Zuppa Molise

Nothing new to say about cheese this week, but tonight for dinner Shelly whipped up a fantastic soup, and the recipe is worth sharing.  Truth be told, we got the basic idea for this dish from good ole' Lidia Bastianich.  You know, this woman:

We recently saw an episode of her show, Lidia's Italy, in which she prepared two types of soups native to the Molise region.  But after we searched high and low for the recipes online and found niente, we decided to give it a go from memory.  The recipe that follows, therefore, is really some sort of amalgamation of Lidia's two dishes with Shelly's own personal touches here and there.

Ingredients:
2-3 tbsp. olive oil
1 medium-sized onion, diced
2 tsp. salt, plus more to taste
1 bay leaf
1 large Idaho potato, cubed
3 tbsp. tomato paste
2 vine tomatoes, diced
3-4 stalks celery, diced
2-3 large chard leaves, chopped
1/4-1/2 lb. scallops
1/4-1/2 lb. peeled, de-veined med. shrimp
9-10 cups boiling water
1 chicken bouillon cube (optional)

1 1/2 cups tacozze (rough, square-cut pasta):
3 cups flour
3/4 cup water
pinch of salt

First, prepare the dough for the pasta.  Pour all three cups of flour into a food processor and add the water and salt until the dough is firm and workable.  Sprinkle with a little extra flour, knead dough for a minute and wrap with cellophane.  Set aside in the refrigerator for at least a half hour.

In the meantime, dice and cube the vegetables.  Then, in a large pot, sweat the onions in the olive oil over medium-high heat and add 1 tsp. of salt.  Toss in the potatoes and add the bay leaf, then stir in the remaining tsp. of salt and allow the onions and potatoes to carmelize.  After 5-6 minutes, clear away a spot in the bottom center of the pot and spoon in the tomato paste.  Let the paste simmer (Lidia calls it "toasting" the paste) before adding the vine tomatoes, celery and chard.

Once your vegetables are hot and coated with tomato paste, pour in boiling water (we boiled it in our tea pot).  Stir a few times and let it lightly boil for about an hour so as to reduce to approximately half the original liquid mixture.

Meanwhile, sprinkle flour over a flat surface.  Knead the dough and cut it into four equal-sized rounds.  Roll each round into a flat, 1/8" thick rectangle.  Using a pizza or pasta cutter, cut the rectangles into small squares, approximately 1" x 1" each.  Coat the squares with a little extra flour and set them aside, then repeat the process with the remaining three rounds.  Set all the fresh pasta aside until the liquid mixture has reduced.

Once the soup has reduced enough, season to taste (more salt? a little pepper?).  Then add the scallops.  After 2 minutes, shake any excess flour off the fresh pasta and add it to the soup.  After 2 minutes, turn off the burner and add the shrimp.  Let the scallops and shrimp continue to cook for 3 minutes or so before ladling.

Here's what our finished product looked like:

Great with a glass of dry white wine.  Buon appetito.

Where do the days go?  It's been over three weeks since my last post...

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've simply been a bit lazy.  On the other hand, I am back into the thick of teaching, and on top of that, a nasty cold has been pestering the Wilson-Waldvogel family.  Who wants a big hunk of cheese when their nose is stuffed up and their taste-buds don't work?

But as soon as we began to feel better, we purchased a few tasty wedges from The Bedford Cheese Shop: Cato Corner's Hooligan and Andante Creamery's Tomme Dolce.

We've wanted to try Hooligan ever since we read Thorpe's mouthwatering analysis of it in The Cheese Chronicles.  But Thorpe is just one of many experts in the field who have celebrated the brilliance of Hooligan.  Another master cheesemonger/purveyor, Patricia Michelson, has this to say about it in her epic, Cheese: The World's Best Artisan Cheeses:

Elizabeth MacAlister and her son Mark have been making cheese since 1997; they have 13 different styles, which are seen in cheese shops and restaurants on the East Coast...Hooligan is a salt-washed-ring cheese with a lovely rich, buttery texture to the pate and patches of white and gray molds on the rind.  The pungent aroma on the orange, slightly sticky rind gives way to the sweet and savory flavors...

She goes on to suggest pairing this raw cow's milk wonder with an Alsace-style wine.  We served it up with olives--

--and a light red, and it didn't disappoint, even in the wake of our colds.  A special thanks to our friend Lauren, who stopped in to Michelson's shop in London, La Fromagerie, and picked up a signed copy of Cheese for us.  Lauren, like all of Cato's Corner's cheeses, comes from the great state of Connecticut.

But cheeses from Andante Dairy come from the West Coast--Petaluma, California, to be exact.  There the master cheesemaker, Soyoung Scanlan, crafts a wide variety of artisan cheeses made from goat and cow's milk supplied by two neighboring dairies.  Scanlan is a rockstar of sorts in the cheesemaking world, and, if tomme dolce were the measuring stick, then rightfully so.

All of Andante's cheeses are named after musical terms or notations, something Scanlan does to pay homage to her past life as a musician.  "Dolce" is no exception, but its name also tell us something else about its production process, which is summed up nicely in this excerpt from an article by a San Francisco food critic:

Using brandy and a plum conserve ... she created a wash for her wheels... It's not uncommon to rub wheels periodically with brandy or grappa to help seal the rind and flavor the cheese, but fruit conserve?

Scanlan washed the wheels with her brandy-conserve mixture every other day at first, tapering off as the 9-pound wheels matured. Released at about 6 months old, the tomme has a thin, even, immaculate rind with some surface mold and a uniform ivory interior with many small openings...

On the tongue, Tomme Dolce is semi-firm and smooth, with a judicious balance of sweet and salt. The aroma suggests caramel, garlic and aged beef, and it just doesn't quit...

Spot on.  I highly recommend it.