We wish you a merry Christmas and a tasty hot soup!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 3 € pp)
- salt
- 100 g veal minced meat
- 100 g pork minced meat
- 2 slices of prosciutto
- 20 g parmigiano reggiano
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp Christmas spices (a mix of cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, ginger and cloves)
- 100 g fresh pasta, cut in holiday shapes (stars, hearts, trees etc)
- 1,2 litre veal or jamón stock
- EV olive oil
- Black pepper
- Fresh parsley
- Drops of lemon
I don´t remember any Christmas meal that did not begin with a soup. Soup on Christmas day is a tradition and every cook wants to present a dish, full of colours and holiday spices. Spices are a trademark of Christmas, teas and pastries of the period are often full of cinnamon, cloves and ginger.
In Southern Europe many cooks prepare very tiny meatballs for the Christmas soups, I personally love them if they are soft and moist and hate them if they are hard and dry.
Having all these things in mind, we prepare the Christmas soup I suggest you.
We start with the stock. To prepare the jamón stock we first blanch the bone for about 5 mins, we then change the water and starting from cold we simmer the bone with a carrot, a leek and a pinch of cinnamon for about 2 hours. One bone is enough for about 3 litres of stock. If we cannot find a jamón bone, we use veal stock. Homemade of course.
We then prepare the tiny meatballs. We mince the garlic and the prosciutto slices and we mix them with the veal and pork meat, the parmigiano cheese (very finely grated), the egg, some salt and pepper and the half amount of the spices. We start kneading the mix. We DO NOT knead intensely, as the intense kneading provokes the extraction of the myosin protein, something which will make our meatballs tough and unpleasant.
We start shaping the meatballs, preparing tiny ones, not larger than our nails. We then lightly fry or roast them. This is a crucial point, because if the tiny meatballs are hard and overcooked the soup will be a disappointment. So we don´t brown the meatballs and we stop cooking them when they turn beige.
We heat very well the stock adding some salt and the remaining spices. We add the tiny meatballs and we cook for about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, we boil the special Christmas coloured pasta, we have presented you here, in a pot with salted water, for just 2 minutes. We drain and we wash it under running water, in order to remove its external starch which would spoil the clearness of the stock.
We add the pasta into the stock and we continue the boiling till tender.
We serve garnishing with abundant olive oil, black pepper, parsley and some lemon drops.
