The Penny-Pinching Epicures Soup Kettle
(Page 6 of 9)
January/February 1973
By Marjorie M. Watkins
Lightly sauté the carrot and onion in the butter. Add everything else except the cream. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, simmer covered for 20 minutes, stir, ladle into bowls and garnish each with a dollop of sour cream. Serves three or four.
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QUICK MINESTRONE
Lightly saute:
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, sliced
Add to the above:
4 cups beef stock
4 peeled and chopped or 1 can stewed tomatoes
1 cup leftover beans or 1 can mixed salad beans
1/2 cup macaroni or spaghetti (uncooked)
1 teaspoon Italian herbs
1/2 cup each chopped cabbage and celery with tops
Bring to a boil, reduce heat, simmer covered about 15 minutes, taste and add salt & herbs as needed.
During the last 5 minutes you can add bits of leftover vegetables such as whole kernel corn, zucchini, peas or green beans. The herbs and a few minutes simmering will marry all the flavors. Serves eight.
Of course, it's possible to make any of these potages and soups—or at least a pale-flavored and less nourishing version—with a bouillon cube and a cup of water in place of each cup of stock. It's also possible to add a little more flavor and some nourishment by browning bacon or salt pork, sautéing the onion in the fat and putting the browned meat bits back into, or onto, the soup.
You probably also know that a handful of oatmeal thickens and adds protein to meatless potages and stews and that soy flour—stirred into a little of the liquid, then into the pot—absorbs floating fat and adds protein.
But to really give soul to a soup, you must always add a little meat, gelatin from dissolved gristle and calcium from bones. It doesn't take much else, in a pinch, to produce a masterpiece.
For instance, if you have a bone, an onion and a handful of herbs, a hunk of some pale-looking dried-up cheese and a few slices of stale French or sourdough bread . . . you have all you need to make a dish so tantalizing in aroma, so friendly to the palate and so satisfying to the body and spirit of mankind that people in Paris go down before daybreak to the messy, noisy, busy wholesale vegetable market—Les Halles—to get it.
FRENCH ONION SOUP
2 tablespoons cooking oil or meat fat
1 very large or 2 medium onions, sliced
Bones from two veal steaks, pork chops or whatever, with leftover meat
6 cups water
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried or 1-1/2 teaspoons fresh marjoram, minced
Toasted day-old bread, one slice for each bowl
1/2 cup grated cheese
Brown the onions while stirring them in oil on medium heat. If some of the strands blacken, don't worry. This soup is good no matter what happens to it, short of overheating the grease or burning all the onions. (If you sprinkle the marjoram on the onions while browning you can enjoy the aroma as you stir.) Add all the other ingredients, except bread and cheese. Cover the kettle and simmer 25 minutes or so. Remove bones, detach meat and put it (the meat) back into the broth.
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