Farro e Fagioli (with Beets)
14 comments Categories: Food, Recipe, Savory, Soup
This is a soup to crave, which is quite unfortunate because it’s not a soup that you can make with a moments thought. First you have to soak beans overnight, two nights if you are being particularly good. You also have to soak the farro for many hours, although since you are already soaking the beans, that’s the least of the worries. Then, you still have to cook the beans for up to 3 hours until they are butter soft (undercooked beans just will not do).
I most likely wouldn’t have even made this soup in the first place with that kind of waiting period, had I not just by chance put a bowl of beans soaking even though I didn’t know what I would do with them yet. My dried bean supply is getting embarrassingly high after a recent binge from Rancho Gordo. Then, one day passed, and then another, and all of a sudden, I needed to have beans for dinner.
But I really had wanted to make this fantastic borscht recipe that Becky taught me a few weeks ago which had a lovely nibble of farro mixed in.
That was some amazing borscht. But, I had these beans to use.
Then, I thought, perhaps pasta e fagioli. When I happened upon the pasta e fagioli recipe in Urban Italian that used farro instead of pasta, I knew I was onto something. All it needed was a bit of beet. And, then, while I was at it, perhaps a bit of leek. And carrot. And kale. And a whole lot more red pepper flakes, because I’m a sucker for a bit of a kick.
Hence, this soup was born. I’m still not really sure what to call it. It’s kind of like borscht, if borscht had hearty beans and farro. And it’s kind of like pasta e fagioli, if pasta e fagioli had beets and a big dollop of creme fraiche. What I will call it is really, really good. And, unfortunately at the moment all gone. Guess I need to get some more beans soaking.
PS: I’m not the only one who is loving the farro/bean combination… Heidi posted this beautiful stew not long ago!
Bean and Beet Soup with Farro
Makes 2 to 3 servings
1 cup dried white beans (such as Cannellini)
1 cup dried chickpeas
2 T olive oil
1/2 medium onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
1/4 to 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 leek, diced
1 beet, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
4 cups vegetable stock, warmed
2 sprigs rosemary
1 sprig thyme
1 stem Italian parsley
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste
5 or 6 kale leaves, stems removed and coarsely chopped
1/2 cup dried farro
1 sprig sage
1 T olive oil
3 canned plum tomatoes, chopped
1 cup vegetable stock
salt and pepper to taste
Creme fraiche to garnish
Place the dried beans in a bowl and cover with water. Cover and let soak 1 to 2 days, and then drain.
On the day you are making the soup, place the farro in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Let sit until needed, at least 3 hours, and then drain just before using.
Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat, and add the onion and celery and cook for about 2 minutes until soft. Add the garlic, leek, beet, carrot and garlic. Cook for 2 minutes. Add the red pepper flakes and beans, then pour in the stock. Add the herbs (tie them with butcher twine to make them easier to remove later). Bring to a simmer, and cook until the beans are very soft, between 1 and 2 hours.
When the beans just start to soften, place the farro, sage, olive oil and tomatoes in another pot over medium heat, and cover with the vegetable stock. Bring to a low boil, and then simmer for about 20 minutes until most of the liquid has been absorbed and the farro is soft. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Once the beans are very tender, season to taste. If you want a bit of a thicker broth, spoon out about 3/4 cup of the vegetables with some broth, puree it, and then add it back to the soup pot. Add the kale and cook for just a minute or two until it brightens.
To serve, ladle the soup into each bowl, add a heaping spoon of farro, and add a dollop of creme fraiche.
Fennel Blossom Soup
Add your comment Categories: Cookbooks, Food, Recipe, Soup
I am kind of a soup person. I always want to know what the soup special is when I dine out. When I eat by myself, there’s a good chance it will be a bowl of soup. I love having a big pot of stock bubbling away on the stove, in anticipation of good soups to come.
In fact, I was all fired up to try the Fennel Blossom Soup in The Herbal Kitchen this week.
Fresh fennel blossoms are bewitching. (They are called umbels, by the way. Isn’t that a great word?) Chopping the teeny-tiny flowers releases the most wonderful perfume. It is summer incarnate. The fennel in my garden right now looks like fireworks, and I figured that the bees wouldn’t mind if I stole away just a little of their pollen.
But the idea of a warm bowl in near 100F heat was definitely out of the question. Luckily, this is a soup that works chilled as well.
The thing is though, I’ve never really been enthusiastic about cold soup. I really don’t find myself on a scorching hot day saying “OOO. What I could go for right now is a big bowl of soup.” I might, as I did on Monday night, eat a whole bowl of salsa with chips for dinner. And I’ve certainly enjoyed a few fresh veggie juices. But my most fond memory of cold soup is from Red Dwarf. Soup is a little respite from a cold winter day. It’s like a blanket in a bowl. I have no religion about chunky versus creamy but I do like my soup hot.
However.
This week, I was more than happy to serve myself a creamy bowl of cold. I had my fill of salads and sorbets already and I really did want to make that soup.
