Today was a perfect day to cook soup.Making soup from whatever I had at hand was so pleasurable, I decided to write it down. Bet I wasn't the only one whose thoughts turned to soup today........Note to self: Buy cauliflower this week to try some of Susie's terrific suggestions.....
It is sleeting now and I am making soup.
I am making soup out of nothing, my favorite kind. I find a leftover knob of onion, chop it and add it to a small pan with olive oil. Too much oil, I think, as it glugs out of the bottle. Yes, but: my soup will be richer and more viscous for it: Better. I put in chopped broccoli rabe, the last of a bunch; the fibrous bits of stalk go in first, the flower heads are saved for later. A small tray of cherry tomatoes, picked from the garden in late November – November!-- has been ripening on my counter. Hard little green tomatoes, I wondered if they’d ever come to anything. They are red now, a month or more later. I split some of them in half and add them to the pan to soften, with salt and pepper, and look for herbs. I crumble in some friable needles from a sprig of rosemary, dried in summer, and tear up a basil leaf from a cutting, rooted in a glass of water, perched on the windowsill. The sleet, I see, has turned into snow. Now water goes into my soup pot, and a piece of Parmesan rind, and the soup burbles quietly while outside the snow is thickening, coming down in big fat flakes. I taste the soup. The broth tastes of tomato with a sharp tang, reminding me of tomatillos in pozole, and how their sourness plays off the comforting starch of hominy. I reach into a box of macaroni, grab a handful and add macaroni to the soup pot, along with the broccoli rabe flowers, saved for last. There, now my nothing soup is beginning to taste like something. I look for a nice wide soup mug , rinse it with boiling water to take off the chill, fish the Parmesan rind from the broth and plane fresh cheese for strewing on top. It is snowing outside and I am inside eating soup, made from nothing, my favorite kind.
Oh Patricia how I wish you had your own Substack - your writing is always so lovely and this ode to soup making (and soup made-from-nothing-something) is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us! And those late-ripening cherry tomatoes - the number one reason for growing your own veg!
There are some gems here, Dee. I'm wondering if it is chilly where you are in Texas?! It's definitely soup weather here - down to 22 degrees last night. Brrrr!
Today was a perfect day to cook soup.Making soup from whatever I had at hand was so pleasurable, I decided to write it down. Bet I wasn't the only one whose thoughts turned to soup today........Note to self: Buy cauliflower this week to try some of Susie's terrific suggestions.....
It is sleeting now and I am making soup.
I am making soup out of nothing, my favorite kind. I find a leftover knob of onion, chop it and add it to a small pan with olive oil. Too much oil, I think, as it glugs out of the bottle. Yes, but: my soup will be richer and more viscous for it: Better. I put in chopped broccoli rabe, the last of a bunch; the fibrous bits of stalk go in first, the flower heads are saved for later. A small tray of cherry tomatoes, picked from the garden in late November – November!-- has been ripening on my counter. Hard little green tomatoes, I wondered if they’d ever come to anything. They are red now, a month or more later. I split some of them in half and add them to the pan to soften, with salt and pepper, and look for herbs. I crumble in some friable needles from a sprig of rosemary, dried in summer, and tear up a basil leaf from a cutting, rooted in a glass of water, perched on the windowsill. The sleet, I see, has turned into snow. Now water goes into my soup pot, and a piece of Parmesan rind, and the soup burbles quietly while outside the snow is thickening, coming down in big fat flakes. I taste the soup. The broth tastes of tomato with a sharp tang, reminding me of tomatillos in pozole, and how their sourness plays off the comforting starch of hominy. I reach into a box of macaroni, grab a handful and add macaroni to the soup pot, along with the broccoli rabe flowers, saved for last. There, now my nothing soup is beginning to taste like something. I look for a nice wide soup mug , rinse it with boiling water to take off the chill, fish the Parmesan rind from the broth and plane fresh cheese for strewing on top. It is snowing outside and I am inside eating soup, made from nothing, my favorite kind.
Oh Patricia how I wish you had your own Substack - your writing is always so lovely and this ode to soup making (and soup made-from-nothing-something) is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us! And those late-ripening cherry tomatoes - the number one reason for growing your own veg!
Yea to Soup!! Can’t wait to try a few of these 🙏
There are some gems here, Dee. I'm wondering if it is chilly where you are in Texas?! It's definitely soup weather here - down to 22 degrees last night. Brrrr!
Oh yes we get cold here. I spent 25 years in CO but wasn’t ever cold until I moved to Central Texas. Maybe cuz I acclimated to 104 in the summer? 🤔