i know… we’re in the throes of the holidays and here i am giving you the kind of post you might more be expecting in january. this modest, even unassuming soup is a fine example of the simple comfort food that everyone craves after all the excess and extravaganza that will ring out the year. but for me, even amidst all the decadence, there would be few things on my list that could ever equal the magnificence that is this soup.

imagine. if you had a cold and then you crossed my beloved jewish grandma julia with someone else’s italian nonna, i’m thinking that whatever she’d be cooking for you might look a little something like what you see here.

and really, all i’m saying is that sometimes, sniffles or not, in between all the festivity, undoubtedly filled with an array of benton’s bacon wrapped dates, hudson valley foie gras on pain de mie toast points, baked wheels of brie with fig jam on top, wine braised lamb shanks and slow roasted loins of meat – possibly followed up with a very beloved christmas eve lasagna = not to mention what you may have on the menu for your new year’s celebration… well, you might just want soup.

and of them all, to me this one reigns supreme.

i threw a whole chicken in the pot along with a rough chopped onion, some carrots, bay leaves, cracked peppercorns and salt. after about 90 minutes i removed most of the meat from the carcass and put it off to the side, putting all the bones back in and letting it go for about another 3 hours at barely a simmer. then i added some parsley, thyme and garlic for the last 40 minutes or so.

i strained the broth through a damp towel lined chinois, discarding everything solid and when the liquid was cooled i defatted the stock by about 90%. about 30 minutes before serving i warmed the broth and chopped up some fresh fennel, collard greens and carrots, adding back the all the shredded chicken and lastly i made trofie pasta, keeping it al dente so as not to soften up too much in the soup.

i loved it. deeply…

(a special thanks to chef bob del grosso for his willingness to both coach and reassure me when i am clueless…which is often.)

i eat a lot of beans. i didn’t used to. but rancho gordo changed all that. i know, you’ve heard it before. but RG has radically altered my personal food pyramid and now, well – i eat a lot of beans…

so in the past two weeks, i’ve made three big pots of very different bean stews and all of them were quite good. but being that this is my every day kind of food, i don’t always write about such lunches and dinners. but there i was, home with no car and a new puppy – and so i took a few shots anyway – and now i’ve decided that as a trio it all makes for a solid post. and so i present to you a virtual hill of beans…

but – being that my memory is only so acute, i may have forgotten a thing or two about the first dish. and in all fairness, that one isn’t even a bean dish. it’s lentils and orzo. and i am not lying when i tell you that i’ve no earthly idea what went into that one. except the green lentils and the last of a container of whole wheat orzo. and carrots and onions. oh, and chicken stock. and i vaguely remember a healthy dose of my sicilian oregano going in there… but ok, really. now i am clueless. except to say that it was damn good food and even better with an egg on top.

oh dear, i just remembered this one too…

these were some leftover christmas lima beans from something or another, way back when, and this was lunch one of those days and it was just so pretty i couldn’t resist taking a picture. a typical lunch in the life of claudia young. now you have it. more beans. and arugula, which i love almost as much as i love beans, if not more. depending when you might ask…

bean dish #2 was actually really fun to make. i had no idea what i was going for, and i just kind of let each ingredient added determine the next in line. at one point i realized i’d better write down what i was doing – and it looked a little bit like this:

brown tepiary beans
whole garlic cloves
celery
carrots
bay leaves
chopped shallots
lots of fresh thyme
a heaping spoonful of pimenton
a can of san marzano tomatoes
collard greens
white rice
crushed chili pepper
one fat anchovy
a lot of balsamic vinegar
3 cups of brown veal stock

all served up in a bowl with a healthy pour of some wonderful grassy green olive oil floating on top. and of course, the obligatory fried egg…

somehow there’s no picture except for this, the final addition of the veal stock, which i kind of got a kick out of. being that it was an afterthought, i grabbed some of my stock from the freezer, peeled off the bag and stuck it into the middle of the pot like a meaty popsicle.

and then lastly, i had soaked some calypso beans and had a few sweet potatoes laying around so i decided to get crazy, veer from the italian and go all carribean. which was an interesting study being that i know nothing about that genre of cooking. BUT by god, i’m a googling fool and after punching in "carribean bean and sweet potato stew", my next ingredients were:

cinnamon
thyme
bay leaves
chopped onion
chopped celery
frozen spinach
allspice
chili flakes
AND (just because)
this very italian mugolio pine syrup – i could have used brown sugar but i had this and well, on a whim in it went. i had recently bought it, tried it and was a little unsure of how i would ever use it. i love market hall foods but this particular product didn’t have quite the kick i had hoped for. in all fairness it’s just as they describe – a honey like syrup with pine overtones. whereas i was thinking more pine in the forefront.

