Italian Wedding Soup - Around the Kitchen Table

Hi, hi, hi, Chef Dennis. Now I'm Chef Dennis. Hi everyone, I'm Chef Dennis and welcome to Around the Kitchen Table. And you know, I guess I'm still a little excitable and nervous. I was just talking with my co-host Susan Sarah about my wedding. And first of all, let's do this to show you there's something new on my head.

Oh yes, love it, love it. Boy, that looks great on you. Looks great on you. Yes, tell me, let's jump right in. And we were talking a little in the green room, we're going to have a wonderful appropriate meal today, which is Italian wedding soup. But come on, fill us in on the details. And how was the day? We were all thinking of you.

The day was great. You know, I got dressed, Lisa spent Thursday night at a friend's house. We started the festivities off with a cruise in Epcot Lagoon where we watched the fireworks from a boat there. Our neighbor's a captain, and he got us a boat for the night. So that was really nice. We got things rolling, and then I dropped her off at her friend's house and went home. Getting dressed the day of, I looked pretty darn good with all the weight I've lost. I had sent her— she was panicking. Well, I, first of all, I stopped to get her flowers., and I stop at the florist and they bring out the 3 bouquets for the bride and the maid of honor and the roses that I thought were for me and my brother, and I don't see a bouquet for her. Oh boy. I went, where's her bouquet? And she looked at me and she goes, she didn't order one. And I'm going, I'm panicking. I'm thinking, oh my God, oh my God. I'm looking in the box, we're gonna make one real quick. And I call her and I said, you know, they don't have a bouquet. And a friend answered because she wasn't taking calls at that point and said, no, Disney's providing the bouquet.

Okay.

She goes, yeah, she said Disney was providing the bouquet. And when you couldn't have told me that. Oh my God. So that was my first little mini heart attack for the day. And, but everything, you know, they, they run a good show, they know what they're doing, they have you timed well. The minister was phenomenal.

Oh, how so?

He was just so reassuring. It was the first time we met him. We hired— he was one of Disney's wedding officiants, and we had heard so many good things about him. His name is Kevin Knox, and he's in the area. He had that calming presence very good-looking, happy man, dressed impeccably. He wanted to know if we wanted robes. I said, "No, this suit's fine. That's what I'm used to as a minister, from my ministers anyway." That was fine, but it was like he would lead me. He told me what to do. He goes, "Just keep holding her hands and smile." Through it he goes, "Keep smiling, keep smiling," under his breath. No one could hear but me. He'd tell me what to do. He was just He came in before we went out and he grabbed a tissue and he goes, "Here, if she starts crying," he goes, "Dab, don't pull, dab." So it's like, you know, he was really, really, you know, gave us a breath mint. He goes, "It's not a hint, just a mint." He just really led us through everything very well, commanded everyone's presence while at the same time being very, you know, just did a really nice job with the ceremony.

That's so nice. And then you moved on to the reception, and how was that reception?

The people— it was at the Bohemian in Celebration, which is part of the Grand Bohemian chain, which is a Marriott chain, which I did not know until a few days prior. And let me tell you, for a corporation, they were phenomenal. I would not have expected— knowing that ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have thought to use them, but I would recommend them to anyone. The people in that hotel were phenomenal.

That's so good to hear.

The woman that was with us from the moment I walked in, Jackie, until the moment we checked out was there for us with everything, every need, everything. You know, they comped us a room for the night we were there. After it was over, I went back and said, I got stuff that I have to put in the room. She goes, I took care of that for you. I moved everything to your room for you. We went in there and they had laid the robes out on the king-size bed and a heart with rose petals, and she had left us a card and little chocolates.

You know, that is so important. That's such a lesson to brands of any size, and I'm convinced that this type of service, it comes from the top. It comes from the culture from the top, you know, from people who care, truly care about their clients, care about their employees. And care about the experience. You can't have that otherwise. If you have a toxic culture, it will feed throughout the corporation. So whether it's the corporation at large, whether it's the management of this particular venue, it's wonderful to hear, and it sounds like it has gone throughout your experience at this place. It was.

