What can you do with four carrots, three sausages, two potatoes, a cup of leftover marinara sauce, some chicken broth, and a takeout box of steamed rice? I checked the fridge and freezer shelves again to be sure I hadn’t overlooked anything promising and found frozen bagels and orange juice. Those would not be helpful. Family had gathered to welcome our newest member, baby Max, then a few days old.
Usually at our daughter Lucy’s house, she’s the one to provide dinner — and it’s always wonderful, but now she was occupied with the new baby. Somehow everyone seemed to be looking at me as they asked, “What should we do?”
It was late, and all the markets were closed, the decent nearby takeout places as well. I’d have to improvise. At least there was olive oil, plus garlic and herbs, on hand. It would be a pot of soup. Setting the garlic to heat in the oil, I started slicing the chicken and apple sausage. Lucy appeared in the kitchen alcove.
“What are you doing?”
“Making soup.”
“With what?”
I enumerated. “It will be good,” I added — as much to convince myself as her. “A rustic farmhouse soup like our ancestors ate.” She looked doubtful. I did wonder if the apple in the sausage would impart an odd taste. We are a family who loves to cook and savors good food, and evidently there were standards to be upheld even in a semi-emergency like this.
The soup would need a point of view. The available ingredients suggested Provence to me, so I chose thyme, oregano, and basil from the spice shelf. There were no onions, so I used twice as much garlic as might be usual to compensate.
From prep time to finish, the soup came together in 30 minutes, including a gentle 20-minute simmer. It came out thick, more like a stew, on account of the potatoes and the rice contributing their starches, and its full, rich flavor surprised me. We called it “lucky soup.”
The approach works well with many other vegetables and sources of protein and with various flavor profiles — I’ve used spicy Italian sausage and added a teaspoon of crushed fennel seeds and a pinch of red pepper, for example. But I’m partial to this one for the memories. We scraped the pot clean that night, and Lucy had two large servings. Years later, when we were working on our $5 Foodie cookbook, she wanted this soup to be included.
I think of our sense of purpose in writing that book whenever I make any version of lucky soup. Among our hopes was to help our fellow home cooks avoid those last-minute nothing-for-dinner shopping trips that, besides being stressful, always seem to mean returning home with necessities plus numerous nonessentials and treats.
With that in mind, the last time I made this soup I resisted shopping for it, instead making it only from pantry and fridge remnants. Then I tallied how much I’d saved by using things up and not running to the store. I figured $22 and then made a food-related donation in that amount.
In our Barnstable neighborhood, that meant giving to the Family Pantry of Cape Cod, which in partnership with the Greater Boston Food Bank distributes food to more than 20 food pantries across the Cape. SKIP, the Soup Kitchen in Provincetown, and the 246 Community Kitchen in Wellfleet both also come to mind. SKIP provides free hot lunches every weekday (and packs things up for Saturday meals, too), while 246 does weekly suppers on Tuesday evenings. These are places that provide both nourishment and community. In this way, I figure, lucky soup offers goodness twice over.
FARMHOUSE SAUSAGE AND VEGETABLE SOUP
Makes 6 servings
3 precooked sausages
2 Tbsp. olive oil
6 garlic cloves, minced
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
2/3 cup water
4 carrots, halved and sliced lengthwise
1 cup tomato sauce
2 potatoes, cut in bite-size pieces
1/3 cup white rice, uncooked*
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. basil
1 tsp. thyme
Salt and pepper
* If you have cooked rice on hand, you can substitute one cup for the 1/3 cup of uncooked rice and omit the 2/3 cup of water.
- Slice the sausages into 1/4-inch rounds. Heat the oil in a medium-size pot until it shimmers and add the sausage slices. Sauté them until lightly browned, about 3 minutes.
- Add all the other ingredients to the pot along with salt and pepper to taste and the optional fennel and red pepper, if using. Bring the soup to a good simmer. Cover the pot, lower the heat, and simmer slowly until the vegetables are tender and the soup is nicely thickened, about 20 minutes. If it seems too thick, add a little extra water. The soup also benefits from “resting” — sitting off the heat for 5-10 minutes before serving — but this isn’t required.
- Taste, adjust seasoning, and soup’s on.
