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winter is over!

sorrel soup--health or prestige?

So I’m strolling through my fave Président Wilson marché early on a Saturday morning, already panting in anticipation. And there it is Joël Thiébault’s fabled stand, seemingly a city block long of every sort of sparkling fresh vegetable you could dream of, in season, just plucked from the earth at Carrières-sur-Seine, west of Paris. The cheerful serveurs hand me a wire basket and by the time I get to the cashier, no matter how darkly I mutter under my breath to myself to be moderate, it’s filled to the brim. Today I found a couple of longtime springtime friends, pictured. Rhubarb and sorrel. These, along with a couple AOC belon oysters THAT I SIMPLY CANNOT RESIST, have me whistling all the way back to my apartment.

Sorrel! Do you know it? So tart, so greenly lemon, so sour from its oxalic acid, so crisp and fine when it’s raw…and turning into a slimy mess the minute it hits heat and liquid. I have struggled with sorrel. It’s been eaten since ancient times as Rumex acetosa, cultivated tenderly, and known as “sour dabs” or dock. John Evelyn, 17th century English diarist and gardener, says about it, “…it gave so grateful a quickness to a salad that it should never be omitted”–and I agree.

But, yes, I have struggled with it in the soup pot. Back in Falls Church, when it was thick in my garden, I tried any number of recipes and any number of ideas without success. Okay, fine, I’ll just eat it raw, I decided.

But. But now I’m in France with Joël Thiébault’s sorrel, for heaven’s sake. So I start with Crème Santé (Creamy Health Soup) in Louis Diat’s Basic French Cookbook. It’s so simple and so pure. Clean and shred enough sorrel to make 1/2 up, firmly packed. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a small saucepan, stir in the sorrel over low heat, and cook til all the moisure has cooked away, about 15 minutes. Stir it into 6 cups of Potage Parmentier, heat, then stir in over low heat 1 egg yolk mixed with a half-cup of heavy cream. Reheat, stirring, without bringing to a boil, then ladle into flat soup plates and garnish with fresh chervil (or shredded sorrel).

This time it’s terrific–and not just hot, as I served it (pictured) to Carmen last Sunday, but also cold, as I served it to Ana on Monday when she locked herself out of her apartment and needed some TLC and a little Santé to boot while her keys were being located.

So let’s try the big magilla, I think: the classic sorrel soup of French haute cuisine, Potage Germiny. This is the one that always slimed on me in Falls Church. And you know what? It’s exactly the same as Crème Santé–except it uses beef broth instead of water as a base…and the sorrel is boiled before it goes into the soup.

Please know that all the fuss about Santé and haute cuisine literally boils down to the fact that sorrel is a natural laxative. Potage Germiny was created in 1869 by chef de cuisine Adolphe Dugléré at his Café Anglais in Paris for the very very old, at that point, Comte de Germiny, former Minister of Finance and Governor of the Bank of France. Ah, regularity–a welcome thing to an old man. So while it’s true that, in Rowley Leigh’s words, “sorrel soup, with its dirty grey-green colouring, is sadly no pin up,” there is room on an old gourmet’s table for Potage Germiny.

Me, I’m not that old (yet). I tried the recipe again…and it slimed. Apparently no way around it when you boil the sorrel first. So I threw it out and am sticking to Crème Santé with its technique of removing the water in a butter saute.

And what about the rhubarb and oysters? The rhubarb made up into such an adorable little latticed pie, and the oysters were so layered in flavor, that, as in the case of the walrus and the carpenter calling out to their delicacies, “answer came there none–and this was scarcely odd, because I’d eaten every one.”

Fragrant steetcorners

Soupe au pistou

Easter Sunday, and I’m so glad to be back in Paris. It’s cool and sunny, a brilliant blue sky, and first thing in the morning I cook up a huge pot of Soupe au pistou, the ultimate French springtime soup, before heading out for a ramble in the countryside. I’m on my way to the train station, bound for Poissy, when I catch sight of this seller of lilacs and involuntarily think of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass:

In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash’d palings,

Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle……and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

A sprig, with its flower, I break.

I think, my God, here it is Easter Sunday and resurrection, lilac intimations of Whitman’s grief on war and Lincoln’s death, and springtime in Paris after being so closely held in Yemen. A lot to think about. I buy an armful–see how bashfully charming this earringed boy is?–go back home and arrange them, then set out once more for the train station.

