Green Soup

Bet you thought soup season was over

Soup is really seasonal, and since it’s both almost Memorial Day and also 50 degrees and rainy in New York, I made this soup that is both very springy and very cozy. I got a new Bean Club delivery this week, of which these tiny chickpeas were not a part, but it made me realize I have like 10 pounds of beans to go through. I also bought a cute new basket from IKEA to store all my bags of beans in! I also had very little in the way of vegetables left at home. So I went to the store after work in the rain, imagining a fresh springy sort of “Italian” soup—whatever that means—and ended up leaving the grocery store with only green items. Green soup it is! Leek, fennel, kale, cabbage, jar of marinated artichoke hearts, these cute tiny chickpeas, some salt, oregano, and thyme, and a hunk of parmesan rind. Simmer. I also made a little …salsa verde? pistou? with garlic, preserved lemon, a cloud of microplane parmesan, and chopped parsley. It’s currently simmering, but I think after a lil taste test I might toss in some celery salt. This soup is gluten-free, and vegetarian and can easily be dairy-free and vegan.

The soup is green and, though this may sound unappetizing, is basically a wet salad. It packs in a lot of roughage. For something like this, the cabbage and fennel get sweeter so I needed to balance that out with salt and acid, and that’s why I added the parmesan rind and the marinated artichoke hearts. Actually, that’s also how I build a salad. Ok, I guess this is definitely a wet salad. I’m not giving you exact measurements in the recipe because I want you to follow your heart! Trust your eyes and your nose and your mouth!

Ingredients

• 1 cup dried ceci piccoli or chickpeas (or other dried or canned beans)

• generous glug of olive oil

• 2-ish leeks, less if fat, more if thin

• fennel bulb (I used half a large one)

• green cabbage (about 1/3 of a small head)

• kale

• 8 oz jar of marinated artichoke hearts

• seasoning (I used dried thyme and dried oregano)

• stock of your choice (you know I love chicken better than bouillon)

• parmesan rind plus grated parmesan for topping

• fresh herbs (parsley)

• garlic

• lemon or preserved lemon

1. Make the dried beans. Tonight I put the beans, 6 cups of water plus a bay leaf and a tiny shallot in the instant pot and cooked them for 30 minutes on high without pre-soaking, then let them naturally release.

2. Chop all the vegetables. They should be tiny. Start with the alliums so you can get them sweating in a dutch oven over medium heat with a big glug of olive oil that coats the entire bottom of the pot. As you finish each vegetable, add them in, sprinkle with salt, and stir. This will give you 3-5 minutes between each addition. Leek, fennel, cabbage, kale, and finally, the artichokes. Pull them out of the jar to chop but keep the marinade liquid because you can use it to season the soup in a minute.

3. Add in seasoning, in this case, a tablespoon of oregano and a teaspoon and a half ish of thyme. Then add in the parmesan rind, the beans with their cooking liquid, and a few cups of additional stock of your choice until the vegetables are suspended. Let it come up to a boil then simmer for 15-20 minutes.

4. While the soup simmers, into a small bowl, add one grated or finely minced clove of garlic, finely chopped parsley, lemon zest or finely chopped preserved lemon, flaky salt, and grated parmesan. Mix, taste, and let sit. It should be extremely mouth-puckering.

5. Taste the soup for seasoning, keeping in mind you’re adding the parsley mixture you just made eventually. At this point, despite all the salt in the bean stock, the chicken stock, and salting the veg, it still needed some more salt and some acid, so I added a tablespoon or so of the jarred artichoke marinade and some celery salt. You could also add lemon, vinegar, fish sauce, nutritional yeast, etc.

6. To serve, ladle into a bowl, top with a lot of freshly grated parmesan, and some of the salted parsley mix.