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maeve66I love soup. I mentioned that in the meme I just posted. But I do. There is something loving and healing and caring about soup: I associate soup with my mom taking care of me when I was sick as a kid. She'd make Campbell's tomato soup and grilled cheese, and give us gingerale-and-orange-juice.
She also made really good soups, some of which I make, too: she made great borscht every once in a while (which is interesting, because it was basically a political thing, rather than an ethnic tradition for us); she made a wonderful meatball soup, and pea soup, and navy bean soup, and especially, bean-cabbage soup. The bean-cabbage soup is something I've made and my sister has made, and slowly, we've changed it, and now we give the recipe to friends. I love anything that smacks of carried-on family traditions, and this bean-cabbage soup fits that bill, though I am sure it originally came from some women's magazine. Still. The version my mother always made used beef (that is, hamburger), and kidney beans, and beef broth along with the cabbage and diced tomatoes. The version my sister shifted to uses ground turkey. I kept the ground turkey and changed the kidney beans to cannellini (white kidney) beans, and then added a cumin bagheer -- whole cumin seeds heated in oil til they pop, and then dumped in the almost done soup. I can add a cumin bagheer to almost anything. I added it to the scotch broth I made a couple of weeks ago, which was AWESOME. Awesome as long as you're not a vegetarian, like most of these, I guess.
I just ate the last of the scotch broth tonight, and loved it as much as when I made it in early January. I like barley soups, like mushroom-barley soup. This is a barley and lamb soup, with mushrooms and onions and carrots and bay leaf and thyme and oregano and a little garlic... and the aforementioned cumin bagheer, which really deepened the flavors. It was actually kind of boring before the cumin. The recipe is from Joy of Cooking.
I'm going to make more cabbage-bean soup with my mom tomorrow night, even though I just made it for M. last Friday. That recipe is easy as hell:
Get a pound to a pound and a half of ground turkey. Brown it. There will be almost no fat if it's good turkey. You might want to add two cloves of finely chopped garlic and a little olive oil, in fact.
Chop up a medium or large head of cabbage -- the cabbage bits are more manageable if you cut the cabbage in wedges and then cut thin slices from the core outwards, leaving the core out.
Open two regular sized cans of cannellini beans. Take 1/4 of the total amount of beans, and all the bean liquid, and mash it up.
Open a regular sized can of diced tomatoes.
Use about two to three cups of broth -- turkey or chicken or vegetable, whichever you prefer. You can use bouillon cubes if you need to. That never seems like enough liquid to me at first, but with the other stuff, I guess it works.
Add a bay leaf and oregano and thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Anything you like, really, at this point.
Put the liquid, the beans (mashed and whole), the tomatoes, the browned turkey, the cabbage, and the herbs in a big pot, bring it to a boil, and then simmer it for about 40 minutes. Longer if you want. Near the end, if you want, heat about two to three tbsp. of olive oil and throw a handful or so of cumin seeds into it until they spit and pop. Dump that into the soup and stir.
She also made really good soups, some of which I make, too: she made great borscht every once in a while (which is interesting, because it was basically a political thing, rather than an ethnic tradition for us); she made a wonderful meatball soup, and pea soup, and navy bean soup, and especially, bean-cabbage soup. The bean-cabbage soup is something I've made and my sister has made, and slowly, we've changed it, and now we give the recipe to friends. I love anything that smacks of carried-on family traditions, and this bean-cabbage soup fits that bill, though I am sure it originally came from some women's magazine. Still. The version my mother always made used beef (that is, hamburger), and kidney beans, and beef broth along with the cabbage and diced tomatoes. The version my sister shifted to uses ground turkey. I kept the ground turkey and changed the kidney beans to cannellini (white kidney) beans, and then added a cumin bagheer -- whole cumin seeds heated in oil til they pop, and then dumped in the almost done soup. I can add a cumin bagheer to almost anything. I added it to the scotch broth I made a couple of weeks ago, which was AWESOME. Awesome as long as you're not a vegetarian, like most of these, I guess.
I just ate the last of the scotch broth tonight, and loved it as much as when I made it in early January. I like barley soups, like mushroom-barley soup. This is a barley and lamb soup, with mushrooms and onions and carrots and bay leaf and thyme and oregano and a little garlic... and the aforementioned cumin bagheer, which really deepened the flavors. It was actually kind of boring before the cumin. The recipe is from Joy of Cooking.
I'm going to make more cabbage-bean soup with my mom tomorrow night, even though I just made it for M. last Friday. That recipe is easy as hell:
Get a pound to a pound and a half of ground turkey. Brown it. There will be almost no fat if it's good turkey. You might want to add two cloves of finely chopped garlic and a little olive oil, in fact.
Chop up a medium or large head of cabbage -- the cabbage bits are more manageable if you cut the cabbage in wedges and then cut thin slices from the core outwards, leaving the core out.
Open two regular sized cans of cannellini beans. Take 1/4 of the total amount of beans, and all the bean liquid, and mash it up.
Open a regular sized can of diced tomatoes.
Use about two to three cups of broth -- turkey or chicken or vegetable, whichever you prefer. You can use bouillon cubes if you need to. That never seems like enough liquid to me at first, but with the other stuff, I guess it works.
Add a bay leaf and oregano and thyme and salt and pepper to taste. Anything you like, really, at this point.
Put the liquid, the beans (mashed and whole), the tomatoes, the browned turkey, the cabbage, and the herbs in a big pot, bring it to a boil, and then simmer it for about 40 minutes. Longer if you want. Near the end, if you want, heat about two to three tbsp. of olive oil and throw a handful or so of cumin seeds into it until they spit and pop. Dump that into the soup and stir.
