Here’s a soup to warm your heart even on the bleakest day of winter. Use it as a guideline, and make your own innovations according to what you have on hand. The beans are very nourishing, the meat accent lends heartiness, and the greens are healthy, giving balance and color. It’s interesting how cooks of the past just knew these things instinctively.

　　

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter or vegetable oil

　　1 small onion, or 1/4 large onion

　　1 new potato, sliced

　　2 cups broth, preferably meaty—beef, lamb, duck, or goose

　　A handful of Swiss chard or spinach leaves

　　1/4 cup cooked dried beans or lentils

　　4 or 5 slices cooked sausage, or as many as you wish

　　Croutons, rubbed with garlic if you like, or a couple of slices French bread

　　A sprinkling of Parmesan (optional)

　　

Step 1

Melt the butter in a small pot, and add the onion and potato. Sauté for a few minutes, and pour in the broth. Simmer for 30 minutes, covered. Add the greens during the last 5 minutes of cooking, as well as the dried beans. Stir in the sausage at the end, and heat through.

　　

Step 2

Serve in a big soup bowl with croutons and some (optional) Parmesan floating on top.

　　

Variations

Step 3

If you don’t have any sausage, use some meat scraps—leftover lamb or pork or dark poultry meat. Instead of cooked dried beans, which you may not have stashed away, try fresh fava beans. You have to shuck them and then peel off the skins of the beans, but you’ll only need about a dozen for this soup, so it’s not that hard—another advantage of cooking just for one.

　　The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. Copyright © 2009 by Judith Jones. Published by Knopf. All Rights Reserved.Judith Jones is senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf. She is the author of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food and the coauthor with Evan Jones (her late husband) of three books: The Book of Bread; Knead It, Punch It, Bake It!; and The Book of New New England Cookery. She also collaborated with Angus Cameron on The L. L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook, and has contributed to Vogue, Saveur, and Gourmet magazines. In 2006, she was awarded the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives in New York City and Vermont.