Off beat: Peanut butter soup

Happy end of Daylight Savings Time, and happy All Saints Day, ragazzi!  Annalena, being more of a fan of darkness than light, prefers this time of year. She also prefers this holiday to Halloween.  Last night, all she could do was hope to  get HOMMMMME as Carol Burnett once put it.

At this time of year, thoughts turn to things like soup.  And as  Annalena constantly needs stimulation (careful, ragazzi, let's keep this g rated), she looks to unusual recipes.  This one certainly seemed unusual to her.  She found it in the Penzey's spice catalogue, and had to try it.

Before she continues, she will add - and let you do what you will with it - this is a recipe from a lesbian couple from the midwest who have been together for a LONG time, and who are nurses.
Annalena does not editorialize here, other than to say Penzey's had embraced the same sex movement way more thoroughly than just about any company, and she could not be more pleased.

Now, to the soup:

It is hard to tell, in fact probably impossible to tell, from that picture, that this is a peanut butter soup.  Had Annalena followed up with the garnish of toasted peanuts they suggest, it may have been easier.  But this is what there is.  It is a blissfully easy thing to do.  Do keep  the ingredients of this soup in mind , ragazzi:  it has all of the benefits, and all of the drawbacks, of peanut butter:  you will get low cost protein (a cup of the soup provides 12 grams of protein), but you will also be getting substantial calories (300 to a cup, of which 210 come from fat:  mostly UNsaturated fat, but fat nonetheless).  Proceed accordingly. 

We start with our basic soup vegetable trilogy:  who remembers those?  GOOD!  Carrots, celery and onion. Annalena used two big carrots, two stalks of celery, and an onion.  In a soup like this, you want small vegetables, so out came the food processor and the pulser: 

After this, out comes the BIG soup pot, because this recipe is going to make a lot of soup:  three quarts.  You melt two tablespoons of butter in that pan, and add the vegetables.  Now, we "sweat" them with a little bit of salt.  Your goal is to get the carrots soft.   You may be tempted to use oil instead, to get rid of cholesterol. Don't.  It's not that much butter, and this is going to have more dairy in it.  Butter, in Annalena's opinion, is the right fat when there's dairy involved.

See the cooking process here?  You'll see, through the smoke, some loss of color in the carrots and the celery, and a translucence of the onions.  It will take 5-7 minutes, and medium low heat.  

Next, you need two quarts of liquid.  Annalena suggests chicken stock and water, in 50/50 proportion. Too much chicken stock makes this "chicken soup with peanuts," and water is not sufficient to carry the "backbone" of the soup, which is the job of the stock. So do that, or if you are lucky enough to have a good vegetable stock, use that.    Add the stock, bring this to a simmer, and let it sit for ten minutes.  What you are doing is adding the flavor of the veggies, and the butter, to the stock. 

After you've let this cook for the ten minutes, add a cup and a half of milk.  Annalena will only cook with whole milk, or 2%.  She finds the others do not work right in her cooking. 

The whisk is there, so that the veggie bits mix well with the soup.  At this point, ragazzi, you actually have an old colonial soup called - milk soup.  It was served to the ill who needed easily digestible protein. Sometimes it was poured over buttered toast, and to be honest, that sounds downright like a recipe that needs revival. 

So, okay, you've stirred in the milk.  Now, get a jar of extra crunch peanut butter.  Annalena has a weakness for JIF, and that's what she used.  If you are a skippy kinda cook, go for it, and if you happen to be someone who goes out to the market and gets her peanut butter fresh ground from someone in a flannel shirt and a beard , well, do not let Annalena get in your way.  (You COULD tie this in to the recipe source, but we won't do that, will we?).  

Peanut butter is very stiff, so add this in globs, combining it gently, at a very low heat.  Boiling soups with milk in them will spoil their flavor.

It's a bit like looking through San Francisco's fog, but Annalena thinks you can see the peanut butter on her spatula, dissolving into the hot milk.  

Use your whisk to feel around to make sure there aren't major lumps of peanut butter, before you add the next batch.  And so on, until you've added two cups of peanut butter - a one pound jar. 

If you jump up to the earlier picture, after we added the milk, you'll see the color and texture difference. 

This soup tastes better after sitting, so don't serve it immediately.  Also, know that, because we do not have a binder like flour in the soup, the solids will settle out, so you'll have to stir things when you get it back into a pot. 

A cheddar cheese biscuit, perhaps with some ham,  a little salad, and a nice meal.  You may even get your kids to ask for seconds.  Especially if you put some peanuts at the top.   

It was easy, wasn't it?  And a bowl of soup is sometimes just the thing.  You can figure out what kind of sandwich to make with it if you are so inclined. 

Make some soup today ragazzi, and remember, like we always say:  SHARE.  Three quarts is plenty.  Give some to someone who's not as ambitious as you are.