A mother-daughter conversation on food and cooking (mostly)

Monday, February 12, 2007

Kale, White Bean, Bacon, and Potato Soup



This is a modified version of a Louis Osteen recipe. (By the way, we have two identical copies of this book if you would like one.) I served it with skillet cornbread.

My friend Mary has commented on how much you and I seem to use cookbooks. I suppose we do, but most of the time it's for ideas, not instruction. The night I made this soup, for instance, I was feeling uninspired and tired, not at all in a cooking mood, but I needed to use the kale I'd bought the week before, so I started poking around through some likely cookbooks. And when I found the Louis Osteen recipe for soup with mustard greens, country ham, and white beans, I got really excited. I ended up having a great time cooking that night.

Mary tends to get an idea for a dish first, then look up recipes online to get an idea of how to make it. Sometimes it works that way for me: yesterday I decided to make peanut blossoms for today's Valentine party at work. You used to make them when I was a kid and I loved them but hadn't had them since. And none of my cookbooks had a recipe, so I had to find several online and choose the most credible-looking recipe. But I hate not knowing a recipe's source well. I know I can trust Joy's cookie recipes and would rather bake something from there.

The cookies are a success. And the soup is even better left over than it was the first night.

Update 02-08-08: Now I've posted the soup recipe.

1 comment:

Kris said...

A version of your kale and potato soup is really popular in Portugal and the Azores. Yours looks delicious. Yes, I'd love to have that Osteen cookbook.

I'll post the Peanut Blossom Recipe for posterity.