andy pucko
minestrone
The thing about a recipe is that it is just a guide. I don't generally bother with them unless I'm working with something I've never seen before. Understanding why the recipe is the way it is, what the ingredients bring to the dish, the cooking sequence, and all that, is more important than the precise ingredients. If you get the technique, the why a thing is done and how to carry it off, then you can always work your way backwards, from the ingredients you have, to get the results you want.
With soups it's all about building flavors layer by layer. If you have looked at a lot of recipes you may have detected a pattern- with soups and sauces you start by extracting flavors from various aromatic vegetables. The classic combination here in the west is carrots, celery, and onion, but other vegetables like shallots, sweet peppers, fennel, celeriac, leeks, parsnips, or parsley root can be used too.
That base layer is then modified with pungent vegetables and herbs- a little something to kick everything in the ass- fresh herbs like rosemary, thyme, and bay, tied in a bundle so you can fish it out later easily, and garlic or ginger, and crushed red pepper flakes.
Then when everything is sweated a little in hot fat (with salt to help release moisture), so you can smell the flavors combining, and there's maybe a bit of brown stuff in the pan, you deglaze the pan with a splash of wine, water, or stock to pull that brown stuff up into solution, and your soup is on it's way. At this point you add whatever it is that will make up the bulky foody part of your soup, like beans in the recipe below (I'm getting to it) and top the pan off with enough liquid to make up your portions, plus enough for evaporation. Once your ingredients are all tender (you should be tasting every few minutes), then you can make any final additions like pasta or tender herbs and greens, which will only take about 10 minutes to cook (pasta turns into glue if you cook it too long). When the time is up, taste and add salt/pepper/vinegar as needed, pull out that herb bundle, garnish with some reserved pretty herbs and shredded cheese, and do what comes naturally...
...........................................
The Minestrone in the picture recipe.
1 small onion, chopped fine
1 rib celery, chopped fine
1 medium carrot, chopped fine (if you have one of those giant horse penis carrots, break a half or a third off and use that)
1 or 2 garlic cloves, crushed, sliced, or minced, as you like it. And for fucks sake only use the stuff in the jars if you have no choice.
1 big tomato chopped (no need to be neat here, it will break down as it cooks)
1 tablespoon of tomato paste (the stuff in the tube is more economical in the long run for singletons or small fluid family units)
1 herb bundle (or at least a bay leaf or two) composed of rosemary, thyme, and bay (use the parsley stems that you stripped the leaves off of too, come to think) The bay leaf is mandatory, fresh or dry. If you don't have fresh herbs, a good pinch of italian seasoning or herbs de provence will do too.
1/2 loose cup flat leaf or curly parsley, stripped off their stems and rough chopped.
kosher salt to taste- remember to just add a pinch at a time- you can always add salt but you can't take it away. i like kosher because it comes in bigger chunks than table salt, giving it a lot less volume and making it a lot harder to overseason.
5 cups liquid. Like half water and half stock, though the stock isn't strictly necessary. You might want to deglaze with a splash of wine too. Whatever you like to drink, though a heavy tannic red is probably a bad idea.
crushed red pepper- a pinch
1/2- 2/3 cup cooked beans*
1/2- 2/3 cup fun pasta shapes (i used Trottole)
vinegar (what you got, or even lemon juice) to taste.
a good grind of your favorite hard cheese to finish and garnish to taste as necessary
olive oil. enough. a good glug. a couple tablespoons. eyeball that shit.
...........................................
put a 4-5 quart heavy bottomed saucepan (with a tight fitting lid) on medium heat.
pour in your oil, and toss the bundle and crushed red pepper in. as the oil warms, the flavors infuse.
add the onion and a pinch of salt, when you just smell it, add the garlic (always add the garlic after- you don't want to burn it).
dump the celery and the carrots in, and stir that around and let that soften.
when the pan seems like it's getting dry, add the chopped tomato, and get that reducing.
when the pan is getting dry again, deglaze with a splash of wine or a bit of the liquid you have standing by and the tomato paste. Admire how glossy the sauce looks as the brown stuff goes into solution.
Add your beans, stir to warm through, then pour the rest of your liquid in. Turn the heat to high, and when it comes to a hard boil, cover it and turn the heat down to medium low.
Go hang out to about 20 minutes.
when you come back, give the mixture a taste, making sure your carrots are tender, add the pasta and most of the parsley, stir it in, cover, go hang out for 10 more minutes.
uncover and check your mixture- if it seems too thick, add a little liquid, if it's too thin, let it reduce a few minutes uncovered. adjust the seasoning, get rid of the herb bundle or the bay leaf, and serve it up, topping the bowl with a little cheese and the reserved parsley. This recipe should produce enough for two largish servings or 4 wimpy little cups sized ones.
...........................................
* What? Sure, you can buy cooked beans, but fuck that- dried beans are cheaper and you get more variety that way- in this recipe I used a mixture of christmas lima, goats-eye, and great northern beans. Usually I make a few cups worth every week, then they are ready to use in sides or in soups or whatever.
Measure out your beans- keep in mind that the cooked beans get 2-4 times bigger than dry, so plan for that, pick them over, looking for rocks and sticks, give them a rinse, then place them in a non reactive vessel and cover them with plenty of water. let them hang out all night. in the morning, add/pour off enough liquid so that the beans are covered under an inch of water, add a sacrificial carrot, celery rib, and herb bundle, bring it to a hard boil, and back off the heat to medium low and cook for an hour. Do NOT add any salt or acid to the uncooked beans- it will prevent them from absorbing liquid and they will never get soft. Alternately, if you have a pressure cooker, do all the above and pressure cook it for 10 minutes or whatever the manual suggests. Drain off the liquid (or save that for the soup) and throw away the vegetables (or put them in the soup too).
