Tuscan Stoup

A few weeks back we were at Sally's and the topic of “stoup”came up. We understood from Sally that a stoup was a conglomeration of a stew/soup that was made adding various ingredients during the day to a broth. It was one of those kind of favorite dishes you remember from childhood that your mom used to make. Not only that, Sally had found recipe to make it on www.houndstoothgourmet.com.

So for our next soup day Mike looked over the recipe and decided this would be a good stoup to make especially as this one called for Italian sausage , one of his favorite items. It certainly had many other items in it like kale, Parmesan cheese. beans  and tomatoes and small shell pasta. You probably could add any other items that you had on hand to make it a real stoup. Mike bought Andouille sausage and said invite "Someone who likes spicy food to help me eat it because you know you won't eat much if it's spicy!!"

Sally and Jo couldn't come so we asked Ros and she was delighted to come. The stoup was indeed spicy but if you didn't eat the sausage ( me) ,just fine. The kale had almost disappeared being one of those veggies that goes from a hugh bunch to almost nothing when cooked.We all thought this was an excellent stoup and we can see why it was a favorite. Mike gave it a 9 , Ros a 10 and I gave it an 8 ( because of the spiciness and overall look- a bit messy.The texture and broth was lovely.

We had a very nice white wine Bare Foot Pinon Grigio with it compliments of Ros.

To eat with the stoup I made a recipe given to me by the Empty Bowls organization. It is in their special cook book called “Soup and Quick bread recipes”. Just the thing for us.I chose Southwestern three cheese biscuits and these came out as an excellent side biscuit, soft and fluffy and just lovely . Believe me you didn't need butter with these biscuits. They do need to be eaten just cooked as we tried the one we had left later in the day and that was not so good.