I won’t go into the multitude of things that have been keeping me away from this blog, but I did want to stop in and let you know that despite the lack of posts here and my nearly four day twitter blackout (what on earth did we do before twitter? thank goodness my account came back last night), I haven’t actually dropped off the face of the planet. However, life has gotten even crazier than it was a week ago, and it likely won’t slow down any time soon.

On top of all that, we have a dear friend coming to visit for a few days and we’re looking forward to eating and drinking our way around town, but with my usual great timing, I seem to be coming down with a cold. I made this soup a few nights ago, and Mike packed some for my lunch today. I used fresh cranberry beans instead of cooked dried beans, and since we were fresh out of potatoes I added a little extra pasta to the mix. I’m hoping the one-two punch of the leeks and garlic confit will chase any bugs away.

You can get my recipe at food52.

When things get quiet around here, it’s a pretty safe bet that things have been crazy at my day job. I’ve been doing what I do for a long time, and I learned early on how to juggle, but these last few weeks I feel like the minute I turn my attention to one task, three more things pop up that require my immediate attention. Couple that with the usual change-of-seasons sluggishness I tend to experience, and you have one tired dame who has struggled to find suppertime inspiration when I get home in the evening.

I had a gorgeous head of otherworldly-looking romanesco cauliflower that I turned into soup last night, starting with a base of chopped leeks softened in butter, then adding romanesco florets and some homemade stock, but when the florets had softened and I pureed the soup, I was less than thrilled with the texture. It was just too thin, and my fiddling with it to achieve something close to the result I wanted meant the soup cooked too long, going from a lovely pale green to an unappetizing greyish hue. I couldn’t even bring myself to take a photo. The flavors, however, were there, the delicate soup getting a nice burst of freshness from a celery leaf and preserved lemon gremolata stirred in at the end, so I think I’ll give this soup another go-round soon.

I’m in commuter hell this week – I’ve had a succession of early or late buses in the morning, consistently late trains, and unplanned cab rides home from the train station which, in addition to being annoyingly expensive and sometimes terrifying, have put me in a big ole cranky mood in the evening, and craving exactly what we’ve been trying to get away from – comfort food.

I sat on the train in my work clothes drenched to the bone after a rain-soaked spin through the Boston Public Market on Tuesday, with tomatoes and fennel and green beans and squash globes and all sorts of other goodies in my totes, and decided a big veg-laden soup was in order. After I got home, I peeled off my damp clothes and changed into something warm and dry, and then I got to chopping: slender leeks, carrots, fresh celery, beautifully ripe plum tomatoes, sweet red peppers, globe zucchini, fresh thyme branches and green beans all went into my pot at various stages, sprinkled with salt and bathed in dribbles of olive oil and a judicious amount of red wine as they cooked down. I added a little bit of orzo to the mix, and when it was tender, added a good amount of freshly grated parm to the soup off the heat. I blitzed up a fresh parsley and fennel frond pistou in the mini chopper to spoon on top, and served up our soup with a few thick slices of Olga’s Pane Francese and some gooey, runny cheese from Farmstead.

As antidotes go, this was just about perfect.

The doldrums drag on. Work has been busy, the weather in New England has been damp and grey, and I’ve been struggling with a nasty bug that kept me home and in bed on Thursday under a pile of blankets and slumbering kitties. I made it to work on Friday, hacking and coughing through the day, and when I came home all I could think about was soup. Small problem: we were fresh out of stock, and I absolutely didn’t have it in me to make more. I could have made that old standby Potage Parmentier, but we were also out of potatoes, so I took a page from my dear Grandma’s playbook and made a version of a little thing we like to call “Garbage Soup.” It’s a clean-out-the-fridge-freezer-and-cupboards kind of soup, endlessly adaptable, and better than it has any right to be.

This batch was built on the last three links of Hill Farm sweet Italian sausage I had in the fridge, crumbled and cooked until deeply browned, then lots of onion, carrot, celery, garlic, a can of San Marzanos with their juice, a parmesan rind, and plenty of thyme and parsley. I added some cooked red beans to the mix, as well as corn, peas, and green beans from the freezer, and several big handfuls of torn kale. With a hunk of bread from Olga’s and some sea salted butter, this soup made for a humble but totally satisfying meal.

Juggling the duties of my new position and old position is still a major challenge, but I’m trying hard not to get overwhelmed. I really do find comfort in the kitchen, and while my time and energy have been limited, it is important to me that I still make time to cook for us at least a few nights a week. I’ve given up on getting creative for the time being, instead choosing to turn out some old favorites, uncomplicated meals I can put together almost without thinking about them – like Monday’s onion soup. Onion soup was the very first thing I taught myself to cook, more years ago than I care to admit, and I still get a little thrill every time I dip my spoon through a layer of molten cheese into the rich broth beneath.

