Easy Winter Tomato Soup

For years, my tomato soup routine was the same. In the summer, I made a version of tomato soup that I found in Cooking Light years ago. (I meant to post this version when it was tomato season and didn't, so now it will have to wait another few months.) And in the winter, I didn't even try to make my own but relied on Trader Joe's.

Those days have come to an end. Not that I will forgo Trader Joe's tomato soup entirely, but now I have an easy homemade alternative. And it should be no surprise that the source is Deborah Madison, soup genius. This recipe is from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which has been on my shelf for years. Why I never tried this recipe before, I can't say. Maybe I thought it was too simple or basic. I don't know. But now that I've tried it, it's going to be in my repertoire for a long time. It's easy, quick and delicious. And in early March, when one day the sun is out and the next day it's snowy and gray, it's nice to have something both dependable and delicious to rely on.

I hardly tweaked this recipe at all. I did add a carrot to the onion and celery, and I think if you're going to make the soup with water rather than vegetable stock (as I have), the carrot helps give the soup some depth. Otherwise, I followed her instructions pretty closely and was not disappointed.

Cream of Tomato Soup
Adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

2 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
1 carrot, chopped (optional)
1 1/2 teaspoons dried basil, crumbled between your fingers
Pinch of ground cloves
2 tablespoons flour
Two 15-ounce cans diced tomatoes in puree or juice (or 1 28 ounce can, if that's what's in your pantry)
Pinch of baking soda
2 1/2 cups vegetable stock or water
1 1/2 cups milk
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Tomato paste if needed

1.Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion, celery, carrot (if using), basil, and cloves; cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is limp, about 5 minutes. Stir in the flour, then add the tomatoes, baking soda, and stock or water. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, partially covered, for 20 minutes. Let cool briefly, then puree in a blender until smooth (or, of course, in the pot with your trusty immersion blender).

2.Return the soup to the pot, add the milk, and season with salt. If the soup is too thick, thin it with additional milk or stock. If the tomato flavor isn't as rich as you'd like (if the tomatoes were packed in water instead of puree), deepen it by stirring in a little tomato paste.

Serve with toasted cheese for a lovely lunch. ((A fancier version of this soup, incorporating souffleed cheese toasts rather than separate bread and cheese, is in Deborah Madison's soup cookbook. I have no doubt that it's also delicious, but I haven't tried it yet.)

Winter Holiday

It's been a very snowy winter many places on the East coast. For better or for worse, my part of Western Mass. is not one of those places. (Every big storm that’s hit further south or east (or west) has mostly managed to miss us.) The most time I’ve spent in the snow has been when I’ve been shoveling it off my driveway. My new snowshoes are still in their bag, and I’ve only used my x-country skis once, and for that, I had to drive halfway to the Berkshires to find (almost) enough snow to ski on. (Admittedly, that was a few weeks ago, and now I wouldn’t have to go so far, after the cumulative effect of this week’s storms.) Still, I felt the need to read about a real winter, of sudden blizzards and frozen lakes with homey houseboats conveniently frozen into them, of skates and sleds and semaphore. In other words, I had to dig out Winter Holiday, by Arthur Ransome, fourth in the Swallows and Amazons series and the only one of his novels set in winter.

I have to add that I was not alone in this impulse. A few days later, I went to look at my friend Mo's blog, Loving the Tasmanian Devil, and saw that she'd written a long and thoughtful post called a Happy Confluence of Winter Books about two of her favorite winter books, one of which is Carol Ryrie Brink's Winter Cottage. I had never heard of Winter Cottage and had to put it on my library list immediately.

But back to Arthur Ransome. I didn't grow up reading the Swallows and Amazons books. For those not in the know, they're a beloved series of British children's books, written mostly in the 1930s and 40s, set mostly in the Lake District of England and featuring several families of intrepid adventurers who sail and camp and have adventures. The first I heard of them was in college, when I discovered my friend and next door neighbor, Ann, reading Swallows and Amazons, the first in the series, which she did, I learned, whenever she was stressed out. Some years later, looking at her bookshelves, I found one of the later books of the series, with the inscription, “For Ann on her 23rd birthday,” which made me laugh.

