Finding Solace in Soup and Reviving Stale Bread

June 9, 2009 3:57 pm

Finding Solace in Soup and Reviving Stale Bread

Although living alone brings me solace in knowing that never again will I have to clean somebody else's hair out of the shower drain, being cooped up in the house, sick as could be, with no human contact for several days can be quite lonely. It can also cause a fresh loaf of bread to go stale. My cold killed my appetite and without roommates to dig in, after a few days, the Ciabatta turned into a rock. Not one to waste food, I searched for something to do with the hardened half loaf, as a sandwich was no longer a possibility.

Typing "stale bread" into the Food Network's database gave me more options than I was anticipating, as recipes for everything from stuffing to fish cakes to bread pudding popped up on my screen. Already overwhelmed by my sniffles, I was in no mood to sift through tons of recipes for things that I did not have the energy to read, let alone walk to the market and purchase. Relief came in the form of Molto Mario, one of my favorite TV chefs, and his tomato bread soup.

Mario's "Pappa al Pomodoro" is a simple dish cooked with ripe tomatoes and stale bread, which seemed like a perfect remedy for whatever bug had bitten me. In fact, since the only chicken soup I will eat is my ma's, the tomato bread soup was the only remedy at my disposal. With that, I made a grocery list, took some more cough medicine and ventured out of my apartment for the first time in three days.

Mmmm, fresh air. Well, City air, which is almost the same thing. The trip outside did me some good, but I was so exhausted when I returned home that my soup had to be pushed off for another day.

Feeling a little better the next day, I decided that it was time to get out of bed and rejoin the rest of the healthy world. It took most of the day to convince myself of this, so around dinner time I officially plied myself out of bed and threw my sheets in the laundry to prevent me from crawling back in. Once the spin cycle was started, I began prepping my kitchen for soup.

I sawed the Ciabatta bread into bite-sized pieces and set chunks aside until I was ready for them. I sliced the bread first because it was incredibly messy and I did not want the crumbs to stick to my counters once the juices from the tomatoes had been released. Next, I diced a small onion and added it to a hot frying pan with olive oil and garlic to cook until it was translucent. I dusted the pan with some hot red pepper flakes to give the soup a little punch and to heat up my insides to maybe kill off the remaining germs. Once the onion was cooked, I added about two pounds of diced plum tomatoes to the sautè pan and set them to simmer. The recipe said to remove the skins and seeds, but I did not feel like being bothered, so I just left them as is and hoped for the best. The tomatoes cooked for a few minutes and then I added the bread, allowing the mixture to fuse together over a moderate flame. Just before the soup was good to go, I mixed in a few fresh basil leaves and a mound of Pecorino Romano. Mario's recipe called for only a drizzle of cheese as a garnish, but that is nowhere near enough for me, so I switched it up a bit. After all, if cheese could not make me feel better, chances are nothing could.

I must say, it was not the most visually appealing dish I've ever eaten, but it certainly did perk me up a bit. The heat from the red pepper flakes was the first taste to hit my tongue. The fiery flakes sent a wave of warmth throughout my body which was absorbed by the juicy chunks of bread. In fact, the bread was so tender that had I not known it to have been hard and stale, I would never have guessed. The skin and seeds that I was too lazy to remove from the tomatoes were thankfully unnoticeable. The cheese melted beautifully, coating each spoonful of tomatoes with its deliciously pungent flavor, making me instantly feel a little better. The freshness that came from the basil leaves complimented the abundance of tomatoes, giving the soup an overall lightness despite the half loaf of Ciabatta bread that was in the mix.

I considered this illness and this meal a lesson learned—keep leftover homemade soup in the freezer for a sick day, as your ma's chicken soup may not always be within reach.

—Alexis Popov