Biba's Northern Italian Cooking - Biba Caggiano [9]
MAKES ABOUT 2 QUARTS
3 carrots
3 celery stalks
2 medium zucchini
2 tomatoes
1 large onion
10 cups water
Salt to taste
Wash vegetables, peel onion and cut the vegetables into small pieces. Add vegetables to a medium pot with water and place on medium heat. When water begins to boil, reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered about 1 hour. Season with salt.
Line a wire strainer with paper towels and strain broth, a few ladles at a time, directly into a large bowl. If you are not planning to use broth right away, cool it to room temperature. It can then be refrigerated for a few days or it can be frozen. Use it as instructed in individual recipes.
PASTINA AND PEAS IN CLEAR BROTH
Pastina e Piselli in Brodo
In Italy a good soup always has, as a base, a good broth. A nice bowl of steaming, flavorful broth with pastina (small pasta) added to it becomes a delightful comforting meal. This is one of the types of soups my mother would prepare for my brother, sister and me, when we were children. And it is the same type of soup I used to prepare for my daughters.
MAKES 6 SERVINGS
6 cups Meat Broth, page 22, or Chicken Broth, page 23
4 ounces pastina, such as bow ties or quadrucci, or rice
1½ pounds fresh peas in their pods, shelled, or 1 cup frozen peas, thawed
⅓ cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Bring broth to a boil in a medium pot over high heat. Add pastina and fresh peas if using, and when broth comes back to boil, reduce heat to medium and cook, uncovered, until pastina and peas are tender, 3 to 5 minutes. (If using thawed peas instead of fresh, add them to soup during last minute of cooking.)
Ladle soup into individual soup bowls and serve hot with a generous sprinkle of freshly grated Parmigiano.
Variations
My father would enrich this type of light fragrant soup with a few beaten eggs stirred into simmering broth during its last few minutes of cooking. When eggs began to solidify and form little strands, he would turn the heat off, ladle the soup into his bowl and top generously with Parmigiano.
Tagliolini in Broth is a classic dish of Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Piedmont. Simply bring broth to a full boil and drop in 6 ounces of homemade or store-bought tagliolini. Reduce heat to medium and cook until pasta is tender. Serve with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
BEANS, CLAMS AND MALTAGLIATI SOUP
Zuppa di Fagioli, Vongole e Maltagliati
This wonderful fragrant soup, which pairs beans, shellfish and pasta, is typical of many parts of Southern Italy.
MAKES 6 SERVINGS
2 cups dried borlotti or cranberry beans, soaked overnight in cold water to cover generously
2 quarts (8 cups) cold water
2 to 2½ pounds clams, smallest you can get
⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil plus additional to drizzle over soup
½ cup finely minced yellow onion
⅓ cup finely minced carrot
¼ cup mixed, finely chopped fresh herbs (parsley, sage, rosemary, mint, marjoram)
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
2 cups canned Italian plum tomatoes with their juices, put through a food mill to remove seeds
5 ounces dried small tubular pasta, such as ditalini or small bow ties
Drain and rinse beans under cold running water. Put them in a large pot, add water and place on high heat. As soon as water comes to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, until beans are tender, 45 minutes to 1 hour.
In a food processor, puree about half of beans with a ladle of their cooking water until smooth, and return to pot. Season lightly with salt and pepper and set aside until ready to use.
Soak clams in cold, salted water 20 minutes to purge them, then wash and scrub them well under cold running water. Discard any clams that are broken or already open and won’t close when you touch them. Put clams in a large skillet with ½ cup water. Cover skillet