TRUFFLES!

Well, it is indeed that time of year, when the minds of folks who cook focus on the following thought; "OH SHIT HOW AM I GOING TO GET IT ALL DONE?"
You know who you are, and you know what I'm talking about. If there are those of you out there who have everything planned out, down to the last bread crumb, I hate you . So does everyone else. Trust me, they do. The rest of us are somewhere in between a state of shock as to not having planned the things we said we'd plan, and in a state of total panic. And it all comes back to 'HOW THE HELL AM I GONNA GET IT ALL DONE?"
Well, this recipe MAY help. It's a godsend for those of us who like to make things for people. It is also a perfect thing to have on hand in case you just can't get to dessert and need "something." It is absurdly easy to do: let's say ten minutes of work here. It makes a lot of goodies: let's say 100. And frankly, when I made them, I thought "The hell with the Xmas cookies, I'm just going to do this."
Well, that's not going to happen, but the reaction to these big boys has been so uniformly positive. People have stopped talking - people who haven't stopped talking since they were born. People who don't like chocolate are eating them. World peace has been achieved.

OK, the last one isn't true. But just maybe, if instead people gave each other chocolate truffles.

I know, I know, I know. Don't say it. Instead, buy some chocolate and condensed milk and make these. Seriously, do. You will be so glad you did.

Here's what you need: two pounds of extremely good quality bittersweet chocolate. I recently stumbled onto little disks of Callebaut chocolate, which saves the problem of chopping the chocolate, reducing the time of preparation to about 7 minutes if you have them. You also need two cans of condensed milk. If you happen to have access to condensed goat's milk, by all means use it, and you'll be making a Latino version. Finally, you need a stick of unsalted butter, and if you want a flavoring ingredient, a tablespoon of that.

Here's how you do it. Put the chocolate, the condensed milk, and the butter, into a pot. Bring it to a simmer, stirring, and let it all melt together . Take it off the heat.

Get a baking sheet with parchment paper on it, and pour it out. Smooth it with a spatula.

You're done. Almost. But the hard stuff IS done. I SWEAR, it is. Now you let this sit at room temperature for at least 8 hours, to firm up.

After that, get another sheet of parchment, and turn over the baking sheet, so that the chocolate block falls on it. Start cutting, or spooning it, into hefty teaspoon size pieces. Have a bowl with cocoa powder, and another tray handy. Cover your hands with cocoa. Roll the bits of chocolate to balls - don't worry about geometric perfection - and dip them in cocoa. Then put them aside on the clean tray. Keep on keepin' on, until the chocolate is done.

NOW you truly are done. Taste one. See what I mean? These will keep in a dry tin, separated by sheets of paper, for an eternity, but they won't last that long. Even if you only eat one a night, they'll be gone in 3 months, and you'll have to make them again.

SUE - stop asking your mom to make the sweets. Come on , girlfriend, YOU can make this one. Stop making fun of my nasty looking leeks and make some truffles. The holidays are here remember...

"And Eye Hayulpped"

Now, most of you are going to figure that out and know PRECISELY to what the title refers. You get brownie points and an extra brownie from Annalena, as soon as she learns how to make them well. For now, you'll have to wait or settle for a cookie. For the rest of you: I believe the product is still available, something wretched called "Shake N Bake." During the 60s, and on through Buddha only knows when, there was a huge ad campaign for this stuff: it came in a box, a mix of powders, the identities of which took up so much space on the label one would think it was the Declaration of Independence. You would put chicken, or fish, or pork in a bag with it, shake it to coat, then put it on a baking sheet and bake. It was supposed to ensure that the meat or fish came out "moist and tender" and delicious.
One of the campaigns, the one that most people remember the most, had a southern family - mother and daughters (of course: this was the 60s , remember, and only women cooked....) bemoaning how their fried chicken just wasn't very good, so they tried shake and bake. The little girls got to put the stuff in the bag. That night, when dad came home and said "great fried chicken honey" the girls could smile and say "It ain't fried, it's shake and bake. And EYE HAYUPLED."
Oh dear. I will say that the product was a hit. I do recall a time, in my church going days (yes, Annalena was a church going woman once, but without a mantilla or anything like that), when I was on a not so religious retreat with a group of 70 men or so. (Yes, yes, yes. I know that, for some of you I just described saturday night. ). I was sharing kitchen duties with a friend who was making baked chicken for dinner. His grocery list included "40 boxes of shake and bake."
Shaking my head in sadness as I was trying to make fresh bread for 70, I shook it even harder when it turned out that his chicken was the hit of the dinner.
That was the early 80s, and whilst yours truly would like to think that our tastes have evolved, I remain skeptical.

