Weenie roasters

I just think this picture of my father and some of his friends at their cottage is pretty cute.

G.D. supermarkets or why I shop like I live in a tiny pre-industrialization village

I’m week three into a new effort to not use my car for basic transportation needs like going to work or grocery shopping. It’s part of my “plan ahead for better mental, emotional and physical well-being” kick. I figure if I plan my meals ahead and only shop for what I’m going to need today and tomorrow at local, within walking distance, grocery stores somehow this will make my life better.The problem is I like to browse and graze while I shop for groceries. My grandmother had a reputation for going to great lengths for a bargain. I distinctly remember my father grumbling about driving all the way across town to save five cents on toothpaste (never mind that she may have been buying a suitcase worth to send to Cuba). And speaking of grazing she also used to fill a bag up with chocolate clusters from the bulk section of the grocery store and then eat them as she shopped. I’ve got a bit of the bargain chaser tendency myself, but I’ve taken it well beyond bargains; I’ll drive all the way across town for the “right” brand of chili powder (why is it so hard to find really nice chili powder in this town?). The thing is, I’m being encouraged in this behavior by the nonsensical stocking practices of the chain grocery stores in this city and it’s making not driving to get my groceries more stressful than I’d like.

Examples: While Loblaws carries the “sandwich saver” pickles (nice with cheddar and turkey on sourdough bread) I like, they don’t stock the spicy ones I like. IGA does however. IGA also seems to be the only store to stock the Chipits brand peanut butter chips, a favorite of my father’s wife. In many other ways however I dislike IGA. The P.A. grocery stores are the only ones who carry the sheep/cow’s milk Greek yogurt I adore as well as the best tzadziki in the city (my opinion). They also seem to be the only place to carry the sliced deli meat I like to buy for the D.C. as well as the sliced white bread made with olive oil instead of not (I vainly hope this will make it ever so slightly less crappy). I do most of my produce shopping at Adonis; in fact I can’t bear to buy the produce at the big name places and often the least expensive fruit juice. But neither of these wonderful stores is worth going to for householdy things like ziplocks or kitty litter. Metro, on the other hand has those things as well as Premiere Moisson bread that seems fresh (though why I can’t get it together to go to the actual Premiere Moisson stores is beyond me)  as well as Stash tea. In fact, the Metro out behind the college I work at is the only place I’ve ever found the jasmine green tea I like. Segal’s on St. Laurent carries an organic mint tea I love as well as the soy milk ice “cream” sandwiches the D.C. and I like. I try to only buy chicken at Zinnman’s on Roy St. because I don’t seem to be able to wreck their chicken no matter how ineptly I cook it. I’ve discovered milk in bottles at Hamel and my most recent (today) discovery is the Mediterranee yogurt whipped up and frozen and this I’ve only seen at the place in the Jean Talon Market that sells Quebec products and at the IGA around the corner. Only some supermarkets carry the fresh cranberry juice I like and it’s another one that carries the mango lemonade I try not to buy except for picnics. I like the President’s choice frozen pizza and no other (really for frozen pizza it’s not so bad) and I like to buy toilet paper in bulk at Costco….you get the picture.

The thing is, I think it would make me sad to just have one place to go to shop. Montreal isn’t terribly afflicted by the big box store plague, but it’s still a modern North American city with its chain grocery stores and name brands everywhere. While I’m still bewildered by the random brand selection at the different stores I kind of like that I’m forced to pick and choose and wander about the city finding what I like. It’s not quite the market in the town square, but it’s a lot more interesting than it could be. The D.C. continues to think I’m a bit touched, and sometimes to be honest so do I, because I just don’t seem to be able to shop in just one store, but somehow it turns the place I live into something more human when I treat it like it’s just one big marketplace.

