Cookstory: January 14, 2013. A Soup 'Torn Apart'

Monday was Susannah's eighth birthday. We celebrated with a dinner out Sunday at the restaurant of her choice: the Candlelite Chicago Restaurant. Both girls love Candlelite's pizza, they always order Shirley Temples, and most importantly, the Ms. Pac-Man machine on the premises gives ample opportunity to blow a few bucks in quarters.

The plan for the 14th, her actual birthday, was to have dinner at home and then head out to our favorite frozen dessert joint: Lickity Split Frozen Custard in Chicago. If she'd had her druthers, Zuzu would probably have preferred that I knock out some pasta and sauce and leave it at that. But I had already prepared for a particular menu, originally scheduled for the weekend, but since that got away from us, I moved it to tonight.


January 14, 2013

Evening

Parmesan Stracciatella with Kale.
Laura found this recipe in a magazine, one of those canned publications where our realtor inserts his name and picture on the inside page to pub himself up and keep his name in our thoughts. Despite the strong scent of prefabrication, the magazine always has a pretty decent section of recipes, and this quarter they included several winter soup recipes, all of which sounded good. I was particularly interested in this one because I'd tried a different stracciatella recipe before, with lackluster results. I knew I could do better, and the addition of kale (and cornstarch) to this recipe gave me high hopes.

Whole Foods usually has two different varieties of kale: a green and a red. I almost always choose the red because it's heartier with darker leaves, thus filled with more vitamins and Good Stuff™. But for this recipe, all the other ingredients were mild (even the Parmesan; there was a full cup of grated cheese in the soup, but its presence was still subtle). So I opted for the less overpowering green kale.

Stracciatella, in case you didn't know, is the Italian take on egg drop soup. You may have also heard it used as a flavor of gelato, but other than the name, the two dishes share nothing in common. The word stracciatella literally means "torn apart." In the case of the gelato, I guess the torn-apart item must be the chocolate shavings mixed in. In the case of the soup, I'm not sure how the word ties in, unless it's the idea that the ribbons of egg in the soup give the appearance of being torn apart.

I've made it before because the girls LOVE egg drop soup when we get it from our local Chinese joint. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to replicate the ... thickness ... the exact flavor of the restaurant version. I hoped this one might come closer with the addition of the cornstarch, and in the end it did. The presence of "green leaves" in their soup, however, put off Susannah and Piper and they had less than they might have had otherwise. (I put significantly less kale in their bowls, but they still balked.) Nevertheless, this was a far superior Stracciatella recipe to the last one, and it will definitely be repeated, though perhaps with one less egg.


Mozzarella, Tomato and Basil Salad.
When was the first time I had this? I can't recall. I think it was at Edwardo's Pizza, back in the 1990s, when Laura and I first started dating. It's so simple, so good; one of those dishes that proves the adage: the fewer ingredients, the better.

Slices of tomato. Raw Tomatoes on their ownis always a gamble in January. You can't find a good-tasting tomato in the winter. Hell, I'm hard-pressed to find a good one in summer, unless you find some farmer's market heirlooms. How did we get to this place with tomatoes in our world? Was it absolutely necessary to completely sacrifice all taste and goodness just so the fruit can travel hundreds of miles in trucks without being bruised? Is the President working on this crisis? Anyway. I buy vine tomatoes, and then usually let them sit a few more days on the counter before using them. I end up with a modicum of taste.

Fresh basil. One leaf per tomato, or if it's a particularly big leaf, tear it in half. It's important to not overdo the basil: it's going to help the tomato, but it can overpower the cheese. I chose basil instead of tarragon for the baked sole a few days ago (to the fish's detriment) because I knew I wanted to make this soon after. The leaf is positioned in the center of the tomato slice.

Fresh mozzarella. The shape and variety depends entirely on what the market is carrying that day, and this time it was the ovolines, which are a little smaller than ping-pong balls. I slice them in half and position one half  on top of each basil leaf.

Olive oil is drizzled over the construction. Kosher salt. Freshly ground pepper. Perfection.


Garlic Bread.
A couple of years ago, if I wanted garlic bread, I'd buy one of those pre-made loaves out of the supermarket freezer, the ones that are pre-sliced, already have the garlic butter on them and just need a hearty blast from your oven. Then I came across this recipe on ATK's site. It's almost as easy as buying the prefab stuff, so why not make it? Better for you too, I bet. Every time I make it, I wonder why I don't make it more often. Piper wonders the same thing: she is on my case to produce more a.s.a.p., and she's asking for it in her school lunch all the time now.

Happy birthday, Zuzu!