An ode to soup
Cabbage soup for the Russian soul:
- «Щи да каша — пища наша»
(Shchi da kasha – pishcha nasha)
Cabbage soup and porridge are our food.
– Russian proverb
“It’s all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and porridge better than anything; but of course there’s nothing like that here.”
“Porridge à la Russe, your honor would like?” said the Tatar, bending down to Levin, like a nurse speaking to a child.
“No, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I’ve been skating, and I’m hungry. And don’t imagine,” he added, detecting a look of dissatisfaction on Oblonsky’s face, “that I shan’t appreciate your choice. I am fond of good things.”
“I should hope so! After all, it’s one of the pleasures of life,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Well, then, my friend, you give us two—or better say three—dozen oysters, clear soup with vegetables...”
– Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (translation by Constance Garnett)
What is more universal than soup? One of my fondest memories: After a chilly UB football game, my dad took me to Scharf’s, a since-closed Schiller Park restaurant whose liver dumpling soup I would give anything to have again. Like wings, beef on weck, and sponge candy, lebernödelsuppe is a taste of home.
Later, as an undergraduate, I attended a soup potluck during cold Williamstown February. We shared a mess of pottage and read the pan-European folk tale about soup being made from a stone. Now, I’m not fond of metaphors for making up a fondant culture. But I still have a soft spot for potluck potage.
Cooking for myself, I prefer to make healthy meals with easily reheated leftovers. Soups are eternal – the bones and peels and cores from one meal become a stock for the next. I currently cook two soups a week. Beside Pablo Neruda’s lovely poem about eel stew, I’ve listed below 10 soups I recently enjoyed:
1. Gulyásleves – paprika soup with bell pepper, beef, root vegetables, and egg noodles. I crave this heartily. Mindennapi levesünk, "our daily soup," is the Hungarian equivalent of "daily bread."
2. Zuppa Toscana – sausage, potato, and kale soup. I make it frequently and like mine with sweet red pepper added.
3. Pasta e Fagioli – ditalini and bean soup. I made red (tomato base), although I grew up on white (vegetable broth/guanciale/parmesan base), with sausage added.
4. Minestrone – Italian soup with vegetables galore, and also some ditalini. It's often red, but I opted to make it alla genovese, with pesto.
5. Jägertopf – hunter's stew, improvised with the meats available to me. I love turnips in this, while juniper berries and lingonberry preserves accentuate their sweetness. Tyrolese / Alpine wine is hard to find, so I cooked it down using Californian pinot noir.
6. Kulajda – Czech mushroom soup, heavy on the dill. This is the first dish I've found that makes good use of dried (porcini) mushrooms.
7. Borscht – beets, dill, and sour cream. I prefer beef borscht with broth made from scratch. Grating the beets always leaves my fingers ruddy. Once I even had a puréed beet-cream smoothie, served chilled at Barney Greengrass on the UWS. Sweet and perfect for summer.
8. Solyanka – Russian anything-goes soup with pickles and olives/capers. I used kielbasa, but mushroom and cured fish versions entice me.
9. Lohikeitto – Finnish salmon soup, with bunches of dill and a splash of lemon juice. I made this for Christmas day lunch, because it's light, and why not?
10. Dopp i grytan – salty broth leftover from boiling the julskinka (Swedish Christmas ham). I love drinking it the day after Christmas. It tastes like culinary victory.
Next for me:
Shchi (Russian cabbage soup),
Zurek (Polish sour soup, or the Czech version with caraway added),
honey carrot ginger soup,
sauerkraut soup,
Česnečka (Czech garlic soup),
watercress soup,
Bouillabaisse (Provençal fish stew),
and of course, liver dumpling soup.
2. Zuppa Toscana – sausage, potato, and kale soup. I make it frequently and like mine with sweet red pepper added.
3. Pasta e Fagioli – ditalini and bean soup. I made red (tomato base), although I grew up on white (vegetable broth/guanciale/parmesan base), with sausage added.
4. Minestrone – Italian soup with vegetables galore, and also some ditalini. It's often red, but I opted to make it alla genovese, with pesto.
5. Jägertopf – hunter's stew, improvised with the meats available to me. I love turnips in this, while juniper berries and lingonberry preserves accentuate their sweetness. Tyrolese / Alpine wine is hard to find, so I cooked it down using Californian pinot noir.
