Feh. Again with the cold and snow. What is this, February in Colorado?
This is soup weather, for sure, and we’ve been through quite a few of my favorite recipes lately, among them a posole from The Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook and a Spanish vegetable soup from Martha Rose Shulman, who runs the “Recipes for Health” shop over at The New York Times. We’ve had her vegetable soup for dinner the past two nights and it’s definitely a keeper. A guy could beef it up some with the addition of dead-animal parts, maybe some moderately spicy sausage links sliced into half-inch rounds and sauteéd in olive oil, but it’s fine as is.
Here’s another posole from the Santa Fe folks. I haven’t tried this one before, but it’s early yet and all I need is the chicken thighs. Looks like a visit to the Whole Paycheck is in order. Oboy, my favorite, an icy slide to the corner of Collision and Contusion so I can transfer a century note from my pocket to John Mackey’s.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to decide whether I should go for a mountain bike ride — I still have a few fingers yet to dislocate — or choose the better part of valor and ride the trainer. Maybe I’ll split the difference and go for a run.
Mad Blog Media 
I thought I felt the EARTH shake.
Beef barley soup is my winter favorite. Chock full ‘o beef, barley, carrots, potatoes and such. Simmer all day til it’s almost a stew. Then make like a pig in mud! An aside note, my human geography professor ask if anybody knew anything about the language difference between Northern and Southern Belgium. Of course, I launched into the discussion, mainly explaining how bike racing is the only real reason they differ and that Eddy Merckx is the real King of Belgium, the official national instrument is the cow bell, that children must learn the names and birth dates of all national champs in both road and ‘cross in order to get out of the 1st grade, and that there used to actually be lions in Flanders. The all looked at me as though I was wearing dog shit for a hat. I’ll probably be asked to sit in the hall this afternoon…
Made my first from scratch posole the other day. And here’s a 95% from scratch, with the canned hominy being the only real shortcut.
http://trainingtable.blogspot.com/2010/01/another-non-recipe.html
Got an Irish stew on there, if anyone’s getting a head’s start on St Paddy’s Day.
Patrick, did you post the veggie soup before? Been meaning to try whatever it was you put out there about this time last year, so I guess I’ll start with today’s offering and maybe one day get around to the other.
Adding the toasted bread to the soup reminded me of the Moorish stew from NPR’s “How Low Can You Go?” challenge, where they asked chefs to come up with $10 meals that serve a family of four. They do the same garlic-smeared-toast thing, but they mash it into a paste which then thickens the soup. It’s a great way to make your soup thicker without going the cream route. Perfect for winter soups.
The original is here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102854605
And our slightly spicier version is here:
http://trainingtable.blogspot.com/2009/05/spice-spice-baby.html
great idea for the posole, I prefer pork but I am a traditionalist form S. Colorado but toasting the cumin and coriander sounds muy bueno, I like the tamales from lorettas in Chimayo, the green chile and chicken with posole make the long Montana winters bearable. Weekend will be in high 30’2 time to get knickers, tights and glove out and see the winter kill on roads and bike paths. now have something to come home to.
Pretty much every Italian soup my better half makes has bread in there as part of it. When you’re lucky enough to be able to buy really good, fresh stuff at 4-6 places within 2-300 meters of your front door and have little self-control when it comes to a whiff of fresh bread like me, you end up with lots leftover. Italian rarely throw anything away so it goes into the soup, either the toasted-garlic-oil route or simply tossed in there to thicken things up. I rarely will eat any zuppa that a spoon will not stand up in – so it’s fine by me. Just this month we’ve had pasta-fagioli, acquacotta, ribollita, chickpea-rosemary just to name a few. Winter truly is the best time for soups like these!
Jeeze, Larry. Between the food and the cycling, I gotta find time to sign up for one of your tours before I am utterly over the hill. Last time we were in Italy (early 90’s) I was recovering from patellar tendinitis in both knees. Walking was painful and cycling was out of the question. Watching the locals ride in the mountains and in places like Firenze, where we saw an evening criterium and lots of morning rides, was frustrating. Riding in the mountains of Northern New Mexico is a close second, but Italy is Italy and I hear the ancestors calling…
I truly am the luckiest guy on earth – great wife whose only dumb decision was to say YES when I asked her to marry me, and a scheme that lets me spend any time the wife does not have to be at the college (like now) somewhere other than Sioux City, IA. Sharing “la dolce vita in bicicletta” with like-minded cyclists is rarely a “job” most of the time I say to myself stuff like “I can’t believe I get paid to do this!” This Viterbo gig is the longest time we’ve spent in one place in Italy so far and it’s pretty darn nice. Eventually, once we get enough of you guys to join us often enough we can retire and live here more or less permanently — at least that’s our dream anyway.
Do you do tandems? We bought a new Co-Motion Primera last summer and I just finished overhauling the gearing (12-36 rear cassette, XT Shadow derailleur) to reflect our upsi-daisy and downsie-daisy rides. Of course, its been snowing nonstop ever since.
Hmmm…can see discussing ancient philosophy and the philosophy of sport while riding bike through the ancient world with some Barolo in the water bottle…ok, make sure the good Professor Reid is there.
Sorry, no tandems. Glenn Erickson used to do a tandem tour of Tuscany using a hotel we currently use for our self-guided Taste of Tuscany so I suspect the rest of his tour matches the quality of this hotel. Professor Reid is ALWAYS on every guided tour, who else would keep me in line?