Soup!

One of my favorite soups to make on a rainy day is Julia Child's Soup a la Victorine.  However, Julia's version has a lot of extra steps that I tend to cut down, and my result is a really yummy, easy, and relatively quick soup.  Once again, everything I needed was in the house already.  Except for the eggplant.  But there was frozen Wild Boar sausage from D'Artagnan, one of my favorites!  Normally, I use regular Italian sausage, which is just as good, but if there's wild boar around, I'll use that instead.  Or, for a lighter meal, I skip it all together.  I had to run out to Walgreens anyway to pick up my cold medicine, so I went to Whole Foods too.  And, I'm glad I did because I found what might be one of the last bags of white chocolate covered, peppermint encrusted, pretzel chips of the season!!

Once again, I digress.... but see how pretty?  Anyway, I came home and started on the soup.  The great thing about this, is that it makes a big pot, enough for 6 people, and since I'm cooking for only 3, we have leftovers to freeze for a day that I don't feel like cooking.  However, there is NO p-touch in this house.  Can you believe it?  My mother has yet to discover the wonders of labeling everything in sight.  I feel that might change once she reads this.  Or maybe I'll buy one for her.  For now, a piece of masking tape with "soup" written on it will have to do for marking the jars that are about to go in the freezer.



½ lb. Italian sausage
2 cups combination of sliced leeks and onions, or onions only, chopped
4 large cloves garlic, minced or mashed
olive oil 
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon sage
4 jars Borlotti Italian beans, drained and rinsed
3-4 cups chicken stock
A firm, shiny, 1 lb. eggplant (about 8 inches long and about 3 ½ inches at widest diameter 
1 can San Marzano tomatoes, chopped
salt
pepper

• Brown the sausage in a bit of olive oil in a soup pot.  When mostly cooked, remove from pot and slice into rounds.  Brown those a bit.  Remove them to a plate.

browning sausage - yum!

• If there is a lot of fat from your sausage, drain some of it.  If there is not a lot, add some oil to the pan.  Sprinkle the leeks and onions with salt and cook slowly until tender and translucent.  Add the garlic and cook 1 minute.  Add the beans, herbs, and stock to cover.  Bring to the simmer, partially cover the pan, and cook slowly for 1/2 hour or until the beans are tender. (Stir frequently).  Sometimes, I will use dried cranberry beans and cook the soup in my pressure cooker.  Both ways are equally delicious, and it just depends on what I I have on hand. 

simmering it all together

• Sauté the sausage in a separate pan, slice, and reserve.
• Peel the eggplant and cut into ½ inch dice.  Sauté in some olive oil pan till lightly brown.
• Purée the soup in a food mill, and add the sausage, eggplant, and tomatoes and some of their juice to the pan.
• Simmer 10-15 minutes
• Serve with a drizzle of good finishing oil.

Back again!!

So much has happened since I last posted here.  One big change is my new job - I'm now working for Veritable Vegetable, the nation's oldest Organic Produce Distributor.  As you can imagine, this has given me access to all sorts of wonderful produce.  I'm organizing my life in many ways, and one of those is to try again to post regularly on here and make this into something....  so here we go.

One thing that I was thrilled to find at work were these - fresh Cranberry Beans.  I've often used the dried or canned variety, but had never even seen them fresh like this.  So I recently brought a bunch home and made a soup.

Cranberry Beans in their pods

I sat down with this bowl full of beans, and an empty bowl, and the Food Network on TV.  Much like shelling peas, you just snap one end and expose the pretty beans inside:

After an episode of Anne Burrell, here's what I ended up with - about 4 cups of shelled beans.

Shelled beans

Unfortunately, after cooking they loose their unique coloring, but the creamy texture more than makes up for this.  So then it was time to start the soup.  With no real recipe to go by, here's what I did:

Mirepoix

All of my soups start with a mirepoix (2 parts chopped onion, 1 part chopped celery, 1 part chopped carrots) and a large, heavy soup pot.  My favorite is a 5 1/2 quart Le Creuset that I got for my birthday one year.  Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in the pot, add the mirepoix, a little bit of salt, and cook until soft, about 8-10 minutes.  Then I added the shelled beans, about 1/2 can of chopped San Marzano tomatoes (I had some leftover from the previous night's dinner) and about 4 cups of chicken stock, and a sprig of sage.  Oh, and I tossed in some parmesan cheese rinds that I had in the fridge.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer.  No salt at this time because it can make the skins of the beans tough.  I cooked the soup for a couple of hours, occasionally adding more water if the level got too low.  Once the beans were super tender and all the flavors had time to really come together, I decided to add some Rainbow Chard that I had in the fridge.  After washing, I cut out the stalks and chopped them up - added to the soup and cooked for about 10 minutes.  Then I chopped up the leaves and added them and cooked for 5 more minutes.  Then season the whole thing with salt and pepper, ladle into bowls, and drizzle with some good quality olive oil. Here's the finished product.  This made enough for dinner that night, dinner for me and Creg the next night, and another night, and one more serving in the freezer (how much is that total? 6?)  Of course, we accompanied the soup with grilled cheese sandwiches, which I did not photograph.

Cranberry Bean Soup