This past Sunday was the 207th Annual Meeting at my church and every year I make soup for the luncheon before the big meeting. This year I made Italian Wedding, Loaded Baked Potato and Cream of Tomato & Basil.
To make Italian Wedding you start with chopped celery and onions. Cook them down in a little olive oil until soft. Add chicken stock and let it boil. While this is going on make your meatballs. I use turkey hamburger. I think the flavor is better and I tell myself its healthier. I mix the burger with bread crumbs and egg, add some dried herbs like basil, parsley etc and salt and pepper. Then roll the meatballs small. This is a very large pot the meatballs are the size between a penny and a nickel. And for soup for 50 people there are lots. My mom always helps me and rolls all the meatballs while I'm working on other things.
When the meatballs are done you add some frozen chopped spinach and adjust your seasoning. 15 minutes before serving you add your pasta. I use Acini Di Pepe, Prince pasta co., is the brand I use. When cooked it is a perfect little ball, very tiny like the stars in canned chicken soup when you where a kid.
When planning this lunch every year different member of the church will say "I hope there will be Italian Wedding this year", so I pretty much have to have it or I hear about it.
The next one is also a big hit. Loaded Baked Potato.....Yum! My sister peeled a bucket load of potatoes and I really appreciated it because I forgot to bring my peeler and the one at the church, let just say - not good. After she peeled, I cut them all into small bite size pieces and boiled them in some chicken broth with a couple of fine chopped onions until tender. Then I took 1/2 to 3/4 of the potatoes out of the pot with some broth and using the immersion blender I whipped them.
Then I put the glop back in with the rest of the bite size potatoes and blended it all together. I chopped 3 ham steaks really small and browned them nicely. I would have used bacon but I find in soups sometimes the bacon turns from crisp to mush, no thank you.
I threw the ham in with the potatoes and added some nice Asian chives I got from the Asian market. They are not like regular chive they look like blades of grass but have a mild onion flavor. I have a great Asian market close by and love picking up strange veggies and experimenting. These chives I have added to so many things in the past week and they add great flavor (very cheap too.) Next I added some milk and a huge block of cheddar cheese that I grated. (Remember soup for 50 adjust your measurements you don't need that much for a small pot of soup.) When I serve the soup I had a bowl of sour cream and a bowl of regular chives if people wanted to top off there Baked Potato Soup!
And last but not least Cream of Tomato & Basil. Cans of tomato where on sale 10 for 10$. So I got 10 cans of tomatoes. I added about 2 cups of fresh basil that I chopped in a food processor until a fine paste with some olive oil. I still felt like it needed more basil so I added a few basil cubes (here) from my freezer. Season to taste with salt and pepper and I used standard dried Italian seasonings oregano, rosemary, parsley, etc. I added 3/4 of a gallon of whole milk when it was almost done and let it simmer on low heat.
Check out this old gas stove I got to cook on.
Leftovers get packaged up and everyone takes some home...
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