Italian Sausage and Orzo Soup -- The Pot That Keeps Simmering

Second week of January and the new year is settling in with the weight of fresh snow — clean, heavy, covering everything that came before. I returned to my yoga classes after the holiday break and the studio felt like home in the way that the apartment does not, which is a sentence I did not expect to write and cannot un-write. The mat under my feet, the dim lights, the sound of breath — twelve people breathing in unison — is the closest thing to peace I know. I taught a gentle flow and my voice was steady and the steadiness surprised me, because I am not steady. I am a woman standing on a surface that is shifting, and the steadiness is a performance, and the performance is so good that even I believe it sometimes.

I made nabe — hot pot — this week. A big pot of kombu dashi on the table, vegetables and tofu and mushrooms and thin-sliced pork arranged on plates around it. You add the ingredients to the simmering broth, cook them, eat them, add more. Nabe is winter cooking at its most social, the pot as gathering place, the meal as conversation. Brian and Miya and I sat around the pot and cooked and ate and the meal was warm and communal and I thought: the pot is the marriage. You add things, you take things out, you keep the broth simmering, you try to maintain the heat. The metaphor works until it doesn't, and where it stops working is the question of what happens when the broth runs out. When you keep taking and stop adding. When the pot goes dry.

Lin invited me to a reading at Powell's — a food writer from New York promoting a memoir about her grandmother's Italian cooking. I went. The writer was precise and warm and her grandmother sounded like Fumiko in a different language, and I sat in the folding chair in the back of the bookstore and thought: I could be up there. I could write that book. The grandmother book. The Fumiko book. The book that turns recipe cards into literature and grief into architecture and a kitchen in Sacramento into a universe. The thought was not new. But the feeling was — not "I could" but "I will." The shift from hypothetical to inevitable. The will is forming. I am not ready yet. But the will is forming.

I talked to my therapist about the book and about the marriage and about the fact that both feel like they are about to happen — the book beginning, the marriage ending — and that the timing is not coincidental. She said, "Sometimes we can't create until we clear the space." The space. The marriage is the space. The marriage is taking up room that the book needs, and the grief needs, and the writing needs, and I need. The space will be cleared. I don't know when. I know it will.

The nabe we made that night — Brian and Miya and I around the pot, adding and taking, watching the broth hold everything together — reminded me that the most honest meals are the ones that stay on the heat, the ones you return to again and again. When I don’t have the kombu dashi and the thin-sliced pork and the patience for a full Japanese hot pot, I come back to this Italian sausage and orzo soup: one pot, one long simmer, and a broth that gets better the longer you let it go. It’s not nabe, but it carries the same logic — keep the heat, keep adding, keep tasting.

Italian Sausage and Orzo Soup

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 30 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 1 lb mild or hot Italian sausage, casings removed
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, with juices
• 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 1 cup orzo pasta, uncooked
• 2 cups fresh spinach or baby kale, roughly chopped
• Salt and black pepper, to taste
• Freshly grated Parmesan, for serving
• Fresh basil or flat-leaf parsley, for serving

Instructions

1. Brown the sausage. Heat olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the sausage, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, and cook until browned and cooked through, about 6—8 minutes. Transfer sausage to a plate and pour off all but 1 tablespoon of fat from the pot.
2. Sauté the aromatics. Return the pot to medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic, Italian seasoning, and red pepper flakes, and cook for 1 minute more until fragrant.
3. Build the broth. Pour in the diced tomatoes (with their juices) and the chicken broth. Stir to combine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Return the cooked sausage to the pot.
4. Simmer and add orzo. Bring the soup to a boil over high heat, then reduce to a steady simmer. Add the orzo and cook, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, until the pasta is tender, about 10—12 minutes.
5. Finish with greens. Stir in the spinach or kale and cook just until wilted, 1—2 minutes. Taste and season generously with salt and black pepper.
6. Serve. Ladle into bowls and top with freshly grated Parmesan and a scatter of fresh basil or parsley. Serve with crusty bread if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 360 | Protein: 21g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 32g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 820mg