An Exaltation of Soups (44 page)
Read An Exaltation of Soups Online
Authors: Patricia Solley
T
HE
M
AKING OF
K
VASS
So many kinds of
kvass!
And some more an acquired taste than others. I really like this recipe as a base for
Okroshka postnaya
, and pleased with myself on how easily this is made and how good, I even like taking swigs from it in the gallon water jug in the fridge.
1 pound day-old black or pumpernickel bread, sliced and dried in a slow oven until crisp, then cut into cubes
24 cups (6 quarts) boiling water
¼ cup lukewarm water (110–115°f.)
2 packages (or 2 tablespoons) active dry yeast
1 cup sugar
¼
cup whole fresh mint leaves, lightly packed
2 tablespoons raisins
1. Sometime before you go to bed one night, put the bread cubes in a large soup pot and pour the boiling water over them. Cover with a towel, put in an unheated oven, and let sit, while you’re sleeping, for at least 8 hours.
2. Get up in the morning, 20 minutes early if you’re going to work, and strain the mixture through a cheesecloth-lined sieve, stirring the soaked bread and pressing on it to get as much liquid as possible out of it. Reserve the liquid and discard the bread. Get the ¼ cup water to the right lukewarm temperature (spigot warm is okay; or use the microwave temperature probe if you’re nervous), stir in the yeast and ¼ teaspoon sugar, and let sit for 10 minutes, until it’s nicely frothy (go brush your teeth). Scrape the yeast mixture into the reserved bread-broth with the rest of the sugar and the mint leaves, give it a stir, cover with a towel, and stick the pot in the oven, forgetting completely about it till you get home that night.
3. At least 8 hours later (you’re home from work; pour yourself a glass of wine), strain the broth through a cheesecloth-lined sieve again, then go looking for that clean gallon jug you’ve got stuck somewhere. Pour the strained liquid into the jug and plop in the raisins. Loosely rubberband a piece of plastic wrap over the top, and let sit for 3 to 5 days in a cool spot. You’ll see the sediments sink to the bottom, the raisins rise to the top, and the liquid on top turn golden brown and pretty clear. It will smell sharp and yeasty.
4. At this point, pour the amber liquid off the top, discarding the sediments. Rebottle the kvass and refrigerate it until you are ready to use it—for the soup or just for a quick pick-me-up.
OLY
W
EEK
P
ALM
S
UNDAY
/C
ARLINGS
S
UNDAY
Palm Sunday begins Holy Week, the last week of Lent. It commemorates the day Christ arrived in Jerusalem for Passover week, when people strewed palms in his path to welcome him. Also called Passion Sunday, it is the time when Christians begin to turn their thoughts away from their own sins and toward Christ’s suffering on the cross.
The English think of … peas. Why peas? Likely by accident, because “Passion” sounded like Middle English
Peason.
So in northern England and Scotland, dried peas became associated with the day and came to be called “carlings,” after the purple mourning draperies
—care
in Middle English—that were placed on church altars that day. In any event, these dried carlings are still sold in packages, and steeped in water over Friday night, then boiled with fat bacon on Saturday evening, and served hot or cold in pubs and hospitals on Sunday with salt and vinegar.In the South of France, people serve chickpea soup, recalling the tradition of Christ’s walking through fields of chickpeas on Palm Sunday.
AUNDY
T
HURSDAY
/G
REEN
T
HURSDAY
Maundy Thursday recalls the Last Supper and Christ washing the feet of his disciples. It’s called Maundy Thursday from the “mandate” (Latin
mandatum)
of humility Christ laid down after the foot washing. It’s called Green Thursday from the Germanic word
grunen
(“to mourn”) and also, likely, from the green bitter herbs that were part of the traditional Jewish Passover dinner. Accordingly, many people still eat green soups of these herbs in honor of the day.
The French serve a potato soup with bitter greens—some combination of dandelion greens; beet, carrot, or radish tops; watercress, spinach, arugula, Swiss chard, escarole, chicory, green onions, collards, mustard or turnip greens.