I mean, they knew us at the valet. They knew we had gotten married. They were there the next day when they got the car. He goes, "I remember it was a red SUV. Now, which one was it?" Now, he remembered details. I walked out in the morning. Lisa had forgotten to pack a comb or a brush, so it's the first time I could actually say my wife and mean it. I said, "My wife needs something for her hair." So they had a comb, of course. They gave us that, and that worked enough to get her there.. But as I'm walking out, I'm looking, I just walk out and the manager happened to come out and he goes, "Oh, you were married yesterday, weren't you?" And I said, "Yeah, we were." And I'm like looking a little lost. He goes, "What do you need?" I said, "Coffee." He took me over to where their little restaurant area was. He says, "You want it in to-go cups?" Didn't even charge me or didn't even mention it, just gave me the coffee and we went on our way. So it was just all the little things. Don't seem like much, but just the little attentions to detail that made you feel welcome and made you feel special.

Yeah, no, it is a lot, and it all adds up. It all adds up. You're right. So you are— in celebration of this exciting day, happy day, you're making— you decided to make Italian wedding soup. I love it.

You know, I had thought about what I would make. You know, I've been on a roll with the skillet dinners and stuff, and we did a big soup show a while back that was really popular. I looked at my blog, I never made Italian wedding soup, and that was one of the favorite soups. When I worked at the one restaurant, that was a staple. We had that every day. We had escarole, we had onion, and then I would make something else. That was what I made. It was really a fun soup to make. It brought back memories. Whenever we have it, I do make it for Lisa from time to time, but for whatever reason, I have not blogged on it. I thought it was a perfect thing.. And it's pretty simple. It can be pretty much whatever you want it to be. If you look for recipes for Italian wedding soup, you're going to find a bunch of them. You're going to find variations. Some are going to have chicken meat in them. Some are going to have meatballs in them. Some are going to have both. It's typically— it was escarole soup too, is what I knew it by. So, you know, it all depends on the culture and the grandmother that made it. So it's like anything else.

Cool.

So my recipe starts— let's switch pans. I've got this pan heating up, and I'm going to add in some olive oil because we need to sauté some vegetables. Sweat them down is the technical term. And I've got my mirepoix, which is carrots, celery, and onions. And that is basically how I start almost every soup that I make.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, unless it's a cream soup. In cream soup, then I leave out the carrots. Unless it's chowder, then of course it gets them. But this is pretty much, you know, I need onions and celery in everything to give it flavor and to give it some body. Now, if it was going to be a really smooth soup and I did not want it to have any other bits strain them out after I made the cream sauce. So, you know, depends on what you want. Now I'm just going to add some sea salt and black pepper, and I'm going to let these vegetables cook for a little bit, and they're going to sweat out some of the liquid from them. And that's what we refer to as when we say sweating them out. And it's really a very important step because if I just add the liquid in here now, I'm boiling the vegetables. And that's not really what you want for a soup. You want to sauté them. You want to cook them a little bit like anything else. You don't want them to be raw when you're just making a soup out of them.

And that has— I would imagine that also has to do with releasing flavors by the sauté process rather than adding the liquid. Yeah.

I mean, you're going to get flavor out of them. Like, if I was making a consommé, I wouldn't necessarily sauté them first. I might just throw all my scraps into the pot, fill it with water, and let it reduce to make a vegetable stock. That's a little different. But when I'm going to eat them, when they're included in the soup and I'm going to eat them, I want to sauté them first. So, and it doesn't have to be long. You'll see them start to get a little shiny, and that's the sweating process, just like we do when we sweat. And the onions, you'll smell the aromatics, and everything will just start to cook a little bit and at the point that they're pretty much just cooked down, usually like 3 to 5 minutes on a medium-high heat, they're going to be done. You can season them with anything else you want at this point too. I pretty much always just use salt and pepper. I'm very basic in my spices when I make something.

