| |
Leftover Ham Soup
Those miserable sub-zero Winter temperatures got you down? Seasonal Affective Disorder sneaking up? Give yourself a break: you need Comfort Food. Go to the supermarket and buy yourself one of those spiral-cut hams. We think Cook's is best.
Serve slices up for dinner with whatever else you like for two or three days in a row. Hack off a few slices for a luncheon sandwich. Go ahead: let the thought of that ham in the fridge get to you late at night; sneak in and pick at it.
It's sweet, it's delicious. But eventually, you'll come down to the bone, where the spiral cuts stop. What do you do now?
You make soup, of course. Get a sharp, short boning knife and start trimming the bone. Forget the really fatty stuff - we don't want that. Concentrate on excising the lean meat from the bone. Take the big chunks off, then work on them individually, trimming
off all the fat.
Once the bone's cleaned of meat, discard it. We're not trying to get the most efficient use of the bone here; there's already too much salt in this soup, and we're trying to keep the Heart Association from lynching us. Those people have no sense of humor about salt.*
Set the trimmed, lean meat aside. You should have about a pound of it. Assemble the following ingredients for the soup:
- About a Gallon of Water
- The Ham
- 1/2 Cup Barley
- 1/2 Cup Red Lentils
- 4 Carrots, peeled & sliced diagonally in 1/4" sections
- 4 stalks Celery, cleaned & sliced same as the carrots
- 3 cloves Garlic, minced
- 1 Onion, Minced
- 1 15-ounce can small white beans
- 1 15-ounce can Cannelloni (white kidney) beans
- 1 Tblsp. Vegetable Oil
- Dried Oregano, Thyme, Summer Savory, Dried Celery, Dried Parsley,
Salt and Pepper, for seasoning.
Put oil in soup pot, heat.
Add onion, sautee in oil until clear - don't brown.
Add garlic, reduce heat, sautee one minute.
Add water, ham, carrot & celery. Bring to boil
While boiling, season with oregano, thyme, savory, celery & parsley leaves.
Boil vegetables 10 minutes, then add barley
Boil 10 more minutes, then add lentils
Total boil time is 40 minutes. 15 minutes before completion, add
beans with juice.
10 minutes before completion, add small pinch of ground clove
and two shakes of ground nutmeg.
On completion, taste, correct seasoning if necessary, and cook 5 minutes
more if you added seasoning.
Serve, salt & pepper to taste.
* Robert Farrar Capon said, "To undersalt deliberately in the name of dietary
chic is to omit from the music of cookery the indispensable bass line, over
which all tastes and smells form their harmonies."
There's a man who knows
what he's talking about, and not just where culinary aesthetics are concerned. Major salt studies repeatedly show that, for a minimum of 92% of us, there is absolutely no benefit to reduced-salt diets - none - so don't quietly acquiesce when somebody suggests you adopt one simply because they have nothing better to offer. Go there only kicking and screaming.
Return to Stark's Page
|
