into the in-blowing winds. hold tight to the hands of the one or two who know how dark it’s become, and we fall to our knees, or fold to the ground and enter the depths of divine meditation. i’ve spent more hours with eyes closed, palms open, sitting in silence, beckoning the perpetual God-flame within, than ever before. i’ve been tempted to beg, “more time, please.” but i don’t any longer believe i can––or hold any special claim to––change God’s equation, so what i pray for is grace. is heightened attention. what i pray for is an emphatic aliveness that infuses each turn of the day with unbarred acceptance. i don’t want to blink and miss something holy.

those prayers––for grace, for keen attention, for seeing deeper than ever day in and day out, for pausing to savor––are answered, blessedly. and my own season of unending thanks coincides with that of this nation founded on pillars of moral perpetude, and the hope of equal justice for all.

the essence of my life’s gratitude has always been the improbable miracle that i became a mother. that i birthed not one but two glorious humans, and devoted the best of my heart, my soul, my breath, my being, to carving out for them a space in which they’d be cocooned in the purest love i could imagine, could muster. along the way, i’ve tossed every life line i could whenever they needed, and now, lo and behold, they’re the lifelines and i’m the one needing.

and so all these past 45 days, i have longed for only one thing: hours more to sit side-by-side the ones i so fervently sumptuously love. to giggle at their antics. to marvel at their wild-eyed wonder tales. to feel their hands squeeze mine, to be wrapped in their arms, my ear pressed to their chest, absorbing the heartbeat i’ve loved since the very first ultrasound when that echoing lub-dub-dub poured over and through me like the holiest chrism. 

this is a countdown like never before. and my heart is more than open for business. the business of loving my boys. in real time. under one shared and sheltering roof.

thanksgiving morn, a few years ago.

here’s a poem, fittingly, a prayer poem by the great madeleine l’engle, who lived by words but found herself wordless in prayer. which, indeed, is sometimes the way to our deepest depths…

Word

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.
The self is shattered, all words torn apart
In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks word, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
I leave, returned to language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended.
I, who live by words, am wordless when
I turn me to the Word to pray. Amen.

––Madeleine L’Engle

and here, because i love to imagine ladling steaming bowls of soup to people i love, is my new favorite stoup recipe, lemony chicken-feta meatball with spinach from my friends at NYT Cooking (you will be licking the bowl; it’s that good):

Lemony Chicken-Feta Meatball Soup With Spinach
By Yasmin Fahr
Yield: 4 servings
Total Time: 30 minutes
Note from NYT: Some might be suspicious of the rolled oats called for in this recipe, but used in place of breadcrumbs, they help create a light and tender chicken meatball. A half-cup more is simmered in the broth, which thickens it and provides a pleasant texture. The meatballs, made with ground chicken, feta and fresh dill, swim in a lemony, spinach-filled broth that’s comforting and light, perfect for lunch or dinner. Serve any leftovers with a fresh squeeze of lemon juice to brighten the soup.

INGREDIENTS
1 pound ground chicken or turkey, preferably dark meat (i use white meat)
½ cup crumbled feta
¾ cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 small red onion, halved (½ diced, and ½ grated, then squeezed with a paper towel to remove excess liquid)
⅓ packed cup fresh dill leaves and fine stems, finely chopped
1 tablespoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon plus 1 tablespoon ground turmeric
Kosher salt and black pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon red-pepper flakes, plus more for serving
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
4 packed cups baby spinach (about 5 ounces)
2 lemons (1 juiced and 1 cut into wedges for serving)

PREPARATION
Step 1
In a medium bowl, add the chicken, feta, ¼ cup oats, the grated onion, most of the dill (reserve about 2 tablespoons for garnish), the cumin, ½ teaspoon turmeric and 1 teaspoon salt. Gently combine without squeezing too hard or overworking the meat. Lightly wet your palms and shape the meat into small balls, a little smaller than the size of a golf ball, about 1½ inches. (You will have approximately 25 balls.)

Step 2
Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven or wide pot over medium until shimmering. Add the diced onion, season with salt, and cook until it begins to soften, about 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon turmeric and the red-pepper flakes, and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Push the onions to the sides as best you can, then add the meatballs. (They will be close together, and that’s OK.) Cook until browned on two sides, 5 to 7 minutes total.

