Carmela's Food Blog: Italian Wedding Soup

The finished pot of Italian Wedding Soup!

I couldn't help but wonder if Mob Wives Season 3, Episode 4, will bring any talk about wedding bells for Joe and Raquel. I am totally guessing here, but they certainly make a great couple and it made me think of a recipe my father taught me. I think this week Italian Wedding Soup would be a great thing to serve for Sunday dinner while we wait for Mob Wives to air at 10 pm. At least this Sunday I can make my soup and not throw my family out right after dinner so I can watch Mob Wives.

Italian Wedding Soup...

When my dad cooked, it was not at home. I watched and learned inside a restaurant kitchen. He had  big pots on every burner constantly at a simmer. So when he made something he always took a little of this and a little of that from each pot. The downfall is he never measured anything so neither did I. It wasn't until now, since I began putting recipes on paper, that I found myself in my kitchen with a pen in hand. My dad always had a pot with a whole chicken in it that he used as his chicken stock, and another one with various cuts of beef and bones for beef stock. Nowadays I rely on College Inn broth, a tip that I learned from my aunts. I am going to give you the traditional recipe. We rarely ate spinach back in the day, and escarole was usually always on hand as it easily doubled for making escarole and beans in a pinch.

Mini-meatballs ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef
1 egg-beaten
2 gloves of garlic chopped
2 slices of stale white bread grated (you can use store breadcrumbs 1/2 cup)
3 tablespoons of milk
1/4 cup grated cheese
2 tablespoons chopped Italian flat leaf parsley
2 pinches of salt, 1 of pepper

Add 1/3 cup of water to the breadcrumbs and set aside. Mix together the ground beef, egg, chopped garlic, milk, grated cheese, parsley, salt and pepper. Add the breadcrumb mixture, mix well and form into mini-meatballs. Drop into hot olive oil in frying pan and brown the meatballs on all sides cooking them 3/4 of the way thru. Shut off heat on pan  and don't throw away the oil.

Pasta: Prepare 8 ounces of cooked pasta your choice: orzo, tubettini or ditalini. Set aside.

Diced Veggies

Soup Ingredients:

10 cups of chicken broth or stock
1 onion diced
3 carrots diced
4  cloves of garlic chopped
2 celery stalks, not the bottom part, the rib part-diced
1 head of escarole chopped (or substitute a bag of spinach)
1/2 cup of white wine - any
1 can diced red plum tomatoes

Generously coat bottom of pot with olive oil and sauté the onions, carrots, garlic & celery together till onions are transparent and everything else is soft. Add the 1/2 cup of white wine and stir.  Add 4 cups of the chicken broth and chopped escarole and cook until escarole is wilted. Then add the rest of the chicken broth and the can of tomatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste.  Add the mini meatballs and go ahead, add the olive oil left in the pan. This will add some great flavor.  Cover and cook 20 minutes. Add the cooked pasta to the pot, stir well and serve with grated cheese sprinkled on top.

I hope you enjoy this soup. If you make it please leave your comments below and let me know how it was!!

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