Italian Wedding Soup

Method

1. mix6 min
   gently, then rolled small
   beef + pork + breadcrumbs + half the Parmesan + egg + a third of the garlic + half the parsley + 1 tsp salt, mixed only until it holds and rolled into meatballs the size of a large marble — small is structural: they cook through in the broth's gentle heat, and one bite should hold a whole meatball; overworked meat bounces
2. sweat6 min
   medium, in the soup pot
   onion + carrot in the oil until softening, remaining garlic for the last thirty seconds — a deliberately quiet base; the broth and the meatballs are the flavor, and the vegetables are their setting
3. simmer10 min
   stock at a bare simmer, never a boil
   + stock brought to the gentlest possible bubble — a boil is the enemy twice here: it clouds the broth and it tightens the meatballs about to arrive
4. poach8 min
   meatballs dropped in raw
   the meatballs directly into the simmering broth, unstirred for the first two minutes so they set — poaching raw is the published choice on purpose: every gram of savor the sear would have crusted onto a pan instead dissolves into the broth, and the meatballs stay cloud-tender
5. simmer8 min
   pasta in, until al dente
   + pasta cooked in the pot with the remaining salt — same trade as every pasta-in-soup: starch out, flavor in; same warning too, leftovers want the pasta cooked separately
6. season2 min
   greens wilted off the boil
   + spinach stirred in until just collapsed + pepper + the last parsley — the marriage the name refers to happens here, greens into meat broth; remaining Parmesan over each bowl, where it melts into the surface