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. 

Love Hurts

The teen suffered a break-up recently, his first. But it wasn't just the end of a relationship - he was ghosted (I'd like to have a talk with her parents about teaching children to accept responsibility for the actions). He was crushed, unsurprisingly; they'd been involved (albeit long-distance) for two and a half years.

Ciabatta, colored black to match the ache in his heart.
 

With this happening right before Valentine's, I wanted to make the day as tolerable for him as possible. I mean, Matt & I don't need a manufactured holiday to show our love. We do that daily. So I decided to make an all-black dinner.

Garlic Soup with Fideos - for un-kiss-able breath.

I got a black tablecloth, and an inexpensive set of dishes and cups, for the occasion.  You can't take a theme too far.

Homemade, black, farfalle in white pesto sauce.

There was chocolate cake, made with black cocoa, for dessert. Decadent chocolate milk to drink.  

But if all that wasn't enough to show him he was loved, we also got him this (Derrynane was very interested).

Being a teenager is hard. Dating is hard. Dating while a teenager? The worst. 

I know he'll recover.  And hope he'll find someone who deserves him. But for now, all I can do is love him and do my best to make him feel better.

 

Visit with a friend

...Hi!

Remember me?

I'm still here. I'm still cooking and baking and creating.

What I'm not doing is blogging.

Yep.

But I'm here now.

Because today was National Soup Day (I'm doing this thing where I try to work in as many 'National Day of' food events into my menus as possible this year) and the timing being what it is, decided to post so I could swing by my dear friend Deb's and join her Souper Sundays.

I know: it's been a while!

I found a recipe from Williams-Sonoma for Lasagna Soup and knew I had to try it.

Nothing too difficult or outrageous, but sounded interesting. And I'm a sucker for deconstructed recipes, so...

A tomato-y broth, pasta, and meatballs topped with an amazingly creamy cheese mix. Wow. WOW. So good.

Obviously, I made some changes. First up was splitting the recipe in two, one pot following exactly and the other done vegetarian.

So, vegetable soup base instead of chicken broth. Vegetarian Italian 'sausage'. And because Alex does not like ricotta, swapped that with marscapone.

Huge success. Everyone loved it. To go all internet-speak: "10/10 would make again".

TDATD: Retro Vibe

Old-timey POP.

While everyone else was mashing potatoes and getting creative with pumpkin, we were channeling the 1940s-1960s in preparation for our annual Two Days After Thanksgiving Dinner.

 


Iceberg lettuce wedges with a house-made French dressing.

Matt doesn't like turkey, and Alex and I are both vegetarian. The traditional Thanksgiving dinner isn't something that appeals to us.

Many years ago, even before we met, Matt started hosting a dinner party for friends the Saturday following turkey day, aptly named the Two Days After Thanksgiving Dinner.

Each dinner carries some sort of theme. Previous parties included Indian, Things Stuffed Into Other Things, Mexican and Halloween in November. This year, we decided to give retro foods a spin.


Rolls from a wartime (the big one, for those wondering) cookbook.

Pulling from both vintage and retro-themed cookbooks, we put together a casual, almost-cocktail party menu.


Tomato soup

You've gotta have soup, right? Very basic, but strongly flavored.


Shrimp cocktail with a horseradish-heavy cocktail sauce.

What's a more classic appetizer than the shrimp cocktail?  The sauce came from my trusty Wartime cookbook.


Waiter, would you serve the nuts? I mean, serve the guests the nuts.




Smoked-chicken salad, served with classic crackers.

The molded salad was such a standard dish. It's also pretty gross. I wanted to keep the look without turning my stomach while making it, so we went with chicken salad: smoked chicken, mayo, celery and chipotle powder, molded in a plastic wrap-lined bowl and chilled then served on a bed of lettuce with Ritz, Triscuits and Captain's Wafers on the side.


Deviled eggs



Feta salad in cucumber cups

Like your favorite Greek salad, inverted.



Making it up as we go: Mock-Champagne Punch.

Matt and I don't drink alcohol (not for preachy reasons, we just don't care for it), but I'm always looking for reasons to use my vintage punch bowl.
The Champagne Punch without the punch is a good enough reason.  Vanilla seltzer, lavender dry soda and pineapple juice.



Dessert

Hostess was in the news around the time of the party. So I made my own cream-filled chocolate cupcakes and 'canoe' cakes.



Oh, look - it's me! Or my pedicured-foot in my rockabilly shoes and dress.




Even did my hair sort of vintage: the pin-curl is my new best (style) friend.

Cambodian Chicken & Rice Soup for Souper Sundays

,

I like the cooler temperatures a lot more than Matt. My feeling is that you can
add more layers to get warm, but when it's hot you can only take off so much
to get cool!

There's another, and more recent, reason I like this time of the year: Matt's more
willing to eat soup. (This is called a 'win-win'.)

Give it some Asian flavors and he might even have seconds.

Cambodian Chicken and Rice Soup (with shrimp, which we omitted) is ridiculously
easy and full of flavor.
For Matt's, we used our already-smoked and shredded chicken instead of rotisserie.
Ginger and garlic (we used jarred pastes for ease) are heated, stock (more of the smoked
chicken stock), water, fish sauce, honey and cooked jasmine rice are boiled.
Add in the chicken, then the shrimp (if using) until just cooked. Throw in some
lime juice, shredded basil & sliced chile and you've got a filling soup with a
bit of heat.

Once again, it's Deb and her Souper Sundays that gets me back here and posting!

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.

Real-Deal Tortilla Soup for Souper Sundays

I am such a bad food blogger.

I made this soup three weeks ago. I had every intention of posting!

...And then I didn't.

Ah, well.

No time like the...blah blah blah.

I've become such a fan of Serious Eats over the last year. I think a third of my bookmarked recipes come from them.

And despite Matt not being much of a soup fan (I know, I cry a little on the inside, too), he was very interested in this one.

Bonus? I finally got to use the Michael Chiarello method for slicing corn kernels from the cob!

I think the only changes made were using some already-cooked (and smoked) chicken for Matt, tortilla chips instead of frying fresh...and of course, leaving out that foul cilantro.
OH!
And blue potatoes. Come on; look at that beauty!

Really fabulous & quick soup. Deep flavor - it has a lot going on. And so filling!

DEB!!! I AM HERE!!

Irish Stew for Souper Sundays

It's not much to look at, I know.

Simple, hearty stew from Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making - onions, potatoes (twice), bouquet garni, beef stock & stew meat.

Hours of cooking, really great flavor (says Matt).