Parmesan Broth with Kale and White Beans

Adapted from the Smitten Kitchen blog

Broth:  
8 oz. parmesan cheese rinds
6 c. water
1 lg. onion, peeled & quartered
3 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
1/2 t. whole peppercorns
Handful of flat-leaf parsley
Salt to taste

Soup:  
2 to 3 oz. tuscan kale, chopped
1-1/4 c. cooked white beans (from about 1/4 lb. dried), with their cooking liquid (about 1-1/2 c.)
Olive oil and parmesan and thin slices of toasted baguette

Bring all the broth ingredients to a boil in a lg. pot, then reduce to a simmer for 1 hour.  Pour through a fine strainer. It will yield about 4-1/2 c.

To make soup:  Add beans and liquid and kale to broth and simmer until the kale is cooked and the beans are warm.  Serve topped with a toasted baguette slice, drizzled with a bit of olive oil and sprinkled with grated parmesan.

Ann's Version 

 

I had some beautiful dried heirloom beans which I put to a soak the night before.  The variety was Good Mother Stallard, a medium size dappled russet and cream.  I soaked the whole pound bag which wasn't necessary for this soup so the excess went in containers into the freezer.  I drained the soaked beans, then covered them with about 3 times as much water, added a couple of fresh bay leaves and a tsp. or so of dried thyme, brought the pot to a boil, and simmered it for about an hour and a half.  Cooking dried beans at our altitude (which isn't really that high) and in our very minerally water usually takes quite a bit longer than indicated in most recipes. 

While the beans cooked I made the broth, using 8 cups of water instead of 6 since I just knew that wouldn't be enough and doubling the parsley (was an accident but it worked).  For the first half hour the broth cooked it was pretty bland and I wondered if it could really make a tasty soup, but in the second half hour the cheese infused the water and it smelled and tasted amazing.  I let it simmer until the beans were done, then poured the broth through a fine strainer into a clean pot, then back into the original pot so as to save any stuck-on cheese.  A word of caution:  clean the strainer immediately!  I just rinsed it and put it through the dishwasher and I'm still poking cement-like particles of parmesan out with a toothpick.

To the hot broth I added a 2 oz. bag of dried kale chips, cilantro/lime flavored since that's what was in my pantry.  I keep kale chips on hand all the time for soup since they don't go bad and I often don't want to make a grocery run just for fresh kale.  Unseasoned ones are hard to find though, hence the unusual flavor addition which in this case really worked.  I added another cup of water since the chips would be reconstituting in the soup and cooked it all for about 20 min.  Then in went the still hot beans with their liquid and it all simmered for another 15 min.  I added 1/4 c. of olive oil to the pot when it was done.

I had a bowl right away with a handful of grated parmesan on top (can't ever have too much cheese!) and it was great.  Definitely a recipe I'll make again, particularly since we eat lots and lots of parmesan which I always grate myself and the rinds pile up in the freezer.  The 8 oz. this recipe called for used less than half my stash!  If you didn't have the rinds I'll bet the recipe would work with just an 8 oz. chunk of parmesan but would probably be quite a bit cheesier.

Cassie's Version 

 

I finally made this soup today.  It took a while to get around to it because I simply did not have Parmesan rinds on hand.  I even asked today at the cheese counter of my (rather excellent) grocery store and they were all out.  I ended up buying two different hard cheeses, whose rinds became the base for my soup: Grana Padano and Romano, both of which were less expensive than Parmesan.  They both tasted great when I sampled them, but neither is as strong as Parmesan so my broth turned out less flavorful than what was probably intended.  I used dried Great Northern beans that I soaked overnight and cooked in the same manner that my mother cooked hers (I actually just followed her directions, above).  I froze the extra beans and cooking liquid to use later.

The only other changes I made to the soup itself were the following: I increased the water to 8 cups (following my mother's advice) and added in dried red pepper flakes, salt, and ground pepper.  I used regular(?) kale instead of the flatter Tuscan variety, which I didn't have on hand.  I also added olive oil at the end, as my mom did, because it needed an extra shot of flavor and some additional body.

This was definitely a good soup, though it seems like a recipe that requires the highest quality ingredients to become really great.  While I think that I generally do a good job selecting produce, I supposed I could do better at choosing (and investing more money in) other ingredients.  Or my next soup could employ more pungency - chile, citrus, and other spices can do wonders at covering up lackluster cooking skills and less than fancy ingredients!  Stay tuned!