Soup Chick®

Quick and easy Scotch broth recipe

When I was a little girl, in the early 1960s, my mother stocked the pantry with the red-and-white soup cans we (and Andy Warhol) loved so much. Though chicken noodle soup topped my list, I also ate more than my share of Scotch Broth, a barley soup with small bits of lamb and perfectly-cubed carrots suspended in a thick base. A true Scotch broth should be made by simmering a hunk of lamb until it falls off the bone, then reducing the liquid to a rich stock, but who has the time or budget for that? Kathy and I decided to adapt the traditional for today's reality, by starting with a small amount of ground lamb to add the meaty flavor in a fraction of the time. It works -- and if you want to serve the soup in a red-and-white can for more 1960s authenticity, that's fine with us.

Quick and easy hot and sour soup with tofu, shiitake mushrooms and noodles recipe

Like stir-fry dishes, most Asian soups come together in no time, once you've prepped all of the ingredients. With a pantry full of Asian condiments, a bit of tofu, and a package of fresh egg noodles (or dried noodles blanched in boiling water), you can whip up a hot, healthy, restorative, comforting bowl of hot and sour soup in minutes. The sour in this recipe comes from lime and rice vinegar; the heat, from a squirt of Sriracha, can be gentle or blow your head off, whichever way you like it. Store-bought chicken stock is the shortcut. Simmer it with a slice of ginger root and garlic to give it Asian flair. I took a bit of help from the grocery store produce department by starting with pre-cubed tofu and sliced shiitake mushrooms, making a quick-and-easy soup even easier.

Recipe for ratatouille soup

From A Beautiful Bowl of Soup, you chose this ratatouille soup for one reason -- for the best reason -- seasonality. It's hard to resist a soup that springs right from the garden. This vegetarian (or vegan) soup omits the potatoes that are traditional in ratatouille, a French vegetable stew, and makes the best use of tomatoes and fresh herbs. The recipe serves six people, but you'll want to double it, and freeze some for later in the winter when the only option for vegetables is a poor second to what we can buy at the farmers' market or farm stand right now. I used fresh basil and oregano from my herb garden; you can certainly used dried oregano instead (half the quantity of fresh). And I couldn't stop myself from adding a Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese rind, which adds depth and rich flavor to any vegetable soup; omit it if you're making a vegan soup.