Soup Kitchen: Deborah Madison's chickpea and farro soup

Yesterday, when I mentioned that my husband was making soup to try out our new La Chamba bean pot, I assumed he’d pored over cookbooks to unearth a recipe. Actually, he found a recipe for chickpea and farro soup from cookbook author Deborah Madison on the Toque Blanche website where he ordered the pot. 

To someone afflicted with an endless cold, I can’t tell you how good a bowl of this rustic Italian zuppa tasted. The flavors are clean and wholesome: it’s basically chickpeas, farro, tomatoes and a little onion and celery, garnished with fresh basil, a thread of extra-virgin olive oil and some freshly grated Parmigiano.

With no more ado, here it is:

 Farro and Chickpea Soup for Summer

(From “Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen,” Broadway, 2007). Her most recent book is “Seasonal Fruit Desserts: From Orchard, Farm, and Market.” 

 Serves six.

“I love cooking in clay pots of all kinds, and the Chamba black clayware is no exception," she writes. "It’s a beautiful material, so soft that it makes me want to cook in a gentle manner, with extra care. But that’s not because the clay isn’t strong — it is. It just gives a different feeling than metal.

"Farro and chickpeas needn’t be relegated to the cold-season months — they make a fine summer soup too, and they needn’t be served hot. Room temperature is good, too.

"This soup takes about 15 minutes to put together, 30 minutes to cook, but it gains in flavor if it can stand for a few hours.”

Ingredients:

1 cup farro, soaked 4 hours in cold water
2 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, finely diced
1 celery rib, peeled if stringy, then finely diced
2 garlic cloves chopped with a handful parsley leaves
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 cup finely diced or crushed tomatoes, plus their juices, fresh or canned
1 (15½-ounce) can organic chickpeas
sea salt and freshly ground pepper 

To Finish: 

1 small handful basil leaves, finely slivered
extra-virgin olive oil
freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Drain the farro. Warm the olive oil in a wide soup pot. Add the onion, celery, and garlic-parsley mixture. Cook, stirring every so often, over medium heat until the onions are translucent and starting to soften, about 7 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste then add the tomatoes, farro, 1 teaspoon salt, and 6 cups water.

Simmer 30 minutes, covered, until the farro is tender but still toothsome. Stir in the chickpeas and their liquid. (At this point the soup can sit at room temperature for several hours, giving the flavors a chance to meld.)

Reheat the soup before serving if you wish to have it hot, or serve it at room temperature. Stir in the basil, a few drops olive oil in each bowl, and grate a little Parmesan over the top.

 This could be the cure. 

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-- S. Irene Virbila
Twitter.com/sirenevirbila

Photos: Farro and Chickpea Soup for Summer. Credit: S. Irene Virbila/Los Angeles Times.

 

All natural: La Chamba black clay pots

This is where the Internet leads you. I saw these great looking black clay mugs on a design site, I truly can't remember where, but more than one place. I loved the rustic hand-built shape and the sheen of the black, burnished clay. I found out they were made in Colombia in a way that dates back 700 years. The pottery is all natural -- unglazed and with no lead in the clay. The handmade pottery can be used on the stovetop, in the oven and the microwave. But shouldn't go into the dishwasher.

And while I didn’t turn up those exact mugs (the closest cost $30 apiece, which I am not going to spend for a mug), I did come across a site, Toque Blanche, selling all sorts of La Chamba cookware, including comals for heating tortillas, handsome casseroles and soup and bean pots. The next thing I knew I was ordering a soup pot, standing in the kitchen with a measuring tape and a couple of likely bowls in order to visualize the size of each model.

When confronted with a choice, I always go for the largest. My husband tried to interject some sense. Just how many beans are you going to cook at a time? Not for me the mini, or even the small versions. They felt, well, stingy in size. In the end, I went with the medium, which purportedly held 3 1/2 quarts. 

I liked its fat belly and the handles like stubby wings.

