MY previously favorite soup, before I started eating the one I’m about to introduce you to, was taught to me in Montalcino, Italy, a hilltop town in Tuscany, by a grandmother named Olga. It uses what might be considered unreasonably large amounts of olive oil, until you consider that the base of the soup is water, that the soup itself is vegan (it’s almost entirely made of fresh vegetables, along with cooked white beans, a little tomato paste, parsley and the oil), and that soup without any fat at all is not only unusual but also often tasteless. This is real cocina povera, the cooking of people so poor that neither meat nor cheese is included.

I thought the soup served to me a few months ago at Peasant, the Italian-American restaurant on Elizabeth Street, was a pretty close relative, at least in taste and texture. It had black chickpeas (yes, you can use regular chickpeas, though you can find black ones pretty easily at most well-stocked Indian markets, as they’re used in dal) and a slew of other vegetables. And it had a similar thick, stewy texture.

But as Frank de Carlo, Peasant’s chef and a friend of mine, revealed to me, the soup — Umbrian in origin — contains animal products in three forms, and each one is used judiciously and beautifully. This may not be the soup of rich people — it’s really quite primitive stuff — but it’s a far more celebratory soup than the one I described above.

There is time involved, and even a bit of work; it’s worth it. You start by browning meaty bones of veal or pork, in olive oil, of course. (Frank said that pork is more traditional; I’d add that it’s better, but that veal is lovely, too.) This is the only part of the process that requires extended attention. You simmer those bones with the pre-soaked chickpeas and the more-or-less-expected vegetables, until the meat is falling off the bones and the chickpeas are tender. This takes a long time — hours — and there’s no reason not to do it in advance. At that point, you fish out the bones and let them cool enough to shred any meat that fell off them and discard gristle, any lumps of fat and the bones.

The soup is finished with a double whammy of body and flavor: beaten eggs and grated Parmesan. I mean, really, how can you go wrong?

But it’s worth pointing out, I think, that the soup is neither a fat-bomb (I wouldn’t be surprised if it has fewer calories than Olga’s) nor one that lacks complexity. The black chickpeas themselves — smaller than the more familiar chickpeas, but quite black before cooking, which lightens them — seem smoky and earthy to me. You use, among other things, tomatoes, thyme (on one occasion, I used sage, equally nice), basil and greens (I like chard best here). And you finish it with homemade croutons, a welcome touch. It is, in short, a vegetable soup with a lot of guts.

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New research has found that consumption of increased amounts of cruciferous vegetables is associated with improved breast cancer survival rates. Other studies have suggested that cruciferous vegetables may decrease risk of many cancers. Red peppers are high in lycopene, another cancer fighting component of vegetables. Add fresh spring asparagus and you have a healthful and tasty soup.

1/2 tablespoon canola oil
1 large onion, diced
1 large roasted or fresh red pepper, diced, divided
3 cups asparagus, cut in 1' slices, divided
4 cups cauliflower florets
4 cups fat-free chicken broth
1/8 teaspoon white pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground thyme
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
In a large saucepan, heat oil. Add onion and cook until translucent. Reserve 1/2 cup red pepper and 1/2 cup asparagus tops to garnish the soup when ready to serve. Set aside.

Add remaining red peppers and asparagus to the pan. Add cauliflower and broth. Bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat. Simmer for 30 minutes or until vegetables are very tender. Using a hand held immersion blender, blend soup to desired consistency. Soup can be completely pureed or leave some vegetables chunks.

Add reserved red pepper and asparagus. Add white pepper, thyme, dry mustard, and milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook for 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add extra broth or milk if needed to thin to desired consistency.

Serves 4 for a first course soup (1 cup serving) or serves 2 for a main course soup.

Nutritional Information per serving:

Calories: 100
Fat, gm: 3

Protein, gm.: 6
Carbs, gm.: 13
Cholesterol, mg.: 4
Fiber, gm.: 4.4

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Cold cure manufacturers continue to push zinc as a cure, despite the lack of evidence.  Today, the Washington Post reported, not for the first time, that taking zinc will shorten the duration a cold by three days in adults.  Sounds pretty good!  Only it’s wrong.