served over a nutty brown rive, everyone really loved this. it was unlike what i usually do – which was a nice change.

i suppose the beauty of this food is that it is supremely healthy and i always use whatever is in my cupboard and the draws of my fridge. i never go to the market to shop for my next pot of beans. they just become whatever they were meant to be on that day.

oh, and did i mention the cannellini’s that are soaking in my kitchen right now?

i’m one of those people who don’t have a great deal of attachment to my childhood food memories. i mean, being from nyc i grew up around seriously great food but my mom was not a gourmet cook. she saw feeding us each night as her familial duty and she did a solidly good job - but nothing extraordinary was happening in our kitchen on yellowstone blvd. i have a dim recollection, which just the mere thought of now causes me to cringe, of flounder rolled with a can of campbell’s condensed alphabet soup mixed with sour cream. and perhaps on a much higher note, my brother’s favorite was veal parmigiana and we always had that for dinner whenever he came home from college – and i’ve got to say that my mom did a pretty damn fine rendition of that. but nothing else really stands out. just that we had a varied and well rounded menu and no one ever went hungry. 

but my grandma julia, now she was a real ballabusta. and her kitchen was huge - at least 600 square feet and well, i spent a lot of time in that kitchen on long island. tons of weekends and sleep overs and then there were all the jewish holidays. my brother once told me that the philosophy of our relatives pretty much boiled down to "we’re jews, you didn’t kill us, let’s eat".

and eat we all did, the likes of which i’ve never quite seen anywhere else. the greenbaum’s at a buffet are a sight to behold.

my grandma made a lot of wonderful dishes, and many were the classics one might expect. there was her chicken soup with knadlaich, stuffed cabbage, chopped liver, brisket and a tongue dish in a raisin sweet and sour sauce that i loved dearly until one sorry afternoon when i was about 13 and had a run in with the tongue, sitting there in all it’s glory on the kitchen counter – before it had been peeled and sliced, leaving an indelible scar on my young psyche.

and then there was her pea soup, sweet from carrots and onions with generous chunks of rich beef studded throughout a soup so thick that the spoon could easily stand up in the bowl all on its own.

and i had all but forgotten about this soup until recently when it suddenly crossed my mind. grandma julia’s pea soup. with flanken. but what exactly was flanken? so i googled it and discovered that flanken is the strip of meat from the chuck end of the short ribs. short ribs... of course… what a perfect soup meat. and short ribs are beyond popular these days, the beefy version of perhaps pork belly, making an appearance on every trendy menu and even in your supermarket meat case (whereas in nashville, tracking down ‘flanken’ i am sure would be a bit of a wild goose chase). so i’d say that short ribs could be classified as an "in" cut of beef – especially this time of year, that lends itself really well to braises and stews – and soups.

i’m pretty sure my grandmother wouldn’t have browned the meat first, but i did. so into the pot went the short ribs, still on the bone and after they were browned on all sides i added two chopped onions and 4 big sliced carrots followed by a bag of green split peas and some of my superlative chicken stock and water. about 2 hours after it had slowly simmered, i added two bay leaves and fresh thyme, salt and cracked pepper and let it go about another 90 minutes. my mom told me that my grandmother used to run it all through a food mill, but everything had broken down on its own and there was no need to purée it any further.

this split pea soup boasts an earthy and uncomplicated flavor. and it really is startlingly good. cary loved it. and to me it felt familiar and soothing. and i think my grandma would have been very pleased.

so listen. i know, i know… put all the cured pork you want into your pea soup. but i’m telling you… you are so wrong.

because i will see you one ham hock and raise you some flanken…

when i first read ‘the making of a chef’ by michael ruhlman, i remember being struck by the last line in an early chapter where he wrote something like, "and then i realized i had come to the CIA to learn how to make a perfect brown veal stock".

having made my own perhaps not-as-perfect version of veal stock, and now that i always keep a couple of quarts of this velvety and sublime stuff on hand, i knowingly smiled. because after all the cooking and the reading, and then all the eating, i get it. i really do. it matters. and so it’s worth the eye-rolls that i get from some friends who think my ingredients are a bit too esoteric, and my technique and principles, elitist – the same friends that when i see them use stock from a can or a box, i bite my tongue and cringe…

because i won’t.

