Aliza Libman writes on ...

Aliza's tortellini-spinach-tomato-feta soup recipe

This recipe comes at the request of the Friday night Settlers collective. I made it to commemorate the yahrtzeit of my grandfather Manny, who passed away five years ago yesterday. I wrote this five years ago and I still mean every word. But in the meanwhile, I thought a meal of soup, pasta, and bourbon-glazed potatoes followed by rum cakes would be a fitting tribute to a man who liked good food as much as I do and good books even more. While I'm certain my grandfather might have liked this soup had he tasted it in his pre-quadruple bypass era, I should note that a generation ago, kosher feta cheese and kosher tortellini were not in my family's good German cooking arsenal.

Ingredients:
2 onions
3 carrots
2 packages of frozen spinach
1 massive can of tomatoes (I used 28oz crushed.)
water
oil
consomme powder
16 oz. frozen tortellini
2 pkgs of feta (8 oz each)

Instructions:
Heat oil in saute pan (or 8qt soup pot, if you saute in your pots.)
Saute 2 chopped onions until translucent and beginning to brown.
Add 7-8 cups of boiling water and some Osem chicken consomme. (I never measure the amount of this.)
When boiling, add 3 chopped carrots and simmer for 20 minutes.
Then add the frozen spinach and simmer for 20 minutes more.
Remove soup from the heat and use a handblender to blend it partially. (Don't blend it completely.)
Return soup to low heat and add frozen tortellini. Simmer for 10 min.
When you're sure the tortellini and carrots are cooked to your satisfaction, remove the soup from the heat. Open the feta packages and pour the water the feta is packed in into the soup. Crumble the feta and put it into the soup. Cover the pot and let it sit for 10-15 minutes so that the flavors meld together.

Serves 8-10?

Some notes:
This is a very thick soup, so you need to cook it on a very low heat to avoid stuff sticking to the bottom of the pot.
Be careful with your spicing early on - you want the rest of your soup to have flavor, but feta is very salty and flavorful and will provide most of the flavor the soup needs.

Labels: recipes

posted by Aliza @ 6:57 p.m.