So, yesterday, I got up early when the house was still a “chilly” 75F to cook the soup. Luckily, even though I first had to make my own stock, I was done with the stove within about an hour, before the kitchen was sweltering. Then both the soup and I chilled… it in the fridge, me in the basement. By the late afternoon, when the lower level of the house was no longer much of a haven, I turned to my bowl of soup.
I really was just excited about the cold. My expectations really weren’t all that high beyond that. I knew the flavors were nice as I was seasoning, but I wasn’t sure if they’d hold up once chilled.
And in fact, the flavors do get more subtle when chilled. But that, as it turns out, isn’t really a drawback. In fact, it’s kind of a nice. The soup still has that grassy, anisey flavor of the fennel blossoms, but it doesn’t make a big deal about it or anything. It’s happy to just be a silky golden spoonful of summer. Just what the weatherman called for.
I may just be reconsidering my stand on cold soups.
(BTW – as it happens, this week’s Summer Fest is on herbs! So for more great herby recipes and tips, head over to A Way to Garden!)
adapted from The Herbal Kitchen
The original recipe uses chicken stock, but I substituted a quick veggie stock and a little dry white wine. Also, my fennel bulb was a bit on the small side, so I added some potato… which I think added to the thickness of the soup.
2 T unsalted butter
2 c leeks, white part only sliced
2 potatoes, 1-inch dice
2 c fennel bulb, 1-inch dice
1/2 c dry white wine
3 1/2 c veggie stock
1 T fresh fennel flowers or fennel pollen
salt and pepper to taste
a fruity olive oil to garnish
Heat the butter in a heavy bottom soup pot, and add the leeks and cook over medium-low heat until they are soft and translucent. Add the potato and fennel bulb and then deglaze with the wine. Add the stock and bring to a simmer. Cover and simmer for another 30 minutes.
Add the fennel flowers (or pollen), then using an immersion blender if you have one (or blending in two batches if you are using a standing blender), puree until smooth. Then, puree just a little longer, just in case.
Return to the pot, and bring back to a low simmer. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve hot or chill for at least an hour. I like mine garnished with a drizzle of a really nice olive oil. A few extra fennel flowers are also a nice addition.
Salmon Noodle Soup for What Ails You
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I don’t know about where you are, but everywhere I turn, someone is getting sick. I, knock on wood, have managed to avoid it so far but my poor not-so-little one has gotten some kind of fever inspiring crud twice now in the last month. I’m still not sure how I’ve avoided it… it must be all that lard.
Anyway, if you or someone you love is caught up with the aches and pains, you might try making this simple Salmon Noodle Soup for them. Or, even if everyone is feeling just fine, it’s a lovely spring kind of soup. Unlike most salmon soups which can be heavy with cream or Asian inspired, this soup is a simpler, lighter broth. Like chicken noodle soup, except a bit fishier. It’s super quick to make from scratch, even if you are making starting from the stock.
For the stock, see if you can find frozen fish scraps at your local fish shop. If you are in Seattle, head up to Central Market for a great selection of left over fish parts (or chicken, beef or pork for that matter) that are great for soups and will only set you back about a buck fifty. For my stock, I used onion, celery, thyme, garlic, peppercorns and a teensy bit of fresh ginger. I also threw in dried bonito flakes, as you would for dashi, although my fish stock remained very European tasting. You can of course, use any veggie and seasonings you like. Parsnips, fennel, parsley, carrots all make lovely additions. You don’t even need to chop them. Just throw them in the pot.
To make the stock, add your defrosted and rinsed fish parts, herbs and veggies to a large stockpot and add a good glug of olive oil and about 1/2 cup white wine. Heat on low for about 5 or 10 minutes until it gets nice and fragrant. Then, cover it all with water and simmer for 30 minutes. I like to strain the resulting broth through a couple of layers of cheese cloth to remove any left over bits, but any fine strainer will do. For this recipe, you’ll need about 4 cups of stock. The rest can be refrigerated or frozen for later use.
Salmon Noodle Soup
4 cups fish stock
2 carrots, small-dice
1 stalk of celery, small-dice
2-3 new potatoes, small-dice
1-2 fresh salmon fillets
3 scallions, chopped into small rounds
2 cups of pasta, cooked but not sauced
1 tablespoon fresh tarragon, chopped
olive oil
Salt and pepper
Heat the fish stock in a large soup pot.
In a medium skillet on medium-high, heat the olive oil and add the chopped carrots, celery and potatoes. Saute until the vegetables start to soften, about 3 minutes. Add a ladle of stock and cook for another minute as some of the stock is absorbed. Then, dump the whole concoction back into the rest of the broth, and bring to a simmer. Cook for 7-8 minutes.
Meanwhile, wipe out the skillet and heat it up again on medium-high heat. Brush the salmon fillets with a bit of olive oil, and place flat (skin) sides up in the hot skillet. Cook for 2 minutes. Then, flip the fillets over and cook for another 3-4 minutes. Remove the fillets from the pan and remove the skin. Break the salmon into bite sized pieces. It’s ok if it’s still a bit rare in the middle… it will cook more in the broth.