Be this as it may, the idea of coating chicken and baking it to make a crispy crust, rather than deep frying it, is more than a bit appealing. Indeed, as my amazing trainer does her job, deep frying may be the next thing to go . I don't deep fry often, but I do do it. Never chicken though. My fried chicken is worse than my brownies.

So, a week and a half ago, I read a recipe in a spices catalogue for something very reminiscient of shake and bake. And I decided to give it a try. It's a hit. And it's open to tons of variation. I will give it to you here, modified from the source (of course), to make it a bit easier.

You of course need, chicken. You should start with 4 pounds. As a general rule, for chicken on the bone, you need a pound per person. A pound of bone in chicken does not produce all that much meat. If you have big eaters, get more. And when you are going to cook chicken parts, Annalena strongly suggests that you use either all legs, or all breasts. They cook differently, and if you try to mix them, one or the other will not be good. Trust me.

If at all possible, put the chicken into some kind of dairy, overnight. Buttermilk is ideal, you could also use yogurt, or milk. If you are going to use plain milk, "clabber" it by adding a tablespoon of vinegar to it before you put in the chicken. You should plan on a cup of dairy for every four pounds. If you can't marinate overnight, then put the chicken parts in the dairy while you prepare the rest of the stuff.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. W hile this is happening, get a big bag and combine flour and corn meal. How much? I used two cups of flour and a cup of corn meal for eight pounds of legs. Keep the 2:1 proportion. And don't change those components. The flour will stick to the chicken and carry the cornmeal, which gives the crunch. Then add your seasonings. Salt is a must: for every cup of flour mix, a teaspoon, please (so for the above, a tablespoon). Then whatever seasonings you like: spicy seasonings if you like spicy, etc. Measure spicy stuff by teaspoons. I did use a big tablespoon of Italian seasonings, and some cayenne pepper, and that was it. I bet curry would be good. The thing you MUST use is a quarter cup of grated parmesan cheese, for every four pounds of chicken. Just mix it in with the powder.

OK, after, or while you're doing that, take a half stick of butter for every four pounds of chicken, put it on a baking sheet, and let it melt in the preheated oven. It won't take long, and don't go away. When it's melted, carefully take the tray out, and then get to work on your chicken. Your hands are going to get messy. Pull each piece out of the dairy and put it in the bag... and shake to coat. (don't do more than one piece at a time and as you need to clean your hands, go ahead). Put each piece on the butter laden tray. When you're done, turn the pieces to cover them in butter. Don't worry if it's not too coated. Then, make sure all of the chicken is skin side up, and put the tray in the oven. If you're baking breasts, after 25 minutes, turn them so the skin is down. If legs, don't worry about it. Bake for a total of about 50 minutes for chicken breasts, an hour for the legs.

If you peak while this is cooking, you will wonder if you're doing it right. After fifteen minutes, it looks like a mess. After thirty minutes , however, it takes on some color and the smell of chicken begins to mingle in the air. And after 50, you have chicken that is browned unevenly, so that you have some crispy bits, some browned bits, some burned bits, all the things you like. And I guarantee you that the people you serve will like it too.

So make up a big mess of it. Maybe even get someone to hayulp you.