6. Kulajda – Czech mushroom soup, heavy on the dill. This is the first dish I've found that makes good use of dried (porcini) mushrooms.
7. Borscht – beets, dill, and sour cream. I prefer beef borscht with broth made from scratch. Grating the beets always leaves my fingers ruddy. Once I even had a puréed beet-cream smoothie, served chilled at Barney Greengrass on the UWS. Sweet and perfect for summer.
8. Solyanka – Russian anything-goes soup with pickles and olives/capers. I used kielbasa, but mushroom and cured fish versions entice me.
9. Lohikeitto – Finnish salmon soup, with bunches of dill and a splash of lemon juice. I made this for Christmas day lunch, because it's light, and why not?
10. Dopp i grytan – salty broth leftover from boiling the julskinka (Swedish Christmas ham). I love drinking it the day after Christmas. It tastes like culinary victory.
Next for me:
Shchi (Russian cabbage soup),
Zurek (Polish sour soup, or the Czech version with caraway added),
honey carrot ginger soup,
sauerkraut soup,
Česnečka (Czech garlic soup),
watercress soup,
Bouillabaisse (Provençal fish stew),
and of course, liver dumpling soup.
Oda al caldillo de congrio
(Ode to conger eel stew)
Pablo Neruda
En el mar
tormentoso
de Chile
vive el rosado congrio,
gigante anguila
de nevada carne.
Y en las ollas
chilenas,
en la costa,
nació el caldillo
grávido y suculento,
provechoso.
Lleven a la cocina
el congrio desollado,
su piel manchada cede
como un guante
y al descubierto queda
entonces
el racimo del mar,
el congrio tierno
reluce
ya desnudo,
preparado
para nuestro apetito.
Ahora
recoges
ajos,
acaricia primero
ese marfil
precioso,
huele
su fragancia iracunda,
entonces
deja el ajo picado
caer con la cebolla
y el tomate
hasta que la cebolla
tenga color de oro.
Mientras tanto
se cuecen
con el vapor
los regios
camarones marinos
y cuando ya llegaron
a su punto,
cuando cuajó el sabor
en una salsa
formada por el jugo
del océano
y por el agua clara
que desprendió la luz de la cebolla,
entonces
que entre el congrio
y se sumerja en gloria,
que en la olla
se aceite,
se contraiga y se impregne.
Ya sólo es necesario
dejar en el manjar
caer la crema
como una rosa espesa,
y al fuego
lentamente
entregar el tesoro
hasta que en el caldillo
se calienten
las esencias de Chile,
y a la mesa
lleguen recién casados
los sabores
del mar y de la tierra
para que en ese plato
tú conozcas el cielo.
(Ode to conger eel stew)
Pablo Neruda
En el mar
tormentoso
de Chile
vive el rosado congrio,
gigante anguila
de nevada carne.
Y en las ollas
chilenas,
en la costa,
nació el caldillo
grávido y suculento,
provechoso.
Lleven a la cocina
el congrio desollado,
su piel manchada cede
como un guante
y al descubierto queda
entonces
el racimo del mar,
el congrio tierno
reluce
ya desnudo,
preparado
para nuestro apetito.
Ahora
recoges
ajos,
acaricia primero
ese marfil
precioso,
huele
su fragancia iracunda,
entonces
deja el ajo picado
caer con la cebolla
y el tomate
hasta que la cebolla
tenga color de oro.
Mientras tanto
se cuecen
con el vapor
los regios
camarones marinos
y cuando ya llegaron
a su punto,
cuando cuajó el sabor
en una salsa
formada por el jugo
del océano
y por el agua clara
que desprendió la luz de la cebolla,
entonces
que entre el congrio
y se sumerja en gloria,
que en la olla
se aceite,
se contraiga y se impregne.
Ya sólo es necesario
dejar en el manjar
caer la crema
como una rosa espesa,
y al fuego
lentamente
entregar el tesoro
hasta que en el caldillo
se calienten
las esencias de Chile,
y a la mesa
lleguen recién casados
los sabores
del mar y de la tierra
para que en ese plato
tú conozcas el cielo.
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