Now what kind of salt do you like to use? I know we've talked about this before, but is it just Is it kosher salt or is it a special exotic salt or do you have a collection of salts?

I do have a few different salts. I have some Hawaiian pink salt, I have some gray salt, but for cooking I pretty much just use sea salt and I look— I always look for Mediterranean, you know, I'm hoping that's where it's coming from if it says it's Mediterranean sea salt, but that's generally just a normal cooking salt and actually I think I have Morton's has sea salt now. I think I have that in there. And from time to time, I'll buy a different brand if I see something special at the store. But, you know, it shouldn't be exotic for everyday cooking. If you want to make some salted caramel or you want to have the salt visible, then you want to use some of those fancy colorful salts like the pink salts or the gray salts. They come in every shape possible. So, so This is pretty much it. It's sweated down. Now I have my chicken stock made, and from this point right now, this is all I really need for my soup. I'm going to add in the chicken stock. I'm going to save a little bit of it. I'm not going to put it all in. I can always add some in, but for now, that's good. At this point, the soup is pretty much done. I'm going to bring it to a boil. Once it comes to a boil, then I'm going to reduce the heat a little bit and I'm going to let it simmer. But for now, it's got to come to the boil.

Okay, let me ask you a question. I'm sorry to interrupt. Do you think there would be a difference— I mean, my thinking is yes— if you made your own chicken stock versus, say, a high-end brand, say a high-end organic brand?

Absolutely. Absolutely. But, you know, even when I make my own stock, I I find that I need to fortify it a little bit with a little of— not liquid stock, but I buy soup bases. I don't ever really buy liquid canned stocks or box. I buy a little 1-pound jar of a soup base, and it's basically a high-end bouillon cube if you want to think of it that way. But a lot of times when you cook down, you just, you know, unless you're cooking a lot, of chicken products to make the stock and you reduce it, that's when you're going to get your flavor. Most people wouldn't let it reduce down enough to have that intense flavor that you want, or that really hearty flavor with a soup. But, you know, yeah, if you have enough scraps, you know, if you were a restaurant, you were cleaning chicken all the time and you had bones and all that, well, you can make some really good stock. Or as they like to call it now, the term is bone broth. That's what—

I thought I heard that tossed around.

That's the buzzword. Someone had posted, "Boy, do I have to put bone broth on my blog? It seems like everyone's doing it, or is it going away?" I wrote, "Bone broth, as long as there are chefs, it's not going away." For the most part, that's how we make a lot of our stock sauces. Where I may not use it all the time, like when I do shrimp, if I'm making a shrimp sauce, I save all my shells. If I had a little more room in this freezer, I would save them every time I used them and then make a nice little shrimp stock out of them. Things like that, lobster shells, shrimp shells. If you're cleaning a fish, the different parts that you're not going to eat, they make wonderful stocks. Beef bones or veal bones, if you want to get them, but then you have to roast them before you make the stock. You just don't throw the raw bones into the stock. Roasting bones always gives them a little bit more flavor.

Really? Who knew? Wow.

So this is, this is this, and let me just see if I can move this over without disturbing it too much, and I'm going to make the meatballs.

Okay.

After I make them, then you can go on with your presentation.

Okay, so you just— so first we're going to watch you make them, and then I'll I'll begin. Is that right? Yes.

So now I have— since I don't eat beef, although I may start eating beef again, but for now I'm going to make chicken meatballs. I prefer chicken because it's got more fat in it. It actually has more flavor. So to make my meatballs for the soup, I'm going to use chicken. You could of course use your favorite meatball mix. You know, I actually looked for it down here because I was going to make them and they don't carry it in Florida. I didn't see it anywhere, the little beef pork veal mixture.

Yes.