Perhaps incongruously, I read my first Swallows and Amazons book in Delhi in 1994. I belonged to many libraries during that long stay, one of which was the American Embassy library, where there was a 15 rupee sale shelf. More often than I'd imagined, decent books turned up on the 15 rupee shelf, and I snatched them up. One summer day, a battered copy of Swallows and Amazons was there, and I bought it. I did not read it right then, however. I remembered Ann's use of Swallows and Amazons as comfort reading, and I saved it for when I might need it. (I knew the time would come, and it did.) In the years since then, I've read a number of the others, and along with Swallows and Amazons, my favorite is Winter Holiday.

The book involves 3 groups of siblings: the Walkers (aka the Swallows), the Blacketts (the Amazons) and the Callums (the D's) who all end up, mostly parentless (except for Mrs. Blackett), in the Lake District during their winter holiday. It is one of the coldest winters on record, and as more and more of the long lake begins to freeze, the children hope to be able to mount an expedition to the north pole (aka the end of the lake). Due to a fortunately timed case of the mumps and subsequent quarantine that keeps them at the lake for an additional month, their wish is granted.

One thing that’s appealing about the book is how well the kids take advantage of winter. They skate daily on a frozen pond and on the lake itself, they take wild sled rides down the hill onto the lake, they spend time in an igloo they’ve constructed and even manage to rescue a sheep stranded on a cliff. Eventually, they take possession of the Blackett sisters’ Uncle Jim’s houseboat that’s been frozen into the lake, renaming it the Fram, after the boat in Nansen’s arctic expedition in the 1890s, systematically eating their way through all of his stores and readying themselves for their own version of polar exploration, a trip to their own north pole, which turns out to be more than they bargained for and also the adventure that they desperately wanted.

By the end of the book, it is abundantly clear that Nancy Blackett’s pronouncement about winter that serves as the book's epigraph—“Dark at tea-time and sleeping indoors: nothing ever happens in the winter holidays.”—is absolutely false. And for those of us who may never build an igloo, enjoy a frozen houseboat or mount an expedition to any pole at all, it’s a true pleasure to go along with them.

I can’t write about Arthur Ransome without noting that he was recently the subject of a major biography—The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome—in which it turns out that he was a spy for Britain and also so close to the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution that he was nearly prosecuted for treason. I read two fascinating reviews of the book in the Guardian and in the Times of London, but I have to admit that I can't decide how much I actually want to know about his real life. Sometimes, at least, it's best to stick with the fiction.

Meatless Mondays: Pasta with Roasted Butternut Squash and Greens

It seems that almost everything I make these days involves butternut squash or chard. A few weeks ago, it was Roasted Butternut Squash Risotto. Then, it was my favorite chard and onion torta from Deborah Madison. This past week, just to liven things up, I made something with both, the pasta with roasted butternut squash and greens from The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper. I mentioned this pasta the first time I wrote about a recipe from this book (the wonderful soup with fresh greens and alphabets), and I've made it numerous times since then, but somehow, I'm not getting around to writing about it til now.

No matter. Despite our lack of snow in western New England, it remains winter here, and fresh vegetables are not in abundant supply. Still, it's possible to get nice-looking, even local, butternut squash and chard (though this is less likely to be local). This pasta dish is nice because it's delicious, first of all, and relatively quick (more about that in a minute) but mostly because it's a nice change from my usual pasta with a tomato-related sauce.

Lynne Rosetto Kasper said that this dish takes 10 minutes to prep. I think she either has a sous chef or she is deluded. I can't figure out how she can possibly prep this dish in 10 minutes when peeling and chopping (or even just chopping) several pounds of butternut squash is involved, not to mention washing and chopping the chard, not to mention the onions and garlic. Anyway, even with the longer than anticipated prep, this is a relatively speedy dinner to make. (Just make sure you allot more than 10 minutes for it.) Although I usually don't buy pre-peeled or chopped vegetables, I make an exception here. A local store (Atkin's Farm, home of the cider doughnut) sells bags of peeled butternut squash, and when I want to make this pasta, that's what I buy. Then it's just a matter of chopping it, which is much quicker.

The sequence is this. Make sure you pre-heat the oven with the pan in it. (I've forgotten this more than once.) While the pre-heating is going on, you combine all of your chopped vegetables in a bowl:

Then, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, brown sugar and herbs. When the oven is pre-heated and the pan hot enough, spread the vegetables on the hot pan. Make sure you keep an eye on the vegetables while they're cooking, and don't worry if the quantities look enormous. They cook down substantially while in the oven.

