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Food for Thought: Dick and Nancy's super soups

This story originally aired Nov. 10, 2018.

It's getting to be soup season, and both Nancy Leson and I have our favorites.  In this week's Food for Thought, Nance and I trade favorites from childhood, our go-to's at restaurants, and the homemade must-haves.

I got this week's FfT  started by asking Nancy Leson about her favorite soup.  For going out, she loves the Hong Kong style wonton noodle at Edmonds' Wonton Noodle House.  At home, she favors Daniel Gritzer's pressure cooker beef barley souppictured above, a pancetta-laced and Parmesan-thickened minestrone she's been making for years, and Lynne Rossetto Kasper's recipe for spicy red lentil soup.

Credit Stein / KNKX
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KNKX
Chicken stock, Shaoxing wine, fennel, cassia, star anise, cardomon, ginger, green onion, orange peel, ribs, and soy sauce make this broth.

I got all excited about the Chengdu Challenge #26 Pork Rib and Noodle SoupI discovered at the Mala Marketsite, an excellent source of mail order Sichuan ingredients and recipes. You can see the finished result up top.  Here's what it looked like in progress.

Now Nancy's over the moon about Andrea Nguyen's Instant Pot Pho recipe.  I still don't have one of those pressure cookers, but if anything could convince me to get one it probably would be this. 

Here's her pho-nished product.

Credit Nancy Leson / KNKX
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KNKX

"Who for such dainties would not stoop?  Soup of the evening, beautiful soup" – The Mock Turtle

Dick Stein joined KNKX in January 1992. He retired in 2020 after three decades on air. During his storied radio career, he hosted the morning jazz show, co-hosted and produced "Food for Thought" with Nancy Leson and wrote and directed the Jimmy Jazzoid live radio musical comedies and 100 episodes of Jazz Kitchen.