Friday, July 20, 2007

Presto Pasta Night #21

With a chill in the air and winter well and truly in force, for this week's Presto Pasta night I've decided to make a comforting soup using Quadratini

Quadratini

which are these tiny squares of egg noodle pasta.

If they aren't cute enough I'm doubling up by using micro herbs

micro_herbs.jpg

On the left is Watercress and on the right is Chervil - they are sold in small pots and you basically just trim off the quantity you wish to use. If you grow your own herbs then consider using them when they are still young rather than waiting for them to fully mature.

The idea of this soup is quite simple but I think, quite soothing. Just cook the pasta in good chicken stock, home made for the best result and when it's tender pour it over a bed of cut micro herbs.

See, I said it was simple.

Quadratini and Micro herb Soup

Quadratini and Micro Herb Soup

Quadratini
chicken stock
Watercress and Chervil Micro Herbs, or a mix of your favourite herb leaves

Place the stock onto a medium heat and allow to come to near boiling point, add the pasta and stir well. Cook for about 5 minutes and then turn off the heat and cover the pot - the pasta will continue to cook in the residual heat.

Meanwhile, cut the desired amount of watercress and chervil - rinse and dry well before placing in the bottom of your serving bowl.

bowl

As you can see the herbs take up about a third of the dish.

Taste the soup and season with salt and freshly ground white pepper - if needed, re-heat it to come to serving temperature and then just pour it over the herbs.

Serve at once.

Quadratini with Micro Herb Soup

It's best if the soup is not boiling hot, just pleasantly warm as you don't want to shock the herbs with boiling soup, you just their flavours to seep into the stock.

You could take this premise and use Asian herbs like Vietnamese mint and coriander, lemongrass and ginger, add fresh chilli for a little heat.

Tagged with

13 comments

  1. We finally have been having some warm summer weather here, so this soup will have to wait for one of the usual rainy, misty days I've been noticing in Nova Scotia.

    Thanks for sharing with Presto Pasta Nights. It looks lovely.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi, I'm reading you via the Australian Blogs Community at Bumpzee, on the RSS feed. Just dropping by to welcome you to the Australian Blogs Community, and to let you know I have just updated the Australian Blogs Community HTML links list file to include your blog, if you want to put it on your blog you can get a copy of it here -

    http://fraudstars.info/~snoskred/aussieatoz.txt - A to Z
    http://fraudstars.info/~snoskred/aussieztoa.txt - Z to A (The down-under version!)

    The list is updated weekly to include new blogs.

    In case you didn't know, anytime you post the first 250 characters go out on the RSS feed, so I'll be reading more from you soon. :) and I've updated my sidebar to the new list, so I'm linking to you now. I also mention you on Sunday in my weekly wrap up post. ;)

    Once again, Welcome to the Australian Blogs Community!

    Snoskred - has a new home at -
    http://www.snoskred.org/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Ruth, good to see you are finally enjoying some better weather.

    Hi Snoskred and thank you for the welcome - I look forward to catching up with my fellow oz bloggers!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can't get over your beautiful photography. Everything looks delectable!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Its not often that I think a soup is cute - but yours certainly is! Looks delicious, too!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousJuly 21, 2007

    Awesome! I love these tiny squared egg noodles! I love the herbs you've added to it. Love your recipe!

    Paz

    ReplyDelete
  7. Haalo, you know I like cute stuff. I've not seen micro herbs but now I won't rest till I find some! Plus, it's too cold to go out to the garden to pick herbs, so it would be good to have some herbs indoors.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousJuly 21, 2007

    :O looks great..
    But am a veggieee..
    :"(

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks Alisha!

    Thanks Katie - the chicken bowl helps in the cute factor ;)

    Thanks Paz!

    Thanks Nora - your best bet might be a specialist veg retailer, I also recall seeing micro coriander and cress I'm guessing I see what the restaurants haven't bought that week.

    Thanks Vish - you could just use vegetable stock.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousJuly 22, 2007

    As usual, lovely recipe...and I love the fact we share seasons! with all those berries in the blogsphere Iwas feeling a little depressed =)
    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks Sil - I felt all misty when all I saw all those cherry recipes appearing and there's still months to go before are in season here.

    ReplyDelete
  12. AnonymousJuly 24, 2007

    wanna say great posts you've got. found some posts in this site definitely worth adding to my bookmarks. thanks, keep it up.

    jay
    philippine recipes

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks Ajay - happy to hear you are enjoying the site.

    ReplyDelete

© Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once | All rights reserved.
BLOG TEMPLATE HANDCRAFTED BY pipdig