In grocery stores, so that must not be a thing down here. So anyway, we'll make it, we'll make them with this, but you can use that, you can use all beef if you want to, or just mix beef and pork together, however you like your meatballs. So basically, that's how I'm making them, like I'd make regular meatballs. I have some grated cheese I'm going to put in—

yum—

breadcrumbs, and these are of course gluten-free breadcrumbs. And then I'm going to add in a mixture of a few spices I have, and I have some dried oregano, some dried basil, sea salt, and black pepper, and that's going in there. And then I wanted something green in it. I did not have any parsley in the house. I didn't feel like jumping in the car and running to just buy parsley. So I chopped up some super greens that I happen to have in the refrigerator.

Super greens? What the heck are super greens?

It's kale, chard, and something else— spinach.

Oh, okay. It's all mixed together? You buy it mixed together? Yeah.

Let me grab it. I love my my big box like Costco.

Okay, well, that should— that seems authentic to me. It seems like it should be authentic to the soup.

Well, yeah, you know, actually it was spinach, chard, kale, and arugula.

Uh-huh.

I love saying arugula. Arugula. And it's a product of the United States. It's organic, and it's just something that I buy. I sauté them. On my diet, that's pretty much been a staple of what I've been eating is super greens and chicken. That's it. Now I have all that in. The last component I'm going to add is an egg. We're going to do that. Then I'm going to mix. I always tell people to mix by hand because you can control where it's going. Of course, if you don't want to, you can use a spoon. I'm just going to mix these all together. The chicken is going to be a little moister than beef would be. So you may find sometimes you want to add more breadcrumbs to them, but that will also make them a little tougher. And also overmixing will make it tough. So you have to restrain yourself that when you think— as long as everything's incorporated. And again, the green was just pretty much to have some pretty little color in it. I wanted to see some specks in there when I have these meatballs. And one thing I learned about chicken for meatballs was that they tend to blow up after you make them. So I made these little, little small meatballs, and they, to me, they look like they almost doubled in size. So—

wow.

But if you take a mixture like this, rather than add more breadcrumbs into it, which I am going to put a little bit more in, if you refrigerate it, you let it sit for a while, it'll firm up a little bit better. So then you can— so you could do this ahead of time. You can make the meatballs ahead of time, have your kids or somebody else help you roll them all out and freeze them. And then after they're frozen solid, you can put them in a Ziploc bag, and next time you want to make soup, you don't have to go through this process.

Okay, so maybe this actually isn't the best question, but it just came to mind. Because I guess you could grind up chicken. For example, I'm thinking chicken thighs versus chicken breast. Can you grind in a food processor? Can you chop finely chicken thighs? And can you— well, you know, because that's of course quite moist. So is that— can you do that?

Yeah, you could do that. You could do your own in a food processor. You just want to make sure that they don't get stringy when you're doing them. Commercial grinders are a little bit different than the blade in a food processor. I probably wouldn't do that just based because of what you really want. I mean, you'd get a meat grinding attachment for your mixer. If you have one of those, you could do it through that because it's just a little bit different kind of a blade, a little, you know, that it goes through. So with the food processors, it's spreads out, I think it goes along that blade a little too much and you're going to tend to get either a mush or maybe not quite what you want. Cooked chicken works really well in there. I mean, if you wanted to chop up something cooked, you know, I've done that before for soups and stuff.

Maybe like a rotisserie chicken.

Yeah, you know, I mean, and again, you don't have to put meatballs in here. You could just as well throw in some nice fresh cooked chicken. I wouldn't put raw chicken. You can if you want to let it cook long enough, but I mean, you can also use leftover chicken from your rotisserie. Makes wonderful soup. Leftover rice. I mean, I have some risotto in there that would be great in a soup. You know, anything you have leftover, that's basically what soups were, remember?

I mean, doesn't everybody have leftover risotto in their refrigerator? I can't believe that. Wow. Okay, so what's next?

