Chick-Pea Soup and a Cheese Soufflé

We decided to make a winter meal of Soup and a Cheese Soufflé. We tried a new soup for us: Pureed Chick-Pea Soup with Mushrooms from Bugialli’s Italy by Giuliano Bugialli. It is an older cookbook that we have used for years. The soup is quite thick and the Porcini Mushrooms give it loads of depth. Cathy added fresh mushrooms to make it even more earthy.

We made a Cheese Soufflé as a second course. I love the way it puffs up and has such a crisp brown top. This was a Parmesan Cheese flavored soufflé and turned out perfect. It is always anxiety creating when you bake the soufflé you know you exactly followed the recipe but none the less you aren’t sure until you bring it out of the oven that it will puff up. This one did! You can get the recipe from our blog of: Feb. 15. 2013. Click the date to get the recipe.

CREMA  DI   CECI AI  FUNGHI

Pureed Chick-Pea Soup with Mushrooms

Bugialli’s Italy

Giuliano Bugialli

Makes  8   servings

From Umbria we have a crema of chick peas. The term ciema is used for pureed soups and really does not imply the inclusion of heavy cream as an ingredient. A significant difference between French and Italian cooking is that Italians almost never add small amounts of cream to a dish in which it is not featured as one of the primary ingredients, as is true of French cooking. One could almost say that in Italian cooking olive oil takes the place that heavy cream has in French cuisine. Dried porcini mushrooms, soaked, provide the dominant flavor here and it is intensified by adding some of the mushroom soaking water to the soup. Dried porcini have a much more intense flavor than fresh ones, and they are an important ingredient in their own right. And fortunately they are plentiful, especially under the chestnut trees that grow in Tuscany and elsewhere.

2     cups dried chick peas, picked over

3     quarts cold water

1     large carrot, scraped and cut into large pieces

1  medium-size red onion, cleaned and quartered

1     large clove garlic, plus 1 small clove garlic, both peeled

1     bay leaf

¼    cup extra virgin olive oil

2     ounces pancetta or prosciutto, in one piece

Coarse-grained salt

1  ounce dried porcini mushrooms

15  sprigs fresh Italian parsley, leaves only

1  cup strained mushroom soaking water

1  tablespoon tomato paste-(optional), preferably imported Italian, dissolved in the strained mushroom water

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

TO   SERVE:

Fresh Italian parsley leaves

Extra virgin olive oil to drizzle all over

Soak the chick peas in a large bowl of cold water overnight. The next morning, drain and rinse the peas and place them in a medium-size stockpot. Add the cold water, carrot, onion, large garlic clove, and bay leaf, then 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and the pancetta or prosciutto. Set the pot over medium heat and boil the chick peas for at least 50 minutes or until soft. Add coarse salt to taste and cook for another 5 minutes. Discard the bay leaf and pancetta and pass the contents of the pot through a food mill fitted with the disk with the smallest holes into a clean medium-size stock-pot. Set over medium heat and reduce for 10 minutes.

Soak the mushrooms in a bowl of lukewarm water for half an hour. Finely chop the parsley and small garlic clove together on a cutting board. Clean the soaked mushrooms very well, removing all the sand attached to the stems, and coarsely chop them. Remove the sand from the soaking water by pouring it through paper towels or a coffee filter several times. Save 1 cup of this water for this recipe and freeze the remaining water to be used when you prepare a meat sauce and want to enhance its taste.

Place the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in a small nonreactive saucepan set over low heat. When the oil is warm, add the garlic mixture and very lightly saute for 2 minutes. Add the mush­rooms and saute for another 2 minutes. Add the cup of mushroom soaking water containing the dissolved tomato paste if desired, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 15 minutes. Pour the contents of the saucepan into the stockpot, mix very well, and let simmer over low heat for at least IS minutes, stirring every so often with a wooden spoon to prevent the crema from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Serve hot or at room temperature, sprinkling the parsley leaves and olive oil over each serv­ing. This soup may be prepared up to a day before and reheated at the last moment before serving.