Soup Weather, pt. 2
Posted by David | Filed under blog
I’m counting the days of winter by how long it takes the snow to melt from outside my front door. Most of it disappears, but there are still the bits lying in shadows, and until they go as well, I’m still considering it officially cold. But what this really means is that we are still in the middle of soup weather.
However, today’s offering really needs to be subtitled “Making Experiments Work.” I feel like I kept the spirit of the soup I tried, even if I had to take some liberties with the ingredients. Do you ever go to the grocery store, and regardless of how common something sounds in your head, they just don’t have it? And not only do they not have it, but they don’t have your backup ingredient either? Please say you know what I’m talking about, because I don’t want to be alone here. For me, that item was escarole.
I decided I wanted to give the “Lentil, Sausage and Escarole Soup” on p. 134. And to do so, escarole would seem like a necessary ingredient. Well, my local store of groceries did not carry it. I ended up settling on some belgian endive, mainly because I got tired of looking, and was just hoping that I didn’t ruin the whole meal (it should be obvious now that I am not a brave ingredient substituter). Not only that, but they didn’t have “brown” lentils either. Just regular lentils, that probably could have passed for either green or brown depending on your available light. And I opted for some ground sausage instead of links, because it was on sale…
Well, turns out I had little to worry about. I mean this is just soup we’re talking about, not rocket science soup. And it cooked up good! The endive blended in just fine, and I actually think I liked the ground sausage better than I would have coins from a link. So winter can keep hanging around as long as I’m concerned; I have plenty of leftovers.
When last we left you, I teased a new feature/series/focus for the website related to a new cookery book of almost mythic girth. A thousand-page testament to food on paper that we would not only use in exercise by simply picking up, but also something that we would be cooking from. And I’m here to tell you a little bit more about that.
