Souper Girl

It's cold here in the Southland...too damn cold...where the hell is global warming when you need it, I ask?

As with most folks, when it gets cold, me and the poodles want to hunker down and stay warm. All balled up in our slanket (we have a knock-off Snuggie, so I call it a "slanket," i.e., a blanket with sleeves) and trying to keep our collective teeth from chattering.

Soup seems to be the ticket for keeping warm, too, and I've been doing a helluva lot of soup making for the last couple of weeks. And it all started with a big ol' bag of kale, some lentils, and some Italian sausage.

A few months ago, I made a wonderful sausage and lentil stew in the slow cooker. Try as I might, I cannot find the recipe that I used. I know that I got it on line somewhere, and I must have worked directly from the screen and didn't save it or print it out. Annoys me to no end when I do stupid stuff like that.

Anyway, I went searching around the Internets to find something similar and managed to kluge together this concoction for your dining pleasure:

Lentils with Italian Sausage and Kale
(serves 4)

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 pound bulk hot Italian sausage

1 cup lentils

1 medium onion, chopped

3 to 4 cloves of garlic, minced

Italian seasonings (I used the Italian Spice Grinder of Doom)

Salt and ground black pepper

1/4 cup tomato paste

1 quart chicken stock

2 cups water

2-3 cups chopped kale (I eyeballed this by grabbing 3 good-size handfuls out of the bag)

Place a large soup pot over medium-high heat and add about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Once the pan and oil are hot, add the sausage and sauté for 3-4 minutes, breaking it up into small pieces--you can use a fork or even a whisk to break it up.

To the browning sausage, add the onion, garlic, salt, pepper, the Italian seasonings (about 3-4 good cranks if you are using the grinder), and the tomato paste. Cook, stirring frequently, for 3-4 minutes, coating the sausage with the tomato paste.

Add a little of the stock to deglaze the pan, then add the rest of the stock and 2 cups of water. Turn the heat up to high and bring up to a bubble. Add the lentils and the kale, stir until the kale wilts in then turn the heat down to medium and simmer 30-40 minutes, until the lentils are tender.

Server with the obligatory crusty bread, and I threw some shredded Parmesan on top of my bowl...you know how I feel about cheese, so this should not be a surprise to anyone.

I froze some of this soup for another day and to feed the poodle sitter when she comes. I had plenty of leftover kale and some leftover Italian sausage, so the next evening, I sauteed the sausage with some mushrooms and onions and garlic, threw in some kale and added it to a pot of Israeli couscous. This little number was part of the "you need to use the stuff that lives in your pantry sometime this millennium...and OMG, why do I have 6 boxes of Israeli couscous, 3 bags of arborio rice, and a bajillion other bags/boxes of pasta/grain-type things?" I thought I should get on the stick and use some of this stuff.

Along the lines of the pantry raiding, I've discovered that you can pretty much make a meal with a package of refrigerated cheese ravioletti or tortellini, a quart of chicken stock, a can of diced Italian tomatoes, and a can of beans...cannellini, kidney, even fava beans. Then, all you need is a nice Chianti. Ha. Heat the chicken stock, throw in the tomatoes, add the pasta, and the beans, a little salt and pepper, and in 20 minutes or, viola! It's soup!

Then, I found a recipe for Italian Wedding Soup that was sort of lighter and possibly healthier for you. I got interrupted in mid-copy from wherever I found it, and I didn't get the original source...was possibly on SlashFood. Anyway, I tweaked it too, and here it is in all it's glory:

Italian Wedding Soup alla the Lighter Side
serves 8

2 large chicken breast, on the bone
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 small carrots, peeled and diced
4 ribs celery, diced
1 large onion, diced
1/2 lb Turkey Italian Sausage (this is the lighter part!)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1/2 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
Freshly ground black pepper--2-3 grinds
1 egg
2 cups fresh baby spinach leaves (or you could use kale!)
1 cup of cooked acini di pepe (mini star-shaped pasta), or 1 cup orzo, or whatever little tiny pasta shape you happen to have on hand--I used some wee tiny shells.

