Soups
Food is at the very heart of Latin culture. The savory aroma of a favourite dish can transport you back to a time and place half a world away. TLN’s lifestyle shows take you on a culinary tour while serving up the best food and recipes from Italy and Latin America. Buon Appetito! ¡Buen apetito!
In a large pot, heat extra virgin olive oil and sautí onions, garlic, celery and carrots until they are soft.
Add potatoes, savoy cabbage, black cabbage, tomato puree and beans. With the back of a fork, break up some of the beans.
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Drain the soaked beans and put them in a pot with the bay leaf and fresh cold water to cover by an inch or so. Bring to a boil, decrease heat to keep the liquid simmering steadily, and cook, partially covered, about 40 minutes, or until the beans are cooked through but not mushy.
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In a large soup pot, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat, add the pancetta or salt pork, and sauté for about 2 minutes. Add the onions, cover the pot, and cook slowly for about 15 minutes, stirring often, until limp. Add the broth and grated cheese, stir well, re-cover the pot, and simmer the soup for about 30 minutes.
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Heat the oil in a soup pot, add the pancetta and allow to cook until
the pancetta begins to brown; stir in pepper flakes, carrots, potatoes,
fennel, onion and parsley. Cook stirring frequently until the vegetables
begin to soften. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the kale,
tomatoes, lemon juice, broth,cayenne pepper and celery seed. Add enough
water if need be just to cover the ingredients.
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Every region of Italy has a fagioli (bean) soup, often quite filling,
with potatoes and pork and either pasta or rice. Interestingly, it was
in Trentino-Alto Adige, renowned for the heartiness of its soups, that I
had this unexpectedly light bean soup, cooked with fresh apples and
delicately spiced. It is vegetarian (also unusual), nourishing, and
quite scrumptious. The combination of apples and beans is marvelous, and
one of the pleasing features of this recipe is that simply by using
less water you can make a great bean-and-apple side dish, a perfect
accompaniment to roast pork, duck, or ham.
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You can turn this soup into a main course by adding pieces of cooked
chicken. Small shrimp are another delicious enhancement: cut about
1/2-pound of shelled, cleaned shrimp into 1-inch pieces and stir them
into the pot when the zucchini is tender. Remove it from the stove and
let the shrimp cook in the residual heat.
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This is a traditional Tuscan soup from the area of Arezzo, made with
bread grilled over an open fire and virgin olive oil unfiltered straight
from the press-the frantoio. Believe me, a pot of beans never tasted
this good. As bread is a principal ingredient, use one with fine flavor,
preferably an artisan-baked loaf with great crust and an airy crumb
with lots of holes. Old bread-pane vecchio-is best, because it is
already dry, but day-old or even fresh bread can be used.
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Use the whole escarole head for the soup, although the tender yellow
center part makes a great salad. Just remove any bruised or yellow parts
of the outside leaves and shred the rest. You can make this soup with
any of the greens (and reds) in the chicory-endive family, including the
various kinds of radicchio now in the markets, escarole, curly endive
(or frisée) or even Belgian endive.To make this soup in the traditional
way, whole dried peperoncino or diavolillo peppers are the type of chili
peppers that are used, seed and all. The process of toasting the whole
pepper along with garlic cloves in olive oil brings out the nuttiness
and spice in the pepper. You can remove the peppers before serving the
soup, or they can be easily spotted and removed when eating.
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This soup is a summertime staple in my house. I keep a big pitcher of it in my refrigerator so I’m always ready to pour a few cups on a hot day for friends and family. If you want to be original, try using ripe yellow and green tomatoes from your local farmers’ markets.
Serves 6-8
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This hearty vegetarian soup gets superb flavor and texture from the long cooking chickpeas and dried and fresh mushrooms. But the secret to the great taste is the paste (pestata) of aromatic vegetables and herbs, ground in the food processor. Before adding it to the soup however, you give the pestata even more flavor by browning it in a skillet-which makes it, in culinary Italian, a soffrito. As you will see in the coming pages, this pestata - soffrito step is used in many Maremma recipes, in sauces and stews as well as soups. In the country, such a soup is often served with grilled bread, making a whole meal. Adding rice or small pasta to the soup pot during the final 10 minutes of cooking is another way to enhance it. Or drop some good Italian sausages into soup for the last 20 minutes cooking. Slice them right into the soup or serve the sausages separately as a second course.
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