i just can’t.

i’ve been shown the way, the light and the most noble of culinary truths…

no real stock on hand? use water.

happy halloween…

but then there are also those times when veal is not the stock of choice. veal stock is more neutral, able to boost flavors in a very subtle but definitive way, while chicken stock is unmistakably – chickeny. and well, sometimes it’s just what you need and nothing else will do. ok, turkey stock will definitely do and then some…

so when the weather was deciding to get cooler, before it changed its mind and went back to the mid 80′s (and now down again), i decided to make chicken soup. i had hit the farmers market a few days before and picked up a chicken, a bag of necks and a bag of feet. the original thought was that i’d make some stock. after all, tis the season of soups and braises and stock is the quintessential element.

so i began by cutting the wings off my chicken and browning them in a large pot along with the assorted aforementioned extras in just a bit of canola oil and then filling the pot with filtered water, bay leaves, crushed peppercorns, a couple of carrots and a very large onion. the last addition was the bag of roasted carcasses and assorted bones that had been saved and frozen from our last 3 roasted chicken dinners in anticipation of ‘stock making day’.

reach out and touch someone…

my goal was to create a good solid stock and then add my now wingless chicken to the pot along with a parsnip for the last 90 minutes. the chicken would then get removed, skinned and pulled apart and the broth would be strained some more. and there would be egg noodles along with the shredded meat – and a few sliced carrots thrown in at the end with a very fine smattering of parsley for color… such is my usual chicken soup.

after about 4 hours at a barely imperceptible bubble, i removed the feet, neck, bones and vegetables and strained the broth through my damp towel lined chinoise, not once but 3 times. my stock looked and smelled absolutely beautiful and i was feeling pretty good about myself. and then i suddenly remembered the whole superlative stock concept that chef pardus had mentioned in ruhlman’s book and i temporarily lost interest in the soup. just like that. and i decided to go the extra mile and make the best damn chicken stock this side of the mississippi.

so into the strained stock went the body of the chicken and i let it simmer for about another 2 hours. after, i removed the bird from the broth, peeled off the skin in one full swoop and shredded the meat. it went into the refrigerator for whatever, whenever, later getting used in one round of soup, sandwiches and salads and the occasional cat treat.

the stock was put back on the stove and slowly reduced down for another 2 hours and was then strained 2 more times. after it cooled on the stove, it was zip-locked and frozen in 2 cup batches. i kept the last 2 cups in the fridge to make us soup at some point that week, and when i went back to my stock, it was heavily gelatinized.

a very good sign…

i think both chef pardus, ruhlman and my grandmother would have been pleased with the result.

later that week the stock shown above was reheated, slightly rehydrated, seasoned and then the obligatory noodles, chicken meat and carrot coins were added. i never did remember the parsley – or to take a photo of the finished soup.

when we sat down to dinner and i took my first spoonful, cary asked me how i thought it was and i looked at him and said, "it’s extraordinarily honest."

so maybe next time i won’t make the superlative version of my chicken stock. or maybe i will.

i guess we’ll just see how the day is going… 

beans! beans! they’re good for your heart! the more you eat, the more you fart… unless you change the soaking water every couple of hours to remove the offending sugar molecules called oligosaccharides. see what you get from me? both immaturity and education! i am like so totally worth your time…

after the butter and cream, the foie gras and all the excesses of december, and then with the inevitable regrouping that comes each january, here we are in february and i’m ready for some simple cool weather comfort food. and the fact that beans are low fat and don’t cost a fortune – well you’ve gotta love the beans if only for that. so after months of hearing endless raves about rancho gordo’s heirloom beans, i could stand it no longer and i went to their tres cool site and placed an order. and voila, as promised a box arrived at my door with an assortment of no less than 10 bags of some mighty fine looking legumes. now i guess i’ve got my work cut out for me…

i opted to begin with the borlotti beans. they’re similar to cranberry beans but the coloration is different and they’re slightly bigger. borlotti’s are commonly used in italian cooking and i’ve been wanting to make ribollita for awhile now, so this seemed like perfect timing. and well, that timing – it’s everything… so i started reading up and it seems that every cook’s ribollita recipe varies, but all share the common theme of taking dried beans, stale bread and winter vegetables – and wowing the hell out of you. ribollita translates from the italian to ‘re-boiled’. as with most stews and soups, this dish benefits by sitting for a day and then reheated the next.

ribollita
(heavily adapted from the ny times column ‘eating well’ written by marion burros in 1992)

