Alone in the kitchen with farro soup

On a recent trip to the library, I came away with no less than 4 cookbooks, 3 food-related books and the requisite couple of novels.



The one that's relevant to this post, however, is the one with the best title: Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant (Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone) [WorldCat].



I've been doing a lot of said cooking for one and dining alone, so I fairly cackled with glee at the idea of reading a book about it.

While there were just as many fantastic recipes in the book as there were hilarious and poignant stories, the one that I just had to try was Mark Bittman's Luccan Farro Soup. Being a fangirl of Bittman myself, I really couldn't resist. Even though the recipe wasn't reprinted in the book, I was able to find it with a quick google search.



I did take some shortcuts from the original recipe: I substituted canned diced tomatoes, canned white beans and Trader Joe's 10-minute farro. If you want to make things hard on yourself and use raw beans and raw farro, check out Bittman's original recipe for cooking times and directions.

You can use either farro or barley (or even spelt), but farro is whole grain whereas the most popular form of barley--pearled--is not. It's had its outer husk and bran layers removed and undergone a polishing process. This means it takes less time to cook but also has fewer nutrients than its whole grain counterpart, where only the inedible hull is removed. In the picture below, the barley on the left is pearled, whereas the barley on the right is the whole-grain form. Since TJ's sells 10 minute versions of both, it made sense to go with the farro.



I also have this problem with buying celery. Since I almost exclusively shop at Trader Joe's, I'm stuck with buying the only celery they sell: celery hearts. It's two bunches of celery, trimmed, and with most of the outer stalks removed. You get maybe a layer or so of the bright green, crunchy stalks, and then you're left with mostly the pale green/white, limp, flaccid stalks in the middle. Can you tell I hate the hearts? I actually enjoy eating celery raw, but only the outer, bright green crunchy stalks.

I'm trying to cut back on waste, so I decided to dice up all the celery (yes even those pale, limp, flaccid stalks) and freeze it. I made a note on the ziploc baggie that I froze it in how much the equivalent was of a single stalk (in volume and weight), so I could just take what I needed in the future. Then I went a little crazy, and diced up an entire bag of carrots and a few onions and stuck those in the freezer too. Ready-to-go mirepoix!

Having the majority of the ingredients ready-made really sped up the prep for this soup, and prep is the part I hate the most about cooking. I've only recently allowed myself to feel this way, and have been buying more ready-made ingredients, like diced/crushed garlic. Garlic is just one of those ingredients that, for me, feels like it takes 30 minutes to prep. Then after I finish it, I realize I still have vegetables to chop and other ingredients to measure. It's really bad for morale. So I take shortcuts in some areas, but they're the areas that really make a difference for me and encourage me to cook more!

Case in point: this soup. I suspect I would have liked this recipe far less if I actually had to do all the prep at once. And taste-wise, it truly surpassed my expectations, even though I used shortcuts for about half the ingredients in the recipe and used a rather suspect vegetable broth base. James even declared it as "one of my best soups yet." Even more telling though, was that he managed to put away another serving just as big as his first. My amatuer photography doesn't really do it justice. But try the recipe for yourself and you'll see just how simple and delicious it is.

Luccan Farro Soup

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 large onion, sliced

2 celery stalks, trimmed and chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

Salt and pepper

1 tablespoon minced garlic

1 cup 10-minute farro*

1 can white beans (~15 oz), drained and rinsed

1 can diced tomatoes, no salt added (~14.5 oz)

6 cups stock, more as necessary*

juice from 1 lemon

chopped fresh parsley, optional (for garnish)

chopped fresh basil, optional (for garnish)

grated Parmesan

Instructions

Put oil in a large, deep saucepan over medium heat; a minute later add onion, celery, carrots, a large pinch of salt and some pepper. Cook until vegetables are glossy and onion is softened, 5 to 10 minutes.

Add garlic, farro, tomatoes, stock; stir. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer. Simmer for 10-20 minutes.* Stir in beans during last 5 minutes of cooking. Do not overcook beans.

Remove from heat. Garnish before serving with lemon juice, parsley, basil and parmesan. Serve immediately.*

Notes
*The TJ's 10-minute farro package contains 1.5 cups. I used the whole package, but it did end up being a bit farro-heavy. It wasn't bad, so if you don't think you'll use the farro for anything else, go ahead and dump it all in!
*I used Smart N Final's store brand of "vegetarian soup base", and while it was a bit salty for my tastes, I just used less per cup of water than they suggested. I'm happy to report it tasted great. But do use a broth that you like the taste of--that's what you're going to be mostly tasting in this soup!
*I simmered for 10 minutes, but the farro was still a bit underdone in my opinion. I'd recommend 15-20 minutes. 

*If you have leftovers or aren't serving it immediately, separate the solids from the liquid and store separately. Otherwise, the barley will absorb all the liquid and you'll be left with barley stew instead of soup. If you forget, you can always just add more stock to the leftovers before you warm it up. 

Adapted from Mark Bittman's NYT Luccan farro soup recipe