The pot came yesterday and the medium is big, as in BIG. The site’s measurements seem to be that of the opening, not the diameter of the full-bellied pot. It’s quite handsome and I’m thinking perfect as a soup tureen, and because both husband and I are under the weather, he decided to make a pot of soup. I’ll let you know how that goes.

La Chamba Soup pot, medium, $59.95 from La Toque online. They also have beautiful little salsa dishes, salad and fruit bowls, and an array of other black clay cookware.

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-- S. Irene Virbila

twitter.com/sirenevirbila

Photos: La Chamba bean pot. Credit: S. Irene Virbila / Los Angeles Times

 

This is where the Internet leads you. I saw these great looking black clay mugs on a design site, I truly can't remember where, but more than one place. I loved the rustic hand-built shape and the sheen of the black, burnished clay. I found out they were made in Colombia in a way that dates back 700 years. The pottery is all natural -- unglazed and with no lead in the clay. The handmade pottery can be used on the stovetop, in the oven and the microwave. But shouldn't go into the dishwasher.

And while I didn’t turn up those exact mugs (the closest cost $30 apiece, which I am not going to spend for a mug), I did come across a site, Toque Blanche, selling all sorts of La Chamba cookware, including comals for heating tortillas, handsome casseroles and soup and bean pots. The next thing I knew I was ordering a soup pot, standing in the kitchen with a measuring tape and a couple of likely bowls in order to visualize the size of each model.

When confronted with a choice, I always go for the largest. My husband tried to interject some sense. Just how many beans are you going to cook at a time? Not for me the mini, or even the small versions. They felt, well, stingy in size. In the end, I went with the medium, which purportedly held 3 1/2 quarts. 

I liked its fat belly and the handles like stubby wings.

The pot came yesterday and the medium is big, as in BIG. The site’s measurements seem to be that of the opening, not the diameter of the full-bellied pot. It’s quite handsome and I’m thinking perfect as a soup tureen, and because both husband and I are under the weather, he decided to make a pot of soup. I’ll let you know how that goes.

La Chamba Soup pot, medium, $59.95 from La Toque online. They also have beautiful little salsa dishes, salad and fruit bowls, and an array of other black clay cookware.

ALSO:

Chat with Mr. Gold

Found! Vintage juicer

First Impression: End of Communism at Rivera

-- S. Irene Virbila

twitter.com/sirenevirbila

Photos: La Chamba bean pot. Credit: S. Irene Virbila / Los Angeles Times

 

Dinner tonight!: Avocado gazpacho

Are you starting to switch out your winter recipes for your summer ones, now that summer is finally around the corner? Check out this recipe for avocado gazpacho. A refreshingly cold soup, this recipe -- combining rich avocadoes with bright hints of lemon and garlic -- comes together in about 20 minutes, and takes just a little longer to chill.

For more quick-fix dinner ideas, check out our video recipe gallery here. Food Editor Russ Parsons and Test Kitchen manager Noelle Carter show you how to fix a dozen dishes in an hour or less.

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-- Noelle Carter
twitter.com/noellecarter

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This week's Culinary SOS: Elway's charred red pepper soup

This week's Culinary SOS comes from Dave Wohl in Sudbury, Mass.: 

I was reading the L.A. Times online edition today and saw that you were able to get favorite recipes! I get to Denver a few times a year, and at Elway's restaurant in the Ritz-Carlton, they serve a terrific charred roasted red pepper soup. Can you get the recipe?

Elway's was happy to share its recipe for this richly flavorful (and completely vegan!) charred red pepper soup. I liked adding a little crumbled fresh cheese for garnish (which makes it more vegetarian than vegan), but you can top it however you wish. You can find the recipe here.

Click here for more Culinary SOS recipes. If you have a favorite restaurant recipe you'd like to request, feel free to email me at noelle.carter@latimes.com. I'll do my best to track it down.

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-- Noelle Carter
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Photo credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

Cookbook watch: 'Zuppe' from the American Academy in Rome

I can still taste the soup a Roman friend made for me 20 years ago. She'd just been up in the mountains in Umbria, to the 5th century town of Norcia, and brought back tiny Castelluccio di Norcia lentils and slender wild boar sausages. Norcia is famous for its salumi, particularly wild boar prosciutto and sausages.

