Granted, not all the wine went into the soup...

Friends ask me, from time to time, if I’m still making soup. Well, yes…but it’s a bit more haphazard than it was during the Year of Soup. Actually, it’s lot more haphazard, which happens to be a lot truer to the spirit of soup than obsessing (though I can’t say I ever really have) over anything like a specific soup.

Soup isn’t about a set of ingredients, it’s about making the most out of the ingredients you have.

Like the soup that’s simmering on the stove.

My gal’s been away all month, and comes home in two days. I realized it was my last chance to clean out the freezer. So I made soup.

The hard part was identifying the many frozen tubs of stuff to come up with a subset that would go together. I actually managed to salvage most of it, though a few blocks of something beige went into the grinder. From the rest of it, plus a few things hanging around the kitchen, I turned out a pretty respectable Beef bourguignon.

Which makes perfect sense, since this is a traditional French peasant dish designed to make tough beef edible, and has only gradually become fancy food.

There is considerable irony in the realization that what can be found going to waste in the average American kitchen makes food that much of the world would be thrilled to have. Actually, the bourguiggnon was good enough for anyone to be happy to have it show up.

Beef bourguignon

Ingredients (found abandoned in the freezer)

• What looked to be half a diced onion and some shitake mushrooms, well past their expiration date.
• A block of something brown that could have been chocolate pudding, but turned out to be beef gravy.
• 1/3 of  pound of beef chuck that I defrosted for 2 minutes in the microwave, then cubed into 1/2 cubes.
• About a cup of something red. I’m pretty sure it was a block of frozen chopped tomatoes.
• half a cup of chopped celery that was getting limp.
• A handful of pasta, some spiral, some bowtie.
• 2/3 of a cup of Charles Shaw Merlot that had been sitting around for two weeks, but hadn’t turned into vinegar.
• Some thyme, rosemary, and a few bay leaves and some coarse pepper grinding.

I tossed the frozen onions and mushrooms into a saucepan and cooked off the ice that had formed around them until it was pretty much gone, then added a splash of olive oil and cooked them until they softened up, and took them out of the pot.

Then I added another splash of olive oil and sauteed the beef, trying in vain to get a little browning going. After a few minutes the beef was pretty well cooked and I gave up, adding the onions and mushrooms back in.

About now I added the wine, a bit of water, the frozen blocks of gravy and tomatoes and let the whole thing come to a simmer.

I added some more water to keep it from being sludge, threw in the handful of pasta, spices, and ground pepper…and put a lid on.

I let the whole thing simmer gently for an hour, then added about a half cup of water to make it more like soup.

Imagine my surprise when it came out pretty darn good. Go figure.

Now I’ll have to go buy a some fancy French bread to go with it.