An Exaltation of Soups (64 page)
Read An Exaltation of Soups Online
Authors: Patricia Solley
3 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, diced
8 cups (2 quarts) rich Beef Stock
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon white pepper
3 cups peeled and diced potatoes
2 cups peeled and diced plantains
2 cups peeled and diced bananas
Salt to taste
1 cup coconut milk
Fried plantain chips (ready-made or homemade), for garnish
O
P
REPARE
1. Prep the ingredients as directed in the recipe list.
2. If making the fried plantain chips for the garnish, fry thinly cut plantain circles in hot oil until crispy, then drain them completely on paper towels.
O
C
OOK
1. Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a large soup pot over low heat, stir in the onion, cover, and sweat for 5 to 10 minutes, until transparent. Pour in the stock, add the red pepper flakes and white pepper, and bring to a boil over high heat.
2. Add the potatoes, plantains, and banana; reduce the heat to low, cover, and let simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, until all the ingredients are very tender. Season with salt.
O
S
ERVE
Stir in the coconut milk, then for enrichment, stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter. Allow the soup to reheat at a low temperature (otherwise the coconut flavor will degrade), then ladle it into bowls, garnish with fried plantain chips, and serve immediately.
“M
OTHER TO
S
ON
”
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no
crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on
the floor—
Bare,
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the
dark
Where there ain’t been no
light.
So boy, don’t you turn back,
Don’t you set down on the
steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder
hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no
crystal stair.
—L
ANGSTON
H
UGHES
,
African-American poet
, 1922
IMBABWE
SPICY VEGETABLE and PEANUT STEW
HUKU NE DOVI
N
DEBELE
E
XPRESSIONS
“If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing.”
“Between true friends even water drunk together is sweet enough.”
Serves 6 to 8
T
HIS CEREMONIAL DISH
for special occasions in Zimbabwe villages is a “must-eat” for anyone who loves good food. It’s rich and sweet, thick and succulent—not to mention piquant—with an unusual and beautiful combination of vegetables. Chicken is expensive in Zimbabwe and brought out only for feasts, which is to say that vegetarians would not be at all violating the authenticity of the dish by cutting out the chicken and substituting vegetable stock for the chicken stock. But by all means serve this with
sadza
, or fried corn-meal mush. It’s traditional to eat the stew with delicate fingertips right out of the pot (or from a big serving dish), a truly wonderful communal meal to serve on one of the nights of Kwanzaa.
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
4 cups (1 quart) Vegetable or Chicken Stock
1 cup creamy peanut butter (more traditionally, finely crushed peanuts)
2 cups fresh or canned peeled and chopped tomatoes, juice reserved
Salt and pepper to taste
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes, or less—this is pretty spicy
2 cups finely chopped cabbage
3 sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 turnips, peeled and chopped
12 whole okra, fresh or frozen, with stems trimmed
2 to 3 cups chopped cooked chicken, in big chunks
O
P
REPARE
Prep the ingredients as directed in the recipe list.
O
C
OOK
1. Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat and fry the onions until soft, about 3 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and stir in 1 cup of the stock. Whisk in the peanut butter, then stir in the rest of the stock, the tomatoes with their juice, salt and pepper, and red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and let simmer for 30 minutes.
2. Stir in the cabbage, sweet potatoes, carrots, and turnips; bring back to a high boil, then reduce the heat to low again, cover, and cook for 20 more minutes.
3. Stir in the okra and chicken, cover, and let stew over low heat for 30 minutes.
O
S
ERVE
Pour the stew into a large serving dish, gather your guests around a table, and invite them to dig in with their fingers. Or, ladle the soup out into individual soup bowls and serve with corn bread or the traditional fried cornmeal mush.
“N
IKKI
-R
OSA
”
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those
big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
and though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good christmasses
and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me
because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
—N
IKKI
G
IOVANNI
,
African-American poet, from B
LACK
F
EELING
, B
LACK
T
ALK
, B
LACK
J
UDGMENT
, 1968
ERMISSION
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material.
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by Saadi, translated by John Charles Edward Bowen. Copyright © 1948 Basil Blackwell. Reprinted courtesy of Blackwell Publishing.
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Tales of Uncle Tompa
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The Heart of Chinese Poetry
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Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966–1996
by Seamus Heaney. Copyright © 1998. Titled
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Stephen G. Gudgel: “Mester d’Amor” by Joan Salvat-Papasseit, translated by Stephen G. Gudgel. Reprinted by permission of the translator.
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The Complete Poems of Cavafy
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Black Talk, Black Judgment
, by Nikki Giovanni. Copyright © 1968, 1970 by Nikki Giovanni. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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The Death Notebooks
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Muslim Songs for Children
by F. S. A. Majeed. Copyright © 1988 by Ze Majeed, Singapore. Reprinted by permission of the author.
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The Works of Alexander Pushkin
by Alexander Pushkin, edited by Avraham Yarmolinksy. Copyright © 1936 and renewed 1964 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Modern Library, a division of Random House, Inc.
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by Paul Valery and Louis Varése. Copyright © 1950 by New Directions Publishing Corp. “What a Little Girl Had on Her Mind” by Ibaragi Noriko from
Women Poets of Japan
by Kenneth Rexroth. Copyright © 1977 by Kenneth Rexroth and Ikuko Atsumi. “Numbers, IX” by Constantino Suasnavar and “Clair de Lune” by Luis Pales Matos from
Anthology of Contemporary Latin-American Poetry
edited by Dudley Fitts, translated by Muna Lee de Munoz Marin. Copyright © 1947 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
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Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.: Excerpt from
Cajun Night Before Christmas
by Trosclair, illustrated by James Rice. Copyright © 1973, 2001. Reprinted by permission of the licenser, Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.
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Fruits of the Earth
by André Gide, translated by B. A. Lenski. Copyright © 1969 by Peter Pauper Press. “Oblivion” from
Verlaine: Poems by Paul Verlaine
, translated by Jacques Leclerq. Copyright © 1961 Peter Pauper Press. Reprinted by permission of Peter Pauper Press, Inc.
Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America: “Pan Tadeusz” from
Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America
by Adam Mickiewicz, translated by Watson Kirkconnell. Copyright © 1962, 1981 by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. Reprinted by permission of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, 208 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016.
The Prague Post:
“Waggismania” by Eva Munk from the
Prague Post
(December 23, 1998). Reprinted by permission of the
Prague Post.
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Poems of Tudor Arghezi
by Tudor Arghezi. Copyright © 1976 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
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The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume I: The Poems, Revised
by W. B. Yeats, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1928 by The MacMillan Company, copyright renewed © 1956 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted by
permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group and A.P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of Michael B. Yeats.
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Narrow Road to the Interior
by Matsuo Bashö, translated by Sam Hamill. Copyright © 1998 by Sam Hamill. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston,
www.shambhala.com
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