{"id":1408,"date":"2015-05-03T22:38:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T03:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=1408"},"modified":"2015-11-06T11:41:51","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T17:41:51","slug":"that-which-is-caesar%e2%80%99s-romaine-panzanella-soup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=1408","title":{"rendered":"That Which Is Caesar\u2019s: Romaine Panzanella 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%3D1408&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_1412\" style=\"width: 406px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1412\" href=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?attachment_id=1412\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1412\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1412  \" title=\"Caesar Salad\" src=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Caesar-Salad.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"396\" height=\"586\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Caesar-Salad.jpg 566w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Caesar-Salad-67x100.jpg 67w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Caesar-Salad-202x300.jpg 202w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1412\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Veni, Vidi, Vichyssoise (I came. I saw. I made a little soup.)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I had salad on the brain this week.<\/p>\n<p>Last Saturday, my wife and I helped put on the second of two Olympian twelve-course dinners our church auctioned off last April.\u00a0 And by Olympian, I\u2019m talking about the denizens of that mountain in Greece, not that piddly little sporting event held every four years.<\/p>\n<p>The theme of the dinner was Italian food and wine and I say we &#8220;helped&#8221; because the hosts did the lion\u2019s share of the work.\u00a0 My wife did the flowers (beautifully) and the dishes among other things.\u00a0 I made soup and helped with tasks that didn\u2019t need to be done quickly.\u00a0 Mostly though, I tried to keep my head down.<\/p>\n<p>(<em>And this has something to do with salads, how?<\/em> I\u2019m getting to that.)<\/p>\n<p>I actually made two soups for the meal.\u00a0 First came the soup I canned for the gift baskets each guest received.\u00a0 In keeping with the night\u2019s theme, I jarred a few quarts of my Caprese tomato soup.\u00a0 The one based on the famous Italian tomato, basil and mozzarella salad I wrote about<a href=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=863\"> here<\/a> last spring.<\/p>\n<p>(For those of you keeping track, that\u2019s salad\u00a0 number one.)<\/p>\n<p>The second soup I made became the meal\u2019s third course, but it wasn\u2019t exactly smooth sailing. \u00a0Our first thought was a roasted asparagus and leek soup I found on the Internet.\u00a0 This soup looked really good on paper, but when I tried it out, we found that the roasting imparted an unpleasant bitterness to the soup. (As opposed to pleasant bitterness? \u00a0Stupid Internet!)\u00a0 Then, after weighing a few different asparagus soup recipes, I wound up making an extra-strength version of the <a href=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=670\">cream of asparagus soup<\/a> I wrote about last fall.\u00a0 I say extra-strength because I fortified the soup with three pounds of asparagus instead of a pound and a half, added an extra pound of onions and used real cream instead of half &amp; half.\u00a0 All that extra flavor made the soup a lot better than the one I made last year. Thankfully it was good enough to find a slot on the menu.<\/p>\n<p>Immediately preceding the soup course, was a delicious salad the host couple call the Sicilian Blue.\u00a0 It featured fresh orange slices, strawberries, candied walnuts and crumbled\u00a0Gorgonzola\u00a0 atop a bed of greens tossed in a white balsamic dressing.\u00a0 It was so good I took copious notes so I could <del>steal it<\/del> recreate this salad it at home.<\/p>\n<p>(That&#8217;s salad #2.)<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the meal rose to even greater levels of complexity and greater heights of flavor.\u00a0 Something I can say without even a hint of pride because I didn\u2019t have much to do with any of it.\u00a0 The menu proceeded through an English pea and lobster risotto, halibut with vanilla sauce over a parsnip puree, duck breast with mission figs and fresh morels, slices of grilled rib eye steak with arugula, braised lamb shanks atop a fresh fava bean succotash, strawberry mascarpone shortcake with basil syrup and 25-year-old balsamic vinegar and individual chocolate hazelnut cakes with whipped cream.<\/p>\n<p>(All right, I did make the risotto, but that just involved stirring in ladles full of stock until the head chef (<em>Call me \u201cSous.\u201d<\/em>) said it was done.