By Request

Italian Wedding Soup

The first time I tried Italian Wedding Soup, it was at...The Olive Garden.

Back in the early 90's!

I was visiting a friend who'd moved to Pittsburgh, and this was our Nice Dinner Out. 

Coming from a very small town where dining out meant Pizza Hut, McD's...or a fish fry, a place like TOG was a step up. Fancy. The bread! I mean, The Bread.  People. Genius marketing. 

I didn't have it again until I got married, about a decade later.  Our families (mostly mine) made the food - the hall was Celtic-themed, but the food (sans the must-have cookie table) was Italian.  There was even venison ragout (caught by a cousin - like I said, SMALL TOWN). 

And Italian Wedding Soup. 

There were two versions: one following the recipe exactly, the other using veggie stock and a plant-based sausage meat for the meatballs.  

I barely ate at the reception (and ours was more like a large party than a Wedding Reception), but there were leftovers, and we had a day before our flight to Ireland.
So I ate as much as I could in that time.

In the 22 years since that day, I've made this soup a lot.

Like..a lot a lot.

It's getting harder to manage, as forming the several hundred tiny meatballs (two versions), and turning the carrot & celery into veggie confetti takes a toll on me (it can require days to recover), but dang it all; I love this stuff.

So does Alex.

When I plan the menu for the next week, I always ask him if there's something he'd like to have.  He is, 86% of the time, unhelpful and uninterested. 

But every now & then, he'll ask for something.

Recently, it was Italian Wedding Soup. And I was happy to make it.

I no longer use a recipe. It's meatballs - a mix of beef/pork (faux versions as well), breadcrumbs, garlic, parsley, s&p, some kind of grating cheese. Keep it simple. Make so many.

The soup base is likewise basic: the tiniest flecks of celery & carrot slowly cooked down in a super-small splash of olive oil. Stock (usually, a veg stock, but my god; it's so difficult to find one that isn't low-sodium/low-fat!). Get that seasoned to your preference, add ancini di pepe (which has to be ordered). 
Because I make one stock, we ladle that in first, then add the meatballs (warmed up) to individual bowls. 

It's easy. It's good. It's comforting. 

And my kid thinks so, too.