An Exaltation of Soups (14 page)
Read An Exaltation of Soups Online
Authors: Patricia Solley
“W
HAT A
L
ITTLE
G
IRL
H
AD ON
H
ER
M
IND
”
What a little girl had on her mind was:
Why do the shoulders of other men’s wives give off so strong a smell like magnolia; or like gardenias? What is it, that faint veil of mist, over the shoulders of other men’s wives?
She wanted to have one, that wonderful thing even the prettiest virgin cannot have.
The little girl grew up.
She became a wife and then a mother. One day she suddenly realized; the tenderness that gathers over the shoulders of wives, is only fatigue from loving others day after day.
—I
BARAGL
N
ORLKO
,
twentieth-century Japanese poet
Serves 8
T
HIS DELICATE SOUP
is served at Shinto wedding feasts precisely to symbolize the union of the happy couple through the paired valves of the clam. It is also typically served on March 3 every year for Girl’s Day, when Japanese people pray for the wealth and happiness of their daughters and set up special
hina
dolls to celebrate the occasion. I recommend you find and use soup bowls with lids—ideally lacquer—for serving this soup. Why? Because the presentation is dramatic in beauty and fragrance when each person removes the lid, gazes into the soup, and inhales the lemony brine aroma. It’s delicious, too—light and stimulating.
16 small hard-shell clams
(asari,
if possible)
2 thick green onions (called
negi
in Japanese), green part only, cut into eight 1½-inch pieces on the diagonal
8 pieces fresh lemon or lime peel (Japanese
yuzu,
if you can get it), cut into 2 × ¾-inch rectangles that are scraped of all white pith
8 cups Japanese Soup Stock
(
dashi
)
1 tablespoon saké
¼ teaspoon soy sauce, or to taste
O
P
REPARE
1. Two hours ahead, start the clams soaking in cold salt water. Then scrub, rinse, and drain the clams.
2. Prep the green onions as directed in the recipe list.
3. Cut deep notches in the top and bottom long sides of the lemon or lime rectangles, so each piece looks like a capital N, then cross the legs of the N over each other to make a triangle shape known as the “pine needle cut.” Set the pieces aside.
4. Heat the serving bowls and their lids in the oven or, if they are lacquer, by filling them with hot water.
O
C
OOK
In a wide soup pot, bring the
dashi
to a boil over medium-high heat, then add the clams in a single layer, cover, and cook until the clams just open, about 3 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and reserve the broth. Take out the clams and remove the clam meat from the shells, being careful to end up with eight shells whose halves are still joined together.
O
S
ERVE
1. Place one double shell in each of the eight warmed Japanese soup bowls, filling each side of each shell with clam meat, then covering the bowls with their lids.
2. Reheat the broth, adding the saké and a few drops of soy sauce, then ladle it over the clams, being careful not to stir up any sand that might still be in the bottom of the pot. Arrange the green onion pieces and the citrus peel in each bowl and cover the bowls with lids.
3. Serve immediately, allowing each person to remove the lid, regard the soup, and inhale its fragrance.
W
HAT
I
S
J
APANESE
S
OY
S
AUCE
?
It’s extraordinary. Today called
shöyu
, soy sauce started out as a revolution against the ancient
uoshōyu
(made of fermented fish, like today’s Southeast Asian fish sauces
nuoc mam
and
nam pla).
When the Japanese embraced Buddhism and adopted vegetarianism as a way of life, they turned away from fish and looked to plant-based seasonings, the Chinese soybean in particular. Then they proceeded to take soy sauce to a whole new level.
Tamari shöyu
was developed by
A.D.
775. It’s rich and thick, a product made exclusively from fermenting soybeans. Today’s
shōyu
wasn’t perfected until the seventeenth century. It is made from steamed soybeans mixed with parched and cracked wheat grains, then cultured for three days with the same mold used to make miso and
dashi.
This mash is then added to salted water and stored in cedar barrels for at least two summers, the longer the better. Finally, it is strained and pressed, pasteurized, and bottled. Of course, many of today’s soy sauces are made with shortcuts taken, with proportional cuts in quality. If you can find
Kanro shöyu
, though, grab it: it’s a handmade sauce produced only in the city of Yanai and is known for its
umami
, the “tastiness factor” in Japanese cooking that is reputed to be beyond sweet, sour, salty, and bitter.
OROCCO
WEDDING LAMB SOUP WITH RICE AND BEANS
HARIRA
F
ROM THE
G
ULISTAN
Whose wife is tender, wise, and true,
In fact, Beloved, just like you,
Although he merits no such thing
Will live, as I do, like a King.