Step 3
Pour in the broth and remaining ½ cup oats, then gently tilt the pot to the right and left to distribute the oats and broth without disturbing the meatballs. Bring to a gentle boil, then immediately reduce the heat to maintain an active simmer. Season with salt. Cook, gently stirring occasionally to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom, until the oats have softened and the meatballs are cooked through, about 4 minutes more.

Step 4
Stir in the spinach and lemon juice until the spinach is wilted, about 2 minutes more. Adjust the seasoning to taste. Spoon into bowls, top with pepper and the remaining dill. Serve with lemon wedges.

what is your heart longing for this season of through-and-through thanks?

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December 2, 2022

’tis always the season for futzing . . . (at the cookstove, anyway . . .)

a hundred thousand years ago, at a bend in my life when i was mostly a dreamer, and under a rather dark cloud, i hoped i might grow up to be the sort of someone with friends who come for saturday lunch. i’d also hoped i’d live in a house where the walls were stacked in books, rows upon rows of them. and, for reasons that escape me, i dreamed of a bespectacled mate, one with his nose often in books; something of the professorial sort. check, check, and check, lo and behold.

not a day goes by that i don’t all but bend my creaky knees, and press them against the floorboards, whispering not only thank you’s, but practically screeching, holy mackerel how did my dimly-lit hopes come tumbling true?

but about that saturday lunch: there is something in particular about company lunch on a saturday that seems so, well, civilized. cultured, even. people with big ideas come for lunch. to get a jump on the thinking perhaps. to cogitate and prognosticate by the light of the sun. (people who want to plop on a couch inhaling hotdogs and football, they come for lunch too, but they’re not the ones of my attention today.)

dinner by candlelight is a whole nother thing, a thing that might entail the tucked-away china and silver. lunchtime, though, is cozier, maybe with a soupçon of euro-sophistication (it’s long been a way of life in paris, barcelona, or rome to insert a midday pause in the chaos, and relish a slow, sumptuous feast, unfurled in the afternoon’s heat.) and, besides, anything more haute than PB&J suggests true commitment to kitchen wizardry.

those who come for lunch, maybe can’t wait.

lunchtime company kicks off their shoes. settles in for old-fashioned simple foods. bounties built on the basics: soup, cheese, bread, fruit, unfettered sweets. (i suppose my tastes––even in menus––tend toward the monastic.)

but it’s not something i’ve ever done much of. not the sitting-down sort of a lunch. the lunch that’s not pulled from a grease-splattered paper sack, or laid out on the rickety old door of a table i refuse to retire out on our porch (the protests rise higher and higher, summer after summer, as the rickety door grows more and more rickety, but i like it too much to admit its demise).

at six-point-five decades and counting, i am still very much stumbling along. trying to make good on a few more of my dreams before my time is expired.

so it’s no small deal that company’s coming for lunch on the morrow. this particular company is coming with a wee baby, the most scrumptious sort of company i can imagine (especially since i’m not seeing any babes anywhere on the horizon here at this old house). this company is someone i dearly love though i’ve only just known him for the last several months (it was pretty much love at first zoom). he’s a new papa who is achingly in love with his new baby boy. and because he wrote me a bracingly beautiful, deeply vulnerable, letter the other day, i know this lunch will commence in the deep end, where feelings hew close to the heart, and eloquent words are put to the truths. i imagine there might be a tear or two, adding a droplet of salt to the menu.

in dreaming up the sort of lunch that might set the mood for the day, i settled on high comfort: grilled cheese and tomatoey soup, though i’m taking both up a whole notch.

grilled cheese is truly straightforward: bread + butter + cheese. sizzle low and slow for high-level melt. my aim is to dream up a scheme to make these ahead, and slice them into fingers, thus giving me the chance to stack them into a geometry of puzzling dimension (think: jenga of oozy-cheese strips).

and the soup prompted a deep dive into the cookery books, where i’ve settled on a non-negotiable trinity: san marzano tomatoes (tinned, as the lovely brits would put it), basil in leaves and stems, and rind of parmesan. a dribble of red-pepper flakes, an ooze of olive-y oil, a few cloves of garlic, and an overnight slumber in the fridge should provide a bowlful of summer in the darkening days of early december.

