(The Tucci Table, page 3)
Cremini Mushroom And Bean Soup
(The Tucci Cookbook, page 58)
Breadsticks
(The Tucci Cookbook, page 84)
Pasta Dough
(The Tucci Table, page 211)
Emily's Chicken Noodle Soup
(The Tucci Table, page 5)
A rare two inches of mid-March snow in Nashville provided the perfect setting for our next Tucci challenge ... attempting three different soups ... and breadsticks too!
We were determined to prevail after our pork tenderloin miscue, and we began by studying the soup recipes thoroughly before starting. We wanted to assure a high probability of success.
Initially, the notion of whipping up three soups seemed easy, but they turned out to be far more rigorous than first thought. From the outset ... one of the soups required soaking beans overnight, another required making dried bread in advance, and a third required us to thaw our huge, six-pound frozen tub of chicken stock before putting it into a recipe.
If we were really brave, we might even attempt to make our own egg noodles ...
We started with the Tuscan Tomato Soup because it was the most simple recipe of the triumvirate. We finely chopped the onion, garlic and optional shallot and sautéed them gently before adding two cans of Delallo San Marzano tomatoes. Tom (who has an aversion to tomatoes) became slightly nauseated by the sight of huge stewed tomato chunks plopping into the soup pan.
After adding a handful of torn fresh basil leaves, we brought it to a boil.
The massive frozen cube of chicken stock was thawed and some of it was added to the mix (we smartly portioned the rest into smaller eight-ounce containers and re-froze them for future use). The soup was brought to an initial boil and then reduced to a simmer. According to Tucci, this extended simmer was the key to removing its inherent 'tomato-y' (tinniness) taste and maximizing its sweetness. It simmered on low heat for more than a hour.
For two hours, at low temperature, we had been drying cubes of Italian bread in the oven, and they were perfectly crusty when we pulled them out and sautéed them in olive oil to make croutons.
When we lifted the lid on the soup after simmering it for an hour, we knew from the aroma that we had made something beautiful ... although Tom half-jokingly remarked that it looked like the vat of stew that Ralphie's mom opened in the movie A Christmas Story.
After garnishing it with our own freshly-made croutons and a final sprinkle of basil, we all sat down and enjoyed a mid-morning delicacy.
The croutons! Ah ... the croutons!
What an excellent start!
We immediately swung into the Cremini Mushroom and Bean Soup and began with the accompaniment - breadsticks. We made bread dough and set it aside, near the fireplace, to let it rise for an hour.
We had soaked white beans overnight and put them in a large pan with chicken broth, diced sage, and crushed garlic and placed it on the stove to cook for an hour. Michelle used an interesting technique that she had learned from Giada DeLaurentis, where she stacked sage leaves together and then rolled them up before dicing them.
Meanwhile, in a separate sauté pan, we gradually combined chopped celery, onions, rosemary, parsley, cremini mushrooms, plum tomatoes (hand-crushed by Michelle) and cubed potatoes into a cooked goulash. By keeping this mixture segregated from the bean broth, we were able to cook-down and intensify the flavors of the ingredients.
The dough had risen and was ready to be processed into our breadsticks. We cut the dough ball into into six pieces and ran it through our 'never-been-used' KitchenAid mixer pasta attachments; first the pasta sheet maker and then the fettuccini maker. The long strips were cut into twelve-inch lengths, lined-up on cookie sheets dusted with semolina flour, and placed in the oven.
There were some issues. The beans and potatoes needed extra cooking to properly soften them. After a few minutes, Michelle checked them and we were good to go. We poured the contents of the sauté pan into the soup pot and stirred gently. It had come together beautifully! We plated the soup with the breadsticks.
It was nothing short of incredible! The bean soup was exquisite; a perfect blend of flavors, punctuated by notes of sage and rosemary. Paired with the rest of the Palazzo Napa Valley Cuvée Blanc, 2012 (Sauvignon Blanc) that we had used in the recipe, we toasted another great step forward.
And the breadsticks? Dan asked if we bought them. We looked at each other and smiled. There could be no better compliment! They were literally gone within minutes.
Two down with one more to go.
We saved what we thought would be the best soup for last, Emily's Chicken Noodle Soup (created by and named after Stan Tucci's sister-in-law actress Emily Blunt).
Having studied the recipe in advance, one thing that stood out was the length of preparation ... nearly three hours. By the time we cleaned the kitchen after lunch, we essentially began cooking all over again.
The first step in this process was placing chicken thighs and legs (stuffed with thyme) on a baking sheet, brushing them with olive oil, and then roasting them for forty minutes.
While the chicken cooked, we diced garlic, carrots, celery, onion and the key ingredient ... ginger ... and sweated them together in a large ceramic pan.
Once the chicken was finished, we removed the crispy skin ... (well, okay, actually we nibbled on it) ... de-boned, and shredded the meat before placing it in the pan with the other ingredients.
Then we added chicken stock, chicken broth, wine (Toasted Head Chardonnay, 2015), and bullion cubes. We brought it all to a boil before putting it on covered simmer for two hours.
The entire house smelled like chicken and ginger. Mesmerizing!
Although the recipe called for commercial egg noodles, Tom thought that he would attempt to make 'egg' pasta noodles from scratch. Everything seemed to go smoothly, from forming the pasta ball to the flattening of the dough. (For the record, Dan had to make an emergency run to the grocery store because we were two eggs short.)
The infamous egg pasta dough-ball
But in his effort to make thicker and wider 'egg style' noodles, Tom's final product looked more like boot leather than pasta. There was a lesson to be learned here ... but we didn't have the time to think about it. He threw the leather noodles into the trash can and quickly put 'Plan B' into effect.
Using the same boiling pasta water, Tom dumped in the commercial egg noodles and nobody was the wiser ... except for Dan, who eventually realized that he had wasted a trip to the grocery.
The final result was above all expectations. It was the best chicken noodle soup that any of us had ever eaten.
The chicken was perfect ...
The pasta was perfect ...
It was perfect.
Stanley Tucci was absolutely right ... the ginger made all the difference! The entire pot of soup was consumed instantly.
We agreed that although all three soups were uniquely delicious, the chicken noodle soup was superlative, closely followed by the mushroom and bean. The croutons and breadsticks were also memorable standouts.
The entire day was a tremendous success!
Sweet redemption!!