An Exaltation of Soups (40 page)
Read An Exaltation of Soups Online
Authors: Patricia Solley
1¼ cups yellow split peas
12 cups (3 quarts) water
1 large onion, chopped
2 teaspoons dried thyme, crumbled between the palms of your hands
¼ pound bacon, cubed
2½ pounds salted lamb shoulder, cut into large chunks
1 large rutabaga, peeled and diced
2 large potatoes, peeled and thickly sliced
4 large carrots, peeled and diced
Pepper to taste, and salt if it needs it
O
P
REPARE
Prep the ingredients as directed in the recipe list.
O
C
OOK
1. Place the peas and water in a large soup pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Skim as needed, then add the onion and thyme. Reduce the heat to low, then simmer, covered, for 45 minutes.
2. Add the bacon and
one piece
of the meat chunks to the soup. (Note: Because of the saltiness of salted lamb, which would seriously oversalt the soup broth, you should boil the rest of the salted lamb chunks in a separate pot of water over medium-low heat, covered, for 1 hour, then drain and add to the soup pot. If you use fresh lamb, you can boil all the meat together in the soup pot.) Bring the soup to a boil over medium heat, then reduce it to low and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes, stirring frequently and adding more water if needed.
3. Add the rutabaga, potatoes, and carrots; cover and simmer for 20 minutes, or until tender. Season with pepper and salt if needed. Remove the meat chunks and cut them into small pieces, discarding any bones, and returning the meat to the soup pot.
O
S
ERVE
This pea soup should be very thick. Ladle large portions into big bowls so the “bursting” can begin.
S
ARCASTIC
H
ALLI
B
URSTS FROM
P
ORRIDGE
S
OUP
In the Icelandic “Tale of Sarcastic Halli,” which was written in the thirteenth century about events 300 years earlier, King Harald of Norway has competing Icelandic poets at his court: the master poet Thojodolf and the irreverent, not to say outrageous, Halli. Soon after Halli arrives in court, he decides to mock the king for not giving his retainers enough time to eat: after a meager meal, he runs into the kitchen and stuffs himself with porridge. The King is furious and orders Thojodolf to compose a satirical poem on the spot:
The handle rattled and Halli
has pigged out on porridge.
A cow’s-horn spoon better suits him,
I say, than something fine.
At the next meal, the King has a trough and spoon brought to Halli in the main hall and orders him to eat until he bursts. He refuses and gets away with it, but the laugh is on him in the end. Back in Iceland, years later, he is served porridge, takes a few bites, and falls backwards, dead. When King Harald learns of it, he says, “The poor devil must have burst eating porridge.”
—
T
HE
S
AGAS OF
I
CELANDERS
, G
EORGE
C
LARK
,
translator, 1997
WITZERLAND
BROWNED FLOUR SOUP
MEHLSUPPE
A S
WISS
P
ROVERB
“Some people like to go to church and some people like cherries.”
Serves 6 to 8
A
REAL STOMACH
coater, this is actually eaten before dawn, as part of the famous three-day Basel Carnival, right before the first masked parade begins. This traditional
Fastnacht
celebration goes back at least to 1376, when it was first mentioned in city records, but most believe it started as a pre-Christian pagan rite dating back to Roman and old Germanic times.
½ cup (1 stick) butter
6 tablespoons flour
8 cups (2 quarts) hot water
2 medium onions, stuck with 3 cloves each
1 bay leaf
Salt to taste
Splashes of dry Madeira wine and/or grated Swiss cheese, for garnish
O
P
REPARE
Prep the ingredients as directed in the recipe list.
O
C
OOK
1. Melt 6 tablespoons of the butter in a large soup pot over medium heat, whisk in the flour, and cook, stirring, until the mixture is smooth and the color of chocolate, about 10 minutes. Be careful that the roux doesn’t burn.
2. Remove from the heat and whisk in the water. Add the onions, bay leaf, and salt.
3. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, then reduce the heat to low and simmer the soup, uncovered and stirring occasionally, for at least 1 hour.
4. Remove the onions and bay leaf and whisk in the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter.
O
S
ERVE
Ladle the soup into bowls and splash a little Madeira into each one. You can sprinkle a little grated Swiss cheese on each portion, too, or pass a separate bowl for people to serve themselves.
Y
OU
A
RE
T
HERE FOR
F
ASTNACHT
F
OOLERIES
At 2:30
A.M.