You can cook the pasta while the vegetables are in the oven, so everything can be ready to combine as soon as the vegetables are ready. Once they're done, it's just a matter of mixing with the half and half and the cheese and adding more salt and pepper to taste.

One more thing I should note--this full recipe makes a lot of pasta. Really, like a lot. So, good for dinner for 6 people (and some leftover), less good for 1 or 2 people who don't want to be eating this every day for a week. When I made this last, I used a 2 1/2 pound squash, 1 supermarket bunch of chard and about 3/4 pound of pasta. (I didn't fiddle much with the rest of the amounts.) This provided me with one dinner and 2 lunches early in the week and dinner for Alex and me later in the week. We both looked at our empty plates regretfully, and it seemed better to want more than to feel oppressed by the leftovers. No matter the quantity, though, I do highly recommend making this pasta. Soon enough, there will be lovely spring dishes on the menu, so we might as well appreciate an excellent winter dish like this while we can.

Pasta with Roasted Butternut Squash and Greens
Adapted from The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper

5 quarts salted water in a 6-quart pot

Roasted Vegetables:
3 to 3-1/2 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into bite-sized chunks
1 medium to large onion, cut into 1-inch chunks
2 big handfuls greens; Kasper suggests escarole or curly endive or spring mix, I use chard; all should be washed, dried and torn or chopped into small pieces
1/3 tight-packed cup fresh basil leaves, torn, if available, or 1 tsp. dried
16 large fresh sage leaves, torn, or 1 tbsp. dried
5 large garlic cloves, coarse chopped
1/3 cup good-tasting extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tight-packed tablespoon brown sugar (light or dark)
Salt and fresh-ground black pepper

Pasta and Finish:
1 pound bow-tie pasta (see above)
1/2 cup half-and-half
1 to 1-1/2 cups (about 6 ounces) shredded Asiago cheese (I've used Manchego, Gruyere and Pecorino Romano, all to good effect)

1. Slip one large or two smaller shallow sheet pans into the oven. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Bring the salted water to a boil.

2. In a big bowl, toss together all the ingredients for the roasted vegetables. Be generous with the salt and pepper.

3. Pull out the oven rack holding the sheet pan. Taking care not to burn yourself, turn the squash blend onto the hot sheet pan and spread it out. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the squash is tender, turning the vegetables two or three times during roasting.

4. As the squash becomes tender, drop the pasta into the boiling water and cook it until tender, but with some firmness to the bite. Drain in a colander.

5. Once the squash is tender, turn on the broiler to caramelize it. Watch the vegetables closely, turning the pieces often. Anticipate about 5 minutes under the broiler. You want crusty brown edges on the squash and wilted, almost crisp greens.

6. Scrape everything into a serving bowl. Add the half-and-half, hot pasta, and 1 cup of the cheese. Toss to blend, tasting for salt and pepper. Add more cheese if desired. Serve hot.

Slings and Arrows: A Heartfelt Plug

Slings and Arrows has been on the edge of my consciousness for years. Canadian, yeah, Shakespeare, yeah, funny, yeah, whatever. I always meant to watch it and never got around to it. But late in the fall, I ran into a friend at the library, and we were recommending DVDs to each other. I told her about the 2005 Bleak House (the one with Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock), and she reminded me about Slings and Arrows. I'm not sure why this time it clicked, but it did.

And now that I've finished all three all-too-brief seasons, I really can't recommend it more highly. The show ran in Canada from 2003-06 and then was on the Sundance Channel here a few years ago. I suspect it still pops up on cable occasionally. It's set at the fictional New Burbage Theatre Festival and covers three seasons there, during which Shakespeare's three great tragedies are performed: Hamlet in the first season (with a Hollywood action star as Hamlet), MacBeth in the second (with a pompous blowhard as MacBeth) and King Lear in the third (with an aged, ailing and possibly addicted actor as Lear). Meanwhile, the business manager falls under the sway of an American corporate sponsor in the first season, a lunatic PR guy in the second season and a really bad musical in the third. I loved all three seasons, with perhaps a slight preference for the first as my favorite, though the second was maybe the funniest and the third the most moving.