Eating in a canoe

While some people think of hotdogs and marshmallows when they think of eating while camping, I’m afraid my experiences are otherwise. Growing up, one of my major food influences was my mother’s close friend (and my best friend’s mother) Sandra. Sandra taught me how to make a flakey whole wheat pie crust and just always seemed to be able to make healthy food taste that extra bit better. She’s also the person you want with you on a camping trip because she comes equipped. It’s the little things that make a difference when you’re camping, the person who not only brings the tea bags, but also brings the kettle. She always comes with a blanket for picnics, the grate for the fire (a shelf from the inside of the fridge) and the griddle to make pancakes. I’ve become so dependant on Sandra to bring the right stuff for cooking in camp, that when left to my own devices I often forget half the things I need.

Luckily, it turns out Sandra’s not the only consummate camp cook. This summer I was lucky enough to be invited on a four day canoe trip by my friend Adrian (along with three other people, Anne, Margaret and Philippe). Full of trepidation because it’s been sooo long since I was in a canoe I was barely able to get myself packed up with tent and sleeping bag and multiple pairs of socks in separate ziplock sandwich bags, let alone food. Luckily Adrian turned out to not only be able to carry a canoe on his head, he also packed for what has to be the most ridiculously gourmet wilderness outing ever. Our first night out, after a short (I’m not sure it was even 45 minutes) canoe trip to the first camping spot we had polenta with homemade bolognese, both traditional and vegetarian. Clever boy had frozen the sauce (Margaret and I almost left it behind in the freezer – luckily the giant post-it on the door caught Margaret’s attention on our way out) so it stayed cold and was perfect by the time we got to camp. Lunch the next day (which was eaten in a swamp while we waited for another group of canoers to get ahead of us so we could go back to belting out rock ballads and Annie tunes) consisted of Fairmount bagels with peanut butter and homemade raspberry jam (mine). The jam is good, but I have to say there’s nothing like watching people lick the jar to make me feel like I got the recipe right. Fruit to Go and weird Italian candies provided us with snacks and boy did the Fruit to Go taste good. That night it was cold and windy and rainy and I saw a four inch leech swim past in the lake. Overall it was kind of depressing and we were in mid transition between clean and dry to dirty and wet, but we weren’t feelin’ it yet so everyone was a little cranky, but our feelings were lifted by the gnocchi with pesto and olive paste.  Food from a tube never tasted so nice. We ended the evening with a somewhat class oriented game of asshole  and then we snuggled into our sleepingbags and thermarests to warm up (really it was cold). The next day (which was warmer, much better for Annie tunes) we had tuna sandwiches with white beans and canned corn with lemon – tres yummy. They totally made up for the clogged waterfilter taking an hour to get a cup of water out of the lake – beaver fever started to sound a whole lot better. When we made it to our final destination, a little damp and pretty satisfied with our dirty selves we were greeted with yet another downpour (that day it seemed like every time we portaged it rained) and then the most spectacular double rainbow ever. We switched gears and sang the rainbow connection and then settled in to making camp and prepare for our final feast. That night we dined on campfire roti with porcinis and sundried tomatoes, fondue (of course what else would you do with those storebought fondue packets!!!?), baguette and smoked salmon. We all gave each other massages, refrained from spending another night in the tent playing asshole and had to eat the rest of the baker’s chocolate because we forgot to put it in the food bucket up the tree and you never know…bears. Next time let’s bring some of the 75% stuff and make potential bear attacks more worthwhile!

The food was amazing and the trip was magical. Nothing like spending time in a canoe with cute boys and good friends. I can’t wait to do it all over again next year!!!!

Special thanks to Philippe without whom I never would have been able to get that grilled cheese!

Alexandre tagged me

Ok, I really do appreciate the gentle prodding from Alexandre to keep at this blog thing. I’ve been tagged by Alexandre and now I must reveal 8 random things about myself. I’ll use his statements for inspiration for the area for each statement. No music, that would take me so long I’d never get this thing posted. I’ll try to work food in instead. 

