An Exaltation of Soups (49 page)
Read An Exaltation of Soups Online
Authors: Patricia Solley
2. After 2 hours, remove the chicken and pick its meat, discarding the skin and bones. Cut the meat into bite-size pieces and set aside, reserving some to fill the
kreplach.
3. Strain the stock, pressing on the vegetables to extract all the flavor and goodness before discarding them. Stir in the chicken and season with salt and pepper. At this point, you can cool the soup, uncovered, and refrigerate overnight so the flavors can blend, then easily skim as much of the congealed fat as you want before reheating.
4. When making the final preparations, return the soup to a simmer, and let the steam build under a cover. Add the
kreplach
, cover the pot quickly, and simmer for 20 minutes. Don’t lift the lid!
O
S
ERVE
Ladle the soup into bowls and start thinking about your deeds over the past year and your hopes for the coming one.
K
REPLACH
(M
AKES ABOUT 18 TRIANGLES
)
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 egg
⅓ cup ice water
3 to 4 tablespoons chopped liver paste or minced chicken, for filling
Mix the flour, salt, egg, and ice water, then knead until smooth, about 5 minutes. Shape into a ball and let rest 30 minutes. Flatten the ball and roll it out ⅛ inch thick, then cut into 18 squares, each 2½ inches square. Drop ½ teaspoon of filling onto each square, moisten the edges, then fold into a triangle. Press the tines of a fork all along the edges to seal. Let rest 20 minutes on one side, then 20 minutes on the other. Refrigerate until ready to cook.
A
IRY
T
HOUGHTS
“The smell of a chicken soup fart with noodles is absolutely one hundred per cent unmistakably Jewish.”
—
B
RYCE
C
OURTENAY
, contemporary Australian novelist, from T
HE
P
OTATO
F
ACTORY
EORGIA
BEEF AND POMEGRANATE SOUP
KALIA
Serves 6 to 8
T
HIS IS AN EXOTIC AND
beautiful soup—bright red chunks of pepper, melt-in-your-mouth beef, sweet onions, crunchy walnuts, all in a sweet-tart and intensely beef and pomegranate broth. Trust me on this: you carnivores will love this soup (and you know who you are).
2 pounds lean boneless beef, in 1 piece
8 cups (2 quarts) Beef Stock, cold or at room temperature
2 tablespoons butter
2 medium onions, chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon dried oregano, rubbed between your palms
¼ teaspoon ground fenugreek (or curry powder, in a pinch)
¼ teaspoon dried mint, rubbed between your palms
¾ cup pomegranate juice (juice pomegranates by rolling them hard on the floor under your foot, then squeezing them in an orange juicer, or you may also dilute pomegranate paste half and half with water)
Pomegranate seeds and toasted walnut pieces, for garnish
A
NDRÉ
G
IDE
T
ELLS
Y
OUNG
N
ATHANAËL OF
F
RUITS
“W
HOSE
M
EMORY
, O
NCE
Y
OU
C
AN NO
L
ONGER
P
ICK
T
HEM
, I
NCITES
Y
OU TO
N
EW
T
HIRSTS
”
Let me tell you of the pomegranate; of its juice,
Sourish like the juice of green raspberries;
Its wax-like flower the color of fruit;
Its closely guarded treasure;
Its partitions in the hive;
Its abundance of flavor;
Its pentagonal architecture;
Its skin giving in;
Its grains bursting;
Grains of blood dripping into azure cups;
Drops of gold falling into plates of enameled bronze.
—A
NDRÉ
G
IDE
,
twentieth-century French writer, posing as the prophet Ménalque, in L
ES
N
OURRI
-T
URES
T
ERRESTRES
O
P
REPARE
Prep the ingredients as directed in the recipe list, to include toasting the walnuts and reserving the pomegranate seeds for the garnish.
O
C
OOK
1. In a large soup pot, immerse the beef in the stock and bring it to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and
simmer until nearly tender, about 2 hours. Remove the meat, let cool, and reserve.