The Post reporter apparently didn’t really get past the abstract for the new study, which isn’t actually a study at all, but just a review of 17 other studies.  The review appeared on May 8 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

ALL of the studies were funded by the companies that make zinc supplements, mostly large pharmaceutical companies.  (Big Pharma or Big Supp, they are often the same companies.)  Here’s a partial list of the sponsors: Warner Lambert, McNeil Consumer Products, Weider Nutrition, Truett Laboratories, Bristol Myers, Berko Ilac, and Quigley.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

One problem with the Washington Post summary is that the benefit wasn’t really three days, even if you believe the results.  Although the study looked at 17 trials, the core analysis only used eight of them, all of which used patients with naturally acquired colds.  The average benefit was 1.6 days, not 3 days, and it was highly variable.  Reuters and Fox reported the story more accurately as “one and a half days” and pointed out that the effect was just over two and a half days in adults.

Somehow, though, the benefit disappeared in children.  Could this be because children don’t care so much about telling the investigators what they want to hear?

And what about those trials that didn’t use naturally occurring colds.  As I pointed out in a recent blog post, if you look at only the studies where the researchers intentionally gave people a cold, the effect vanishes.

“The more rigorously scientific studies, where you took a group of people and gave half of them zinc and half a placebo and inoculated their nose with a cold virus, found there were no differences,” said Terence Davidson, director of the UC San Diego Nasal Dysfunction Clinic in a February interview.

None of this stops ProPhase (NasdaqGM: PRPH), maker of ColdEeze zinc products, from making this claim on their website: “Cold-EEZE® has been clinically proven to shorten the duration of the common cold by nearly half.” As evidence, their website points to three studies from 10-20 years ago.  They conveniently ignore the more recent studies that showed far less (possibly no) benefit.

The authors of the latest review article graded the quality of evidence for five different outcomes.  Their report card on these studies has one “Moderate” and four “Low” grades.  Moderate means “further research is likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and may change the estimate.  Most of the grades were “low,” which means So the authors themselves don’t really trust their own study!  In the end, they conclude that “there is only a weak rationale” to recommend zinc.  And previous studies, not funded by supplement manufacturers, showed no benefit.  Who are you going to believe? Save your money and use it to buy chicken soup instead.*

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PALM HARBOR --A woman said she almost vomited when she found a bandage in her chicken and rice soup at Leo's Italian Grill in Palm Harbor. "Oh my God," said Wan St. John. "Like, throw up, right. I'm scared."

St. John is originally from Thailand, and English is her second language. David Baier said he was eating the same soup at St. John's table. He said St. John had not yet taken a bite and was stirring her soup to cool it off, when she made the discovery. “I was unfortunate enough to taste the soup," Baier said "While she found a Band-Aid in her soup."

Baier said he took a few pictures of the bandage in the soup to document the incident. “Taking the pictures at that time, gave us evidence that this did occur inside the restaurant," he said. "It occurred at that time and we knew as soon as they came over they would want to take the soup.”The manager and owner came to the table and tried to blame the party for the bandage, according to Baier.

“I was appalled," he said. "I don’t have any incentive to put anything in my food. Especially, at the beginning of my meal."  “No, I not put nothing," said St. John. “No way, no way I put.”Baier was so upset that he called 911. We obtained a copy of that call through a public records request.

A Pinellas Sheriff's deputy responded but told Baier they don't handle those kind of calls. Baier said he then filed an online complaint with the Department of Business and Professional Regulations.

Baier’s complaint prompted a DBPR inspector to visit the restaurant on Thursday. According to the inspector’s report, he ‘did not observe any employees with cuts, burns or bandages.’“A cut’s going to heal within that time and I didn’t expect them to find somebody with a cut on their hand," Baier said. "That person may not be working, who knows?”

Leo's Italian Grill located at 33286 U.S. 19 N., was cited for 30, mostly minor, violations. One of those violations was for a cook who touched bread with his bare hands. That violation was corrected on-site when the cook put gloves on, according to the report.

The owner of the restaurant, Ilir Karruli, 42, who goes by 'Leo', told us over the phone that he and the manager apologized to the table. Karruli said he told the group that the bandage did not come from his staff.

"We were doing our best to please them but they weren't hearing it," he said. Karruli said he believes a 3-year-old boy with the group may have accidentally gotten the bandage in the soup, "The little boy was playing on the floor and all over the restaurant." Baier said there's no chance the boy's responsible for the bandage and there's a way to prove it.

“They advised that they had over 20 cameras in the restaurant and they could review them. Well, bring it on,” Baier said. "Let me see ’em. Let me see what happened at that table.”Karruli said he reviewed the surveillance video and the side of the table that St. John was sitting at was not in view of the camera.

Baier said all he wanted was for the manager to stop serving that batch of soup that night. Especially, since the pad was missing from the bandage.