, Marianne, our hostess, knocks on our door, already dressed. “Hurry up, guys. The soup’s done.” We stagger downstairs, bleary-eyed, and gulp down a big bowl of steaming
Mehlsuppe
to fortify ourselves against the pre-dawn chill. The scene in the street outside could have been painted by Breughel. A middle-aged man rushes by dressed in a bunny suit, a big bunny head firmly cradled under one arm, big bunny ears flopping crazily. A bearded man in a gown of burgundy velvet strides by. A small black and white drum is slung over his shoulder, a froth of white lace cascades over his ample bosom, and his beribboned bustle swishes in time to his steps. As we near the old town, the costumed crowd grows thicker. People rush around resolutely, like characters in a play just before the curtain goes up. We huddle on the sidewalk near the Old Post Office with hundreds of other watchers, and try to stay out of the way. All eyes are on the clock as the minutes tick away to four … three … two …one … The lights go out. The crowd lets out a huge “Waaaaaah!” and thousands of piccolos and drums strike up a lusty military march. Hundreds of gaudy lanterns light up the darkness. The funny, bustling Basel burghers are gone. In their stead, gnomes, gremlins, witches and sprites loom out of the dark. Every possible figment of the human imagination is there: dinosaurs and chickens, pirates, Indians, trolls, jesters, kings, queens, sheep, monks, Saracens and cavaliers, Pierrots and Columbines, Dalmatians and dwarves. And then the masks begin to move. Marching four abreast, they come from all sides at once. The wail of the piccolos and the rattatat of the drums overtakes us, then fades away, then rises again. A whole platoon of Elvises marches by, followed by 30 or 40 piccolo-playing petticoats. They are huge in the narrow streets, and, suddenly, those outsized
papier-mâché
heads with their grinning mouths and empty eyes are not so funny anymore. They come on in “cliques” of 30 or more. Each follows its own lantern and they wind through the cobbled lanes, crossing paths with other cliques, falling in behind them, then breaking away to rejoin in cacophony on the main square. The pageant goes on until daybreak. Then the phantoms turn back into sleepy people wearing masks, who gradually drift off to bed.
—E
VA
M
UNK
, “Waggismania”
ENT
The earliest Christians celebrated a short, tough Lent. Either for one day, or forty hours, or two days—they didn’t eat a bite or take a sip of anything. Okay, not exactly uniform. And, in fact, Eusebius reports that St. Irenaeius was annoyed by these variations, urging Pope St. Victor I in
A.D.
190 to lay down the law on precisely how long people
should
fast. A couple years later Tertullian echoed the same sentiments, sneering a bit that common Catholic practice was a mere two days (the so-called Passion Feast for “the days on which the bridegroom was taken away”) instead of the tougher two-week fast of his own schismatic Montanist sect.
It wasn’t until the fourth century that the church declared a much longer, but less severe fast at the Council of Nicea (
A.D.
325). It was St. Athanasius who actually set the forty days, when he urged his flock in
A.D.
331 to fast for forty full days—to commemorate Jesus’ forty days of fasting and temptation in the desert and his forty hours in the tomb. Pope Gregory laid it down as church law in
A.D.
604, and by 653 the Council of Toledo was ready to refuse communion to anyone who didn’t fast for forty days. Let’s not even talk about Charlemagne’s ninth-century edict that these recalcitrants be put to death.
By the seventh century, for Catholics, Lent meant no meat, no eggs, no milk nor butter nor cheese, and no sex for forty days. In “Beppo,” Lord Byron put it this way:
And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes,
And solid meats, and highly spiced ragouts,
To live for forty days on ill-dress’d fishes,
Because they have no sauces to their stews.
It was worse if you were Orthodox: all the above plus no fish (except shellfish), no wine, and no olive oil—and for forty-eight days. But the important thing was, now there was a benchmark:
Lent was a fixed star in the constellation of this moveable feast, and Easter-related customs were now free to develop and take root in church calendars.
Needless to say, soup comes into its own during Lent. It may not be the best soup you’ve ever eaten, but it serves a purpose: austere, thick, filling, hot, often beany—and not highly seasoned as the whole point is penitence and mortification of the flesh.
Cheating during Lent? Oh yes, always. And lots of shady rationalizations, too. The church rule was no “meat”—so fish, mollusks, and crab were okay because they were “cold blooded.” Then, upon reflection, cold-blooded turtles and frogs were declared okay, too. Then snails actually began to be raised at convents and monasteries as food for Lent. Iguanas and alligators. Then newborn rabbits, somehow. Creative interpretation reached a new level with eleventh-century aristocratic monks at the St. Gall monastery in Switzerland. These epicures shipped in exotic seafoods for Lent, including a whale; they declared beavers cold-blooded; and they specially reclassified ducks, geese, partridges, and pheasants as “feathered fish” for the duration of the Lenten season.
To this day, Mexicans dote on sea turtle soup for Lent, fishing some 35,000 of them annually and prompting conservationists to publicly beg the Pope to rewrite the rules and declare these endangered creatures “meat.”
Nicaraguans, likewise, traditionally make
sopa de garrobo
of iguanas, rice, and vegetables their primary Lenten diet.