All right, so I'm going to roll these into little balls. Okay, I'm going to— and I'm probably not going to make them as small as I should just because it's tedious. But I'm going to roll these into little balls, and then I'm going to take them and I'm going to drop them into the soup. And while I'm doing that, you're going to talk to us about kitchen design.

Okay, yes, I'm so excited. I really am. I'm giddy. Because this is what I've done. This has been my work for the past 25+ years, and now we're about— the chef and I are about to embark on his kitchen design. And so this is an opportunity to show you the process in little short, you know, 5-minute segments. So I'm going to get right to it, and I'm just going to give you an overview, not of Chef's Kitchen, but of an overview of the process in general. So I will go to screen share. Here we go. And let's see. Yep, I'm going to go right here. Okay. I hope you can see. I'm not sure what you can or can't see. Maybe I can make this bigger. Yeah, no, it doesn't get bigger. Okay, this is my design program. So, what we're looking at here is a whole, if you see all this list of, and I don't know how well you can see it. Actually, I'll make it bigger on my, oh yeah, you can see it quite well. It's a list of all the designs that I've done for this client. Many of them are the same and they range from the beginning designs to increasing detail, particularly after they chose a design. So, in the very beginning, what I like to do is I like to fool around with the space and where do the appliances go, where does the seating go, what is the countertop distribution, and what is the traffic flow. So, so when I do that, I— it's very general. It's actually shapes and forms that I put into the space. So we don't have critical dimensions, we have creative, creative process. So in this particular plan, I will go through some of the plans that I was playing with, and then you can see in progression where the client wanted to take it. I tend to let my process flow a little too much. I show too many choices, but that, that's because I'm kind of an obsessive person in general. So here I'm going through some of the designs that I, I thought maybe could work and I could present to the client, and they have different levels of where, you know, what— again, what is the countertop distribution about people interacting in the kitchen and the flow of the workstations and so forth. A large block, you can see, might be the refrigerator. So, we always want to be aware of where do we want to be— have the appliances, how close, how far apart, what's the walking distance, that type of thing. And here, this area here in every plan is a large entranceway from, I think, another, another room. I think it might be from a hallway, and the bedrooms are back here. This is actually the entrance. It's a condo, I believe. Yeah, this is an entrance to the home, and here there will be living room furniture. So, I'll continue on with other plans that I came up with, and this is a typical kitchen triangle where they're relatively close proximity refrigerator, this might be pantry storage and so forth, but then I also put, you know, sometimes I utilize this wall or utilize this wall for appliance locations. So, some Plans might be more contemporary than others. Others may be more traditional. Others may be more unique. And here's one which is, you know, I'm actually not quite sure how viable this one is, but, you know, but that's okay, because if you stick with what's tried and true, in the beginning of the process, then, you know, then you're not really expanding the creativity. And that's true for cooking as well, which is why there's such a good relationship between cooking and the kitchen design process. However, you know, in this case, some people— two islands can be very useful, and it can mean that people can be around a different part of an island, multiple people can cook.

So there—

the point is, there are always pros and cons. In every design, and sometimes you just make a little tweak here, a little tweak there, and you know, big things happen. I liked in this plan, I liked that the island was sort of floating, and you know, if you look at some of the other plans, I don't care for when the cook is looking at a wall. Is facing a wall, and so that's why many of these plans sort of had the, you know, kind of a floating effect. Sometimes you can't avoid that, of course, but I do like to have the cook out and have a nice line of vision, you know, where I can.

That means a lot. I mean, really, when you're just staring at a wall, if you're at a back counter and you have nothing to look at, I mean, that really can get kind of You don't get as happy.

