Alphabet Soup
To be honest, I've been dreaming of this soup for nearly 5 months. Not the soup itself actually, but the letters. The letters seemed like a difficult thing to make. I don't like to admit that because after you see how easy this is, you might judge me harshly. That's ok. I might be deserving. I probably could have googled, "how to make alphabet soup" but I prefer to let things stew (pun optional) in my head until it's all figured out.
Now that Soup Season (obviously the very best of seasons) is upon us...let's play, make and eat this body nurturing, soul satisfying, mind calming substance! Shall we?
Gather:
*Spoon
*Knife
For Soup
*1/2 bulb of garlic
*Onion
*Sriracha (optional- but is it really?)
*Olive oil
*Honey
For Pasta
*2 cups flour
*2 eggs
*1/8-1/4 cup water
*salt
Create:
1. Make the pasta dough. Grab the food processor and put the flour, eggs and salt in. Pour about 1/8th water in and turn on. You want the dough to come together into a ball. If the dough does not do that, you can add small amounts of water until it does.
The dough should not stick to your fingers. You should be able to easily remove it from the food processor. If it is too wet, add more flour. If it's too dry add more water. The trick is to add those ingredients slowly until you reach the desired texture.
2. Place the dough in a seal-able and reusable container (or use plastic wrap if you must.) Store in refrigerator for about an hour.
3. Make the soup. Place pot on stove on medium high heat. Pour a bit of olive oil in the pot. Finely chop 1/2 bulb of garlic (You read that right) and one medium size onion.
4. Scrap onion and garlic into warmed olive oil and saute for a few minutes.
5. Add the stock and both cans of tomatoes.
6. Let come to a boil. Add a tablespoon of sriracha and big pinch of salt. Add one tablespoon of honey. Taste.
7. Reduce to a low heat. Let simmer. Taste again. Add salt to taste. Add herbs here if you want. Dill is fabulous in tomato soup. The most obvious pairing is basil- also fabulous! Or leave it as is. It's quite delicious without herbs.
Pasta Time!
8. After the pasta has rested for about an hour, pull it from the fridge. It needs about 10 minutes or more to warm up and be pliable. Grab your silicone letters and dust them with flour. Be sure to get inside the letter crevices.
9. Dust your rolling pin with flour.
10. Grab a small handful of pasta dough and place on one of the trays of letters. Roll it out covering the silicone letters completely. Cut the edges of dough off. Repeat until you have finished all the desired letter trays. You will have leftover dough.
11. Place silicone molds onto a cookie sheet and place in freezer for a little over an hour.
12. Remove the trays from the freezer. Dust cookie sheet with flour. Use it as your work surface. Pop one of the molds out.
Look how cool!! That's pasta yo!
13. Now this part is a bit time sensitive. While the dough is completely frozen you can snap off the area around the letters. As it warms up a bit you can lay it down on the cookie sheet and use a knife to remove the area around the letters.
14. For the lower case letters, I popped the dough sheet out and placed it on my flour dusted cookie sheet. I let it warm enough to use a knife on it without shooting pieces across the room. I simply just cut squares around the letters. It so much simpler than trying to cut all around the tiny letters. You could do that with the large letters too! It would take half the time. I chose to remove all the area around the large letters because I was going for an authentic, old school look with my alphabet soup.
15. Keep all the letters flat on your cookie sheet until ready to cook.
16. Simply bring the soup back up to a boil and drop letters in. Cook for about 4-6 minutes or until you reach the desired texture.
17. Put the remaining pasta into the freezer to refreeze. Keep it on the cookie sheet while doing so. Once frozen place into a bag. You can pull out pieces as desired for soup making! Or make a browned butter sauce or marinara or...so many possibilities!
Serve HOT. Enjoy!