Vegan vegetable bean soup - sort of

Ok, this is VERY close to being a vegan soup, and it's the easiest thing in the world to making it pristinely vegan ("pristinely vegan?" What in the world has gotten into Annalena?). Hang in there with me. It's better with the non vegan trick, but if you don't want to use it, Annalena has a trick up her sleeve (rather than up her dress, but we won't go there).
When it gets late in the year - like now - regardless of how warm a particular day MAY be, there have been many cold ones before that, and as a result, it may be difficult to find the vegetables you found two weeks ago. And when the day is warm, you tend to forget that you had that cold weather, and getting a grip on the fact that they ain't there no mo' is frustrating. So, for when that happens, Annalena has an old reliable terrific bean soup recipe that she will share with you, because she loves you all so much.

She really does. Truly. It's her alter egos that sometimes have problems with people. But Annalena? Truly one of the world's saints if she says so herself.

Ok, so here's how you do it. It does take some planning, because Annalena does not use canned beans. Like Amy Winehouse said about rehab "no, no no." So the day before you want to make your soup, measure out 2 cups of dried beans, and put them in a pot and cover them with a ridiculously large amount of water. Cover them if your kitchen is subject to falling debris, kamikaze roaches, or other assaults on your work. Don't cook them. what you're cooking to do is rehydrate them, and it takes a while. I prefer using the white beans like cannelinis, or flageolets, for this soup, so that the color is nice, but use what you like. Black beans are good, but I am not a fan of kidney beans, (quote Amy Winehouse again).

Now, the day you plan to make the soup, drain those beans. Then, put them back in the pot, and cover them with yet another ridiculously large amount of water (don't use the old water: it's got nasties in it from the beans, and it will stink up your kitchen and force you to find out who your real friends are when you eat this. If you are going completely vegan , add a chipotle chili, or a sprig of rosemary to this. Then bring the pot to a low boil, and cook the beans until they are al dente. This could take anywhere from 20 minutes, to an hour. If you are using frozen, or fresh shell beans that have not been dried, it will take precious little time. If you're using the beans your mom gave you when you moved into your apartment fifteen years ago, it's going to take a while.

While they are cooking, slice up a cup of carrots. If the carrots are small, coins are good. If the carrots look like you could beat someone to death with them, use half moons. And also cut up a cup of some member of the onion family: leeks, onions, scallions, something like that. Two cups of potatoes, please, and this time, use the pink or red boiling ones. Peel them if you like, don't if you don't. If you want to, you can add a cup or so of a chopped green vegetable, preferably something somewhat sturdy, like green beans.

When your shell or dried beans are done, drain them and put them to the side. Dry out that pot, coat the bottom with olive oil, and add all those sliced vegetables. Turn them in the oil, add a few teaspoons of salt and then cover the whole mess with about 2 quarts of water and let it cook away for about fifteen minutes. Then, add 2/3 of the beans, and - now here's where we spoil the vegan quality - a three inch piece of the rind from parmesan cheese.

This is the dirty little secret of Italian vegetable soup making. That rind is going to add so much more flavor, you are going to thank Annalena forever for this little trick.

Anyway, let the whole pot of soup cook for another fifteen minutes or so. Take the remaining beans, put them in a blender, and add a generous cup of that soup liquid to the blender. Puree the beans, and then dump everything back into the soup pot. Stir it, and then taste the seasonings. I bet you'll need more salt. Black pepper is also good. When you serve it, you may also want to float some olive oil on it. You could, if you like, toss some pesto or some tomato sauce in here as well. It will change the overall ambience of the soup, but that's ok. It's your soup, not mine, remember?

This is one of those soups that I URGE you to try. It's inexpensive, it's tasty, it's healthy, and you can adapt it, all year long. Ain't nothing wrong with a low fat, high fiber bean soup.

"Sort of Sicilian" Pasta with cauliflower, and....