Tuesday night’s dinner was even easier, thanks to the full day I spent cooking on Sunday. I had cooked up another pot of my new favorite lamb ragu, setting half of it aside to reheat last night, and stashing the rest in the freezer for another time. When I got home from work, I put the ragu in a pan with a glug of red wine, got a pot of water boiling, and caught up with Mike over a cocktail while the sauce simmered. I really love this sauce, and while I’ll never give up the pleasures of a long-simmered beef and pork Bolognese, I think this simple lamb ragu is going to be my go-to meat sauce for pasta. It’s all about options, and balance, right?

Lamb Ragu, Take Two

½ cup chopped celery
½ cup chopped carrot
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
1-2 T olive oil
Kosher salt
1 T double-concentrated tomato paste
1 lb. ground lamb
1-2 fresh bay leaves (or one small dried)
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
½ cup dry red wine
1 28 oz. can whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes, with their juice
1 teaspoon Sherry vinegar

Place the celery, carrot, onion, and garlic in the bowl of a food processor and pulse them until they’re very finely chopped. Heat the oil in a wide, heavy-bottomed pan until shimmering, then add the ground up veggies and a big pinch of salt. Stir the veggies through to coat them with oil, and cook for a few minutes until they’re softened. Clear a spot in the bottom of the pan and add the tomato paste, allowing it to toast for a few minutes before stirring it through.

Add the ground lamb, breaking it up with your spoon and stirring until the softened veggies are mixed through. Cook until the lamb has lost its raw, red color, then add the bay leaves, thyme, marjoram, and wine. Bring to just to a boil, then add the tomatoes and their juice, breaking the tomatoes up with your spoon. Add another big pinch of salt, then bring to a boil once again. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook the sauce, partially covered, until the sauce is thick and reduced, about an hour or so.

Stir in the Sherry vinegar right at the end, taste and adjust the salt if needed, then serve right away or cool and store in the fridge or freezer.

Note: This makes about 4-5 cups, or enough to sauce 2 lbs. of hot cooked pasta. To reheat, add a couple of cups of the sauce to a hot pan with a half cup or so of wine or water, then cook over medium heat until it cooks down and gets a little caramelized. If you’re going to toss it with pasta, let the sauce get really dry, and then add some of the starchy water to the pan along with the al dente pasta; leave it a little more moist if you’re going to serve it another way (like, for example, over soft polenta).

My week so far has been hectic, both at home and at the office, and our last couple of dinners have reflected that. The weekend’s snowfall has led to bus snafus and train delays, making my long days even longer, and by the time I have gotten home at night, I’ve found myself in a mad rush to both get dinner on the table at a decent hour, and to finish cranking out edible holiday treats.

As most of our fresh food is earmarked for holiday meals, I’ve relied heavily on pantry staples for these last two dinners, and since we’ve been dialing back on meat in anticipation of the rich dishes we’ll be indulging in over the extended holiday weekend, I turned to mushrooms to lend a hearty bite.

On Monday, my latest incarnation of lentil soup got extra heft with a topping of roasted criminis, and brightness from a crumble of tangy fresh goat cheese.

The goat cheese came into play again last night, to both brighten and add a bit of creaminess to bowls of spaghetti tossed with one of my favorite old standbys, a rich mushroom ragu.

While these two meals made for a couple of very brown plates, they made for two very satisfying dinners, and this time of year, that’s good enough for me.

As you may have gathered from the four pages worth of bean-centric dishes I’ve blogged about here, we like our beans, so I was very happy to learn that dry heirloom beans from Freedom Bean Farm in Maine would be returning to our Wintertime Farmers’ Market.

I’ve made some version of this white bean and roasted garlic soup for ages – probably since my teenage vegetarian years. I’ve done it with canned beans, with fresh beans in season, and with cooked dried beans, and I have to say the the last version is probably my favorite, as the bean cooking liquid adds so much flavor to the soup. In previous versions, I’d roast a head of garlic at the same time the soup cooked, but now that I’m making batches of garlic confit on a fairly regular basis, I’ve taken to adding some of that instead. You don’t have to use white beans, of course – but I like them here for aesthetic reasons.

Garlic Confit

1-2 large heads of garlic
extra virgin olive oil

Separate the cloves from the heads of garlic, peel them, and lay them in a single layer in an oven-proof baking dish. Add just enough olive oil to cover, then cook in a preheated 300 degree oven for an hour or so. Allow to cool, transfer the garlic and oil into a covered container or a glass jar, and store in the refrigerator for up to one week.

