We had a blizzard last week and the University was closed Tuesday and Wednesday, so it seemed like a good opportunity to fix some soup; but, between shoveling and doing some work I'd brought home that I had to get done, and the fact that I don't keep any food/ingredients in my fridge or pantry to speak of, soup didn't happen. Besides, I knew I was going to be fixing some for a Super Bowl party I was going to at some friends' house on Sunday, so I needed that full week to recuperate between soup adventures. I was going to look through my Soup and Italian soup cookbooks on Saturday to see if I needed to go grocery shopping and start working on it that evening, but I worked all day Saturday and didn't get home till about 7:30 p.m. and was too exhausted to care. Sunday morning I picked one out that looked simply (yeah, right--I should know better by now) delicious and nutritious: "Alphabet Soup," (called for alphabetto or other small soup pasta) which is a vegetable soup with pancetta or proscioutto. It said it serves 4, so I decided to triple the recipe since there would be about a dozen friends at the party, though I knew there would be other main courses and lots of good food, so I'd have plenty left over to have later in the week.
Sunday morning, I went to breakfast and grocery shopping with my friend CS, and I'd forgotten to make a copy of the recipe, so I grabbed the whole Soup cookbook on my way out the door. Didn't have much trouble finding most of the ingredients, except I wasn't sure which of the different kinds of onions or potatoes I should use, and CS said the yellow onions and the potato I held up would be good, so I went with those. The recipe called for "4 oz. smoked pancetta or prosciutto cut into cubes," so I asked the woman at the deli for 12 oz. of either pancetta or prosciutto cut into cubes. She looked at me funny and said she had prosciutto and could slice it thick, but I'd have to cut it into cubes myself. OK, fine. No problem. (I didn't realize till I got home I'd forgotten to ask for smoked, but that would have to be OK, 'cause I wasn't going to smoke it myself!) After much internal debate in the pasta aisle, I picked out small rings; and, after more internal debate in the canned food aisle trying to decide which of the suggested beans to get--cannelini, red kidney or chickpeas--I went with the chickpeas. I was taking so long that my friend was ready to check out, so she left and I started to panic in case I needed help figuring anything else out. But, we had run into a couple of other friends, B&DO, and I knew they were still there, so I felt better knowing I could ask them if I needed any soup 911 (which, thankfully, I didn't).
Got home just in time to unload and put away the groceries, change my clothes and get to church, after which I came home, ate lunch, and did some laundry and started picking up the house to get ready to be gone for a few days to a conference. Suddenly, I remembered that our local kitchen store used to have football shaped pasta, so I jumped in the car and dashed up there, hoping first of all that they would be open, and then praying they'd have football pasta for my SouperBowl Soup. I was relieved to find they were open, but disheartened to find they didn't have any football pasta. (The woman said they had some a year ago, but they didn't get any this year.) Disappointed, back home I dashed just in time for the Bowl game I'd been excitedly awaiting which I thought was on from 2-3: Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl VII! I knew I needed to care about washing, peeling and chopping vegetables, and cubing meat; but I thought that could wait till 3:00 and I'd have plenty of time to prepare and cook the soup before leaving for the Super Bowl party at 5:15. Turned out the Puppy Bowl was on till 4:00, and I wasn't able to tear myself away from it (and the fun Kitty Halftime Show), until I got an e-mail about 3:30 from my friend asking how the Soup making was going. Oops, time to get busy!
I got out all the ingredients, cookware, and utensils, and started cutting, chopping, cubing, slicing, seeding, coring, and measuring vegetables and meat. The proscuitto was to be heated gently and sautéed in a large saucepan, then the onion added and cooked gently, then "Add the potato, carrot, celery, zucchini, tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Add the stock and heat until simmering." OK, wait a minute. My one large saucepan was full after only the meat, onion, and potatoes were put in, so I got out another saucepan and put the carrots and celery in it, but it got full, so I found a third saucepan and put the zucchini, and tomatoes in it. Then I decided I should have some of everything in each saucepan, so I divided everything into thirds and had three saucepans of veggies and meat simmering.
Then the recipe said to add the stock and heat until simmering. At no time did it say to put anything in a large pot, but while I was still cutting and chopping veggies, I got out my 8-qt. soup pot I'd bought last week and poured the three boxes of Chicken Stock in and heated it. I looked at the clock and it was 4:45, and I suddenly panicked that I was supposed to be at the party at 5:00. I looked up the email invitation, and it said the game starts at 5:00, so I called one of my friends who said she was on her way to the party and our pre-game betting and parlay card games were to start at 5:00. I told her I'd be there as close to 5:15 as I could, but if I wasn't there by the time they needed to do the little games, go ahead without me. I suddenly realized I hadn't cut up the large head of cabbage, or washed and cut the green beans. It seemed to take an eternity to cut the little ends off the green beans, so I only did half the bag, and I only did half the cabbage (and sloppily, at that), threw them in the pot, dumped all three skillets of veggies and prosciutto into the big pot, added the pasta and beans, brought it to a boil and cooked it for 5 minutes, then added the peas and chickpeas (after draining them) and cooked it for another 2-3 minutes till the veggies and pasta were tender. Added sea salt and black pepper (which wasn't freshly ground, but that's OK). Then it said to serve sprinkled with parsley (which, I realized, I'd forgotten to get), crusty Italian bread (which, I realized, I'd forgotten to bake), and freshly grated Cheddar cheese (which I didn't have time to grate).
I put the extra veggies back in the fridge, wiped the counters, turned off the stove, grabbed the bread and cheese, my new (from last week) cheese grater, my soup ladle, the pot of soup (which looked YUMMY!), my soup bowls, my coat and quarters for the betting board, threw everything in the car, and rushed across town, arriving at 5:17, just in time to put my name on the boards and fill out the game sheets. Soup's on!
As the football game started, I grated my cheese and asked one of the hosts if I could use her oven to bake the bread, which she graciously said I could, and preheated the oven. I didn't want to miss any commercials, so when the commercials were over, I went up and put the bread in the oven, and then after the next set of commercials went up and got the bread out, sliced it, and served it hot and fresh out of the oven. It was delicious. When I finally got a bowl of soup, which looked delicious, I was crushed to discover that the pasta was mushy. It had been almost the last thing to go in, and I didn't over-cook it, so I will have to try to figure out why that happened and how not to let it happen next time. No one said anything about the mushy pasta, but I felt bad that it had almost ruined an otherwise scrumptious soup.
By the end of the night, more than half the pot of soup was left, and I knew I was going to be out of town for several days so I didn't know if it would keep till the end of the week. My friend asked if I was going to freeze it. I didn't know you could freeze soup, and she said sure--put it in a bunch of little Ziploc freezer containers and I'll have soup for the rest of the winter! So, that's just what I did when I got home, and I'm looking forward to having some later this week. I'd share it with friends and neighbors if I weren't so embarrassed about the mushy pasta. Next year, I'll plan ahead and buy (special order if I have to) football pasta, and I won't have mushy footballs!
"Food is not about impressing people. It's about making them feel comfortable."
~Ina Garten, 'The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook'
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