Politics: Despite the fact that my paternal grandparents were communists, traveling to Cuba many times has lead me to decide that no political system will ever work because the flaw isn’t in the systems it’s in the people. Despite this, I still really like old school Cuban pizza which is made with a Gouda like cheese made in factories set up by the Dutch, something that might never have come into existence without Cuban Socialism.

Hockey Riots: I was once fired from a job because of the ‘93 Stanley cup riots. I’d been hired to work as a receptionist at an optometrists’ on St Catherine, near the old forum. I’d worked there one day when the riot along St. Catherine St. occurred and the windows at my place of employment were smashed. My employer was so upset he called his wife to come in and gave me a week’s salary and said he’d “call me”. I took the money and went to Cuba to visit my father. I may have had pizza while I was there. I definitely had a great penne arribiata and came to the conclusion that penne is my favorite pasta if I must chose. Only cretins think the shape of the pasta makes no difference.

Podcasts: I have never knowingly listened to a pod cast, though I’m sure it would be very nice. How embarrassing. I should go download something right now. I suppose I could write something about peas, but what to say about peas?

Gender: It’s entirely possible that I have a collaborative degree in Women’s Studies and Drama from The University of Toronto. (The Drama part is for sure, for some reason I never checked on the collaborative part – I was supposed to get it) The one really interesting thing that I learned in my feminist philosophy class was that the majority of the female grad students in class avoided writing papers by doing domestic activities like cleaning or cooking or even knitting. I baked. I particularly remember the blueberry lemon pound cake, but I don’t remember what paper it was associated with.

Cars: I got my drivers license on September 11^th, 2001. I think I may have passed as a result, since I kind of almost ran a red light during my test, but the examiner was kind of freaked out. As were lots of people that day. As for food, now that I drive myself, I wonder a little about all those people who seemed to need me to feed them things like potato chips and french-fries when I was a passenger. It doesn’t seem to me that eating in a car is very difficult.

Addictions: I thankfully don’t have any addictions, because I’m not very good at saying no to myself. I’m terrified of anything people say is addictive after just one try – though in all honesty I’m not sure how often I’m really offered crack or crystal meth. I don’t think I need to even mention food here, the connection for myself is pretty self-evident.

Religious origins. I’ve never been to synagogue or a Baptist church though those would be the houses of worship for two of the religious practices of my grandparents. I do however spend some time trying to work out the difference between Jewish guilt and Protestant guilt. I also like religious ceremonies with lots of pomp and circumstance: Bring on the dead languages and the incense!!! I think food has replaced religion as a source of guilt in my family. My mother makes me feel guilty about it when I eat it and my father’s family makes me feel guilty when I don’t eat: “What? You don’t like it?!”

Childhood ambitions: I wanted to be a novelist and an archeologist when I was a kid. I still wouldn’t turn up my nose at either option. I once read a novel about a vampire fighting pastry chef. I thought it was brilliant and wish I could come up with ideas like that for novels.

If heaven is made out of pizza…

If heaven is made out of pizza then the clouds are crafted from the dough used at Bottega Pizzaria on St Zotique. Reviews of this newish restaurant have been effusive and it’s been in the back of my mind to go for some time, so for my birthday I called up and made a reservation for myself and the D.C. Lately I’ve been finding my palate a little jaded. A couple of forays to various restaurants around town in the last few months have left me feeling a little like maybe food isn’t as good as it used to be.  Not that I frequent many fine dining establishments, but I’m beginning to have sympathy for Lesley Chesterman’s bitching about the high price of food at mediocre establishments…my other complaint also echoes one of her ongoing issues: service. My darling dining companion is not always the most forward or agressive client (though he is occasionally aggressively hip when he watches Entourage) and I have to admit to a bit of an aversion to anything akin to asking for directions, and that including bugging waiters and maitre’ds about seating at restaurants. I’ve had too many experiences of going to a new restaurant I’m really excited about, only to be treated dismissively, and in one memorable instance in Portland OR forgotten about, by the staff at the door. Suddenly I’m on edge over the need to get assertive or demanding just to get treated with the courtesy I thought went along with going to a restaurant. I think I’m beginning to see why so many people don’t eat out in new restaurants… but back to Bottega.