Easy.
minestrone
The thing about a recipe is that it is just a guide. I don't generally bother with them unless I'm working with something I've never seen before. Understanding why the recipe is the way it is, what the ingredients bring to the dish, the cooking sequence, and all that, is more important than the precise ingredients. If you get the technique, the why a thing is done and how to carry it off, then you can always work your way backwards, from the ingredients you have, to get the results you want.
With soups it's all about building flavors layer by layer. If you have looked at a lot of recipes you may have detected a pattern- with soups and sauces you start by extracting flavors from various aromatic vegetables. The classic combination here in the west is carrots, celery, and onion, but other vegetables like shallots, sweet peppers, fennel, celeriac, leeks, parsnips, or parsley root can be used too.
That base layer is then modified with pungent vegetables and herbs- a little something to kick everything in the ass- fresh herbs like rosemary, thyme, and bay, tied in a bundle so you can fish it out later easily, and garlic or ginger, and crushed red pepper flakes.
Then when everything is sweated a little in hot fat (with salt to help release moisture), so you can smell the flavors combining, and there's maybe a bit of brown stuff in the pan, you deglaze the pan with a splash of wine, water, or stock to pull that brown stuff up into solution, and your soup is on it's way. At this point you add whatever it is that will make up the bulky foody part of your soup, like beans in the recipe below (I'm getting to it) and top the pan off with enough liquid to make up your portions, plus enough for evaporation. Once your ingredients are all tender (you should be tasting every few minutes), then you can make any final additions like pasta or tender herbs and greens, which will only take about 10 minutes to cook (pasta turns into glue if you cook it too long). When the time is up, taste and add salt/pepper/vinegar as needed, pull out that herb bundle, garnish with some reserved pretty herbs and shredded cheese, and do what comes naturally...
...........................................
The Minestrone in the picture recipe.
1 small onion, chopped fine
1 rib celery, chopped fine
1 medium carrot, chopped fine (if you have one of those giant horse penis carrots, break a half or a third off and use that)
1 or 2 garlic cloves, crushed, sliced, or minced, as you like it. And for fucks sake only use the stuff in the jars if you have no choice.
1 big tomato chopped (no need to be neat here, it will break down as it cooks)
1 tablespoon of tomato paste (the stuff in the tube is more economical in the long run for singletons or small fluid family units)
1 herb bundle (or at least a bay leaf or two) composed of rosemary, thyme, and bay (use the parsley stems that you stripped the leaves off of too, come to think) The bay leaf is mandatory, fresh or dry. If you don't have fresh herbs, a good pinch of italian seasoning or herbs de provence will do too.
1/2 loose cup flat leaf or curly parsley, stripped off their stems and rough chopped.
kosher salt to taste- remember to just add a pinch at a time- you can always add salt but you can't take it away. i like kosher because it comes in bigger chunks than table salt, giving it a lot less volume and making it a lot harder to overseason.
5 cups liquid. Like half water and half stock, though the stock isn't strictly necessary. You might want to deglaze with a splash of wine too. Whatever you like to drink, though a heavy tannic red is probably a bad idea.
crushed red pepper- a pinch
1/2- 2/3 cup cooked beans*
1/2- 2/3 cup fun pasta shapes (i used Trottole)
vinegar (what you got, or even lemon juice) to taste.
a good grind of your favorite hard cheese to finish and garnish to taste as necessary
olive oil. enough. a good glug. a couple tablespoons. eyeball that shit.
...........................................
put a 4-5 quart heavy bottomed saucepan (with a tight fitting lid) on medium heat.
pour in your oil, and toss the bundle and crushed red pepper in. as the oil warms, the flavors infuse.
add the onion and a pinch of salt, when you just smell it, add the garlic (always add the garlic after- you don't want to burn it).
dump the celery and the carrots in, and stir that around and let that soften.
when the pan seems like it's getting dry, add the chopped tomato, and get that reducing.
when the pan is getting dry again, deglaze with a splash of wine or a bit of the liquid you have standing by and the tomato paste. Admire how glossy the sauce looks as the brown stuff goes into solution.
Add your beans, stir to warm through, then pour the rest of your liquid in. Turn the heat to high, and when it comes to a hard boil, cover it and turn the heat down to medium low.
Go hang out to about 20 minutes.
when you come back, give the mixture a taste, making sure your carrots are tender, add the pasta and most of the parsley, stir it in, cover, go hang out for 10 more minutes.
uncover and check your mixture- if it seems too thick, add a little liquid, if it's too thin, let it reduce a few minutes uncovered. adjust the seasoning, get rid of the herb bundle or the bay leaf, and serve it up, topping the bowl with a little cheese and the reserved parsley. This recipe should produce enough for two largish servings or 4 wimpy little cups sized ones.
...........................................
* What? Sure, you can buy cooked beans, but fuck that- dried beans are cheaper and you get more variety that way- in this recipe I used a mixture of christmas lima, goats-eye, and great northern beans. Usually I make a few cups worth every week, then they are ready to use in sides or in soups or whatever.
Measure out your beans- keep in mind that the cooked beans get 2-4 times bigger than dry, so plan for that, pick them over, looking for rocks and sticks, give them a rinse, then place them in a non reactive vessel and cover them with plenty of water. let them hang out all night. in the morning, add/pour off enough liquid so that the beans are covered under an inch of water, add a sacrificial carrot, celery rib, and herb bundle, bring it to a hard boil, and back off the heat to medium low and cook for an hour. Do NOT add any salt or acid to the uncooked beans- it will prevent them from absorbing liquid and they will never get soft. Alternately, if you have a pressure cooker, do all the above and pressure cook it for 10 minutes or whatever the manual suggests. Drain off the liquid (or save that for the soup) and throw away the vegetables (or put them in the soup too).
Easy.