This is another one of those recipes that has an origin, and has a classic formula. And I have made it that way, and it's terrific. Much to my surprise, people loved it and ask for it. And, like many great recipes, it stands up to playing around with, as you'll find out.
One of the things I learned, in the last ten years, is that Southern Italians eat a lot of cauliflower "cavolo fiori," or "cabbage flowers." Cabbage and cauliflower fall into the same category of vegetables, but ask yourself if you think of cauliflower as an Italian vegetable? I certainly didn't.
My theory about why that is, is that we Americans simply do not much like it. And my theory about that, is that it's because it is not cooked properly, sort of like most of the cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts, and so forth. Too little water, and cooking for too long, produces that incredibly strong, sulfur smell that turns people off - with good reason. And let's not mention, the, ahem, flatulence problem.
I will confess that for years I was not too fond of it myself. My turnaround seems to have come when the new strains of cauliflower, with their golden color, became available. They taste the same - they really do. Somehow, however, the golden colored cauliflower seems to be richer, and more buttery. Don't they say we eat with our eyes? Well, more people have told me that the cauliflower purees I make with the golden ones are "SO SO RICH. How much butter and cream did you use?" Uh, none. Just water, and salt. No one believes me. Fine. It's all good.

Anyway, moving on. One of the classic recipes in Sicilian cooking is pasta with cauliflower, bread crumbs, currants, and onions. The vegetables are cooked to the point where they carmelize, the bread crumbs are toasted, the currants are tossed in, and at the end, you dress it with olive oil.

This preparation is, without question, one of the most popular dishes I make. If you wanted an explanation why, I couldn't tell you. So I won't make up stories.

Now, one of the other vegetables that you will always find associated with Sicily, is fennel "finocchio." You've seen it, the thing that looks like celery with asparagus fronds, and tastes a bit like licorice? It's quite a dandy l ooking vegetable, which is perhaps why "finocchio" was Italian slang for "faggot." My teacher tells me that today, using it is very old fashioned, and folks just say "gay" instead. Somehow, that makes me feel like the language is getting impoverished. A bit sad.

Ok, I should stick to cooking. Anyway, one night, I had a bunch of fennel that was threatening to go bad, a head of cauliflower, and of course, bread crumbs and currants. It was cold, it was rainy, it felt like WINTER, and away we went.

This is another dish that calls for a shaped pasta. I think penne is traditional, but shells will work, so will orecchiete, anything that is sort of the size of a cauliflower floret. Here we go.

Cut up a small head of cauliflower, or half of a large head. Take the florets, and save the stems to make a soup or something like that, or puree. Also take a medium sized bulb of fennel. Cut away the fronds and the tough stems, and dice that.

Mix those together, and put them into a large frying pan, to which you have added a nice amount of olive oil: more than enough to cover the pan, but not enough to float the vegetables. Let the vegetables sit. Try not to stir them for a bit. Let them darken, and carmelize. Both will get sweeter from this process. When they darken, then you can turn them and cook them a little more. Add some salt as you go along.

After they're cooked, put them in a bowl, to the side, and add a bit more olive oil - say three tablespoons - and add half a cup or so of flavored bread crumbs. Saute' these just until they brown. Get them out of the pan, in a separate bowl. Now, get your currants ready - no more than about a quarter cup - and put them aside as well. You can mix them with either of the two things you've prepared.

Boil up a pound of pasta in the usual, rapidly boiling salted water, and as it's going along, scoop out about 3/4 of a cup of the cooking water. Keep it at the ready, after you drain the pasta. Get it back in the pot, and add everything except the bread crumbs (if you've mixed the currants with the crumbs, no problem. Save them back too). Add the water, if you need it, to create a sort of little sauce, or if the veggies still seem to hard. Let this cook for 2-3 minutes and then off the heat, stir in the crumbs. When you portion it out, pour some peppery olive oil over it.

NO CHEESE in this dish. The crumbs are supposed to approximate the cheese. And you've got a winter dinner in a plate.


This is fairly substantial for a vegetarian dish. Serve less than you think you'll need. And save the leftovers. They are terrific cold.

Ho fame. I think I need this, NOW

"Sort of Pugliese" Pasta with broccoli rabb and ricotta

Now, you may be wondering "what in the name of the gods happened to that woman? Has she gone off to join the circus as she's been threatening for all these years?"
Ah, ragazzi, nothing that dramatic. Just the usual busynesses , if you know what I mean - and a decision at work to block this site from access, so now Annalena has to push blogging into her incredibly busy at home schedule. But, fear not, Annalena will be sitting down and writing y'all a letter from time to time, as she has for so long (some would say, WAY TOO long, but they can get over themselves).
So, what's with the title? Well, we're going to be exploring a bit of variations on classic pasta dishes in the next few blogs, sort of a case of "use what you got on hand" to make something that is "sort of " like a classic, but not really.

