Oh, Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Ah (or Ew), it finally feels like January in DC, which means... Soup's on! Well, it will be tonight for dinner. On the menu, an Italian Escarole Soup with rosemary crackers. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, Escarole = Chicory, so look for one or the other label at your green grocer. This is what I think I will do to make a wonderful (hopefully) pot of steaming soup for a cold winter's night.

I thawed half a package of lean ground beef and a package of spicy Italian sausage without the casings. I'll mix those together and loosely ball them into very small meatballs, which will get browned and then set aside. (If you buy your sausage in the casing, all the better. Just brown the whole sausage, remove from the pan, slice on the bias instead of all this mini-meatball preparation.) A little extra-virgin olive oil in the pan with a chopped onion and a bit of minced garlic, maybe a pinch of red pepper flakes until the onion is soft. Return the mini-meatballs, add chicken broth (I plan to use stock that I made and froze a couple months ago, and probably will need to add a can of low-sodium broth to it). When it comes to a boil, open a can of canellini beans and plunk those in (actually, I like to rinse and drain canned beans to help reduce the sodium and remove the goo, technical term, that's in canned beans). Then add escarole, washed and roughly chopped, into the broth until just wilted. Season with salt and pepper, top with fresh flat leaf parsley, and serve it hothothot! Even shave a little Parmesano-Reggiano at serving time maybe. A crusty, crunchy rosemary bread would be a sublime accompaniment to this soup, but I picked up a small bag of rosemary crackers at Trader Joe's the other day to try.

A quick, simple, humble and yet satisfying, warming, and mostly healthy, weeknight supper. And by the way, for those of you who have a hard time getting your daily dose of leafy greens, soup is a great way to do it. Add a package of frozen chopped spinach to almost any kind of soup or stew. Besides the health benefits, the dark green leaves are often just the right color to make your dish look complete. The ubiquitousness of spinach, especially the frozen kind, makes it easy to use in everything. I even add some of the prewashed bagged kind in my tuna salad! Sounds weird, I know, but try it!

If you desire a change in your choice of leafy greens, something exotic (or at least less mundane), try a quick sautee of watercress (Chinese variety, or ong choi would be best if you can find it; it's not as peppery as the regular kind) in a few drops of sesame oil with thinly sliced garlic cloves and a generous pinch of salt. When it starts to wilt, add a couple or three tablespoons of chicken broth and maybe a tablespoon or two of rice wine. Look in the produce section of your best Asian or Oriental market for snowpea leaves, which are the leaves of the plant itself instead of the pod. Same prep as the watercress. Both of these are vibrant green and they pair well with a steamed whole fish (with scallions and ginger) and rice, grilled lemongrass chicken, or anything with an Asian flair. Or make it Italian by swapping the sesame oil for olive oil and add a pinch of red pepper flakes. So quick, so easy, so delicious and so nutritious! The most time consuming part is washing the greens. I put all the greens in a big bowl of cold water and kind of swish them around really well, then pick the greens out of the water by the handful (removing stalks, trimming ends and thick stems or whatever as I go), and dump them into my salad spinner and spin the water out. As you can see, an aversion to spinach is no reason not to get your daily dose of greens!