No Vegetable Soup: The Meat Edition.
I didn’t mean for soup to be a rampant theme in my chef life this week—sometimes there is a blizzard people are preparing for, making your day set back a couple hours and disabling you from roasting a chicken. So, instead you buy grass-fed ground beef, throw in some sprinkles of shoyu, a scoop (using your best judgment) of dijon, some stock-soaked oats, thyme, salt and pepper… and you make meatballs. When life gives you a blizzard, you make meatballs.
I quickly prepped a pot of Stracciatella (egg-drop soup, via Italians): I heated olive oil, added four cloves of garlic, two leeks, three carrots, three ribs of celery, two fresh bay leaves, parmesan rind, and then seven cups of filtered water. As it simmered I cooked the meatballs medium-rare on the stove top. An hour went by. So much for not having time to roast a chicken.
I strained the parmesan laden broth through my mesh strainer, thinking back on when I bought it at the Chelsea Market after a tour of The Food Network, wondering how I’d ever lived without it. Once the broth was free and clear of vegetables, I put it back in the pot and made a hurricane cloud with a spoon as I stream-lined eggs I’d quickly beaten into the eye of the storm. Salt. Pepper. The result was magnificent; the mixture of the meatball and the subtle flavors of the broth was heartwarming.
This was a menu for adults, not for kids. They loved it. No vegetables included.
No-Vegetable Soup.
Kids mean business. Not all kids; there are some who have been, by birth, properly trained to eat vegetables. I am a Private Healthy Gourmet Chef and Nanny to a family who did not teach their children this way, and it’s now my job to steer them away from the grasp of obesity and processed food. People like to be reliant on genetics for their health; both parents have a seemingly fast metabolism and a healthy set of parents (so bathe, they do, in Sun Chips, Pillsbury Instant product, and CS and HFCS laden ‘snacks’). But, we are eating completely differently than our older bloodline. Thankfully, I have an immaculately healthy snack and lunch full repertoire, I started making No-Vegetable soup… which is made entirely of vegetables.
“What color are you making? Green? Red?” he asked me when I starting prepping his deceitful lunch.
I looked in the fridge. We had carrots. ”Orange”, I responded. ”Is that okay?”
I grabbed a single large carrot (organic, of course… it’s safe to assume all of my produce is organic), a local, organic yellow onion, and some apple slices I couldn’t get the little one to eat a few days ago. I’d make Apple-Carrot Soup. I am working on my recipe writing skills, but until then I will just talk about the method I used to create this soup in a half hour.
To make a kid-size serving, I used 1/4 of the onion, the whole carrot, and about half a small gala apple. I put the onions in a small sauce pot with a teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt until they were translucent; added the carrots and then the apple after the carrots were soft. For the stock I used 1/4 cup of organic chicken stock—not homemade—so to that I added about a cup of water. I threw in a sprig of thyme for an aromatic and a heartier flavor, and then a 1/4 of a small yukon gold potato to add a starchy element, making the soup thick and creamy. I also added some spices; cinnamon and ginger, and some turmeric (from the root of a plant in the ginger family) to make the orange a bit brighter (as it adds a nice amount or yellow-orange without being an overpowering flavor). After the soup simmered for about twenty minutes and the potatoes were soft, I strained the soup, threw it in the blender with a small, tip of the knife amount of cold butter, and added stock until it was a texture I thought was lovely. Salt and white pepper to taste, and, voila! No vegetables soup.
This kid sized recipe yielded about a cup. To my portion, I added diced apples, some cilantro, and a tiny bit of lime zest (to liven it up and add to the sweet and savory aspect of the soup). To his, I added some ‘cream’ as the little one calls it, as a nice helping of protein (it’s nearly 2.5 grams of protein per ounce, so roughly two tablespoons scooped in is more than enough).
Lunch accomplished.
These recipe can be made in heaps of servings, and is can certainly be made three days in advance. Freeze after to eat later. It’s your world, we just need healthy kids in it.
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