There are certain dishes that are emblematic of different regions of Italy, especially in the Pasta area. For example, pasta stuffed with pumpkin is a classic of Mantua. It is made elsewhere, but this is where it's from. So, too, is a dish we will look at in days to come a classic of Sicily: pasta with cauliflower, bread crumbs and currants.

One of the characteristics of cooking from Apulia is the use of broccoli rabb. There are some Pugliese who will tell you that they eat this wonderful vegetable every night. And it is wonderful, but let Annalena clarify some things for you.

Broccoli rabb, is NOT broccoli. No ragazzi, in Italian, it is called "cima," and that is turnip greens.
Betcha you didn't know that, did ya? Nope, the classic "broccoli rabb" is the top of a root v egetable, and those turnips are not fit to eat. But the greens? Strong, forceful and bitter. Sort of like many men. (Well, the bitter part is true). They can be tamed, however, by dropping them into boiling water. Sort of like most men. And in this dish, you do just that, and you create a very economical, easy, nourishing dish.

The classic pasta used with it is orecchiete, the "little ears," also a classic of Apulia. But if you don't have them, use any pasta shape you have as long as it is on the short and stubby side of things. (Again, sort of like most men). In my version, I used penne.

When you buy broccoli rabb, you will notice very thick, tough stems. ABANDON THEM. Make a cut across the bunch of vegetable where the stem begins to get tender. Toss the tough stuff, and then cut the rest of it into bite size pieces. You can be rough with it (like with most men), and push it to the side (you know what's coming).

At its simplest form, what you do next is add your pasta to rapidly boiling, salted water, and let it cook for about five minutes. Then you add the greens, and cook them together. The pasta becomes al dente at the same time the greens cook. You drain them, together, add a lashing of good quality olive oil, some black and/or hot pepper, and perhaps some grated romano cheese, and dinner is served.

If there happens to be some left over sausage in the house, slice it up (if it's cooked), and add it as well, and cut back the olive oil. Cook it first if it ain't. You have a classic.

I did not have any left over sausage when I made my pasta. I did, however, have half a container of a very good quality rich tasting ricotta. Ricotta makes a wonderful sauce for pasta, if you thin it with some of the pasta water. And that is just what I did. I took that ricotta - about two cups of it, and added grated black pepper, and the cup of pasta water, stirring it to just dissolve the cheese. When the pasta was done, I dumped it out, just like in the classic version, and after it was drained, I stirred the cheese in, and put some more black pepper on it. DINNER.

Is it Pugliese? Oh, heavens no. Is it good? You betcha. Is it easy? Yup.

So call it what you want, but don't call it Pugliese, and make it for yourself. You'll have a quick easy dinner without a lot to clean up, it will be a complete meal, and you will be thanking me endlessly.

Using what you got or, Annalena goes "Mexican"

Well, sort of. This is a tale of having to use up stuff in the fridge, getting a bit creative, and winding up with something that is greater than the sum of its parts. It really is. I promise.

This past weekend was a stock making weekend. Since Annalena has taken up the challenge from Liliputia (you know who you are...), and makes her own stock every couple of weeks, there is left over chicken from that stock making. This weekend, I used a different vendor than I usually do, and I will be back. The birds from the purveyor (who actually specializes in pork), were so much meatier, and so much more flavorful than the ones I had been buying, that there is no question in Annalena's mind. So, there I was, at the end of the soup making process "confronted" with tons of boiled chicken. We also had left over roasted chicken from our fest with Adam earlier that week (the "fest" that sent Annalena the message that she's drinking too much. OI, did that hurt). Another bowl of chicken salad? Oh GOD NO. Not that my chicken salad is not good. It's just that, well... after awhile, when you're saying "homemade chicken salad AGAIN????" Not that we were, of course (or at least I wasn't. If Guy was saying it under his breath, well, who knows?). In any event, I had run out of celery, which is essential in chicken salad to my point of view, so I had an excuse.