—S
AADL
,
thirteenth-century Persian poet
Serves 6 to 8
T
HIS SPECIAL WEDDING
version of the rich, lemony
harira
that traditionally breaks the fast during Ramadan uses rice as a symbolic ingredient and dispenses with the eggs used to thicken traditional
harira
recipes. It’s wonderful, as all
hariras
are, and a great start to both an extravagant banquet and wedded bliss.
1½ cups dried chickpeas, or two 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound boneless lamb, cubed into bite-size pieces
2 medium onions, chopped
1 large red pepper, seeded and chopped (hot or sweet, as you prefer)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
½ cup chopped fresh parsley
2 pounds ripe or canned tomatoes, chopped, juice reserved
1 cup red lentils, washed and picked through for stones
10 cups (2½ quarts) water
½ cup rice
Salt to taste
Cinnamon and lemon slices, for garnish
O
P
REPARE
1. The night before, soak the dried chickpeas overnight in lots of water. The next morning, drain and husk the chickpeas by rubbing them between your palms.
2. Prep the remaining ingredients as directed in the recipe list.
O
C
OOK
1. Heat the oil over low heat in a large soup pot, then add the lamb, onions, red pepper, cinnamon, black pepper, ½ cup of the cilantro, and the parsley. Cook, stirring, over medium-low heat for 5 minutes.
2. Add the tomatoes, turn the heat to medium, and continue cooking for another 15 minutes.
3. Stir in the lentils, chickpeas (unless you’re using canned chickpeas), reserved juice from the tomatoes, and the water, then bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, partially covered, for l½ hours.
4. Add the rice and cook another 30 minutes. If you’re using canned chickpeas, add them now.
5. Stir in the remaining ½ cup of cilantro and the salt. Let simmer for another 5 minutes.
O
S
ERVE
Ladle the soup into festive pottery bowls and sprinkle with cinnamon, pinching the grains between your thumb and forefinger to get a fine dusting. Serve lemon slices on the side—or you may pass around tiny bowls of fresh lemon juice with tiny spoons on the side. My family was served
harira
with bowls of lemon juice at a dinner hosted by a friend remotely connected to the Moroccan royal family, and I watched my lemon-loving young daughter across the low-slung table methodically spoon some 30 spoonfuls into her soup until she’d delicately emptied the entire bowl.
C
ILANTRO
/C
ORIANDER
-
THE
T
WOFER
H
ERB
This member of the parsley family is now in the produce sections of most supermarkets, but I’d never seen nor heard of it in 1983, when I first set foot in the souks of Morocco and found it everywhere, called “Moroccan parsley.” Love at first bite. Native to southern Europe, cilantro has been cultivated for thousands of years by many, many cultures—for its seeds (often called
coriander
, from the Greek
koris
, or “bed bug,” because of the buggy smell of the seeds when they’re still green) and for its leaves (often called
cilantro
, its Spanish name). In ancient Egypt, the seeds were bruised to mix with bread. Romans prescribed the leaves, freshly chopped, for invalids and brought the plant with them to England. There, in Tudor times, the seeds were part of a highly spiced wedding drink called Hippocras—perhaps for their reputed aphrodisiac effect—and, indeed, if consumed in large quantities, coriander acts as a narcotic. What else does it do? It combats flatulence, and women throughout the Arab world chew the seeds to ease labor pains.
URKEY
BRIDE SOUP
EZO
G
ELIN ÇORBASI
Serves 6 to 8
T
HIS RICH TURKISH SOUP
is attributed to an astonishingly beautiful girl born in 1909 in the village of Dokuzyol, located on ancient caravan routes in Turkey’s Barak plain. Ezo had red cheeks and black hair and was adored by camel riders who stopped by her house for water. Her story ends badly, though; her first marriage to a villager was unhappy and she was permitted to forsake him on grounds of maltreatment. Her second marriage took her to Syria and a mother-in-law who couldn’t be pleased—and for whom, it is said, she haplessly created this soup. Ezo died of tuberculosis in Syria in 1952, but in the interim had become a legend in her native land in both folk song and film. Her name lives on in this very popular, oniony, and stick-to-the-ribs soup, which is now traditionally fed to new brides right before their wedding to sustain them for what lies ahead.
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) butter
3 medium onions, finely chopped
2 teaspoons paprika
1½ cups red lentils, washed and picked over
¾ cup fine-grain bulgur wheat
10 cups (2½ quarts) Vegetable or Beef Stock
3 tablespoons tomato paste
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons dried mint leaves
Lemon slices and fresh small mint leaves or parsley, for garnish