On a bustling, warm Thursday night we arrived at the restaurant, which has a shiny sleek modern look that the D.C. says reflects the current style in Italy (as opposed to the more dated look of many Italian establishments in Montreal). The Maitre’d was a fine example of the aesthetic contributions of the Italian gene pool to Montreal and he greeted us in a friendly manner; however, as we waited for him to set up our table I began to have a sinking feeling as I watched him apparently preparing a table for another group. A familiar sinking feeling began to set in as the D.C. and I sank down onto the chairs set aside for patrons waiting for tables or take away orders. Here we were in this bustling, bright room full of happy people obviously enjoying themselves as a host of lime green lacoste shirt wearing waiters whisked about, relegated to the outskirts like we didn’t really belong. It’s a bit like a dropped ice-cream cone – worse because of the excitement and anticipation that was there before the fall. And then we were saved! I was wrong! The Maitre’d’s momentary foray to another table was brief and we were ushered over to a perfectly nice table after only the briefest pause. My drink order (Campari and soda of course!) was taken and menus were brought over and suddenly we were part of everything that was happening. Such a tiny thing but it made all the difference. In the moments the D.C. and I spent waiting for our table we were able to watch orders being whisked (really there’s a bustle and speed about this place that’s very exciting) to other people’s tables and it all looked very promising, very, very promising.

We decided on a single Arincino and an order of sausages and rapini for starters. The D.C. has a deep and abiding love of the arincini, a deep fried ball of risotto like rice often filled with various things and often served with a touch of tomato sauce. I am not in fact a big fan of sausages but I love rapini done Italian style . The arincini was passable but the sausages and rapini were amazing. The fennel sausages made me into a sausage convert and the rapini may have even converted the D.C. a little bit with it’s sweet butteryness mellowing out the vegetable’s natural bitterness.

I ordered a pizza covered in smoked provolone ( I had an experience with a smoked mozzarella pizza once that has made me a fan of smoked cheese on pizza ever since), wild mushrooms (always a good choice I think) and capicollo (I think, though it may have been some other permutation of Italian cured pork). Honestly I can’t remember what the D.C. had on his pizza; I became so obsessed with my own when it showed up that Iwas blind to all other pizzas for a time. As our pizzas showed up, all puffy crusted and thin in the middle I was reminded of a passage from the book “Eat, Pray, Love” where the author describes an experience in Napoli where she claims to have taken to a state of altered consciousness over a pizza so that “not only was [she] in love with the pizza, but [she] was under the delusion that it in turn was in love with her.” I think I felt a bit of what she was talking about. There’s something about the pillowy softness of the crusts on these things that makes you feel like you’re floating in a big doughy hug. If there are clouds in Heaven they aren’t those cold misty things we’ve become familiar with, they are Neapolitan pizza dough, somewhere between the best bread you’ve ever tasted and breasts. I’ll say no more, I’m obviously becoming obsessed. The nice thing is that despite the puffiness of the outer crust, the bottom of the pizza remains thin so there isn’t that sense one has with thick crust pizza that one is eating bread with toppings.

I manged to save a piece of my pizza for my father only because I had eaten so much of the sausages and rapini. I also ate all of the left-over crusts off of the D.C.’s plate. I am in love. I must go back and try different kinds of pizza. I am a little frightened by the fact that this place is walking distance from my house. That healthful, cleansing diet I’ve been thinking about trying out to round out spring and usher in bathing-suit season seems less and less likely…

If you haven’t been to Bottega Pizzaria go now, go fast. Keep this place in business. And let’s celebrate the fact that Montreal is no longer a mediocre pizza city!