3 cups dry borlotti beans, soaked 8 hours
1/4 cup fresh sage leaves
8 cloves garlic, peeled, 4 left whole, 4 minced
6 ounces pancetta – medium dice
2 large onions – coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup canned Italian tomatoes
4 carrots – chopped
4 celery ribs – chopped
1 fennel bulb – sliced
1/2 cup of chopped flat leaf parsley
6 sprigs fresh thyme – chopped
2 pound cavalo nero (lacinato kale) washed, trimmed and cut into thin strips
1 pound potatoes, coarsely diced thin slices of stale tuscan bread – i used a loaf of pugliese

1. drain beans after soaking and cover generously with fresh water, adding the sage and the 4 whole cloves of garlic. bring beans to boil and cook 45 minutes to one hour, until they are quite tender. reserve liquid.

2. meanwhile, saute the pancetta, the 4 minced garlic cloves and the onions in the olive oil.

3. when beans are cooked, puree half of them in a food processor, using a little of the cooking liquid

4. combine the pureed and the whole beans with the pancetta mixture and with tomatoes, carrots, celery, thyme, kale, potatoes and 3 cups of the bean broth. cook for 30 to 60 minutes, adding water if soup becomes more like porridge. season well with salt and pepper.

5. place a layer of bread in a casserole and top with some soup. repeat until all the bread is used, ending with soup on top. the dish can be served this way, as a bean and bread soup. to make this a true ribollita, refrigerate overnight. the next day, mash the soup and the bread into a thick porridge. boil to reheat. as an alternative, you may saute the ribollita in a non-stick skillet in some olive oil until it forms a light crust. in either case, each serving should then be topped with your very best olive oil. i added slivers of parmigiano.

and yes, i grabbed my skillet and opted for the lightly crusted version. i mean, how could you not? my ribollita was then served right alongside a simple salad of romaine with dried cherries and a walnut oil and black fig vinaigrette.

it’s as close to tuscany as i’ve been in too long.

i could just say "thank you heidi" and then give you the link… because anything else is really superfluous here – but since we haven’t chatted in awhile i thought i’d hang around and shoot the breeze.

’08 has had a rough start. one of my cats, chet – a sable burmese – got injured to the tune of $2500, i cancelled a 3 week trip next month to brazil because i just couldn’t swing it, a big annual seminar that i run each year was not as well attended as in the past due to our scary economy – speaking of which the democrats are at each others throats already which makes me nervous that the country will get nervous and lean towards the republicans. and although i have little control over such most things i am concerned enough that i got a big honkin’ cold sore on my face which i believe is large enough to warrant its own zipcode. just thought i’d share… but then on the lighter side of life there is this fabulous lentil soup that you need to make. i’ve gone through three batches in two weeks and will make my fourth tomorrow. it is quite simply, "just right". and it takes 20 minutes to prepare. i use a teaspoon of spanish pimenton in mine to give it a smokey depth, along with some chili flakes for just a touch of heat. i also use a full bunch of chard, probably more than heidi’s recipe calls for but i like it. and as we all know, everything is much better with a poached egg on top – although i also made her saffron yogurt sauce and it was divine. it’s what’s for lunch – or dinner. home alone – or even if friends drop by. this lentil soup is absolutely wonderful.

below, the saffron yogurt version – which looks remarkably similar to the poached egg version:

totally a favorite – a new staple to make over and over and over.

3 soups in one day?  ambitious?  perhaps.  but i was hell bent on getting through this mountain of produce that was somehow all mine.  and soups are a good way to go when faced with an overbearing bounty.  i opted first for the bittman pear zucchini, then a riff off an aubergine soup i’d seen that i refer to as mediterranean eggplant and finally a buttermilk butternut squash creation that was inspired by JO (you know who you are…).  even in a baking recipe, i rarely can follow along verbatim although i did stay loyal to mark.  mark, i hang on your every ingredient.  you are so my kinda cook.

the pear in the zucchini soup is more subtle than i expected.  it gives it a certain mellow sweetness and flavor that marries well with the zucchini.  it’s a sautee of onion, carrot and potato, the latter giving it it’s creamy texture – and of course pears and zucchini.  a lot of zucchini…  i opted to serve it room temperature as i felt it brought out the flavor of the pear more.  to finish i sprinkled this soup generously with fresh chopped mint. 

there is not one zucchini left in my house.  thank you jesus.

