Garlic Soup With Pasta and Peas

When local cauliflower enveloped in his green leaves arrives at the farmers market every fall, it's a good time to create an Italian version of this soup. Simmer the edible green cauliflower leaves and stalks in the soup and add the white cauliflower florettes in place of the pasta.

There's no such thing as too much garlic. I truly believe that. The more pungent, the better. I brown the garlic first, in a spoon of olive oil, then proceed with the recipe.
Have left-overs? This soup easily becomes a simplified "pasta e fagioli": add a can of tomatoes and white beans, maybe some crumbled sausage.
I tell you, winter just got better with this soup.

Sounds delicious and easy...however ...4 measly cloves of garlic for 6 and half cups of water does not make garlic soup. I would use at least 12 -16 for that amount of water. If you use dried thyme and want to remove ( I would keep it in) just use a cotton herb bag or if you have access to melitta paper tea bags for loose tea.

“Tempering” eggs isn’t as hard as it sounds. You’re just adding a little hot broth to warm the eggs and thin them out before adding them to the rest of the soup. If you just drop cool eggs into a hot soup, you end up with strands of cooked egg - which is how you make egg drop soup. Here, you want the eggs to melt smoothly into the liquid to enrich it. Enjoy!

Fat has long been recognized as an essential part of a healthy diet. The demonization of saturated fat was exposed to be a deliberate and calculated effort to promote low-fat, high carb food subsidies. By every currently accepted definition of dietary health, this recipe is excellent.

The purpose of tempering the eggs is to prevent them from curdling. If you add the eggs directly to the hot broth you will get sloppy scrambled eggs or if you're lucky something akin to egg drop soup. Tempering by adding a small amount of the hot liquid to the eggs allows the eggs to gradually come up to temperature. When the mixture is added to the broth the egg will be distributed evenly throughout. Don't worry, it's cooked! But instead of separating out it thickens and enrichens the broth.

Used four heads of garlic and added Parmesan rinds to the broth. Had a fair amount of time to spare so I left it on low for an hour or so. Used white beans instead of peas, added escarole, and upped the parsley. A truly delicious soup - definitely will make it (likely multiple times) again.

There are several other NYT recipes for garlic soup, at least one of which calls for a full head of garlic. I prefer more garlic, and also the variations that call for poaching the eggs (1 per serving) in the broth rather than beating the eggs and then adding them to the broth

This is amazing. I switched out the water for chicken stock (because I had it in the freezer) and used an entire head of garlic. I threw the whole cloves into the water at the begin, strained them out at mashed them once cooked. At the end, like another reviewer, I subbed spinach for peas and added a small amount of leftover chopped rotisserie chicken for added protein. Skipped the cheese because it had plenty of richness and flavor without. Plenty hearty for a family meal.

I just made this for lunch after reading the recipe- loved it! Used 10 cloves of garlic, added sautéed shiitake mushrooms and chard. Otherwise followed the recipe- will make again it was deee-lish.

This means to bring the eggs up to a certain temperature so they don't scramble when added to the hot soup. You do this by stirring about 1/2 cup of the hot garlic soup mixture to the bowl of eggs and olive oil to warm them up and then pour the now tempered eggs and olive oil into the soup pot to finish cooking. In this recipe, you first turn the fire off under the pot before adding in the tempered eggs. You can also do a search for "tempered eggs" online to get more details.

Four individual cloves is not anywhere near enough it would seem. Four heads maybe?

Hi Dave, eggs in soup don't freeze and reheat well. I would ladle out the amount you want to freeze, and then add the egg to the portion you're about to serve.

What does tempered egg mean?

This was ok but rather bland. I think it would be better made with a stock instead of water.