Soup – Orangette

October 3

Molly — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 17:06:20 +0000

I started my Monday by listening to Blood Orange until my ears fell off, which was nice. Then my friend Jenny told me to watch this (old-news) video (that I somehow had never seen before), and with that, my week is off and running. Hi to you. Now, business: 1. The Guardian kindly invited me to write about a food that evokes home, and I wrote about a dead-simple, bare-cupboard soup that was first made for me by my aunt Tina. That’s her below, on the right, living the early-eighties hot tub life with me and my cousins. Most people thinks that June gets her hair color and texture from Brandon, but world, let it be known that I think she’s got my texture…

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That January thing

Molly — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 20:52:29 +0000

Split pea, the ugliest soup! The food whose appearance most closely approximates toxic waste water! The miraculous substance capable of making a home kitchen feel like a military chow hall! Capable of making a person who has never used the words “chow hall” in her entire life suddenly feel like Chow Hall is what she will call her vast, sweeping estate in the English countryside, when she somehow inherits a vast, sweeping estate in the English countryside! Split pea, a voyage for the mind! I have written before about split pea soup. It is apparently a January thing for me: I last wrote about it four years ago this month. Until yesterday, in fact, I wasn’t going to write about this particular version,…

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Doop dee doo

Molly — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 18:53:00 +0000

A couple of years ago, late one winter morning, we were out running errands in the neighborhood, and we stopped into La Carta de Oaxaca, on Ballard Avenue, for an early lunch. June was still in a high chair and not yet fully proficient at chewing anything with crunch, so we ordered their sopa de pollo for her, a rich, brothy chicken soup served in a bowl big enough for mixing cake batter, with the meat still on the bone and big hunks of zucchini, carrot, and chayote. I shredded the meat onto a plate and chopped up the vegetables with the side of my spoon. She ate with her hands, the juices running fast down her forearms, which were then still…

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Even on a good day

Molly — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 00:42:00 +0000

My mother has been in town since early this month. We don’t often get this kind of extended time in the same place, and I’d forgotten what a good cooking collaborator she is. She makes sure our wine glasses are never empty. She cleans up as she goes. She doesn’t mind deveining shrimp! I could go on and on. I bow down. At my reading in Madison last week, someone asked me to talk about a few of my favorite cookbooks. The ones I mentioned were The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, All About Braising, various Nigel Slater titles, and Every Grain of Rice, and because I am long-winded, my answer wrapped up, blah dee blah blah, about twenty-five minutes later, on the topic of…

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Right now

Molly — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 02:10:00 +0000

Hello from a train en route to Portland, Oregon! I’ll be at Jim Dixon’s Real Good Food olive oil warehouse tomorrow, Monday, from 3 to 4, if you’d like to stop by for some olive oil and a book, and then I’ll be reading at Powell’s on Burnside tomorrow night at 7:30. And then, on the way home, because I am an unstoppable book-signing machine, I’ll be swinging by the Bayview School of Cooking, in Olympia, for an event at 6:00 pm. If you’re in the area(s), come on out. Now, in the meantime, I promised you the recipe for June’s new favorite thing, which, now that I think about it, may also be my new favorite thing. The thing in question…

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Approximately a soup

Molly — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 10:27:00 +0000

First: RING THE BELLS! I HAVE A NEW CAMERA! Here at Wizenberg-Pettit World Headquarters, we are excited. And grabby. Second: we are also into soup, apparently, which is why I’m going to tell you about yet another, our third soup in a row. I am so, so sorry. This particular soup, however, is only approximately a soup. I don’t know that I would have even thought to call it a soup, actually, except for the fact that its author, the wonderful, recently departed Marcella Hazan, called it that. She called it Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup. To me, it’s closer to a risotto, a risotto that starts with an entire head of Savoy cabbage, shredded and cooked very gently in…

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Please consider

Molly — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 17:46:00 +0000

So, how bored will you be if we talk about soup again? Ham Bone, Greens, and Bean Soup? I didn’t set out to write about this one – I made it mostly as a vehicle for a ham bone that I put in our freezer last April, forgot, and then triumphantly unearthed the week before last – but June liked it so much that she did her special high chair “dance,” swaying from side to side and grunting, so I changed my mind. Swaying and grunting: strong praise from young June E. A. Pettit! (Also, Swaying and Grunting: what I will call my debut album when I launch my third career as a down-and-out country singer.) I know that it’s almost…

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But the soup

Molly — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 22:39:00 +0000

Would you look at that! While trying, and failing, to start this post about squash soup, I accidentally ate an entire chocolate chip cookie dough ball from the Delancey walk-in! Let’s get right to it. I’ve been wanting to tell you about this soup for more than a week now, but a certain crazy-haired dancing maniac of a young person is getting a molar, or something, and has been waking up veeeerrrrrry early and then spending a large portion of the day crawl-running around the house/park/bathtub/Delancey, panting, grunting, and generally looking and acting a lot like Animal. After she goes to bed, I make myself a drink, warm up some soup, open a book, close the book, and sleep like a dead person.…

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It’s my specialty

Molly — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 23:01:00 +0000

Hi. I am writing this from my in-laws’ kitchen. Brandon is out on a bike ride with his dad. THEY’RE BOTH WEARING SPANDEX!!!! It’s a great day to be in New Jersey. Before the holiday sets in, while it’s still relatively quiet in the house, I wanted to share a recipe with you. I should say first that it’s not for Thanksgiving. I know you already have plenty of that. What we have here is something for this weekend, or next week. More specifically, what we have here is the soup that I will be eating over and over and over again, lunch after lunch and dinner after dinner, for months to come. The New Winter Favorite. I can tell…

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Easy enough

Molly — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 04:41:00 +0000

We moved last Tuesday. I’m going to repeat that, because it sounds so unlikely, so inadvisable, that I know you might not believe me. I hardly believe me. But we did. We moved. Brandon is starting a second business, and I’m trying to start a second book, so, you know, la la la, let’s move. We’ve had worse ideas, but I can’t think of them right now. This is the last picture taken in our old kitchen. Our old kitchen, our old place, our old duplex, where we lived for almost five years, on a noisy street with the nocturnal neighbor who does outdoor home improvement projects by flashlight. I will miss that place, but only a little, and never…

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