because i’m an inveterate futzer, and usually can’t manage to leave well enough alone, i almost never take one recipe’s word for the matter. i like to peruse and muse, and mix things up, culling my plot till it’s just the right calibration. in my mind, i’m cooking before i ever step near the cookstove, before i’ve laced up my apron strings.

because we’re at the cusp of the darkening season, with a few more weeks till the longest, darkest night of them all, it seems a fine moment to haul out the soup pot, and commence the stirring.

here, should you have reason for a saturday lunch, and find yourself in the mood for a summery bowl, is my game plan for provencal tomato, basil, parmesan soup, brought to you by a cooking collective.

Tomato, Basil, Parmesan Soup, a collective effort…

call me a futzer, or call me a fiddler (or maybe even a muddler), i cannot keep from plucking a little this, a little that, to reach for the stars. And so it goes at the cookstove, when more often that not i stand with an array of roadmaps and mull over the smart way to go. a parmesan rind from Column A, stems of basil from B. 1 + 1 = 3 in my arithmetic book. 

here’s my final equation, when the assignment was a splendid tomato basil soup with undernote of parmesan for saturday lunch with a friend….

Provençal Tomato, Basil, Parmesan Soup

By Martha Rose Shulman and Ali Slagle and Babs

Time: 1 hour
Yield: Serves four 

Martha learned to make this soup years ago when she lived in France. She tells us that if there are no fresh tomatoes at hand, use canned. And she thickens with rice or tapioca, which we’re forgoing, at least on the first go-round. Ali chimes in: “What if you could have a tomato soup that was as plush as a cream of tomato but tasted like pure tomato? Enter Parmesan. Simmering tomatoes with a Parmesan rind is like seasoning a bowl of soup with a shaving of cheese 100 times over. It gives the soup an undercurrent of savory fat and salt that only bring out tomato’s best sides. Many specialty groceries sell containers of rinds, but if you can’t find any, stir 1⁄2 cup grated Parmesan into the final soup (or cut off the rind of a wedge you’re working through). Rinds will keep in the freezer for forever, so start saving.” Babs echoes and amplifies both, having plucked the very best bits from each of the kitchen geniuses.

INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 to 6 garlic cloves (to taste), minced
1/2 tsp. red-pepper flakes
Salt to taste
2 (28-ounce) cans whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes with juice, or 4 pounds tomatoes, cored and diced
Pinch of sugar (optional)2 large sprigs basil, or about 16 leaves, plus 2 tablespoons slivered basil for garnish
[i’m skipping Ali’s call for 1 quart water (or 1/2 wine, 1/2 water), because i’m doubling up on San Marzano tomatoes]
6 ounces Parmesan rind
 Freshly ground pepper to taste
1⁄4 cup rice or tapioca (optional; i’m trying without it. if necessary, we’ll float our grilled cheese bits in the tomatoey pond.)

For the Garnishes
Garlic croutons (thin slices of baguette, lightly toasted and rubbed with a cut garlic
Grated or shaved Parmesan 

PREPARATION
—Heat oil over medium heat in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven. Add onion. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about five minutes. Stir in half the garlic and a generous pinch of salt. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds to a minute. Add the tomatoes, sugar (if adding), basil sprigs or leaves and remaining garlic. Cook, stirring often, until tomatoes have cooked down and smell fragrant, 15 to 20 minutes. 

––Add Parmesan rind and salt to taste. Bring to a simmer, cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer 30 minutes. (If adding the tapioca or rice, add it at the 15-minute mark, then simmer for the remaining 15 minutes until tapioca is tender and the soup fragrant.) Remove basil sprigs and Parmesan rind. Puree in a blender in small batches, taking care to place a towel over the top of the blender and hold it down tightly. (Martha adds: If you used fresh unpeeled tomatoes and want a silkier soup, put through a strainer, using a spatula or the back of a ladle to push the soup through.) Return to the pot, add pepper to taste and adjust salt. Serve garnished with garlic croutons and/or Parmesan, if desired, and slivered basil leaves. If serving cold, refrigerate until chilled. 

Tip:
 Advance preparation: The soup will keep for two or three days in the refrigerator and can be frozen. 

what wintry recipe will you be bringing to your lunchtime table?

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