New Year's Resolutions - new recipe, week 10 - Italian Potato Pasta Soup

I'm still on track! Two new recipes this week, though one is what I'll call a "swing" recipe, as I made it Saturday but we ate it Sunday. Totally giving myself credit for that one in week 9.

First up: Italian Potato-Pasta Soup with Greens for a meatless Friday night meal. Only hiccup: we didn't have it on Friday, because we ended up running errands and going out to dinner. It was still a good Saturday night dinner, though!

As has become standard, step 1: gather ingredients.

Isn't that fennel and kale beautiful?! I had shopped at our local Festival Foods instead of Walmart sine I was there for Caroline's Girl Scout cookie booth, and their produce section was seductive. Plus, fennel! I've never even heard of it, much less used it in a recipe before. Love this trying new recipes thing.

The recipe said one hour for required time, but I've learned that's usually a strong underestimate for the way I cook. I think the difference is in the prep time - the time estimate seems accurate once all of the dicing, chopping, peeling, slicing, shredding, grating, etc. is done. But how do you leave that out of a recipe time estimate? Are there kitchen prep fairies out there that I have filed to acquire? Besides, I've found that I do enjoy the prep part, getting to use my KitchenAid processing discs, my lovely sharp knives for dicing, the deliberateness of gathering and measuring and seeing my handiwork as I begin to put the ingredients together.

With all of the raw ingredients ready to go, I pulled out our soup pot (how lovely that I *have* a soup pot!) and set it on the stove. Heated olive oil to shimmering and began to saute the vegetables.

Beyond this, it really isn't that complicated - it's soup, y'all. Add the liquid, add the other ingredients, bring to a boil, and simmer. I did have to modify it a little bit; as normal, our Saturday was quite busy, so I had begun the cooking in the morning with a plan for a break to go to Caroline's play, to the grocery store (needed ingredients for week 9!), then on to church.

Hit the pause button.... now, unpause!

I had chosen mini bowtie pasta not because I thought it was the best option, but because it was essentially the only mini pasta option in the aisle. I sometimes wonder about the magical shelves that must exist in NYC grocery stores and bodegas, because some of the ingredients in recipes I peruse on the NYT website are a total mystery to me, and I can't find them in my local stores. While I try to avoid substitutions, I don't let a small thing like unavailability stop me!

Home from mass and the soup base still warm on the stove, I tackled the simple task of boiling the pasta to add to the soup as the final step.

It only took a little while for the soup to be back to piping hot and ready to eat, with nothing between us and dinner but a ladle, some parmesan cheese topping, and a dash of olive oil to make it shine.

 

Since it was no longer a meatless Friday night, we added an antipasta plate to round out the dinner. Between the Italian meats, cheeses and the hearty soup, I was stuffed!

 

Caroline missed dinner with the family since she was at the evening performance of the musical, but she got the benefit of a small tweak - I went ahead and added the remaining tomato paste to the soup, giving it a more robust and Italian look and flavor. She even said it was her favorite recipe that I've made yet this year!

One upside (or downside, depending on how you look at it, I suppose) is that there is a TON leftover. One of our largest tupperwares is filled to the brim in the refrigerator. I'm hopeful it will heat up nicely, though, because there is something to be said for weeknight dinners that take nothing more than reheat and eat!