White Bean and Roasted Garlic Soup

1 cup dried white beans
Kosher salt
12 cloves garlic confit, plus 1 T of the infused olive oil
2 cups leek, white and pale green parts only, sliced into thin half-moons
1 cup diced carrot
¼ cup diced celery
1 tablespoon fresh oregano leaves
2-3 fresh bay leaves or 1 dried
½ cup dry white wine
1 cup water
1 parmesan rind
1 cup diced peeled potato
1 cup small dry pasta
2 cups fresh spinach leaves

Rinse and pick through the beans, place them into a pot and cover them with 4-5 cups of cold tap water. Place a lid on the pot and bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and cook until the beans are just tender. Season with salt and let the beans cook just a bit longer until they are seasoned. (You can do this ahead of time and store the beans in the refrigerator or freezer in their cooled cooking liquid.)

In a large, heavy bottomed pot, heat the garlic-infused oil over medium heat. Add the leeks, carrot, and celery, season with salt, and cook until soft. Add the oregano and bay, let cook briefly until fragrant, then add the wine, allowing it to bubble up for a minute or two. Add the parmesan rind, water, and potato, and let cook until the potato is tender when pierced with a fork. Mash the confit garlic cloves until they form a paste. Add the beans with their cooking liquid, the garlic confit, and the dry pasta, bring to a boil, then simmer until the pasta is al dente. Add the spinach right at the end, stirring it through until it is bright green and wilted. Remove the bay leaves and the parmesan rind and spoon the soup into bowls, topping with grated parmesan if desired.

This week has been a struggle. Just last week we celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday and expressed our gratitude for, among other things, how well our Kali has done with her treatment for anemia, but that same night when she stretched out on the table for scritches, we discovered something troubling – a lump. Mike pointed it out to the vet at Kali’s Monday appointment, a cell sample was taken for testing, and we waited. I’ve been distracted and out of sorts all week as a result, fretting about the unknown and fighting to stay healthy myself while seemingly everyone around me battles one bug or another.

I’ve also been fighting exhaustion – mental, pysical, and emotional. So much has happened during this whirlwind year, and while there are some potentially great things for us to look forward to in 2010, they are all still very much up in the air, and the weight of all the uncertainty we are facing has been difficult to bear. It has been hard to find inspiration, hard to find words to put down on a page, hard to just keep going day after day.

And while I planned and planned for our Thanksgiving meal, I never really got around to sketching out meals for this week. I brought home a mishmash of produce from last Saturday’s farmers’ market, but without any advance plans it has been difficult to get interesting meals to take shape this week. So there was pasta. And pizza. Soup and more soup. By last night soup was all that I wanted, a big bowl of cream-laced tomato, with tiny grilled cheese sandwiches alongside. Comfort in a bowl, a variant of one of my oldest “recipes“, something simple and warm to help chase my blues away.

The call from the vet came this morning, the results, “inconclusive.” We’ll keep waiting, and watching, forging ahead through the uncertainty until answers start to appear. I see a lot more soup in my future.

Yesterday was not one of my better days. My stomach was churning as much as my mind was, and my lack of appetite made it hard to think about what to make for dinner. By the time I was halfway home, I had decided on soup, but it wasn’t until I remembered the tomatoes on the counter that a plan took shape.

You see, I bought those tomatoes, green, at the last day of the Hope Street farmers’ market at Lippitt Park. My intent was to pickle them, or at the very least to fry them, but they sat on a plate on the counter, forgotten and turning from green to pink to ripe red. November tomatoes – a gift. I had to use them, and while they were surprisingly fragrant when I cut into them, I figured the best way to coax as much flavor out of them as possible would be to roast them.

I also had fennel from the weekend market – not a planned purchase, but when I saw those green fronds peeking out at the Simmons Farm table, I couldn’t resist. The fennel would get roasted, too, then the roasted vegetables and all of their rich juices would go into a pot of broth and shallot softened in butter. That done, I pureed it all until smooth, a little tickled at the beautiful orangey hue the soup took on as everything blended together. The soup didn’t really need the cream I added at the end, but it was Monday, and a little extra softness is always welcome on a Monday, don’t you think?

You can get the recipe at food52.

I’ve had Heidi’s post about Richard Olney’s Garlic Soup bookmarked since the day it published, and with Mike away for the evening, and me trying to build up my system in advance of the coming cold and flu season, I finally gave it a whirl last night. And let me tell you… wow.

This dish is incredibly simple, but what a showcase for super-fresh, really high quality ingredients: a head of garlic I picked up from Kimball’s at the Tuesday farmers’ market in Boston, just before boarding my train; Zephyr Farm eggs with their gorgeous orange yolks; torn pieces of crusty ciabatta; and (my one variance from Heidi’s version) stock Mike made just that morning, from leftover bits of our favorite pastured chicken.

I drizzled on some of our best olive oil, then tucked into a bowl of pure goodness while enjoying a quiet evening alone.

The soup, and the evening, were just as restorative as I had hoped they would be.