Broth-y Goodness

This weekend, I made my first ever broth soup. I have been making creamed vegetable soups now for three and a half years, but since I usually find broth soups… unappealing, I’ve stayed away from them. Why do I find them unappealing? Perhaps it’s because I’m a texture person, and I don’t like the inconsistencies of the thin broth along side the lumps of carrots and chunks of meat. It could be that they’re simply not fatty enough for me – it’s no secret that I’d take a white sauce any day over a red sauce – maybe this just follows?

At any rate, yesterday afternoon as I was staring into my fridge and freezer, wondering what I could make into a decent Sunday lunch, I noticed that I had quite a lot of tortellini that had been hanging around being frozen for quite some time. Naturally, my first thought was to cook them up with a jar of Classico Alfredo Sauce, but I didn’t have any. And I have been avoiding them when they’ve been on sale because (sigh) they’re not healthy. The next best thing to a cream sauce is a cheese soup (you don’t have to tell me that one is not healthier than the other), so I sat down at my trusty allrecipes.com website and searched for “tortellini cheese soup.”

The first recipe to appear: Italian Meatball Soup. I was intrigued, clicked on the link, and was happy to find that I had all of the ingredients in my cupboards – something that rarely happens! As I cried over my onions, however, I soon realized that I had used up my last can of kale on a delicious dinner of boerenkale, our minced garlic was AWOL, and my can of diced tomatoes turned out to be whole stewed tomatoes. A package of frozen spinach was substituted for the kale, I used garlic salt (we don’t even have garlic powder in our cupboards) in lieu of both garlic & salt, and I chopped up the stewed tomatoes, which is a bit of a messy job.

As I was working on the soup, I sent the hubby out with the dog to the bakery around the corner to fetch some fresh buns and some real Parmesan – while we don’t have a Zharky’s in our neck of the woods, Sweet Paradise is not a bad second-best. It’s nice to have a local bakery to run out to now and again.

Once my soup was simmering away, I got to work on my meatballs, and had to substitute fake Parmesan for real, and again the garlic salt for the garlic and salt. Since I haven’t purchased ground beef in over a year I substituted ground turkey for ground beef, which resulted in Brian declaring, as he walked into the kitchen while the meat was frying on the stove, “those meatballs smell great!” This is a man who thinks that the only smell worse than burning human flesh is the aroma of ground beef as it browns on the stove.

Just over an hour after I first pulled the pasta from the freezer, soup was on the table, piping hot. The finishing touch: a teaspoon (ok, maybe a tablespoon) of fresh Parmesan cheese sprinkled on each bowl of soup. It was pretty good, if I do say so myself!


Italian Meatballs:
(Taken from allrecipes.com)

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic
• 2 quarts beef stock
• 1 (12 ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 1/2 cup green beans
• 1/2 cup diced carrot
• 1/2 cup chopped kale
• 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 pound frozen, cooked Italian-style meatballs - thawed
• 1 pound fresh cheese tortellini
• 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Melt the butter in a large pot over medium-high heat; cook the onion and garlic in the melted butter until tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Pour the beef stock into the pot; add the tomatoes, green beans, carrot, kale, Italian seasoning, and bay leaf. Bring the mixture to a boil. Stir in the meatballs and tortellini; return to a boil and cook another 5 minutes. Ladle into bowls and top each with about 1 teaspoon Parmesan cheese to serve.

Italian Meatballs
(Taken from canadianliving.com)

Ingredients:

2/3 cup (150 mL) fresh bread crumbs
1/2 cup (125 mL) water
1 egg
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp (2 mL) each salt and pepper
1/4 cup (50 mL) grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup (50 mL) chopped fresh parsley
1 lb (500 g) lean ground beef
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 can (28 oz/796 mL) diced tomatoes
1 cup (250 mL) beef stock
1 zucchini, grated
1/2 tsp (2 mL) each dried basil and oregano

Preparation:

In bowl, combine fresh bread crumbs with water; let stand until absorbed, about 5 minutes. Beat in egg, garlic, salt, pepper, cheeseand parsley. Mix in beef. Roll by rounded tablespoonfuls into balls.

Brush large nonstick skillet with vegetable oil; heat over medium-high heat. Brown meatballs, in batches, about 5 minutes. Transfer to bowl.

Drain any fat from pan. Add onion and garlic; cook over medium heat, stirring often, for 3 minutes.

Add tomatoes, beef stock, zucchini, basil and oregano; simmer, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, about 25 minutes. Return meatballs and any accumulated juices to pan; simmer, turning meatballs occasionally, until no longer pink inside and sauce is thickened, about 20 minutes.

Note: I skipped the sauce step, and added the pan-fried meatballs straight into the soup.