An Exaltation of Soups (34 page)
Read An Exaltation of Soups Online
Authors: Patricia Solley
2. Prep the remaining ingredients as directed in the recipe list.
O
C
OOK
1. Bring the meat, water, and chile pepper to a boil in a large soup pot over medium heat, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 2 hours.
2. Add the pumpkin and carrots, cover the pot, and cook until very tender, about 20 minutes.
3. Remove the meat and chile pepper from the pot, discarding the pepper. In a blender, puree the pumpkin and carrots in the broth, then pour back into the pot. When the meat is cool enough to handle, cut it into cubes and stir them into the soup.
4. Add the celery, onion, turnips, potatoes, and malanga to the soup; bring it to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Thin the broth with as much water as needed—it should not be too thick.
5. Add the cabbage and cook 15 more minutes. Thin the soup again with water, as needed.
6. Add the vermicelli and cook until tender. Thin the soup again with water, as needed. This is a soup full of thirsty ingredients.
7. Taste and correct for seasoning with salt and pepper. Stir in the lime juice. Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let it sit until you are ready to serve it.
O
S
ERVE
Carefully bring the soup back to a simmer, stirring so the pumpkin doesn’t burn, and ladle the soup into bowls. Serve some lime wedges on the side for people to help themselves.
T
HE
B
IRTH OF
S
OUPE
JOUMOU
, J
ANUARY
1, 1804
People started gathering at dawn at Gonaïves’ Place d’Armes. General Dessalines mounted the Autel de la Patrie to speak. He recited the cruelties of the people’s enslavement in Kreyol, so everyone could understand him, and he declared that Haitians would forever after live free and die free. “Long live independence!” he shouted at the end of the ceremony, having no idea what a difficult life it would be. Cannons were fired; church bells rung; people cheered; and, they say, kettles of fragrant
soupe joumou
perfumed the air, ready to be ladled up in a mass communion. This soup symbolizes Haiti’s fervent wish for peace and freedom—its symbol of communion and brotherhood. And one thing is sure: on January 1, Haitians around the world make it and eat it for lots of reasons.
Some say, pure and simple, it’s a good luck charm for the New Year—and you
better
eat it because it’s bad luck if you don’t. Others say, no, it’s really to cleanse and purify the body for the New Year. Others yet say it honors the Vodou god Papa Loko, keeper of African spiritual traditions, and that it reliably “lifts up a man’s soul and makes him prophesy.”
H
AITIAN
H
ISTORY IN A
S
OUP
B
OWL
What a tangled web this soup symbolizes. From the time King Ferdinand of Spain congratulated Columbus on his Christmas Day landfall near Cap Ha’tien in 1492, then declared open season on West Africans to work his New World sugar plantations there, Haiti has been a land of warm and gracious people racked by violence and suffering.
Here’s some history behind this heavily symbolic kettle of New Year’s soup: After the 1492 landfall, Spain stayed long enough to kill off the natives, import sugarcane cuttings from the Canary Islands, and establish plantations with African slaves, but then left Haiti to the French in 1697.
France wasted no time. Under Kings Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, it transformed those depopulated mountains and valleys into cash-crop factories of sugar, indigo, and cotton. How? With African slaves culled largely from tribes in Congo, Angola, Dahomey, Guinea, and Senegal. When the slaves died, often from nearly unbelievable cruelty, they were replaced by new shipments from Africa.
So what happened in 1789 when the French rose up and proclaimed
Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!
? After all, the French National Assembly’s Declaration of the Rights of Man clearly stated, “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” National Assemblymen in Paris said, Oh yes, we guess that means Haiti, too—or at least the freed mulattoes there, those fine sons of Frenchmen and their African slaves. No way, said the racist colonialists in Haiti, and they conducted such a tough lobby that the National Assembly reversed itself in 1791.
Haiti’s mulattoes could not believe their ears. It was the last straw. They immediately joined their education, knowledge, and considerable military experience to those 500,000 enslaved Africans—and Haiti exploded in revolt. In August 1791, Vodou priest Boukman Duffy convened slave rebel leaders in the forest overlooking Le Cap. Illuminated by flashes of lightning, they made incantations; they slit the throat of a pig and drank its blood; and they formally swore death to all
blancs
, which they carried out to the letter with pruning hooks, machetes, and fire. In November, Louis-Jacques Bauvais’s mulatto troops attacked and burned Port-au-Prince, slaughtering whites wherever they found them. They sported white ears as cockades in their caps and committed nearly unbelievable atrocities against women and children. And that was just the start.
Thirteen long years, all told, of tit-for-tat torched cities, slit throats, scorched earth, attacks, betrayals, mass executions, sieges, torture, encirclements, and despair, not to mention 10,000 deaths from malaria and yellow fever. Uprising leader Dessalines’s ultimate winning strategy:
koupe tet, boule kay
, “cut off heads, burn down.” In the end, some 300,000 Haitians died and 50,000 French—and in the end, the French were defeated. French General Rochambeau was given ten days to pack up his army and ship home.