next up was the eggplant soup.  a quick sautee of shallots and garlic in olive oil and then the diced eggplant is added to the pan on low heat.  cook this down for about 30 minutes or so and then add salt and chicken stock.  cool it down, transfer to a blender and puree until it’s smooth.  then add it back to your pan along with the juice of half a lemon, full fat greek yogurt and chopped parsley. 

i opted to top this with the suggested gremolata and added a fine chop of tomato for color and flavor.  i saw it presented with a healthy slice of buffalo mozzarella – one of my favorite cheeses in the world – but i opted to keep it lighter.  the original recipe also calls for butter and cream.  and i’m sure it’s amazing.  but this version was meant to be a bit more lean while still staying big on flavor.

and last, i love butternut squash.  which is lucky for me because before i began this soup i had 8 of them in my house.  i am currently down to 4.  i like to think of this as progress.  i diced a few of them up and they were added to a sautee of onion and garlic.  i added chicken stock and seasoned with fresh thyme, salt and pepper. 

i let the squash soften and after cooling down, pureed the mixture with a cup of buttermilk.  to serve i garnished with a swirl of greek honey and some fried sage leaves.

and i’ve got to hand it to cary, a truly good boyfriend who not only shopped with me, took a bunch of the final photo’s AND cleaned the entire kitchen – but he ate 3 bowls of soup for dinner.  happily.

and that right there deems him a keeper.

it was a quick ‘let’s have lunch’ decision.  and i thought perfect.  zucchini pear soup - a bittman recipe that sounded intriguing from last week’s dining section in the ny times.  and then i immediately thought imperfect.  no pears.  damnit.  i had just bought pears but now they were gone.  i had honeycrisps but that wasn’t going to cut it.  so faced with yet another produce quandary, i switched gears.

i opened the fridge, grabbed a red bell pepper and two big zucchini’s and proceeded to make it all up as i went along.  sometimes this tactic works better than other times, but soup can be pretty forgiving.  it’s hard to destroy a soup.

so first i sauteed about 4 diced shallots in olive oil.  anthony bourdain claims that if you just use shallots more often, forgoing the lowly onion, your food will taste better.  probably had i substituted butter for olive oil the result would have tasted better still.  but i wanted a cleaner vibe to this soup – a heart happier, less french, more italian soup.  then i added about 4 cloves worth of chopped garlic, followed by oregano and all the diced zucchini.  when the vegetables had softened i added boxed organic chicken broth (so sue me) and let it simmer.  from there it hit the blender and then the fun began.

i charred the red bell pepper over the gas flame of my stove and then peeled, seeded and thinly sliced the flesh.  but now i must take a sec and tell you about one of my top 3 favorite olives cured with lemon and rosemary.  they are HAAMAZING.  easy entertaining with michael chiarello…  come on – you know what i’m talking about.  do you get the catalog too?  i do.  don’t you just wanna live in napa and hang out with michael, with his ever so appealing boy next door thing goin’ on and drink the zin from his vineyard and eat all the perfect produce from his garden and sit around the table with his other friends – you being his best – and eat all those great ‘easy entertaining’ meals? i do.  in the meantime though i suggest that you breath deep, pay the shipping fee and then delight in these olive’s deliciousness.  cause i’m here to say that i’ve eaten a ton of olives in my years and these rocked my world.  but that’s just me.  ok, last step was to chop some basil and then it was all about making it look like something other then flecked greenish sludge.  so i channeled my inner ‘iron chef’ and this was the end result.

we cut a slice of bread and slathered it with the last of the thick smokey tomato sauce.  the soup was wonderful AND i made it up all by my lonesome. 

i think bittman would’ve been impressed, if only just a little.

i didn’t include this concoction in my last night’s post, but there was this soup.  it’s this thing i’ve been doing lately.  it’s because of the csa – the vegetable overload.  and because soup is good.

so my brilliant technique is to start throwing things into the vitamix to see what happens.  and here is what i did as dave stood there watching, feeling (i am sure) very unsure of my culinary acumen.

about 5 yellow squash – cut in big chunks
two smallish tomatoes
a jalepeno
half of a sweet red bell pepper
organic chicken broth
4 triangles of low fat laughing cow “cheese”
3 cloves of garlic
cumin
some arugula that was needing to get used up
and the chicken breast juice/drippings from the pan

and the squashed tomato juice/drippings from the other pan

and a partridge in a pear tree

DIRECTIONS :  hit the switch

result – i loved it.  dave loved it.  cary loved it.  let us rejoice.