You need:
About a tablespoon of olive oil
Two or three cloves of fresh garlic, bruised or chopped into big pieces
One can artichoke hearts
Some dried herbes de Provence
One container store-bought low sodium chicken broth (I like Swanson Organic)*
Package of spinach fettuccine (nests, if you can find them – DeCecco is good)
One or two lemons
Shredded parmesan cheese
Black pepper
Flat-leaf parsley, optional
One or two medium-large pots for pasta/soup
In a large pot, heat up about a tbsp. of oil and add the garlic, sauteeing on medium for a minute or so. Drain, rinse and break up the artichoke hearts and add to the pot with a heaping tsp. of the herbes de Provence. Sautee for another minute or so and dump in the broth. Raise the heat and bring up to a simmer, adding more herbs if you like more flavor.
At this point, you have two options: the quick two-pot method or the slower one-pot. For the two-pot, bring some salted water to a boil while you're doing the above and add about two nests of the pasta, cooking til almost al dente. Once it's done, drain and add it to the soup pot. Or for the one-pot method, just dump those nests into your soup, add a cup or so of water, bring up the heat and boil until the pasta is done.
Once you've got your broth and pasta together, you can start adding lemon juice to taste (I add at least a half a lemon) and as much black pepper as you like.
Ladle the soup and noodles into a big bowl and top with lots of shredded parmesan, plus another squirt of lemon juice. If you want to be real fancy you could pretty it up with some flat-leaf parsley, too. Best served with a good baguette or crunchy roll with butter and garlic. And a good strong hot toddy if you're really sick. Or even just sort of sick.
*oh sure, if you're one of those people who keeps homemade chicken stock on hand in the freezer, or if you only have or prefer only to eat vegetable-type broth, use that, why don't you.