When the last French ship had cleared Le Cap, Dessalines sent word: “There is no more doubt,
mon cher general
, the country is ours, and the famous
who-shall-have-it
is settled.” He divided up the war chest—8
gourdes
per man; he dispersed his army to the principal towns; and he sat down with his generals “to ratify in ink what they had written in blood” and to celebrate with
Soupe joumou.
RAN
(P
ERSIA
)
NOODLE SOUP
ÂSH-E RESHTEH
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the white hand of Moses on the bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the ground suspires.
—O
MAR
K
HAYYAM
,
eleventh-century Persian poet, from T
HE
R
UBIYAT
, verse 4
Serves 6 to 8
T
HIS ANCIENT SOUP
to celebrate
No Ruz
(New Year) on March 21 began life in Zoroastrian Persia, made then of spinach and clover that was freshly sprouting in mid-March and thickened with a paste of flour and water. Over time, the flour-and-water paste thickened into dumplings, and by
A.D.
500, at the court of Sassanian King Kobad, tales from Old Persian literature indicate those dumplings had forever turned to noodles, 700 years before pasta turned up for the first time in Italy. This recipe is rich in native Iranian ingredients, but also reflective of its central position on the hump of the Silk Road, with traders and their fabled foodstuffs endlessly peregrinating through it, east to west and west to east and back again.
Âsh-e reshteh
is a glorious soup, stuffed with grains and greens, multicolored, multitextured, and oh-so-exquisitely aromatic for all the stumpingly hearty foods in it. You can ladle it into separate bowls and garnish individually, but it’s really lovely in one big tureen ladled out to hungry guests who are anxious for a lucky New Year. Be sure to have warm bread and lemon juice on the side.
¼ cup dried red kidney beans
½ cup dried chickpeas
¼ cup dried white navy beans
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced in half from stem to top, then thinly into half-moons
Pinch of saffron threads, crushed to a powder with a few grains of sugar and dissolved in 2 teaspoons of hot water
½ teaspoon finely ground black pepper
8 cups (2 quarts) Vegetable Stock
¾ cup brown lentils
1 lemon, juiced
½ teaspoon dried dill, crumbled between your palms
1 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 cup chopped green onions, white and some green parts
2 cups fresh spinach, washed, stemmed, stacked, and thinly sliced
Salt to taste
1 cup Persian noodles or linguine, broken into short lengths
2 tablespoons sour cream (a substitute for Persian
kashk,
or dried buttermilk)
G
ARNISH
¼ cup
na’nâ dâgh
(1 small minced onion and 1 teaspoon dried mint fried in 1 tablespoon oil)
Dollop of sour cream (or
kashk)
Sprinkling of turmeric
R
ESHTEH AND
N
O
R
UZ
Reshteh
, the name of this flat noodle, actually means “string” or “reins of life” in Persian, and it is traditionally cooked into dishes when momentous ventures are to be undertaken. Not just at
No Ruz
, when families wish to “cut the knots of trouble” in their lives and at the same time “tie themselves together,” but also before journeys or when important decisions are to be made—in fact, at any time when a fresh start in life is needed.
As for
No Ruz
itself, it has always been a time of renewal and family celebration. From earliest times, homes were scrubbed, ceramic pots broken and replaced (hygienic reasons!), and fires lit on roofs to guide one’s ancestors safely home from heaven on the cusp of the New Year to feast with the family for the next ten days. Today, Islamic faith and New Year notwithstanding, the festival carries on for twelve days, ending in
Seezdah Beedar
, the thirteenth day of the New Year—and since it’s considered a very unlucky time to stay home, people troop off to the countryside for a last blast picnic feast.
D
UALIST
S
OUP
M
EETS
D
UALISTIC
Z
OROASTRIANISM
Once upon a time, the Zoroastrian god Ahouramazda set out to create the world. Instantly, his act of creation provoked an opposite reaction in the cosmos. His evil twin Angromainyous sprang into being, dedicated to destroying the harmony of the universe. Eternally these two gods face each other off, and humans must balance their lives in careful equilibrium between their extreme forces of good and evil. Likewise, Zoroastrians ate as they lived: their foodways developed to carefully balance opposing flavors, as in this sweet-and-sour New Year’s soup.
O
P
REPARE
1. The night before, soak the beans and chickpeas overnight in plenty of water. Drain, rinse, and reserve the beans.
2. Prep the remaining ingredients as directed in the recipe list.
O
C
OOK
1. Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium heat and sauté the sliced onion until golden brown; this shouldn’t be rushed. Stir in the liquid saffron and pepper, the drained beans and chickpeas, and the stock. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 1 hour.
2. Add the lentils along with the lemon juice and dill, return to a boil over high heat, and again reduce the heat to low and simmer for another hour.
3. Stir in the parsley, green onions, and spinach, and simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Bring the soup to a boil over high heat, adding more stock or water (as much as 3 cups) to your taste of soupiness. Season with salt, then add the pasta. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, uncovered, stirring from time to time, until the noodles are tender, about 12 minutes.