One of my favorite food blogs is Italicious.  She has a nice touch of showing the blog post she did a year ago, and I always find it intriguing.

And so it was that almost exactly a year to the day, tonight we decided to have the same Ligurian vegetable soup we had a year ago.  Same deal: I picked the recipe, and Barbara executed it to perfection.  There were four minor variations: (1) she was too lazy to add the porcini mushrooms and soaking liquid for the extra depth of flavor, (2) we did not bother to make croutons, (3) we used Swiss chard instead of kale, and (4) I was in possession of two superb Ligurian wines to accompany the dish, thanks to my recent association with Social Wines of South Boston.  The net effect was still a very satisfying dinner, supplemented ever so slightly by a small quantity of Spaghetti with Onion Confit with Rosemary and Walnuts Sauce, from a New York Times recipe by Molly O’Neill in 1996.  I provide both recipes for you below for convenience.  The photo of the soup is last year’s version, with peas and croutons, but this year’s was almost as good, and featured Ligurian olive oil, too.

The first wine was the rose, Ciliegiolo, followed by the Bruna Rosso 2012, mostly Garnaccia, with some Rossesse, Cinsault and who knows?  Both were so well suited to the dish that I was transported to Genova, Portofino, and Recco in a brief moment.