“Can you please take the soup off? And they said, ‘no.’ They could potentially lose hundreds of dollars in this meal,” Baier said. “I’m not looking to sue. I don’t want any money. I just want to get this out to some of the other patrons that were there that night.”Karruli said he did throw out that batch of chicken and rice soup in an abundance of caution. 

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In the early 1980’s I was cooking on the line in a small restaurant in New York City. One of my first jobs out of cooking school, I was learning to set up my station quickly and absorb the finer points of putting out food consistently throughout dinner service. It was a tiny kitchen. The only other cook was my boss. He was a great mentor — taught me a lot and encouraged me to always challenge myself. If I didn’t know how to do something, he would put it on my to-do list the next day.

Before service one night I got a phone call from my boyfriend (now my husband). At the last minute he had been invited to go to dinner at Lutèce, Andre Soltner’s acclaimed restaurant, and wondered if I could go with him.

My boss overheard me say “I can’t go to Lutèce tonight, I have to work.”He interrupted and said “Of course you can go. You’ll learn more at Lutèce eating dinner than you will cooking here tonight.” I rushed home, changed my clothes and an hour later I was sitting in the plush dining room on East 50th Street. A dream come true for any cook, young or old.

From 1961 until he sold it in 1994, Andre Soltner and his wife, Simone, were Lutèce. They visited every table providing a warm atmosphere that was unusual for a formal French restaurant at the time.  In the three decades they owned the restaurant they only missed about five services. It had a four-star rating and was recognized as one of the best, if not the best, restaurants in the United States. He served classic French food with many dishes from his native Alsace.

Fast forward 30 years and this past Saturday night I got the chance to cook a dinner with Andre Soltner. If you had told me when I was first starting out I would have the opportunity to spend an evening in the kitchen cooking with him I would have shook my head in disbelief.

The occasion was the New York Culinary Experience sponsored by New York Magazine and The International Culinary Center. Chef Soltner’s dish was veal cheeks with spatzle. The base of the sauce was a textbook perfect, beautiful veal stock he had made.  The flavor was rich but not too gelatinous and gummy as many veal stocks can be. The color was a gorgeous deep dark mahogany. The veal cheeks melted in your mouth.

The other chefs preparing courses were New York chefs. Wylie Dufresne from WD-50 prepared slow cooked trout with a light delicious potato puree and Michael Tropeano from Silhouette served sautéed foie gras with pineapple several ways. The acidity of the pineapple produced the perfect balance to the rich foie gras.

For dessert, since I was cooking with Chef Soltner a French chef of the old school, I chose something classic.  I made Rhubarb Apple Charlottes and served them with Caramel Crème Fraîche.  And to my delight he loved them. Working side by side with Chef Soltner will be one of my culinary highlights, just as eating in his restaurant was so long ago.

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Alec Boulieris is one of the chefs who regularly makes this Mexican bean soup for both Chocolate Fish and Chocolate Frog cafes on Wellington's Miramar Peninsula.

Up till now, Chocolate Frog, located in Palmers Garden Centre, has done the baking and food preparation for both cafes, as it has been the only one with a kitchen.

Chocolate Fish at Shelley Bay has a barbecue, and its chefs are typically outside no matter the weather, cooking everything from whitebait fritters to sausages or fish.

However, owners Penny and John Pennington are in the process of opening a kitchen there too. Says Penny Pennington: "This is one of our most requested soups."

MEXICAN BEAN SOUP

Makes 4 servings

1 tbsp oil

1 onion finely diced

2 cloves garlic

1/4 tsp chilli flakes (you may wish to add more)

4 carrots diced

4 sticks celery sliced

2 x 400g tins tomatoes

2 cups vegetable stock

2 capsicums chopped (red and green)

1 bunch fresh coriander finely chopped – use both leaf and stalk

1 tin kidney beans drained

2 tsp brown sugar

Salt and pepper to taste

Chipotle Tabasco to taste

Heat oil, sweat onions and garlic. Add carrots, celery and chilli flakes and cook until tender. Add tomatoes, vegetable stock, capsicums, beans and coriander. Bring to boil, then simmer for 30 minutes. Add brown sugar. Season with salt and pepper and chipotle – to give the soup a smokey flavour. Garnish with sour cream and chopped coriander.

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Mostly people think that a meal can only be competed if there is a delicious dessert after eating heavy foods. It very true that people really love dessert and we can never deny that having a delicious dessert can make our meal valuable. However, the fact that most desserts out there are not something sugar and fat and as a result, you should only eat desserts which are good for your health. This is even more important if you want to lose weight.

