The Soup Series: Italian Wedding Soup

Ingredients
half of one small onion, chopped
4 carrots, washed and chopped

2 stalks celery, washed and chopped

1 clove garlic, sliced paper thin
8 cups chicken broth

1 cup bone broth if you have it
1 small bundle of escarole, washed and chopped OR 1/2 of one small bag of baby spinach chopped OR 1/2 of 1 10 oz bag frozen spinach 
1/3 box of small pasta - I usually use acini di pepe or ditalini or pastina
kosher salt

meatballs:
1 lb meatball mix
1 egg

A dash of half & half
1/4-1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1.5 tbs dried parsley
1 tsp onion powder -eyeball it but at least 

1 tsp garlic powder 
1 tsp celery salt

salt and pepper

Directions

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a stock pan or dutch oven. Add the carrots and celery and cook about 5 minutes, then add the chopped onion and garlic and saute another three minutes. Add the stock and bring to a boil.

While the stock is working, make your meatballs. You want to mix everything together by hand, adding bread crumbs by feel. You want them to stick together but not be too wet or too dry. Start with a quarter cup and add more if you need to. If you add too many bread crumbs, correct with half and half. 

Complete and set aside, and when the stock is at a boil, drop them in one by one close to the pot. Let those go on medium heat while you clean up any mess you made from making them. Resist the urge to stir.

Hit it with a few pinches of kosher salt and make sure it's at a boil. Add your small pasta.

Let it boil to package directions for firm pasta. Throw in your escarole or spinach towards the end of that. 

This freezes well so don't be afraid to do that.

If you just came for the recipe, there you are. If you are someone who likes reading beyond that, here you are: 

If you've read this blog for more than five minutes, you know I cook a lot yet I rarely post recipes. Why? Because I don't measure a lot of the time, and I'm always adding or subtracting or substituting, and I always want to tell people what they could do differently which gets really long. Bottom line, I'm loosey goosey. I wasn't always that way - it only comes from loving to cook, doing it often, and learning the rhythm of food. Now I like to have recipes to start with, but I tweak everything a little to make it more fun. However, people often ask for the recipe of something I made. And people want measurements, goddamnit. I'm approximating so I can share some recipes on Tuesdays because Tuesdays suck so I will feed you recipes to make you feel better.

But first a haiku for Haikuesday:

A haiku for soup?

Slurp me up, lovin' spoonful.

Good to the last drop, mofo.

I know you don't often hear this, but this soup is a situation where you want your balls to be small. Your meatballs that is. Hey ohhhhhh.

You can use any small pasta for this soup. I chose ditalini. Why? Because in the song Brass in Pocket I always thought the line I've been driving, Detroit leaning was I've been driving, ditalini. That's why.

I went crazy on the spinach, so I strained some out and got myself a nice little spinach side dish. Popeye, call me.

Enjoy.