I agree, and I think it's important. So now we have come to the place where this— the client shows this general configuration, which was kind of an L-shape with the refrigerator over here, pantry storage over here, and this way the cook can communicate with people in this area. So let's see how this progressed. Then I offered still other ideas, a cooktop over here, refrigerator here. Someone actually could be cooking here, someone could be at the sink area here, someone could be sitting here. Really, really great opportunity for social interaction. Then eventually we came to this plan with the seating over Here, sink, easy access between the cooktop and the sink, wonderful easy access. Someone could stand over here and cook. Someone could cook over here. Someone could go over here, and the refrigerator's here. So, lots of opportunity for, you know, different people. Let's see. Oh, yes. And this one, I'll go back to this one, you can see early on, once we were settling on this plan, what I did was I did a plan where I put the dimensions of the clearances between cabinetry and walls so that the client could see, could really begin to feel the space and perhaps put up sort of boundaries in the space so they could feel it. They need to feel the space. You can't just see it on paper, you have to put up boundaries. And then we got more and more detailed, and we were fooling around with each wall. I did a lighting plan, and we got into more and more detail. And then, as you can see, the top and bottom are changing. So, we did lots of different ideas for— once we got the island set for the top and bottom areas, and we're going on and on with more detail. And then, what I will do now is I will Yeah, I will open this up and I will do a perspective drawing and you can see the end result of this particular kitchen. So, oh, that's funny, it stopped the screen sharing, I think. Let me bring it back. Yep, it did. Okay, that's okay. I'm going to bring it back. Here we go. Okay, and I think it probably will do it again. So, here's the plan as a whole, and I'm going to just show the perspective, and then we will get back to Chef. But here's the bird's-eye view, and I'm going to fill it in solid so we can see what the finished plan looks like. And I've also put in the dining area, I've put in this takes a little bit. I've put in living room furniture so we can see as a whole, you know, what's happening in the plan and where we have some seating here. And, you know, this is kind of how the plan developed. One more shot I want to show you, a real quick one, and let's see, I think I'll do it this way, and— but I will move it this way. Okay, so this is looking, you know, from the island, and we have storage here. We don't need countertops, so this is interesting. Good storage there. Ovens are located with a quick turnaround to the island, and then we have Here's the refrigerator. I think I put something here. I don't think this is the end plan, but you can begin to see, you know, what it's looking like. So, that is how the process begins with shapes and forms, and then little by little by little we go on, and then this is what we're going to do with chefs, and we're going to show you this. I will show you a project every week, and I'm so excited about doing this. And Chef, you're gonna see the progress right along with everyone else. So there we go.

I am loving it. Alright, let's get back here. And you can see I did turn the heat down on this a little bit. I'm probably gonna turn it down just a little bit more. I have it on low simmer after it boils, and you'll see the meatballs kinda I did make them a little bigger again because I'm just making too many small ones. If you've got kids, it gives them something to do. If you want to give them gloves, you can give them gloves too. Or even if you're at a party and you want your friends to help you along with it. I'm doing something a little non-traditional with this because I like it and because I can. I'm going to add in some tortellini. These are cheese tortellini. They're 3 cheese. I like them, and it doesn't have to be a rigid recipe. They're going to go in, and they would go in— I would normally let this sit for about an hour, and they would go in sometime after, right after that, maybe about 15 minutes before I was going to serve, which is about the same time I want to add in my escarole. It will be fine later., but it'll be a little bright, a little more brighter and more brighter. I don't know if that's the right way to say it. It'll look a little bit healthier and still fresh.

I'm sorry, I missed that. Tell me what you just put in, Chef?

Escarole.

That's what I thought you said, escarole. Okay, wow.

It could be spinach, it could be kale, it could be any kind of green that you want. And, you know, this is something you want to think about adding to any vegetable soup that you make, or even a noodle soup. Throw some spinach in it. Make it look colorful. Make it look vibrant. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. This is a nice hearty, thick soup now. I actually am probably going to end up adding the rest of the stock in here because it is a little bit too thick. This way, I'm getting full range out of. It's still got a lot of stuff going on here. You can get some pretty good tortellini at the grocery store, tortelloni depending upon how the shape and what they're stuffed with. These are cheese. I didn't go— they have some really good sausage ones that we've had before, but because of the chicken meatballs, I didn't want to compete with them, so I just went with plain cheese. I'm just going to put in It'll almost be more greens than you think you should because as they cook down, they're going to just kind of be absorbed.