As a matter of fact, you may want to know what kinds of desserts are considered healthier and good to our body. So you have to be careful in choosing desserts that have low fat content which is good to our health. In most cases, you will tend to eat twice as much of the dessert if it is low fat dessert. In this case you will only eat more fat than you should since a lot of overweight people will fall into this corner because they think that it is low fat and they can eat more. However, you should never do that or else you will not be able to lose weight.

Let us talk about some healthy dessert to lose weight. Fresh fruits are certainly a good dessert and good to our heath as well. For example, you can eat apples and oranges as your dessert. Melons are also very good. They are normally tasty but there are people who will also put slices of bananas into orange juice. This is an excellent kind of dessert because the flavor of the orange juice and bananas are different. It creates a wonderful new flavor when they are mix together. However, you may also think in getting a god blender in order to make healthy and excellent desserts. You can easily make milk shakes with a blender and you can put some bananas as well as strawberries with milk and of course you use low fat milk. By this you can make an excellent low fat and healthy dessert with these fruits and the taste is great too. 

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Oblivious to their crumbling surroundings, they fill the pot with water and bring it to a simmer by the side of a busy road, stirring in pasta to feed those driven to poverty by Greece's debt crisis. They are stepping in where the politicians have failed, they say, even though they, like one in five Greeks and half of all the nation's young people, are unemployed.

Every day, through an informal group they call "O Allos Anthropos", or The Fellow Man, they feed all comers - mostly immigrants and others without jobs - thanks to donations, whether from a pensioner handing over half a loaf or market vendors stumping up unsold vegetables. A few blocks away, workers are building a stage to hold campaign rallies for the May 6 elections. The pasta crew shake their heads in scorn.

"Those who are running in the election will just be wasting money to make campaign posters. They should be ashamed of themselves," said Constantinos Polychronopoulos, 47, a jobless marketing man in a black apron, as he added zucchinis and onions to the mix.

"They have never gone hungry in their lives."Like many of the people they feed, he lost his job in a deep recession, now into its fifth year, that has claimed hundreds of thousands of jobs. Many in this new army of the destitute, angry with the tax hikes and wage cuts that were a condition of the international bailout that saved the country from bankruptcy, are likely to abstain or back small parties opposed to austerity measures.

"The new poor will vote in great anger and disappointment for smaller or protest parties," said Costas Panagopoulos, at ALCO pollsters. "It's a vote against the system."

The election will decide who steers the nation through the tough times after an emergency government secured the rescue funds from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, but it is not expected to change much.

Parties who object to the bailout also mostly object to each other, so there is no prospect of them coming together to rule. That leaves a renewal of the fragile coalition between the conservative New Democracy party and PASOK, the socialists, as the only viable option. It is likely to hold only a weak majority, while the growing ranks of the disaffected split their vote between as many as 10 opposition parties.

HUNGRY
The bitterness towards politicians was shared not far away in a quiet churchyard, where a few dozen men and women queued up clutching empty plastic bags and boxes. They arrived one by one at the yellow-stone Agia Zonis Orthodox church to pick up a warm meal of potatoes and peas to take home to their families. There were no smiles, barely any talking and even less hope.

"I will be homeless in a few days. Does any politician have a solution to that?" said Costas Smaragdis, 60, a carpenter whose public sector job disappeared in 2010 when the state stopped renewing temporary contracts to save money.

He has just found a job at a funeral home, but that pays only 400 euros a month, not enough to avoid eviction. He will vote for a small party - it's his "democratic duty" - but believes the election will solve nothing. Most of those gathered in the churchyard, old and young, were shocked to find themselves in such circumstances.

They used to be taxi drivers, shop owners or public servants, before their lives were sucked into the country's deepest economic crisis since World War II. Now the basics are beyond their means.

After collecting food, a young mother also facing eviction took the black-robed priest aside and asked him softly if he could help her and her two children find a place to stay.

NO HOPE
The Agia Zonis church has seen the numbers coming for food more than double to over 100 a day since the crisis began. Three quarters of Greeks say they are struggling to keep up with bills, a Eurostat poll showed.

Pensioner Costas Yiakouvakis had owned a shop and driven a cab in his 67 years. Now his social benefits are lower than the rent for the flat he shares with his unemployed son.

He is angry to find himself depending on charity to eat. "I am disgusted by politicians. I will not vote," he said. He was once a Socialist party official, too, but lost faith in politics when wages and benefits were slashed to plug the fiscal gap. Pensions have been cut by an average 25 percent since the beginning of the crisis.