Semolina pie- the morning after

It came out fine. The D.C. said it was the best dessert I have ever made. As usual I think he’s on crack. It’s good. My lack  of motor skills added about twice as much butter to the filo and it’s sweet – so of course it’s good. The filling I think could be better. The recipe called for cornstarch to be added to the semolina, sugar, vanilla, egg, and milk mixture for the filling. I guess it’s to thicken it, but as anyone whose made cream of wheat knows, it gets pretty thick on its own. The cornstarch added a chalkiness that’s not exactly perfect. Next time smaller pan, no cornstarch and maybe a touch of cinnamon or maybe rosewater.

It’s not that I can’t take compliments, it’s just this is good in a have it for breakfast and feel good kind of way, not a ohmygod this is the best dessert ever kind of way. I’ll post the recipe later when I have better motor skills. For now off to do some of those “other things”.

Mediterranean Phyllo-Semolina Pie

I’ve just made Mediterranean phyllo-semolina pie (it just has to have a better name) from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Deguid’s book Home Baking. It’s almost one in the morning. The recipe was not hard I just started it late. Basically it’s like baklava made with hot cereal in the middle. Sounds not so appetizing, but I had some at a pot-luck a few months ago and it’s actually quite nice. It does in fact have a better name than Jeffrey and Naomi have given it, probably a few as they list it as a Lebanese dessert and I was assured it was Greek. Makes me wonder about their book a little really, but it has such lovely pictures. I bought it at Powell’s in Portland I think in part because one of the things I lusted after most sorely when I was a very poor grad student in
Toronto was their book about Rice. Now that grad school has landed me a cushy teaching job I just couldn’t pass up one of their books in the discount pile! I won’t know what it will taste like until morning as it’s supposed to sit, but I’m thinking with the butter and honey and phyllo it’s got to end up being good. Unless the wine I’ve been drinking has caused some awful misjudgment. Along with a propensity for discounts I seem to have inherited a bit of a compulsion to finish things off from my Grandmother. Luckily she also passed on a cooking gene. When I called the D.C. for dinner I said I was making a gourmet meal (ok so really it was just a recipe out of Gourmet magazine – one of those quick menus) and asked what he wanted to drink I really was just trying to warn him I’d be pissed off if he didn’t come to the table quickly (I HATE when people don’t come to the table quickly). Anyway he suggested a bottle of wine. This was supposed to lead to a slow romantic evening, but much like I had overstated the level of dining, he had overstated his attention level. So when he returned to the thing I was afraid would keep him from the table in the first place he left a very nice bottle of wine only a quarter finished. This time it wasn’t my latent lushlike tendencies, but just a need to not have things go to waste. So while the dessert I’ve attempted may be Greek like the wine I was drinking, I think it’s safe to say drinking and baking do not go well together.  I guess I’ll see in the morning when I have pie for breakfast!

Christmas in Portland OR

My grand plan has been to write about the food I had in Portland while visiting my friend Rose for Christmas. So better late than never…As it happens I was also inspired by a little book, which is apparently a series, that I found in Portland called Eat Shop Portland http://eatshopguides.com/. They’re these little guides to the food and shopping that the person writing the guide likes. The focus seems to be on original, artsy kind of places. As Portland is full of artsy little places it must not have been hard to write the book. Anyway, I thought maybe I’d branch out in this space and write a little about shopping as well as fooding, because some days I like to diversify the way I dull the pain (kidding). Thus, the slight change in title. Besides, occasionally I do things other than cook, go to restaurants and think about food.My plan to go to
Portland for Christmas was born of two things. I missed Rose’s visit this past summer because I was in Chisasibi teaching (more on goose and michaups later) and Christmas in Montreal has become a nightmare marathon of family. On my own I have a number of branches of family to spend time with at Christmas and the Dolce Culo, being Italian, has an extended family as well. So we pretty much spend three days going from house to house eating variations on Christmas dinner (from goose stuffed with sausage and chestnuts with Jerusalem artichokes on the side to lasagna made with boiled egg and peas), having to stay when we want to go and having to go when we want to stay (or when we can’t move anymore). I couldn’t face it this year and decided to escape to the West coast. Rose and I grew up together and our families spent lots of Christmases together so it seemed like a good bet. The D.C. was less enthused but we went anyway.The food experience started, unfortunately, in the airport during our stopover in Minneapolis. I haven’t been in an American airport in a while, but they seem to have become much like shopping malls. I won’t get into the details too much but after a meal at one of the many available chain restaurants in the airport I came to realize that tequila and air travel aren’t a good combination for me.Once in Portland the food experience started at Sidney’s, a little restaurant/cafe close to Rose’s work. I went there to finish marking exams, and while there consumed a small quantity of very lovely mini-cupcakes.