She cooked up the lentils with a sofrito of vegetables, and sliced in some sausage. Then she set the table with wide, shallow soup bowls, laid a slice of bread in the bottom of each, broke an egg over the top and ladled the soup over. She poured a thread of new olive oil over and handed us each a big silver soup spoon.

On that bitter cold day: heaven.

I was reminded of that soup when I picked up a copy of the new cookbook "Zuppe" from Mona Talbott, head of the kitchen at the American Academy in Rome and executive chef of the Rome Sustainable Food Project. This small, lovely book includes 50 soup recipes, enough to keep you cooking for a good long while. They're divided up seasonally, so right now (spring), I'm looking at chickpea, cabbage and artichoke soup or risi e bisi, the famous Venetian rice and pea soup. But considering the fava beans waiting to be harvested in the garden, I'm going with fava bean, English pea and chicken meatball soup. I've also got nettles, so maybe her nettle and potato soup.

She’s also got a spring lentil soup, this one with carrots, a little white wine, onion, garlic, smoked paprika and toasted ground fennel seeds punched up with lemon and chili pepper flakes. I can see that one in my future too.

The Project: Soup with winter greens and chickpeas

  Rain, rain, go away.

Hmmm. That didn't seem to work. But this might help you forget all about the rain that's ahead of us this wekend.

Each Friday, we post a recipe from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen archives that's perfect for weekend cooking. And this recipe is perfect for rainy weekend cooking: A hearty soup made with winter greens and chickpeas.

Watch this video: Times Food Editor Russ Parsons shows you how easy it is to make. The total cooking time is about 90 minutes. But most of that is hands-off cooking as your soup simmers away on the stove. That means you can cuddle up on the couch with a furry blanket and rip through that backlog on the DVR.

If you try this recipe, we want to know about it. Upload your photos of the finished dish here

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The beet goes on: Borscht!

Borscht. No, it does not sound beautiful. But when well made, few dishes can be as seductive. Clean and earthy and economical, a bit sour and a bit sweet, assembled from the humblest provisions and better with age, it's a crimson silk purse stitched from a beetroot.

Read more about borscht here. 

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Ever crave liquid pork?

 
Here's a sneak peek at what's coming in this week's Food section: Our Find of the Week is Ramen Yamadaya in Torrance:

Tonkotsu is the heart of the matter at Ramen Yamadaya, an unassuming little ramen shop in Torrance squeezed between a skate shop and the 405 Freeway. Proper tonkotsu broth is made by simmering pork bones for the better part of the day, and the result is a lush, intensified, liquefied pork. A good tonkotsu broth feels like a crushed velvet smoothie.

Yamadaya's tonkotsu broth looks promising: cloudy, dense with porky particulate. A first sip doesn't disappoint, revealing a sensuous version of tonkotsu broth -- almost fuzzy, like drinking a pork Snuggie.

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-- Rene Lynch
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Turn summer's bounty into a cool, refreshing bowl of gazpacho

Janet Mendel, reporting from Mijas, Spain, says today "is the feast of San Juan in my part of the world, a celebration of the start of summer that also traditionally marks the beginning of the gazpacho season. And just in time: My gazpacho garden is about to bear fruit."

And lucky for us, she shares her recipes in this week's Food section.

VIDEO: Winter-worthy soup to weather the latest storm

 

We spent last week weathering a series of storms, before it all cleared up for the weekend. Well, let's hope you used that sunshine wisely: We're about to get pummeled again, as early as this afternoon. (Thankfully, though, forecasters tell us this storm won't be nearly as bad.) So here's your recipe for the day: Winter soup with chickpeas. Check out the video, too: Times Food Editor Russ Parsons walks you through the recipe. Greens not your thing? Here are some more soup options:

-- Rene Lynch
On Twitter @renelynch

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