Average private sector wages have also tumbled, falling by nearly a quarter last year alone. "There can be no hope from politicians, even after the elections," he said. "I have no reason to go vote."

He knows that whoever governs will have to find another 11 billion euros of spending cuts to satisfy lenders, and the economy, 16 percent smaller than when the crisis began, will shrink again this year and next, and maybe beyond. (Reuters)

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Salt

3 cups lightly packed shaved bonito flakes

3/4 cup soy sauce, preferably light (not low-sodium but usukuchi)

1/4 cup mirin

2 tablespoons sugar

1 sheet nori

4 eggs

About 1 pound soba noodles

1/2 cup chopped scallions.

1. Heat the oven (or a toaster oven) to 300. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. In another large pot, bring 10 cups of water to a boil; stir in the bonito flakes, turn off the heat and steep for 10 minutes, no more. Strain into a large bowl; discard the flakes.

2. Put the soy sauce, mirin, sugar and a pinch of salt in the pot you used to make the broth; bring to a boil. Let it boil for a minute, then add the bonito stock; bring it back to a boil, and transfer 6 cups to a separate pot and keep hot. (This will be the broth for the soup; what remains is for cooking the eggs.) Toast the nori in the oven until slightly crisp, about 5 minutes. Cut into quarters and set aside. Crack the eggs into a bowl or a large measuring cup with a spout and beat until frothy.

3. Cook the noodles in the boiling water until just tender, 3 to 4 minutes, then drain, quickly rinse under cold running water and drain again. Put a portion of noodles into each of four soup bowls. Using a circular pouring motion, slowly stream the eggs, 1/3 at a time, into the smaller amount of boiling broth; as the first third sets, add the second; as the second sets, add the third, then turn off the heat and let the eggs sit for a minute. In the meantime ladle the stock (the one without the eggs in it) over the noodles. Use a slotted spoon to scoop a portion of the egg into each bowl, garnish with the nori and scallions and serve.

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Rich but light? Creamy but not heavy with calories? Can such opposites be reconciled in one dish? It is possible, and not even difficult. “Cream” soups made with low-fat milk, a touch of butter and bit of flour can still have the luscious silky “mouthfeel” that makes a creamy soup especially satisfying – but without the heaviness you regret later.

Asparagus is what made me want to explore this happy meeting of opposites recently. Or, to be more precise, asparagus I’d badly overcooked. I didn’t want to waste it, so making it into a pureed soup was a logical next step.

Most vegetable based pureed soups are creamy, and thus not the healthiest of options (especially in spring, when heavy, fatty soups seem less appealing). But that reliable friend of healthy alternatives, Cooking Light, has a version that provides a lovely compromise. Leeks or carrots work, too, but I’ve only just used up the forlornly mushy asparagus and haven’t tried the other versions.

I loosely followed the Cooking Light recipe below (linked here), and came up with a delicious, delightfully easy soup. Searching in vain for nutmeg, I substituted allspice. I used dried thyme instead of fresh (accidentally – it still wasn’t my most careful cooking day). And the milk I had was 2% instead of 1%. Given that I was so off in my cooking that day, the success of the soup proves anyone can do it, easily.

Cream of Asparagus Soup
3 cups (1/2-inch) sliced asparagus (about 1 pound)
2 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
3/4 teaspoon fresh thyme, divided
1 bay leaf
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 cups 1% low-fat milk
Dash of ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons butter
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind

Combine asparagus, broth, 1/2 teaspoon thyme, bay leaf, and garlic in a large saucepan over medium-high heat; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer 10 minutes. Discard bay leaf.
Place asparagus mixture in a blender; process until smooth. (I used an immersion blender, which makes it even easier.)
Place flour in pan. Gradually add the milk, stirring with a whisk until blended.
Add puréed asparagus and ground nutmeg; stir to combine. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat, and stir in 1/4 teaspoon thyme, butter, salt, and lemon rind.

Variations:
Cream of Carrot Soup: Substitute 2 cups baby carrots for asparagus. Omit bay leaf. Yield 4 servings (serving size: 1 cup).
Cream of Leek Soup: Substitute 3 cups sliced leek for asparagus. Substitute 3/4 teaspoon rosemary for thyme. Omit bay leaf.

For a less creamy asparagus soup experience, try the recipe Higgins restaurant’s Greg Higgins shared with Edible Portland magazine. His Potato, Morel and Asparagus Soup uses a miso broth as its base and pureed potato to add the creamy texture; the asparagus (joined by kale) floats in one-inch chunks. Here’s the link.

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