Chervil soup is eaten throughout Europe because it’s green and because it tastes like myrrh, which flavored the wine offered to Christ while he hung on the cross.
OOD
F
RIDAY
On this day of Christ’s crucifixion, many people by tradition would eat nothing at all. Those who did would remember the vinegar: “Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.” It was the last ministration. “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (John 19:30). As a consequence, and in honor:
In Greece, lentil soup is dosed with vinegar and eaten.
In Poland,
zur
is served, a very sour rye soup.In New Orleans, Cajun cooks make
Gumbo z’herbes
with seven bitter greens and vinegar to flavor the oyster and okra soup.
In the Swabian district of Germany, however, people traditionally made a clear soup with
Maultaschen
, or “snout pockets”—wonderfully fat stuffed noodles. And the stuffing? Since medieval times, it has been meat—prompting critics to ask, “Do you think God is so dumb that he can’t see through the noodle dough?”
ORSICA
“SOUP OF THE LORD”
MINESTRA DI FASCIOLU SECCU
P
ENITENTIAL
C
USTOMS
Since the Middle Ages, Corsican penitents who wish to expiate their sins join their village’s Procession du Catenacciu on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, traversing the Way of the Cross in bare feet and draped with a cowl. It’s solemn and deadly serious, but that doesn’t prevent fellow parishioners from collecting wild rosemary along the way to flavor the traditional bean and pasta soup they are preparing to eat on Good Friday. The most famous (and tourist attracted) procession takes place in the town of Sartene, where the parish priest selects one anonymous penitent, covered from head to foot in a red robe and cowl, to carry a seventy-pound oak cross through the town while dragging a thirty-pound chain behind him.
Serves 6 to 8
T
HIS IS A
basic soup, solid fare appropriate for such a serious occasion. And yet, it’s a lovely soup—pretty to see with red beans cuddled by elbow macaroni, fragrant with rosemary, and set off by a generous garnish of fresh minced greens, all mouthwarming in its pepperiness.
2½ cups (1 pound) dried red beans
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or 4 canned tomatoes
8 cups (2 quarts) water
A large sprig fresh rosemary, or 1 teaspoon dried rosemary, crumbled between your palms into the soup
Salt and pepper generously to taste
½ pound elbow macaroni or ziti (about 3 cups)
Minced bitter green (dandelion, arugula, etc.) or green onions, for garnish
O
P
REPARE
1. The night before, soak the beans in plenty of water.
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 onion and garlic in it for 5 minutes. Add the tomato and cook down for a minute or two, then pour in the water, add the rosemary, and bring to a boil.
2. Drain the beans and rinse them. Add them to the soup, bring back to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for about 1 hour, until the beans are soft.
3. Season the soup generously with salt and pepper, then add the pasta and cook over medium heat until tender, 20 to 30 minutes, stirring from time to time and adding water to this thick soup as needed. You want the soup soft and well cooked.
O
S
ERVE
Remove the rosemary sprig, ladle the soup into bowls, and top with minced bitter greens, to recall the bitterness of the season.
R
OMAN
S
ENECA
N
EEDS
S
TOICISM TO
E
NDURE
E
XILE IN
C
ORSICA
Banished to Corsica for eight years by Roman Emperor Claudius for alleged relations with the emperor’s niece Julia Livillia, Seneca lamented in his
Epigram II:
Corsica, land peopled by Ionian settlers,
Corsica, once called Cyrnos by the Greeks,
Corsica, smaller than Sardinia and bigger than Elba,
Corsica, rivers bursting with fish,
Corsica, scorching hot as soon as early summer starts And deadlier yet when the dog days patter in,
You’re the same to jailed and free people alike:
The ashes of the living endure on your light earth.
NITED
S
TATES
NEW ORLEANS GUMBO
CAJUN GUMBO Z’HERBES
T
USKEGEE
V
OODOO
Leah Chase, a New Orleans restaurateur, tells the story from back in the 1940s when members of the Tuskegee Airmen came to eat gumbo. When they saw her add filé powder (from sassafras) into the soup, one of them warned the others that it might be voodoo powder and if they ate it, they’d never leave New Orleans alive.