2 quarts chicken stock
2 cups water

Sprinkle the chicken with half the salt. Heat the oil in a large stockpot over medium-high heat and add the chicken, skin side down, half the carrots, celery and onion. Cook 4-6 minutes until the chicken skin begins to brown along with the vegetables. Remove the chicken skin and discard it. This is going to be easier said than done if you try to do it in the pot. Trust me on this. I used tongs and a fork to get the skin off, and I couldn't get it all. My pot was probably not so "light" after all. (You could probably do it with the skin removed, too...make sure it doesn't burn.)

Cover chicken with the chicken stock and water. Bring to a slow boil, then immediately reduce to a simmer. Add the remaining carrot, celery and onion. (I also threw in a few grinds of the Spice Grinder of Doom here.)

Cook 15 to 20 minutes, skimming any foam from the top once or twice. Cover and turn off the heat. Rest 30 to 40 minutes or until chicken is cooked through and no longer pink at the bone. (Watch your pot, and don't let it boil too vigorously...my chicken was a little overdone.)

While the chicken is cooking, prepare the meatballs. Combine the turkey Italian sausage, the grated Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, garlic, pepper, and egg in a large bowl. Mix well and form into small meatballs about the size of a grape.

Remove chicken from broth and set aside to cool. Bring the broth back to a simmer and drop in the meatballs. Cook 2 to 3 minutes until the meatballs are no longer pink inside. Add the spinach.

When chicken is cool enough to handle, remove meat from skin and bones, and cut into small chunks. Return the meat to t he soup along with the meatballs and stir in the pasta remaining salt. Serve immediately...I sprinkled a little shredded Parm on top again.

This makes a lot of soup, and it was a little more time consuming than I first thought--mainly because I kept remaking the meatballs to get them just a little bit smaller. Which is probably why I overcooked the chicken.

Speaking of chicken, the Fat Dog is on a boiled chicken diet as of last week. He stopped eating kibble, and that really scared me. You know--when they stop eating and drinking, it's "time." However, I was eating some leftover rotisserie chicken for lunch and he seemed interested. I gave him a bite, and he ate it and got closer and looked more interested. Gave him the rest and promptly went and bought chicken parts for his dinner.

I tried adding some rice, and he would have none of that. Refused to even look at the chicken while it had rice anywhere near it. The New Hotness and the Goldfish are in high dudgeon, because they aren't getting chicken. I explained that when *they* had a terminal disease, *they* could have whatever they wanted...they still aren't happy with me. The New Hotness knows something is up...he curls up by the Fat Dog during the day and looks at me like I should be doing something, anything to help, because he knows the Fat Dog feels bad. I tell him, honey, I wish I could, I wish that more than anything on the planet.

He has good days and not-so good days, and I figure as long as he's eating his chicken, he's still willing to stick around. And, I'm glad for that, as long as it lasts.

Matzoh! Matzo! Matza!

I was rummaging around in the pantry tonight, looking for something to prepare for dinner. Yes, I had a perfectly lovely package of chicken breasts waiting in the fridge, which I had planned to grill, and I just wasn't feeling the flame-broiled love. Probably because it has dropped about 20 degrees since yesterday.

Welcome to Spring in the South...weather changes day-by-day, and for the love of Pete, do not get tempted to actually plant anything in the ground outside before Easter. And, if you put out some lovely hanging baskets of petunias, be prepared to haul them in at least once before Easter, if not multiple times.

I was wandering through Lowe's yesterday, in the 78-degree afternoon, looking longingly at the herbs...basil, rosemary, and wishing they had some thyme. With steely resolve, I turned away, because I knew it wouldn't last. Sure enough, today's high was around 56, with a nice chilly wind.

So, back to the chicken...was feeling too wimpy to stand outside and grill chicken, so am looking for a boxed something to whip together. I don't even want to touch the chicken at all, for some reason...probably relates to that whole pain in the ass that cooking for one is...or I could just be incredibly lazy today. I'll let you make the choice.

Hidden behind 3 boxes of couscous and a couple of quarts of chicken stock, I spy a box of Streit's Matzo Ball and Soup Mix. An odd thing for a goyim gal to have, but y'all should know me well enough by now that if it's a dumpling or any form of pasta...oh, heck who am I kidding? Any form of carbohydrate, then I'm all over it.

