{"id":1330,"date":"2015-03-29T00:28:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-29T05:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=1330"},"modified":"2015-11-06T11:16:18","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T17:16:18","slug":"i-cant-believe-its-not-bitter-pork-dandelion-soup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=1330","title":{"rendered":"I Can&#8217;t Believe It&#8217;s Not Bitter: Pork &#038; Dandelion Soup"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none\"><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fthesoupblog.com%2F%3Fp%3D1330&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=true&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;width=450&amp;height=30\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width: 450px; height: 30px;\"><\/iframe><\/div><div id=\"attachment_1331\" style=\"width: 480px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1331\" href=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?attachment_id=1331\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1331\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1331\" title=\"Dandelion Greens\" src=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Dandelion-Greens.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"470\" height=\"228\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Dandelion-Greens.jpg 470w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Dandelion-Greens-100x48.jpg 100w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Dandelion-Greens-300x145.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1331\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Who Me, Bitter?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I went back to Caputo\u2019s this week.<\/p>\n<p>It had been several months since I\u2019d been to the Chicago-land grocery chain in part because I had found inspiration elsewhere.  But with the change of season, I figured it was time to see what fresh offerings my favorite produce market had to offer.<\/p>\n<p>I had visions of sweet greens I could turn into something worthy of an Oscar Wilde dinner party.  Sort of a soup version of those little cucumber sandwiches, only with watercress instead of cucumbers.<\/p>\n<p>As usual things didn\u2019t work out like I thought.  Instead of finding little bundles of watercress at Caputo\u2019s, I found bunches of red dandelion greens, which are kind of like watercress except they\u2019re a lot tougher and incredibly bitter.<\/p>\n<p>Great. What do I know about bitter greens?<\/p>\n<p>I mean, I\u2019ve saut\u00e9ed dandelions a few times with garlic and collards and mustard greens or some other sharp flavored things, but my main exposure to them is through the lawn mower. The grass at our rental outside Chicago is infested with the stuff and getting worse all the time.  What\u2019s more, the dandelions in our lawn don\u2019t even look that healthy.<\/p>\n<p>What kind of a weed is that?<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, the greens I got at Caputo\u2019s were very attractive\u2014beautifully colored, strong-stemmed and hardy\u2014which almost made up for the lingering bitterness.  Just the sort of thing you\u2019d want to toss into a pot of boiling stock.<\/p>\n<p>Next, as I was simmering the greens, I proceeded to saut\u00e9 some minced garlic, chopped green Cubanelle peppers and ground pork together. Then I folded them all into the soup.  The result was not too bad, it was rich and flavorful, but each spoonful of the soup still finished with a really bitter aftertaste.<\/p>\n<p>I needed something to counteract that. \u00a0Something that would take the edge off, make the soup mellower and, frankly more palatable.  My first instinct was to add a few cups of sour cream. And those extra dollops of dairy fat made the soup a lot better without making it dull in any way.<\/p>\n<p>I won\u2019t say that the soup turned out as nicely as my freshly mown lawn because my lawn hasn\u2019t been nicely mown for a while.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to a generous gift from my brother-in-law, I had been trimming the lawn for the final two times last fall with a beautiful riding mower. \u00a0Sadly, because the mower\/tractor has a bent rotor blade, it can\u2019t decide if it\u2019s a mower or a  roto-tiller. As a result, my lawn is still recovering from the numerous gouges it received last year. Actually, it may never recover.<\/p>\n<p>Does grass hold a grudge when it gets mistreated? (I\u2019ll keep you posted.)<\/p>\n<p>One thing that is definitely not bitter anymore is my Dandelion Soup.  It\u2019s just really tasty.<\/p>\n<p>Now if I could just figure out how to get the stuff out of my lawn.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pork &amp; Dandelion Soup<\/strong><br \/>\n(serves 6-8)<br \/>\n6 cups stock<br \/>\n1 lb red dandelion greens, chopped<br \/>\n1 t canola oil<br \/>\n3 green Cubanelle peppers, cored, seeded and chopped<br \/>\n2 cloves garlic, minced<br \/>\n1 lb ground pork<br \/>\n2 cups sour cream<br \/>\nsalt &amp; pepper to taste<\/p>\n<p>1.\tAdd the stock to a 3-5 quart soup pot, bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer, add the dandelion greens, cover and continue with the next step.<br \/>\n2.\tWarm up the oil in a medium skillet, add the peppers, garlic and pork.  Continue to saut\u00e9 until the meat is browned.<br \/>\n3.\tPuree the dandelions together with the broth and fold in the ingredients from the skillet.<br \/>\n4.\tHeat the mixture through, fold in the sour cream, and adjust the seasoning to your own tastes.<\/p>\n<p><em>Image Credit:<\/em> \u201cRed Dandelion Greens\u201d from an image discovered online.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pardon all the references to bitterness in this installment.  I\u2019ll work harder to put on a happy face in the coming weeks.  Fortunately, I\u2019m in the middle of a mini-vacation right now, so any \u201cun-smiley\u201d faces I had been wearing will soon be turned upside down.  Let me know if there\u2019s anything I can do to help you.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went back to Caputo\u2019s this week. It had been several months since I\u2019d been to the Chicago-land grocery chain in part because I had found inspiration elsewhere. But with the change of season, I figured it was time to see what fresh offerings my favorite produce market had to offer. I had visions of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,127,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dairy","category-dandelion-greens","category-pork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1330"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1375,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}