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. 

Something resembling Italian Wedding Soup: Souper Sundays

What's this? Two weeks in a row?

I'd better be careful or you might start expecting more from me.

A 'quick' & easier Italian Wedding Soup for dinner (and Souper Sundays). As always, we made two versions of this. One for Matt & another for Alex & me.

Already-made smoked chicken stock or vegetable boullion was boiled with finely-diced (or, as I like to call it, 'confetti') carrots & celery. After a few minutes, add first the orzo & cook until al dente, then the meatballs (the recipe wants them one-inch; I made mine considerably smaller, while Matt's were only a bit larger than that) made from either ground pork or a vegetarian ground 'sausage', breadcrumbs, grated cheese (Asiago, in this case) & a bit of salt & pepper. This gets simmered, then chopped spinach goes in & simmers a bit more.

The recipe also calls for chickpeas, which is an unfamiliar ingredient for this soup (to me), but we decided to omit them on the grounds that a few years ago, sillyAlex (TM) declared he didn't like them.
And some nights, you just don't want to deal with the whole 'try it before you say you don't like it' debacle.

For something that came together quickly & with so few ingredients, it was surprisingly good.
Matt & I prefer to brown our meatballs before adding to anything liquid, but despite a short cooking time, they came out nicely-done.
Results were flavorful, but not overwhelming.

And after Alex quite literally cleaned his bowl & went off to play, Matt & I did a parenting-win high-five.

Love ya, Deb.