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

Tanis Elsewhere

Read more about Tanis, life in Paris, his book Platter of Figs, and what others have to say about his recipes:

Saveur
Saveur - Recipe
The Wednesday Chef
New York Times
Martha Stewart Show

Enjoy!

Stephanie

another early autumn

Let me start by saying that it was not easy to make a selection from this beautiful cookbook. Everything looks amazing. So, I narrowed it down by making a selection based on the following criteria:

1. Must be an entire menu.

2. Must come from the Fall portion of the cookbook.

3. Must include a technique or ingredient that I've never worked with before.

*Bonus: Ideally include figs!

Well, I found a menu that matched all of my criteria: menu sixteen, another early autumn (pgs. 190-199). This menu includes a few techniques and ingredients I've never worked with. Panna Cotta. Duck. Livers.

Yes, I'll admit that I was a little nervous about the duck and more than a little nervous about the livers...

but looking forward to expanding my culinary know-how!

Next up: making my grocery list. Many of the items we already had on hand but needed to pick up some of the key ingredients...duck, juniper berries, livers, pancetta, fresh baguette, half-and-half, Creme Fraiche, and powdered gelatin.

We went to no less than three different grocery stores to pick up everything we needed. Found the duck breasts at our favorite gourmet foods market, Pastaworks, the livers, pancetta, Creme Fraiche and gelatin came from another local specialty foods market, Zupan's, and the rest from Whole Foods.

I planned this to be our dinner for Sunday night so I started by preparing the duck on Saturday since it called to refrigerate the duck breast roast for "several hours, or overnight" prior to cooking. I have to say that I really liked this technique of tying two duck breasts together to make a little "roast". It was super easy to prepare the spice rub (I subbed ground allspice for the allspice berries in the rub), apply it to the duck and tie it all together in a compact little bundle. After prepping the duck breast, it was on to the Duck Liver. Okay, fine, I didn't find duck livers but the recipe does indicate that you can also use chicken livers so that's what I did. Trimming the livers was...to put it mildly...my least favorite part of preparing this meal. In their raw state they felt like pieces of jello. Needless to say, I tried to finish that task as quickly as possible. The remainder of the prep for the liver spread was quite simple and once everything was mixed together I popped it in the fridge for the night.

Sunday: I made the Panna Cotta early on Sunday morning since it had to chill in the fridge for at least 6 hours. This recipe calls for Creme Fraiche with a recipe to make your own (p. 41). I did take a peek at the recipe and even attempted to gather the ingredients during our trip to the grocery store but could not find non-ultrapasturized heavy whipping cream... Since I didn't know if that was critical to the texture and consistency of the finished product, I scratched that idea and just picked up a container. The headnote at the top of the Panna Cotta recipe says that it's "surprisingly easy to prepare" and I would have to agree.

The baked figs and roasted pepper salad were perfectly simple and, also, extremely easy to prepare.

My final report on the meal:

Liver Toasts: We served these as our first course on crostini. I was not a fan of the metallic, iron-y taste of the liver. We both decided that rubbing the crostini with fresh garlic helped us to enjoy the spread a little bit more!

Roasted Pepper Salad: Simple. Delicate. Lovely.

Double Duck Breast with Baked Figs: The recipe called for 6 duck breasts (to make 3 mini roasts) but since I'm just cooking for Jim and I, I used two, which still left us with lots of leftovers. This turned out really nice. The duck cooked perfectly moist and we both felt that the spice rub was a great compliment to the duck. And the figs. The figs were fantastic. The roasting process intensified their flavor and still left them soft - almost jammy.

Panna Cotta: I was a bit disappointed with how the panna cotta turned out. I had hoped that they would easily turn out from the ramekins into perfectly shaped little molds. But, they didn't really hold their shape at all. Instead, they turned into little puddles. (Maybe I should have prepared them the night before to give them more time in the fridge...) The flavor was good though so it was not a total loss! They were like a silky, milky pudding. The vanilla bean gave it a mild sweetness that paired well with the fresh strawberries I served with them. And, no, I did not take a picture...it just didn't seem worthy of a photo!

I had a fantastic time preparing this entire meal and I can't wait to pick out another recipe!

buon appetito!

Tempa

October

A Platter of Figs by David TanisOur inaugural launch of The Book Cook Club will set sail on the pages of David Tanis' beautifully presented book, A Platter of Figs. With each season comes a collection of menus, and for each menu a treasure of recipes. An irresistible cover of 2 perfectly ripe figs draws the curious in, to which is revealed an elegant compilation of unbelievably simplistic recipes (dare I call Sliced Tomatoes with Sea Salt a recipe?). This is the food that Tanis serves to his friends and family; dishes that highlight ingredients and thoughtful preparation. It appears that the attraction of such basic presentation is to strip away pretentiousness, and penetrate the true pleasure of cooking and eating with people you care about.

Happy Cooking,

Stephanie