A Beautiful Bowl of Soup

I wish every meal I make could be like the meals I make on Sundays.

Sundays are all about food. I wake up - leisurely, sans alarm clock - and immediately begin thinking about what we'll eat that day. I settle in at the dining room table with a cup of hot coffee and spread out my latest cooking magazines and favorite cookbooks of the moment. I flip through pages, scan recipes and build my meal plan for the coming week. My husband and I eat breakfast together - a luxury that our busy weekday mornings doesn't afford us - and I make a shopping list. On an ideal Sunday afternoon, we head out for a bite to eat around lunch time at our favorite cafe, Grand Central Bakery, and then it's off to the grocery store to stock up for the week. As soon as I finish unpacking the groceries at home, I get to start dinner. Sunday dinners are usually the ones that involve a bit more time and effort. I love to fill an afternoon - and sometimes even part of the morning - with preparations for dinner that night. A meal that is planned and prepared well in advance always feels more special.

Regrettably, I was unable to begin preparations for my next meal from our friend, David Tanis' cookbook in my usual Sunday style. That's because I planned this meal for a weekday night.

My parents were coming into town. They would arrive at our house on a Thursday in the early evening and I wanted to plan a meal that would greet them as they walked in the door and would be comforting to sit down at the table to after a 2-day road trip from California. What better than a bowl of soup? When I saw the picture of Tanis' Zuppa di Fagioli with Rosemary Oil (p183) I knew it would be perfect. Just thinking about that steaming bowl on the table warmed me up inside. :)

Early in the week we made a special trip to our nearby meat market, Gartner's, to pick up the smoked ham hock for this recipe. I'll admit that I'd never worked with ham hock before and wasn't even sure what it would look like when the butcher presented it to us. Turns out it's just a nice, meaty hunk of pork from the hind leg. The only other item I needed for this recipe was the dried white beans (I used cannellinis) which I purchased from the bulk section of New Seasons, another of our favorite markets.

The recipe recommends that it be made the day before you plan to serve it which is exactly what I did. The night before my parents were due to arrive, after a long day at work, I came home and set about making this soup. After sauteeing diced onions, garlic and bay leaf, I nestled in the ham hock and tumbled the dried cannellinis around it, then covered the whole thing with water and let it simmer. The simple seasonings (ground fennel, red pepper flake and salt) are added in after an hour. Then it's simmered for an hour more. And that's it.

The next night, about an hour before my parents arrived, I pulled it out of the fridge and put it back on the stove to reheat. I put together a plate of salami, prosciutto and capocollo with olives, sliced the bread for the garlic toasts that would be served alongside the soup, and snapped a fragrant handful of fresh sprigs from our rosemary bush for the rosemary oil drizzle.

By the time my parents walked in the door, road-weary and hungry, the soup had filled the house with the most amazing fragrance.

How can a dish be rustic and elegant all at the same time? This soup achieves that balance.

And, so what? I didn't get to make a whole day of making this meal. (If I had, I most certainly would have made the almond biscotti - also part of menu fifteen.) What this simple recipe did allow me to do was to make a special meal - in a relatively short amount of time - to share with loved ones which, after all, is the most important part!

buon appetito

Tempa