Yeah, they sure— that, yeah, that's, that's true. That's true. So maybe like a quart or even, you know, it doesn't even matter. You just go by handfuls too. You could do that, right?

I usually just, you know, if you get a good size head of escarole, you know, these weren't the best and the outer leaves were in bad shape, so I add 2 2 small heads left over when I was done. That's why they're a little bit greener, because they should be a little bit darker green, the escarole. But again, I could have used the Super Greens in here and they would have been delicious. They would have been wonderful. So it's not etched in bronze. So this is basically it. I think it needs a little bit more pepper. I can't see any. If I can't see any floating around, that means I didn't put enough in.

I'm totally making that tonight. I am making that tonight.

That's it. We're going to have this for dinner. We have guests over and they'll be having that. I have to go run and get some bread for them and we'll do some cheese and some olives and have a little bit of a European dinner. The way to serve this now, if I was going to serve this up, get a nice amount of greens in there, get some meatballs, let's get some broth. And of course, the tortellini aren't fully cooked, so I mean, I would not— I'm not going to eat this right now. But just like that, now I'm going to take a little bit of grated cheese. I'm just going to serve it.

Okay? Ah, nice.

There's your wedding soup. Your—

Beautiful. That is so— it looks— I love it. I love it. It looks substantial. It looks flavorful. I love the idea of extra pepper, and my husband is a big red pepper flake fan, so I think that would be perfect for that, right?

Absolutely. Again, you know, don't be limited by what recipes say. Don't be bound to make it exactly like it says. Make it like you enjoy it. And when you have guests over, let them taste what you've done to the recipe. Let them learn, because maybe it's not exactly the way they like it either because they have different tastes, but they'll say, "Wow, you know, that's really good. I like how you added this in instead." Maybe you want to put peas in it. You know, I use peas lots of times in my soups, because they're bright and they're green and they look good. I happen to like peas. Lisa hates peas, but she also doesn't like cooked carrots. The soup would be monotone if I didn't use them. Think about what you like to eat, different things that you like to put in it, and just have fun and experiment with it.

I'm wondering, what do you think about mushrooms and artichoke hearts? I don't know about mushrooms, but what about artichoke hearts?

I'm not a big one on artichoke hearts in the soup, but if you like it— again, don't buy marinated ones. Buy the ones that are just in brine or that are in juice. If you like it, that's all that matters. You can make a piccata soup, or you could make something— whatever your tastes and flavors are. Mushrooms would be fine in this. Just remember to sauté them first. Don't put them in raw because they're going to look ugly as hell if you don't.

Okay, okay.

Maybe you want to use portobellos, you know, or the baby bellas, you know, not— they're not really portobellos, but they're the baby bellas.

You know what? I don't think it needs anything else. I think as is, it's amazing.

Yeah, and again, you could leave out the tortellini if you want to, you know, and— but, you know, that's something just to add a little. This is going to be dinner, so I wanted it to be a little heavier than just soup. So now we got some pasta in it, but again, risotto, rice, break up some pasta and throw it in, anything you want to do, you know, it's still good.

Beautiful, beautifully done, Chef. So inspiring. I'm making it. I'm totally making it tonight. I'm going out in a little while. I'm making it. Thank you.

Well, thank you. And you know, we're at the end of our show. And thank you so so much for everyone coming by today around our kitchen table, and we'll see you next week. Where next week I will be with Chef Bob Ongst at his house in Maitland, Florida, and we'll be cooking up something special with him.

Cool. See you then.

Bye-bye.

Bye.