\u00a0 At that point, Chef Kirk adjusted the seasoning, folded in the seafood and the vegetable garnishes and essentially made the whole thing go from palatable to delicious.)<\/p>\n<p>Kudos to the hosts for all their work and the night&#8217;s overall success.<\/p>\n<p>The next day, after all that prep, all that execution, not to mention the brief interlude that was income tax preparation, I was too tired to do much of anything, much less come up with a new soup.<\/p>\n<p>So I took the easy way out and turned another one of my favorite salads, the Caesar, into a soup.\u00a0 I know that sounds pretty weird.\u00a0 In fact, if you\u2019re like my wife, you\u2019re probably cringing at the thought of a lettuce soup flavored with garlic-parmesan dressing.\u00a0 Nor does the name Caesar Salad Soup sound particularly appetizing. \u00a0That&#8217;s why I re-christened it\u00a0Romaine Panzanella after the Italian bread salad.<\/p>\n<p>(Salad #3.)<\/p>\n<p>So how did it turn out?<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly enough, despite all the simmering, the chopped romaine still retained some of its crispness and the toasted croutons added an extra crunch to each bite. \u00a0As for the taste, it was, in my wife\u2019s words \u201cstrangely good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sounds like a compliment to me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Romaine Panzanella Soup<br \/>\n<\/strong>(serves 6-8)<br \/>\n3 hearts of romaine lettuce, cored and chopped into 1\u201d pieces<br \/>\n6 cups vegetable stock<br \/>\n<em>Caesar Salad Dressing<\/em><br \/>\n\u00bc cup red wine vinegar<br \/>\n4 cloves garlic, minced<br \/>\n1 tsp Dijon mustard<br \/>\nsalt &amp; pepper to taste<br \/>\n\u00be canola oil<br \/>\n\u00bc cup parmesan cheese<br \/>\n<em>Croutons<\/em><br \/>\n\u00bd loaf day old French bread, cut into 1\u201d cubes (about 1 quart in volume)<br \/>\nolive oil<br \/>\nsalt<br \/>\nblack pepper<br \/>\nbasil<br \/>\ngarlic powder<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Preheat the oven to 400\u00b0F.<\/li>\n<li>Cut the bread into chunks, 1\u201d cubes or smaller, brush them with olive oil and toss them with a mixture of salt, pepper, dried basil and garlic powder.<\/li>\n<li>Arrange the cubes of bread on a sheet pan and place in the oven until lightly browned (5-7 minutes) then turn the croutons over and bake until the other side is lightly browned.<\/li>\n<li>Remove croutons and set aside.<\/li>\n<li>Core the three heads of romaine, slice the lettuce into 1\u201d pieces and place \u00a0them in the stock.<\/li>\n<li>Bring the stock to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and simmer for 15-20 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>In the meantime, place the vinegar, garlic, mustard, salt &amp; pepper in a mixing bowl.\u00a0 Then whisk the ingredients in the bowl as you slowly drizzle the oil into the mixture to emulsify the dressing.\u00a0 When all the oil has been added, whip in the parmesan cheese.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Note:\u00a0 Alternatively, you can blend the salad together with an immersion blender, the eliminates the need to mince the garlic and does a nice job bringing the dressing together.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Puree the lettuce and stock together with an immersion blender, then stir the dressing into the mix until it is well blended.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol>\n<li>At service time, garnish each bowl of soup with several      croutons, it adds an excellent texture to the soup.\u00a0 A good pairing with almost any sandwich.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><em>Image Credit: <\/em>\u201cVeni, Vidi, Vichyssoise,\u201d more clipart shenanigans by the author.\u00a0 <strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>As much of the Christian population celebrates holy week this time of year, it seemed like a good time to render something out of Caesar.\u00a0 I\u2019m also left wondering if there\u2019s any linkage between Easter and tax season.\u00a0 Nevertheless, soup, and this soup in particular, remains affordable even for those of us who got gouged by Uncle Sam this year.\u00a0 Bon App\u00e9tit and many happy returns!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had salad on the brain this week. Last Saturday, my wife and I helped put on the second of two Olympian twelve-course dinners our church auctioned off last April.\u00a0 And by Olympian, I\u2019m talking about the denizens of that mountain in Greece, not that piddly little sporting event held every four years. The theme [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,61,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheese","category-garlic","category-romaine-lettuce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408","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=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1423,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/1423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}