The show is beautifully written and acted, complex, funny and just all around fabulous. The main character is the theater's artistic director, Geoffrey Tennant (played by the cute and wonderful Paul Gross), who had once been a star actor at the theater before having a nervous breakdown in the middle of Hamlet. (He was playing Hamlet and jumped into Ophelia's grave and wouldn't get out.) When the theater's artistic director--and Geoffrey's former mentor and friend--Oliver Welles, is killed ("run over by a pig truck") at the end of the first episode, Geoffrey is asked to take over. Oliver, however, doesn't go away. His ghost, only visible to Geoffrey (and one other key character, later on), plays a major role throughout the series. He and Geoffrey bicker constantly, alarming all who see Geoffrey engaged in what seems to them to be one-sided arguments with the air.

The acting is wonderful all around, from the main characters--Geoffrey; Oliver; Richard Smith-Jones, the clueless business manager; Anna, his able assistant; Ellen, the festival's leading lady and diva--to the minor ones (Nahum, the Nigerian janitor; Frank and Cyril, the two older gay guys who play many of the minor roles; Maria, the ever-harried stage manager). The occasional big name actor shows up (Rachel McAdams in season 1, Sarah Polley in season 3), although I should re-phrase that to mean bigger name in the US, as many members of the cast are very well-known in Canada. But the writing is also wonderful. And even though each season stands on its own, the three seasons work together as a whole. I read somewhere that the show was conceived of as a 3 season show. (Each season contains 6 episodes of 45 minutes; all three seasons, 13.5 hours in all, equal about one regular TV season in the US.) This becomes clear at the end, when there is a real sense of closure. The ending is bittersweet, but the show ends the way it should end, the way it's been set up to end. And throughout the last few episodes, there are moments that hark back both to earlier seasons--Oliver providing for Geoffrey in King Lear what Geoffrey had provided for his leading men in Hamlet and MacBeth--and to earlier moments in that season (the ever present Bolivian musicians' role in the storm scene in King Lear was just fabulous). One thing I should note is that each season takes a bit of time to warm up. You may not be hooked after the first episode or two. But be patient. Once the story is set up, it's hard to stop watching. And the last two episodes of each season are so well done that I felt that I had no choice but to watch them again, immediately.

I could go on and on. But really, the thing I most want to say is Watch This. I'm not in theater, I haven't read Shakespeare since college, I don't have any personal reasons for enjoying this. But I loved it. It's probably the best TV I've seen since The Wire, and it's much less stressful. (I had rather disturbing dreams while I was watching The Wire, which is probably why I still haven't watched the last 2 seasons.) For a very brief taste, here's a link to a YouTube clip from the first season, the lovely Geoffrey trying to coach his truly terrible Ophelia. And meanwhile, though I'm sad not to be able to watch it for the first time, I have no doubt that it will hold up to repeated viewings, and even having just finished watching it, I'm already looking forward to the next time.

Meatless Mondays: Potato-Leek Soup, Two Ways

Apologies for the silence and for the day-late Meatless Monday post. (Meatless Tuesday isn't quite as mellifluous.) I've had my head in a (figurative) flowerpot, pretending that our new senator is not a Republican who once posed naked for Cosmo. Well, that and other things, but between the special election and the Supreme Court and my flooded basement, the flowerpot is looking more appealing every day.

Anyway. As promised, now that the new year is well upon us, I am writing about soup for all who are still feeling abstemious and slightly regretful about overloading on fancy food full of sugar and fat over the holidays. Potato leek soup is about as simple as it gets. I tend to make it every fall, especially when it's the end of farmer's market season and I start to feel like "oh no, the season's almost over, I must buy extra vegetables while they're here," and I inevitably end up with lots of leeks and lots of potatoes (since, of course, it's the end of the season and there's not a huge variety.) But that makes this soup equally appropriate for January because even in New England, you can still find decent leeks and potatoes, and that's basically all you need. Plus, there aren't many soups more comforting than potato-leek, and it seems like we could all use some comforting this month.

Recently when I made this, I was all ready to devote some time to the soup and make stock for it, figuring that a soup with so few ingredients in it would need a hearty stock. But Deborah Madison disagreed. In her recipe for Potato-leek soup in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, she specifically says to use water, just water. Well, who am I to question Deborah Madison on the question of stock vs. water? And besides, it saved me some chopping time.