2. Heat the butter in a skillet and sauté the onions until golden. Add the red pepper, garlic, coriander, oregano, and fenugreek, stirring for another few minutes, then scrape into the soup pot. Wash the skillet out with broth to extract every bit of flavor.
3. Cut the meat into small dice and scrape it into the soup pot. Simmer for 30 more minutes.
4. Crumble the dried mint into the soup, then stir in the pomegranate juice and simmer for 10 minutes.
O
S
ERVE
Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish each portion with a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds and toasted walnuts.
P
ASSIONATELY
P
OMEGRANATE
Not surprisingly, the word
pomegranate
, from the Latin
pomum granatum
, means “apple of many seeds.” But if you can’t bring yourself to chew and swallow those many seeds, you probably aren’t interested in buying the fresh fruit, with its leathery red skin, regardless of its seductive flavor. And seductive it has always been.
In the Old Testament Song of Songs, Solomon describes Sheba as a garden whose “plants are an orchard of pomegranates;” he says, “As a piece of a pomegranate are thy temples within thy locks.” She then says she wants him to drink “the spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate”—whew! this is suggestive courtship at its best.
The ancient Greeks associated pomegranates with the story of Persephone. When inflamed Pluto abducted Persephone to the underworld to set her on his throne, her mother, Demeter—goddess of nature—was not happy. She grieved the world into famine so that Zeus was forced to intervene, requiring Pluto to restore Persephone to earth, so long as she had eaten no food in the interim. Alas, unhappy as she was, Persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds to quench her thirst. The compromise? She would return to earth for six months—and return to Hades for the other six. Demeter, with a mother’s sense of fairness, obliged with weather to match: summer when Persephone was home, winter when she wasn’t. It’s this association of pomegranate with death and rebirth that later made it a Christian symbol of the Resurrection.
In the meantime, Romans imported the pomegranate from North Africa, calling it
malum punicum
, or “apple of Carthage.” In Arabic folklore and poetry, it is a symbol for the female breast. In Judaism, the pomegranate symbolizes fertility—all those seeds—and relates to the first commandment of the Torah: to be fruitful and multiply.
RAN
VEGETABLE AND RICE SOUP
ÂSH-E KALAM-O HAVEEJ
P
ERSIAN
R
ICE
Ah, Persian rice—the most prized delicacy of one of the world’s most delicate cuisines. How did it get to Persia in the first place? One myth has it that King Tahmures, of the legendary Pishdadian dynasty in ancient Persia, brought it straight from China in 835
B.C.E
. At 3,500 miles, as the crow flies, over some of the roughest terrain on earth, that would have been an unusually long military campaign. More likely it found its way gradually over the Silk Road, arriving in Persia with Turkic tribes via northern India some 2,000 years ago. Today five microvarieties are grown and produced in Iran, in small quantities, alas, rarely exported. Four are for high holidays, all very long-grained, hard, and fragrant:
Ambar-boo
(amber scented),
Darbâri
(imperial court),
Dom Siâh
(“black tailed” variety of basmati rice), and
Sadri
(for the poor).
Gerdeh
, a round and starchy rice, is used for desserts, stuffings, meatballs, and soups like this one.
Serves 6 to 8
C
LASSICALLY PERSIAN, WITH
all the sophistication that implies, this soup is thick; it is colorful with bright orange bits of carrot and slivers of dark green spinach. It is subtle in flavor—all in a rice-thickened broth that soothes and excites the palate at the same time.
2 tablespoons chicken fat
2 medium onions, halved (root to stem), then sliced into half-moons
⅔ cup raw short-grain, starchy rice
3 tablespoons tomato paste
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
10 cups rich Chicken Stock
5 carrots, peeled and diced
2 cups finely chopped cabbage
3 cups washed, stemmed, stacked, and thinly sliced spinach
1 cup finely chopped fresh parsley
½ cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
Salt to taste
2 cups diced cooked chicken