Portland, thankfully, still seems to think that all things cupcake are cool. I concur. I think these tiny bites were there for the children who seem to frequent the cafe from the Montessori daycare across the street, but never mind, they were moist and playfully capped with frosting that I saw one young lady joyfully licking off as if it were an ice cream cone. Personally, I prefer, popping them whole into my mouth while pretending to be some sort of muffin devouring monster. This seemed to be an unpopular style with the nannies and yummy mummies also frequenting the place, but what the hell, I was a foreigner who couldn’t be expected to know better.

From there the highlights included: The mac&cheese at The Delta Cafe(and their drinks in wide mouth mason jars), a pear & procuitto grilled cheese sandwich at the Ste Honore Bakery, and the sorbet and champagne float at Pix, Portland seems to be in the midst of a love affair with the French style boulangerie/pattisserie, which while nice, wasn’t such a departure from home, and the “potato bar” meal Rose cooked at home when I ended up with a migraine and no medication. When I was little I claimed a baked potato would get rid of my migraines and it seems to still be true. Yummy and medicinal!

There were other stops on the food tour of the city but I must make mention of AJ’s aunt’s soup, which was amazing. I need to get the recipes. I pooh poohed the idea of soup for Christmas Eve dinner but I don’t think I’ve ever had soup like this. An Italian vegetable soup was followed by seafood chowder followed by one of the best damn tiramisu’s I’ve ever had (sorry to the D.C. and his family some of whom make a very good tiramisu). I’ll get the recipes and put them up here. Other food adventures included: Happy Hour at the Portland City Grill, where the food kind of sucked but the view from up on top of a high-rise was nice, despite the gladiator style competition to get window side seats; The giant bag of trail mix Rose and I almost bought from a very stoned health food store employee – those self-serve dispensers are hard to manage, ah well it brought us back to our hippie childhoods and saved us from serious blood sugar problems; and Ken’s Pizza, which we went to to test their authenticity. The D.C. , our token Italian, was feeling a little dragged out by this time and complained that the sophisticated sprinkling of sausage on his pizza wasn’t what he had in mind (what! no pepperoni, no chunks of sausage! But Rose and I liked it, despite a little bit of a glitch with getting seated. Actually I kind of liked the pizza in Portland. They make their slices really big.

Finally, as far as food goes,Taqueria Neuvewas the peak experience of our trip. Rose and AJ took us to their favorite Mexican restaurant and I fell in love. It started with my margarita made with strawberry infused tequila. It sounds a little girly/dainty but it was the most wonderful cocktail I have ever had. It tasted like springtime and all things good. By the end of the meal we were taking pictures of empty dishes and our full tummies and writing adoring notes to the chefs on the brown paper table cloths. In an effort to get this post up finally I won’t get into too many of the details. Suffice it to say that there wasn’t an off note in the entire meal and if you should go to Portland you should go. For once I forgot about the bill and ordered everything and I don’t know the last time a meal has made me so happy. It might also help if you’ve just had a pedicure and are still walking around in the silly flip-flops they give you to let your toes dry…especially if the temperature seems to be hovering around zero. It all added a crazy edge to an evening of great food with the bestest friend ever. It may have taken me a while to get this post up, but I’ve still got the toenail polish Rose looked askance at on (I need to find more of it actually) and a hankering to make me some strawberry tequila of my own!!!

