CSA week six - sausage, chard and fennel soup

I'm still not quite recovered from the sniffles I caught during the cold snap so some soup sounded like just the thing. I used this recipe. I came across some more complicated ones, but I liked the use of the pasta water and the Parmesan rind in this one since I happened to have a rind around and I know they add a lot of flavor to soup. I halved the recipe, but added in the fennel bulb as the bunch of chard was on the small side. And I used orzo for the pasta. Here's my whole mis-en-place minus the fennel which I only remembered when I smelled the fennel seed in the cooking sausage. You can see that it took a bit of chopping, but it wasn't a lot of trouble otherwise.

In retrospect, I think I'd remove the vegetables before the half hour of simmering and put them back in near the end. They were already tender from the sweat and steaming; a half hour more in the pot left them on the verge of mushiness. Also, I'd be a bit more careful with the salt. I added some to help with sweating the vegetables, but there was plenty from the pasta water and the cheese so it ended up a little oversalted. Otherwise it turned out just fine with plenty of leftovers.