What the heck, let's make this, I think...is cool outside, is soup, and doesn't really involve handling chicken. Although, I immediately start thinking about how to spruce it up...and wondering if I should add the chicken into the soup, or if that was somehow sacrilegious...even though I am not Jewish. (And, did you know that if you say something sacrilegious out loud, it then becomes blasphemy. Furthered all our educations today, didn't I?)

Matzo is a flat, unleavened cracker that is used as bread during Passover, because eating leavened products is forbidden. Wikipedia has much more reference material on the who, what, and how of this tradition, and can explain it in much greater detail than I can...and thereby making sure that I don't inadvertently get something wrong and offend anyone. I know about the whole dairy and meat shall not meet restriction, and the avoidance of bacon and shrimp, but honestly, all I really know about Jewish dietary law, I got from the visiting rabbi's lecture during my 15 minutes in Banquet Class. Plus, there seem to be a whole lot of ways to spell the word, so I'm picking "matzo" and going with that for consistency's sake.

I've eaten matzo crackers for years, because they are incredibly plain and boring...which makes them a great vehicle for very savory dips and spreads, in my opinion. I don't want my cracker to compete with my dip/spread; I want it to complement it, or really just carry it to my mouth. The downside of that is that the plain mazto is also an unsalted vehicle for my dip...and sometimes that little kick of salt on a cracker is just what the spread calls for and is sorely missed. Sometimes, you're the bug, sometimes, you're the windshield.

The one thing I have absolutely no desire to do is make my own matzos, so we won't even talk about that.

Onto the soup...Matzo Ball Soup is essentially comfort food, and it seems that lots of cultures have a version of a comfort dumpling soup. Just this weekend, my friend Kimma, made Chicken and Dumplings, which might be comparable as Southern Matzo Ball soup. She did it pretty much from scratch, cooking a chicken and making the dumplings by hand, and they were fluffy and good. (Bisquick was involved, but that is an acceptable option for making dumplings. DO NOT get me started on people who use canned biscuits for dumplings. It will not be pretty, and it's too late in the evening for bloodshed.)

My great-aunt, who was essentially the family matriarch, even though she never had children of her own, was the champion chicken and dumplings maker in our family. Unfortunately, she's gone now, and I have no idea how she did it. If you have a family cook or a family recipe that's in danger of being lost for good, I strongly encourage you to get it recorded somehow--writing, pictures, video, etc., because once it's gone, it's gone.

Oh, yeah, soup. So, the little box tells me to mix 2 eggs and 1/4 cup of vegetable oil with the packet marked "matzo," and let it sit for 15 minutes, while bringing 2.5 quarts of water to a boil. I decided to sub a quart of chicken broth for 1 quart of water, and I think that added a lot of flavor.

After the 15 minutes were up, and the liquid was boiling, I added the contents of the package marked "soup." I then wet my hands and formed the dough into walnut-size balls and dropped them into the soup. I also added a few sliced carrots and some diced celery. I clamped the lid on that sucker, reduced the heat to low, and simmered it for about 25 minutes, and viola! Matzo Ball Soup a'la Poodlevania.

The texture was slightly similar to the Bisquick dumplings, in that it was fluffyish on the inside, but the Bisquick was definitely a Pillowtop Serta Comfort Sleeper Matress in comparision to the matzo ball...leavening does that for you.

The nutritional info is not too bad on this stuff, either. 1 cup prepared is approximately 50 calories, and the ingredient list is not awfully horrible and unpronounceable, either. When was the last time you saw a packaged soup mix with white pepper, celery seed, and dill seed included? (Although, it says there are approximately 9 servings, of which I probably ate 4...and not sure how the whole mazto ball calorie count plays into it--those tricky marketing folks, you know.) However, I do have some leftover for lunch tomorrow or the next day...will be interesting to see how the matzo balls hold up as leftovers.

Here's a great column by Steve Almond, a funny guy, author of Candy Freak, describing his trials and tribulations on learning how to make matzo balls and taking up the family mantle of mazto ball maker. He includes his family recipe, which seems simple enough, except, I'm not sure where I would get the chicken fat (schmaltz)...not a lot of kosher grocers in this neck of the woods, but I could probably figure it out.