Sunday, July 13, 2008

Wedding Soup: Improv Style


I {HEART} Wedding Soup. Its one of my favorites. Its a perfect comfort food with some crusty bread. Sure its July-in Georgia-and should be around 95 degrees later today-but its raining right now and what would be better than some soup and crusty bread?

I decided to use this recipe from allrecipes.com, as a base for building my soup:

California Italian Wedding Soup
1/2 pound extra-lean ground beef
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons shredded fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoon chopped Italian flat leaf parsley (optional)
2 green onions, sliced (optional)
5 3/4 cups chicken broth
2 cups finely sliced escarole (spinach may be substituted)
1 lemon, zested
1/2 cup orzo (rice-shaped pasta), uncooked
grated Parmesan cheese for topping


Mix together the meat, egg, bread crumbs, cheese, basil, parsley, and green onions; shape into 3/4 inch balls.
Pour broth into a large saucepan over high heat. When boiling, drop in meatballs. Stir in escarole, lemon zest and orzo. Return to a boil; reduce heat to medium. Cook at a slow boil for 10 minutes or until orzo is tender, stirring frequently. Serve sprinkled with cheese.


Here's what I had to change:

Ground Beef-we don't buy it-only ground turkey in this house
Egg-didn't have any thanks to them falling out of the cart in the parking lot
Fresh basil-had to use dried instead
Green onions-Didn't have any
Escarole-used frozen spinach instead
Lemon-didn't have one so I used some lemon pepper instead
Orzo-none in the pantry used pasta shells instead
Bread crumbs-didn't have any of this either

So its pretty much a wonder why I even bothered to make this with all the ingredients I was missing...All in all though the soup turned out good anyway. I just mixed some grated Parmesan and dried basil and parsley in with the ground turkey then rolled it int0 balls. I made my chicken broth from the chicken bouillon I get in the Latin grocery section. I added some sliced baby carrots for some color.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This sounds really good! I never heard of it before, so I think I might try to make this on a rainy day...we seem to have a lot lately!

Anonymous said...

never had it either but looks yummy. definitely will have to try that out.

Anonymous said...

Ya know..I've never had this soup before. And I call myself Italian! This soup has always reminded me of Albondigas in a way. I love Albondigas!

Anonymous said...

I love wedding soup! Looks yummy!

Anonymous said...

I love Wedding Soup! I bring cans of the Campbells Select version to work with me and eat it fairly often.

Hmmm... Maybe I could make it myself sometime.

You don't have fresh basil? Why isn't it one of the herbs you're growing? I have basil, sage, and oregano at my house...

Cat Von C said...

I've got fresh basil started-I only started my herbs a few weeks ago. Started the veggies first. the basil is just little sprouts right now.

Anonymous said...

I love wedding soup. I'm not the greatest soup maker but that one sounds easy enough. Looks yummy but then your food always does :-)