So, what to do? Well, if you are of a creative (some would say, sick) mind as is Annalena, you turn to what you have around, including the things that make you wonder "why did I buy that?" In fact, I had a couple of jars of the Italian vegetable relish, giardeniera, which I think I had ambitions of turning into something on crostini. THAT never happened, because there was too little of it, and it was too wet. Mixed with shredded chicken, however? Hmmmm. There was also a jar of my tomato sauce in the fridge, beginning to give me ugly looks (this weekend is a sauce making weekend), and there were the two bags of corn tortillas I had bought "to make something," and God only knows what that was. (maybe it left my head when the bottle of wine from the Adam fest took place). And, finally, a small bag of medium hot chili peppers, which were also beginning to give me dirty looks.



This all sounded like pseudo Mexican to me, and away we went. The chicken was already cooked, and all I did was shred it off of the bird carcass (actually quite a bit of fun, and easy, if the stock has been cooking for a million hours, as this was), and add the left over shredded roast chicken. I put the two jars of the vegetable relish in with this and put it to the side.



I took about 2 cups of tomato sauce, and heated it, with 4 chopped, medium spicy green chilis, for about five minutes. That's all. Now we were just about ready. I got a big baking dish - 9x13 - and covered the bottom of it with a bit of the tomato sauce, as if I were making a classic lasagna, if there is such a thing. I covered this with one bag of the corn tortillas, overlapping them so that there was a solid layer . Before I put them down, I heated each tortilla in a small, ungreased frying pan, just to take the stiffness off of them.



On top of that layer of tortillas went the chicken/vegetable mixture, and that was covered with the rest of the tortillas, and then the tomato sauce.



FINALLY, there were the bags of left over cheese from the ghosts of dinner party pasts. I am almost ashamed to admit this. But I'll tell you: I took the left over Spanish cheeses and grated up those. I know, I know, I know. Shame on me. But it worked. It was good. I covered the tomato sauce with those cheeses, and then put the whole pan - which weighed about a ton - into the oven and baked for 30 minutes or so, until the cheese was melting and bubbly and looking full of pseudo Mexican goodness.



This is feeding a whole lot of people. I think we gave out portions to five people, and took some for ourselves. So that's seven. And I would say these are hearty portions.



Now, what if you're not a soup maker, and you want to do something like this? Well, Annalena has some answers: MAKE SOME SOUP FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE. It is not hard, and why would you buy a cooked chicken to make a casserole if you can make soup and get some for free?



WEll????



Ah, but here's another idea for you. One of the things that always stuns me about Mexican cooking is that there is so much turkey in it. Yes, there are turkey mole recipes all over the place, and lots of other ones. And isn't thanksgiving coming up? And won't you have a lot of leftover turkey?



Well? Get into the kitchen. Think about it. After the excesses of the standard (or unstandard) thanksgiving meal, doesn't something spicy and "faintly ethnic" (sort of like Annalena herself), sound good?



Get to it...

Stealing AGAIN: celery root and boston lettuce soup

I can't help it. I really can't. When I have something at a restaurant that I really like, which feels like something I can make, I have to try it. That way I know, if it never shows up at the restaurant again (a REAL possibility), I can have it anyway.
Normally, I do this with main dishes and desserts. Not soup. Why not? Well, I almost never order soup in a restaurant. And why not? Ok, I will 'fess up, it's a weird thing. In my mind, I consider soup a rip off. I always think that I'm going to get a bowl of something that cost about a quarter to make, but for which I'm going to be charged 10 bucks or so.

It IS true that in restaurants soup IS up there on the profit meter. Normally, the pay off on a bowl of soup exceeds anything except maybe coffee or a drink. This is so even though soup is usually the l east expensive item on the menu. It's a kind of weird "catch 22." In most places, soup is almost an after thought, or so it would seem. It's the same soup in every restaurant (for one stretch that I remember, every single restaurant I went to, for two weeks, had butternut squash soup of one kind or another. On another occasion, it was potato leek). When someone works on a budget and goes out to eat, however, the soup is appealing because it's cheap and more than that, it's filling. (in fact, many guides to home dinner planning advise NOT serving soup, because it is so filling).

