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Ina Garten is a veritable force in cooking and entertaining. Her gracious and welcoming demeanor makes you feel as though you could stop over to her house and she’d be whipping up some fabulous, and yet unfussy, feast at any moment. One of the most endearing things that has bubbled up as she invites viewers into her life on TV shows like the uber popular “Barefoot Contessa” and in her recent memoir “Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” is the way she waxes poetic about cooking for her husband Jeffrey.
In an episode of “Wiser Than Me,” a podcast hosted by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Garten chatted about the role of food in her life and tipped her hat to how she eats on a daily basis. It is clear that she and Jeffrey share as many meals as possible together. Between coffee and toast in the morning (French butter and shaved sea salt required), a cup of tea at precisely 10:30 a.m., and a bigger dinner, perhaps out with friends, she and Jeffrey always have soup for lunch.
Soup is endlessly comforting and keeps well
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On the podcast, Ina Garten specifically mentioned Italian Wedding soup. This humble stock-based soup features meat — usually sausage or meatballs made from pork — a slightly bitter wilted green like escarole or chard, and often a small pasta like pastina or orzo. You may be surprised to learn that the “wedding” aspect doesn’t have anything to do with marriage between two people, rather it is a marriage of the meat and vegetables. No matter. It comes together in a hearty and satisfying way and is all the sweeter in name that Garten and her husband regularly enjoy it together for lunch.
Garten may just be onto something, and soup can come together quickly for a mid-day meal. Although she often espouses picking up certain store-bought ingredients, she would never buy canned soup. In Garten’s view, the soup may have been sitting on the shelf for too long, can have a mushy texture, and is likely high in sodium. One beautiful aspect of soup is that you can make a big pot ahead of time and freeze it, making weekday lunches a snap. Soup is also quite forgiving. You can add a pinch of this or a pinch or that, or even sub out many key ingredients for an entirely new variation. Just don’t fall prey to common soup mistakes like not sautéing the aromatics, neglecting the stock, or skimping on the fat. Once you’ve taken your homemade soup off the heat, consider finishing it off with a squeeze of lemon to brighten up the flavors — then regular lunchtime satisfaction can be yours.
Dining and Cooking