Soup as Supper

Mrs. Fussy has left the building. By now she is hopefully in sunny California. It used to be that when she would leave I’d make onions. But over the years she has softened her stance on what should really be the state vegetable of New York.

So now I no longer have the wicked desire to eat onions at every meal during her absence. Perhaps some of this has to do with the presence of children in the household and their relative intolerance to onions. Not that they would detect a cooked onion in something and reject it, rather that they would probably be nonplussed with a giant plate of sweet and salty Korean noodles with a mountain of charred and snappy sliced onions tossed throughout.

And I can’t blame them.

You know what else wouldn’t thrill the little buggers? If they knew how much soup I made last night. Seriously, the first night on my own, and once the kids were in bed I started three cooking projects: chicken stock, my take on Braden’s mushroom barley soup, and sweet milk liqueur.

The problem is that I have all this soup now and nobody to help me eat it. But I have an idea for turning soup into a meal that I’m hoping will pass muster with the tikes while momma’s missing.

Ribollita.

In theory it’s a reboiled Tuscan soup with beans and vegetables. I’ve got mushroom soup with barley and vegetables. But in this case I’m focused on the technique and not the actual recipe.

The dish is soup that is made and chilled. Then on the second day it is ladled into a pot full of stale, crusty bread. Sounds appetizing, no? Well, the soup and bread are “reboiled” and the soup softens the bread while the bread thickens the soup. It’s a win-win. Drizzle with good extra virgin olive oil and grate some Parm-Reg over the top, and you are good to go.

But it sill resembles soup, and that will not fly with the little ones. For them to consider something as a meal it needs to involve a fork.

Well, leftover ribollita (soup on day three) congeals into a solid mass of broth soaked bread. You may need to throw some extra bread cubes into the mass for good measure. Now, a ladle full of the stuff can actually be pan fried in a bit of olive oil in a well seasoned cast iron skillet (or some other non-stick surface).

That’s right. It’s fried soup.

Same deal. You can drizzle a bit of oil on the crispy edged patty, and grate some good Parm-Reg over the top. And you can eat it with a fork and knife. I first had this with Raf at a little place called Delfina near his apartment in San Francisco. It was amazing.

This is the soup you can eat like a meal. And I’m going to see if I can get the kids to eat it, but I’m not terribly optimistic. Little Miss Fussy throws a fit at the very mention of savory bread pudding. But maybe this will win her over.

Or maybe it’s incredibly misguided to even attempt this with a mushroom barley soup. The only way to know for sure is to try. I’ll keep you posted.