More recently, I decided to branch out and make the variation in Deborah Madison's soup cookbook, Leek and Scallion soup, with potato gnocchi. This one has fewer potatoes in the soup itself but makes up for the lack by the addition of potato gnocchi at the end.

I'm including both recipes because each soup has its own pleasures. The plain potato leek soup is earthy and simple, with the clear flavors of the potatoes and the leeks fully resonant. The second soup is a bit more elegant, with a tang from the wine; with fewer potatoes, the flavor of the leeks and scallions also stands out more sharply. This is a soup you could serve for company, if you needed a simple starter.

Either way, they both encompass the qualities of simplicity, virtue and deliciousness, all fine qualities in soup, of course, and what all of us could use as January staggers to a close.

Creamed Leek and Potato Soup

Adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

3 large or 6 medium leeks, white parts only, finely chopped
1 1/2 pounds potatoes (Yellow Finn, Yukon Gold or boiling recommended), scrubbed well and thinly sliced
1-2 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper
Milk or water to thin the soup, if needed
Light cream or half and half (optional)

Melt butter in a wide soup pot, then add the leeks and potatoes and cook over low heat, covered for 10 minutes.

Add 7 cups water and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and bring to a boil.

Lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, until the potatoes are soft to the point of falling apart, about 35 minutes.

Press a few against the side of the pan to break them up and give the soup body.

If needed, thin the soup with milk and heat through.

Taste for salt, season for pepper and serve.

I like to go the extra step and put the soup through a food mill. (I don't use an immersion blender for this one, as the potatoes get gummy pretty quickly.) Then, if you're feeling a bit decadent (or even if you're not), add 1/4-1/2 cup of cream or half and half. Serve with finely chopped chives and parsley. (Chilled, it's vichyssoise.)

Leek and Scallion Soup, with potato gnocchi
Adapted from Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen

1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
4 cups chopped and rinsed leeks (white part only) (5-6 leeks)
1 celery rib, peeled and chopped
1 russet potato, peeled and finely diced
sea salt/fresh ground pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 cups water

1 pkg. potato gnocchi (found in the frozen food dept.--I found mine at Whole Foods.)

1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 cup finely slivered scallion including an inch or two of the greens

Saute the leeks, potato, and celery with about a tsp. of salt until the leeks have softened.

Add the wine and cook until the wine is almost all gone.

Add the water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 20 min.

Add some pepper. Puree a cup of the soup and return to the pot. (Because there was only one potato in this, I risked using the immersion blender and pureed the whole batch, roughly.) If feeling decadent, you can add whole milk or half and half. (I did and did not regret it.)

Meanwhile, cook the gnocchi in salted water, 4-5 minutes. Set aside and keep warm.

Saute the slivered scallion in the butter until just wilted.

Stir the scallions into the soup.

Add a few gnocchi to each bowl when you serve the soup.

Maine Shrimp reminder

Last year, I didn't discover Maine shrimp until March, near the end of the season. I wrote about using them in a Thai-style coconut milk soup.

But the Maine shrimp season actually starts in December or early January, which I suddenly remembered a few days ago as I passed the fish counter at Whole Foods and saw a large heap of plump pink Maine shrimp in front of me. Maine shrimp are cheap ($5/pound at Whole Foods, not on sale, and probably cheaper other places and definitely cheaper if you're in Maine) and tasty and vaguely local, at least if you live in New England. And in January, when there's not much else even vaguely local to be had, that counts for something. (This may be changing. There's now a new winter farmer's market in Northampton every Saturday, and yesterday, there was a special Winter fare market with farmers from all over this area held at a local high school. It was so crowded that people were practically fighting over the carrots, and by the time I got there, halfway through, everything green had already been bought up--I guess there's a pretty serious communal craving for fresh vegetables in the midst of a January freeze!)

Anyway, my inaugural Maine shrimp dish this year was risotto. I loosely followed this risotto recipe, although I made the shrimp stock more like this one posted at the Beyond Salmon blog. We ate it sitting in front of the fire, and it was a fine dinner for a freezing January night--warm and filling and tasty.

