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Baby, it's cold outside! ❄️🥶 No matter where you are in the US, it's cold right now. My sister will probably share her adventures of travel to and from Bozeman, Montana last week, where the temperatures were 34 degrees below zero at night and which due to the cold and snow involved flights to four different airports to get home. Here in LA, it felt that cold--so we said--still, our self-acknowledged wimpiness for cold weather has everyone all bundled up when the temperatures drop below 50℉, so despite our complaining about the "freezing" temperatures, they never got below 45 degrees.
When this kind of weather hits, combined with the early nightfall in the winter, comforting, warm soups come to mind. While I have been cooking soups for weeks already, this week seemed to call for something a little less filling and a little more soulful. Perhaps the calendar clinking over to 2024 has me thinking about the warmer weather ahead.
I was also looking back at some of the soups we have made in the past on this blog and came across a Tuscan-inspired soup that my sister made way back in 2009. Fresh porcini mushrooms are the prize of the autumn season in Tuscany. While fresh porcini mushrooms are nearly impossible to find in the US, good-quality dried porcini mushrooms are widely available. Soaking dried porcini mushrooms in boiling water is a great way to bring out their flavor and it also produces a wonderful soaking liquid that is gold when added to soups and risotto.
This soup recipe is all about umami, a seemingly magical taste discovered by the Japanese in the 1900s. It runs all through this entire recipe, with browned sausage, sautéed mushrooms, reconstituted porcini mushrooms with their broth, Parmigiano Reggiano rinds, grated cheese, and toasted bread. The components come together to make this recipe much more than a simple soup, but is something to remember.
I also like to make a big pot of cooked beans this time of year for use in lots of recipes, including soups, chilis, and salads. While canned beans are a great product and will last nearly forever in your pantry, if you soak and cook your own dried beans, you can customize them with lots of aromatics, including herbs and onions. Once cooked, cooled, and stored in your fridge, it's possible to use them and their broth in any number of ways for up to a couple of weeks. The key is to buy fresh, good-quality beans. Standard supermarket beans might have been on the shelf for years, so look for a source with a lot of stock turnover, whether at a brick-and-mortar store or online. My tips for cooking beans are found in Note 2 at the bottom of the recipe.
Another great trick to making winter soups--especially this one--is to add a Parmesan rind to the pot as the soup is cooking. My sister talked about this extensively in her last post, but simply put, never throw away the rind from a spent piece of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese; instead, freeze them and add one whenever you want to add some depth and umami to soup.
Finally, some nice, crusty toasted bread is a perfect complement, to soak up some of the broth. Since Covid started in 2020, I've been trying my hand at bread baking. I was initially terrified and had lots of failures, but I've finally gotten the hang of it. The bread pictured here is based on a King Arthur Baking recipe for Sicilian bread. I've made it per the recipe but substituted the flour with 50/50 AP and finely ground Semolina flours. This bread takes me right back to the Sicilian bread of my childhood and the bread we found on our recent trip to Sicily.
Enjoy this warming soup on a winter 2024 night be assured, warmer days are ahead 🌴🏖️😎.
Get the recipe on OurItalianTable.com!
Stay warm! ☀️
Joe
This is delicious! I’ve made it three times so far. I shared the recipe with 2 friends who also rave about it. I changed out the beans onetime, to navy beans, because that is what my pantry had. I plan to use dried beans the next time I make this. It’s just right for a cold, snowy or chilly drab day. Don’t forget the toast!