Thanks to Rose for a great Christmas. Sorry we pushed the kitty over the edge…

Is it spring yet?

Ok, keeping up with this blog thing is  harder than I thought. I’ve been trying to craft something clever to say about food in Portland, Oregon and trying to make strawberry infused tequila but it’s taking longer than I thought it would. So in the meantime here’s this:

For Christmas Margaret, of the siamese cat cakes, bought me the missing Nigella Lawson cookbook, Nigella Bites, for my collection. I had been holding off buying it in the hopes that that would make me seem a little less obsessed. I can’t figure out really if I want to be Nigella, sleep with her, go over to her house for lunch, or just steal all her cashmere sweaters (who cooks in cashmere?). All I have to say right now is that she suggests deep-frying a Cadbury Creme egg in the “Trashy” section of Bites.  Now maybe I’m the only person who thinks Cadbury Creme eggs are dirty – I believe it was my dear friend Henry who pointed out to me that there is a lacivious element to trying to lick the filling out (I was young and impressionable at the time and was impressed that anyone would think what I was doing was lascivious – I had a very bad case of the good-girls in high-school), but regardless of your feelings on the subject, a deep-fried creme egg is just filthy, in a morally compromised sort of way.

So as the first little suggestion of spring creeps over the land and one’s thoughts turn to all things naughty, I will attempt to sublimate my more immoral tendencies into cooking in cashmere, metaphorically…whatever that means. Maybe I’ll just go buy more shoes.

Family

Just so it’s clear: I come by this food thing honestly. My father was scheduled to fly back to Florida to sail back to Cuba yesterday morning, but when I went over to my Aunt and Uncle’s house to have breakfast and say goodbye he informed me thay my Aunt had made soup so he was staying a few more days. I guess it was a matter of comparing the pros and cons of staying or going and the soup tipped things over towards staying. It’s good soup.

Most of the members of that side of my family make good soup. My father used to make crazybig pots of soup when I was a kid. I remember coming home from school and having little bowls of soup. They always tasted better on the second day. I, on the other hand, am soup-challenged. I’ve never really liked the soups I’ve tried to make. That is until I discovered pasta fagole, or Italian pasta and bean soup – what I ignorantly used to think of as minestrone soup (which is actually just vegetable soup).

The Dolce Culo and his Italian Mama are responsible for me being able to make soup, as she likes to send over frozen containers of beans and vegetables in stock (I think that’s what’s in those containers) which are then meant to be turned into soup. This, it turns out is easypeasy. Basically you just make a tomato sauce (onions, tomatoes from a can or whatever, salt, olive oil -sautee onions, add the rest, cook for a while), then you add beans (canned beans, frozen beans, green beans, shell beans, beans you cooked on the stove from dry or beans Carmela sent over in a little recycled plastic container which are now sitting in the freezer – it doesn’t matter). Once the beans are integrated in with the sauce you add soup stock (I like Imagine brand organic chicken stock but vegetable stock or powdered stock is fine, homemade stock is always good too). Then I stir for a while, consider adding corn and chile and making it more southwestern, then I look at the soup and try and figure out what’s missing. I leave it for a while to let the tastes meld together, still thinking I’ve forgotten to do something – then I remember and add about half a cup to a cup of small pasta. Not the pasta that looks like rice, but still something really small. Then I let it cook until the pasta is done. Then it’s done. If I have some sitting around I also like to cook it with a bit of the rind from a parmasean cheese. The cheese taste makes it taste better, richer. I serve it with parmasean grated on top. If I’m really ambitious I eat garlic rubbed toast with it, but the key is that it’s easy and that screwing up some of the steps doesn’t really lead to bad soup.

It’s not my Aunt’s cilantro soup served with cream, but it’s nice when it’s cold or rainy out.