Add the salmon, scallions, tarragon and pasta to the broth. Add salt and pepper to taste, and simmer for another 5 minutes. Serve up as is, or for a little more indulgence, a small pat of butter.
Full of Bean Soup
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You might remember me mentioning my so-called organizational system for recipes that I get from my somewhat ridiculous number of magazine subscriptions. I have a list that I maintain that I tag with the issue and page info, as well as some basic search criteria to help me find the recipes later. For example, I’d tag an apple pie recipe dessert, sweet, apples, fruit, pie, tart, fall, so that next time I have apples and am wondering what to do with them, I can see all the recipes that I thought looked good. It’s a pretty simple system, which is good because anything that would be complicated just won’t get used in the first place. I’d see recipes and forget to log them and they would be lost in the bookshelves and boxes forever. Over the past year, I’ve tagged over 300 recipes that looked tempting enough for me to notice and want to come back to.
The problem, however, is that the list grows and grows each month. And I’ve cooked from the list, oh, some number of times that I can probably count with my shoes still on, and maybe even a hand in a pocket. I almost always forget about the recipe list when I get to craving something, and reach instead for one of my also-too-many cookbook titles. After my last session of inputting recipes (I tend to queue them up for a month and have a data entry marathon), I decided that I need to change this pattern of perpetually adding and never taking away. It is, I realize, a pretty futile attempt since each month I can easily add 30 new recipes and I know I’ll never cook that many in the same time period… the list will certainly always be growing larger and more daunting. Still, I feel like I should at least try to keep it in check.
Last week, when summer vanished here in Seattle, and I got the craving for soup, I knew where I’d be starting my search. It would begin with the list. I had 10 soups already tagged (plus more coming with the recent issue of Sunset magazine), but there really was not much struggle in finding what I wanted to make. I knew, even before I had typed the oup into the search box that I wanted bean soup. White bean soup. And luckily, I had two white bean soup recipes on the list. A white bean soup with chile paste, found in Bon Appetit, and a Donna Hay white bean soup with chorizo. Both looked lovely, and I decided to go with the Donna Hay recipe and use some Italian sausage from Skagit River Ranch in place of the chorizo.
This soup is creamy (without cream) and hearty, perfect comfort food for a chilly fall evening. It’s delicious with sausage, but just as lovely without, perhaps with a drizzle of truffle oil. For the beans, I used dried cannellini beans, and just soaked in water them for about 4 hours before starting the soup. Borlotti or cranberry beans are a great choice too, or really any kind of shelling bean. If you use a smaller bean, it may need to soak and cook for less time.
That’s one recipe down, 330 and counting to go…
White Bean Soup with Sausage
Adapted from Donna Hay issue #33, p 104
Soup
2 T olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 stalk of celery, sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 lb cannellini beans, fresh or rehydrated
4 cups chicken stock
salt & pepper to taste
optional toppings
1 red chile pepper, seeds removed, and finely chopped
truffle oil
crispy sausage (see below)
Heat a large soup pot on medium heat. Add the oil, onion, garlic and celery, and stir about 2-3 minutes or until they are translucent. Try not to brown the onion. Add the beans and stock, and bring to a boil, stirring to ensure the beans don’t stick to the bottom. Reduce the heat to get a very low rolling boil, almost more of a simmer, cover and let cook for about 1 hour, or until the beans are very soft. Stir the soup occasionally during this time.
The next step is to blend the soup. If you have one, use a hand blender. It’s easier than taking the soup out of the pot. Otherwise, a food processor or standing blender will work too. Puree the until it is smooth. Then, place the soup back into the pot, and season to tase. Continue to cook, uncovered, until it’s the thickness you want. While it’s continuing to cook, prepare the sausage, if desired.
To serve, ladle the soup into the bowl, and top as desired. The soup is great with one, or any combination of the topping above.
Crispy Sausage
For the sausage slices, use a flavorful cased sausage like a spicy Italian or a chorizo. Cook the sausage through first, so it can be sliced. Then, slice to rounds, on a bias, a little less than 1/2 inch thick. Heat a skillet with a small splash of olive oil over high heat. Add the sausage and cook for about 2 minutes on each side, or until browned and crispy.
Technorati Tags: donna hay, Food, food magazine, recipe
Jack's Quick Salmon Soup
Add your comment Categories: Cookbooks, Dinners, Family Recipes, Food, Lunch, Recipe, Savory, Soup
Jack, to you. It’s Dad to me. And this is another recipe from my family cookbook. My dad was never afraid to get into the kitchen, and when he cooks, we always know we’ll get something good. His specialties have always been breads… hand-pressed tortillas and homemade white or wheat loaves. He’d hate the no knead bread, because I think the kneading is his favorite part! All that physical interaction with the food, to create such wonderful results.
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