(As read by Alex Tuller and prepared by Dean Temple)
Sorrel is a wonderful green, and a relative of rhubard. That means it has a strong and tart flavor, much too strong just to eat as greens. But it makes the easiest soup on the planet, so easy you feel like you cheated and poured it out of a can. So easy, that we had to turn around the next day and make a different soup that was more complicated. Both recipes are here.
Soup 1 ingredients
2 ounces sorrel
3 tablespoons cream
3 cups chicken stock
For the first soup, we took about 2 ounces of sorrel and sautaéed it in cream until it melted. It melts, sort of. It changes to a dull green color and kind of collapses, more than it melts. You’ll see when you try it. Season with salt and pepper. Add 3 cups of hot chicken stock. Let it simmer for a minute or two. And that’s it. There is nothing else to do. It almost drove me nuts it was so easy. And it’s delicious.
So;
Soup 2 ingredients
Bag of navy beans
2 onions
1/2 pound sorrel
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
I took a bag of dried navy beans and let them soak in a pot of water for at least 4 hours. I poured off the water, put in three quarts of fresh water and brought it up to a boil. In the meantime I sliced two onions very fine and caramelized them in about 1.5 tbsp of butter. If you can find anywhere to get goose fat, use that instead.
And if you can find anywhere to get goosefat, please, please let us know. Seriously. Email us where at info@virtualhudsonvalley.com.
At any rate, when the onions are nice and browned, add three tablespoons of flour and cook that in for a couple of minutes. It will get a little deeper in color and stick to the pan. Then, take a ladle full of water from the boiling beans and pour that into the pan with the onions. Scrape the bottom and pour the whole thing into the bean pot.
Then, take your sorrel – about half a pound. Cook it in 1.5 tbsp butter (or goose fat, or even duck fat for that matter). Cook it down. Once the beans have been gently boiling for an hour, add the sorrel. Cook for another hour.
After that hour, add salt and pepper to taste. We served it with bread that was toasted to a crisp. It was delicious, and cheap, and there was lots of it so it lasted a good long time.
(note: I can never find sorrel anywhere so we planted it in the garden. It is a perennial and comes back like a weed.)