Warning: One of my rare food posts. Unrelated to anything else on blog.

This is a soup that I’ve been making a lot this winter. It’s really simple, it’s cheap, and it reheats well. I got the recipe initially from The Silver Spoon, which is the English translation of the best-selling cookbook in Italy for, reportedly, the last 50 years, though I’ve modified it to my taste. It’s an incredible cookbook in any case, though I have to admit that I stay away from the chapters on things like cow heart and whatnot. I am sadly provincially American in the meats I’m willing to eat. I do not do offal, tripe, or most organs. I would kick ass on ‘Fear Factor’ unless there was an ‘eat-a-disgusting-substance’ segment, in which case I’d just quit, because I won’t put crappy parmesan in my mouth, much less live spiders or rotted sheep brains.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil.
1 carrot, peeled and diced.
2 celery stalks, diced.
3 ounces pancetta, diced. (Pancetta is an Italian bacon. It’s cured with peppery spices rather than smoked, and then rolled up and sliced before being cooked. It is one of my favorite things in the world.)
3 1/2 cups diced potatos (1/2″) - Peel them, but do not rinse them after they’ve been peeled. Use a starchy potato like a Russet (the ’standard’ potato in America). The starch helps to properly thicken the soup.
4 cups chicken stock (either homemade, which is always preferable, or low-sodium store-bought).
1 tablespoon tomato paste.
1 teaspoon dried thyme.
Salt and pepper to taste.
1 1/2 cup small pasta. Try to find very small pasta for this. Don’t use stringy pasta like spaghetti, and don’t use hollow pasta like macaroni or penne. It’s not that you’ll ruin it, as it’ll still be good. It’ll just be better in texture with a small pasta.

1. Sautee the carrot and celery in the heated olive oil in a pot for five minutes or so to sweat them.

2. Stir in the pancetta, and cook for another three minutes.

3. Put the potatoes in and pour the chicken stock in.

4. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

5. Stir in the tomato paste, the thyme, and the pasta. Salt to taste.

6. Cook until the pasta is al dente(see pasta instructions) and remove from the heat. By the end, the soup should be more of a kind of stew than a very liquidy soup.

7. Serve the soup in bowls, and grate some parmesan over the top of it. Add some fresh-ground black pepper (seriously, don’t even keep pre-ground black pepper. It is essentially tasteless by comparison.) to each person’s bowl right before you serve it.

8. Enjoy. I like some hearty, crusty whole wheat bread with this soup, even though that’s matching starch (bread) with a potato (more starch) soup.