And since I now know that Maine shrimp will be around for a few more months, I'm already pondering the possibilities. The Thai soup is definitely on the agenda, but I'm planning to explore some other options as well. I'll report back when I have a winner. In the meantime, stay warm!

Deborah Madison's Lentil Minestrone

The lowly lentil is in the news this week. Yesterday, Mark Bittman devoted his Minimalist column in the NY Times to legumes and beans and has a number of interesting looking recipes. Today, the Atlantic food section offers another paean to the lentil as well as a recipe for "tasty lentils" (that do, in fact, sound pretty tasty). Even before the media attention, I was thinking of lentils anyway because I'm happily eating my way through a large pot of Deborah Madison's lentil minestrone.

I've written before about my general love for Deborah Madison (see here), but I think she's a especially a genius when it comes to soup. Her soup cookbook, Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen, is a standby in my kitchen year round, though it's especially useful in the winter. The lentil minestrone is in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, which also has an extensive and helpful section on making soup. Madison's soup recipes may have more steps or be slightly more time consuming than others, but the payoff is in the layers of flavor. The lentil minestrone, for example, is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Its humble ingredients--carrots, celery, onions, tomato paste, lentils--belie how delicious the final concoction is.

It's a perfect dish for January--it's filling and full of things that are good for you. (Lentils! Chard! ) But, it's also delicious. You can eat it happily and maintain your New Year's resolutions at the same time. Like most lentil soups, it gets better with time.

A few notes:

This soup is made even better by the inclusion of a Parmesan rind, added when you add the lentils and the water. (This soup has enough depth that it's fine with water, if you don't have any vegetable stock on hand and don't have the time (or inclination) to make any.)

While Deborah Madison has you cook the greens separately, I usually don't. I rinse the chard and chop it ahead of time, then just add it to the soup while the pasta is cooking. It doesn't stay bright green, admittedly, but when you're eating the soup over several days anyway, the chard will not stay bright green no matter what, so you might as well save a step here.

I do always keep the pasta separate and then add it when re-heating. Otherwise, the pasta will drink up all the liquid, and you'll have soup with rather bloated pieces of pasta and no liquid left.

I usually just use dried thyme with the bay leaves, and I don't always include the parsley branches (though I do include the chopped parsley).

I don't have any mushroom soy sauce in the house so have never added it to this soup. While I think adding regular soy sauce would be fine, I sometimes put in a dash of red wine vinegar instead, which adds a nice flavor.

If you leave your bowl on the table too long, watch out, as it might attract the attention of an otherwise carnivorous creature who might stick a tongue out for a tentative taste . . . (In this photo, I think Chaya is actually coming back for more--he already knew he liked it, as the previous night he'd licked my bowl clean, a privilege usually reserved for cereal, yogurt and ice cream. The cat is definitely on to something!)

Lentil Minestrone
Adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Add the cooked pasta and greens just before serving so that they retain their color and texture. And, don't forget the Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra virgin to finish
2 cups onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste (The Italian tomato paste in a tube is perfect here.)
1/4 cup chopped parsley
4 garlic cloves, chopped
3 carrots, diced
1 cup diced celery or celery root
1 cup French green lentils, rinsed
Aromatics: 2 bay leaves, 8 parsley branches, 6 thyme sprigs
1 piece Parmesan rind (optional)
9 cups water or vegetable stock
Mushroom soy sauce to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
1 bunch greens—mustard, broccoli rabe, chard, or spinach (I almost always use chard.)
2 cups cooked small pasta (I usually use shells or pipette)
Thin shavings of Parmesan

Instructions
Heat the oil in a wide soup pot with the onion. Saute over high heat, stirring frequently, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.

Add the tomato paste, parsley, celery, garlic, vegetables, and 2 teaspoons salt and cook 3 minutes more.

Add the lentils, aromatics, Parmesan rind (if using) and water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes. Taste for salt and season with pepper. If it needs more depth, add mushroom soy sauce to taste, starting with 1 tablespoon. (The soup may seem bland at this point, but the flavors will come together when the soup is finished.) Remove the aromatics.

Boil the greens in salted water until they're tender and bright green, then chop them coarsely. (Or, add the chopped greens to the soup while the pasta is cooking.)

Just before serving, add the greens and the pasta to the soup and heat through. Serve with extra virgin olive oil drizzled into each bowl, a generous grind of pepper, and the Parmesan.