Winter is here and that means it’s SOUP SEASON! My friend Julia makes soup every Sunday during the winter and they eat it all week and I wanted to follow suit so I decided to start off with this Pasta e Fagioli from Carla Lalli Music.
Of course, I found this recipe on the Bon Appetite youtube and bookmarked it to try and the recipe in full is something that Caleb and I would eat without modification so it was as simple as following along.
I did cut corners and I know Carla would not be proud but instead of using dried white beans, I just used canned. Sorry Carla, I’m not committed and prepared enough to soak beans overnight… I was also worried about finding a ham hock but it actually was easy to get at the local grocery chain so that made things easy.
After that I just followed along with the video and recipe. I pulsed the carrot, leek, and garlic and then cooked them down in a dutch oven. I added my ham hock and cooked it down then added the beans, tomato, and kale. I had a parmesan rind, bay leaves, and let it simmer all together. I was supposed to discard the rinds after a few hours but I hit it too late and they were soft and mixed in with the rest of the soup i had a hard time finding it. Critical mistake.
I did fish out the ham hock and it wasn’t terribly difficult to pull the meat off the bone after such a long slow cooking time.
I decided to use little pasta rings which I love for soup and cooked them al dente like instructed and then added them to the soup. Then we were finished!
This was a really great soup experience and it made the kitchen smell amazing. I loved making it and it was well worth eating throughout the week. My one preference was that I should’ve shredded the kale smaller because I didn’t like eating the large chunks and ended up eating around them. I’m not a huge kale fan overall but I wouldn’t omit them totally since they were a nice addition. So maybe a little less or just cut down better.
My big mistake, as mentioned before, was that I didn’t pull out the parm rind and it ended up in Caleb’s bowl and he didn’t not have a great time with it. He’s very sensitive to food textures and accidentally finding that in his mouth ruined his first bowl experience and I felt really bad about it since the rest of the soup was so good.
This is on the list to make again for sure, especially since I have another ham hock in my freezer just hanging out. Soup season! Let’s gooooooo!