So what does one do? I am not sure. I guess if the soup sounds like something you would like to eat, have it. If it does not, spend 2 extra dollars and have the salad that does sound good. Maybe if there is a "revolt" against bad soup, the restaurants will pay attention.

A week ago, we were at one of our favorite restaurants (Savoy), and the soup DID appeal. It was "celery root boston lettuce." Now, at this time of year, celery root soup is pretty ubiquitous. We're going into fall, the green things are waning, and celery root has an inherent creaminess, like potatoes, that make it taste richer than it is. I'm fond of celery root soup, but not overly so. The addition of lettuce had me intrigued. Most people don't think of lettuce as a vegetable that they can cook , and that's a shame. It makes a really good cooked vegetable, although it does cook down more than just about anything else. Young lettuces sauteed with peas in butter are wonderful. Moving to soup, years ago, I found and made a recipe for "bacon lettuce and tomato soup." That, too, was good. I heard that it was the winner of a contest that Campbell's sponsored. They bought the recipe for 5000.00 ( a lot at the time), but it never went to market because - DUH - they couldn't figure out a way to make the bacon stay crisp and the lettuce not get brown and disgusting.

this soup was NOT brown or disgusting. It was good. As the chef, Ryan and I are friends, he came over to chat and I asked about it "Oh, nothing much. You know how to do it. Just use milk instead of cream."

OH. Okay. I didn't know there was either in it. Shows you what kind of palette I have. But what I interpreted him as saying was that it was a basis vegetable soup, pureed, with a broth base.

Now, I got all that from "Oh nothing much. You know how to do it." Well, he was right.

Here's how I constructed mine. First, I knew I wanted some flavor from the broth, but I didn't want to use chicken stock. I wanted to share the soup with my friends Mark and Jeremy, who both do not eat chicken. In my experience, any pre-prepared vegetable stock is disgusting, so I use water . Not this time. I felt like there needed to be a deeper base than the one that water supplies, so I had to make my own vegetable stock. I made it by chopping up an onion, two stalks of celery, two carrots, and a large beefsteak tomato that was past its prime. The tomato was unusual, but it was a good choice. I covered a soup pot with olive oil and added the vegetables. I let them cook, without stirring until they browned. Then I stirred to brown them some more, and when that was done, I added two quarts of water, and a few sprigs of thyme.

While this was going on, I cleaned and roughly chopped three large celery roots. I also took all the leaves off of one head of Boston lettuce, and the older, greener leaves of a second one. I let the stock cook away for ten minutes, tasting every few. When the flavor was pronouced - good strong notes of thyme and tomato, I was done, and I drained it.

The careful reader will wonder why, as I usually puree my soup base into my final soup. I did it this time, because I did not want to overload the celery flavor. It CAN get overwhelming. I poured the strained stock into a pot and added the celery root, and a BIG teaspoon of salt. Probably closer to two. Then I let this cook away, uncovered, for just over half an hour. Twice, the water level dropped and I added more. I tested until the celery root was tender enough to fall apart when I jabbed it with a knife. When I had that, I added my WASHED lettuce leaves, and let them droop into the hot soup. (if your lettuce is clean, you don't need to do this, BUT CHECK). And if your celery root is cut smaller than mine was, you'll need less time.

When the stuff had cooled to luke warm, I pureed it in the blender - a good choice, because the blender got it smoother. It emerged an incredible emerald green color. Just gorgeous . Just like the restaurant. I tasted it, and now I saw why Ryan had said to use milk. The flavor was very "brassy" and strong. The milk - about a cup of it, stirred in, calmed everything down. The color was less green, but still beautiful

So, how does it taste? Well, I bet if you didn't know there was lettuce in it, you wouldn't know there was lettuce in it. It is definitely a celery root soup, with a taste of fresh, clean herbs. It's a good thing to have on hand, as we go into the winter months. We will be eating a lot of roots and squashes and tubers, and lettuces are almost always available in some way . If you want to lighten up your heavyweight cold weather soups, and give them the taste of spring, here's your ticket. Try it.

And if you go to Savoy, thank Ryan