By the end of the day, I have witnessed serial and joyful baptisms in Poissy’s 12th century Collégiale Notre Dame, a highly anticipated tradition on Easter as the Collégiale houses St. Louis’ actual baptismal font. I have wandered through the town and explored Le Corbusier’s astonishing Villa Savoye (unusual in its expansive approach to accommodate Mme. Savoye, who did not know how to back up in her new car and had to drive forwards all the way around the house in order to leave the grounds). I’ve walked along the Seine through Vilenne and on to Emile Zola’s house in Medan–reliving his battles for justice and human rights, regardless of consequences. As dusk fell and I waited, bone weary, for the return train in Vilenne, I was glad to be alone with my thoughts. I get so caught up in the moment that I just don’t think enough. And then, there’s as much pain as pleasure in it.

Vilenne to Gare St. Lazare; St. Lazare metro to Villliers; Villiers to Victor Hugo–and a quick walk past the triple fountain in the middle of the place, home. Was I happy to fire up the soup, ostentatiously prepare the little bowls of pistou and parmesan, uncork the wine? You know I was. Hot, filling, halfway between Lenten bean soup meals and the richness of Easter, it was the perfect meal for the day. In the mood for a think? You might think about having Soupe au Pistou on the back burner:

Soupe au Pistou (French Provençal Vegetable Soup with Pistou)

2 cups dried white or flageolet beans, soaked overnight, then discarding water
10 cups water
2 leeks, chopped into quarter pieces
2 carrots, chopped into quarter pieces
2 stalks celery, with leaves, chopped
2 zucchini, cubed
3 potatoes, cubed
15 green beans, cut into small pieces
3 tomatoes (or 6 canned), peeled, seeded, and chopped
¼ cup parsley, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Garnish: Pistou
6 cloves garlic
4 Tablespoons tomato paste
¼ cup fresh basil, chopped
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
½ cup olive oil
3-4 Tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
Press the garlic, then whisk the tomato paste, basil, cheese, oil, and parsley with it in a blender til it is a rich paste.

In a large soup pot, bring the soaked beans and fresh water to a boil. Add all the vegetables and herbs, bring to a second boil, then reduce the heat, cover the pot, and simmer for an hour. Meanwhile, make the pistou if you don’t have any handy in the freezer.

Add the salt and pepper to the soup, stir well, and continue simmering uncovered for another 15-20 minutes.

When ready to serve, ladle the soup into big bowls. Pass the pistou–and extra Parmesan cheese, if you like–so people can load up the bowl with flavor that releases itself right under their noses.

Nancy, we miss you

Czarnina

Back in May 2002, I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Candy Sagan of the Washington Post to be headlined in its Food Section. And I was doubly lucky, because the week after the article came out my phone rang and the voice at the other end said it was impossible that the Post’s “Souper Woman” did not know about Washington DC’s “infamous Bi-Annual Soup Party.” On the spot, I was invited to attend the upcoming one in 2 week’s time.

That was pure Nancy. Nancy Manuszak was a little slip of a woman who packed a TNT punch–forging people and good times together with gusto, smoking and drinking up a storm, impossibly good hearted, incredibly complicated, and Polish to her toes. If it wasn’t her infamous soup parties, it was sausage making. If it wasn’t Friday night hen parties at controversial films, it was happy hour oysters and champagne at Old Ebbits. She greeted me as the honored guest at that first soup party and went on to proofread and challenge every statement of my book when it was still in manuscript form. She came to Paris my first Christmas here, toting a 1974 guide from her last visit, and complained about everything that had changed since then. Always we talked about soup–and especially Czarnina, which she recommended above all other soups and which I was never able to make since fresh duck or pig’s blood is not an easy ingredient to come by. “I’ll have to take your word for it,” I would say. “Humph,” she’d reply, lighting another cigarette.

In fact, Nancy died suddenly just when I’d gotten back from my first ever trip to Poland and was midway through an email to her to say, dammit, I STILL couldn’t find a bowl of Czarnina, not even in Krakow…but that I had a great new story about one related to it from Michener’s Poland. Her brother Zak wrote to me and to her hundreds of friends across the world with the news. Now her local friends in DC–Sheila and Judy and Doris and Harriet and all the others–are throwing a last, glorious Soup Party, with balloons, on April 18 to commemorate the outrageous life and opinions of Nancy Manuszak. And I can’t go in anything but spirit. So, Nancy, let me tell you this last story about Polish Black Soup. I have no doubt you’ll figure out a way to tap into the web from heaven to read it.

“Ignacy Mniszech himself went into the kitchen to supervise preparation of the soup, a task at which he spent most of that day, absenting himself from the noontime meal so that he could avoid responding to Bukowski’s implied proposal of marriage. He spent that time slaughtering a young pig and carefully catching all its blood in a ewer, which he brought back to the kitchen, where he added vinegar and salt to the blood and set the ewer aside.

“Asking the cooks for what meat stock they had, he added to it bits of cooked pork and chicken, two large handfuls of chopped vegetables, three heavy soupbones and six large dried mushrooms that he and his daugher had gathered that autumn.

“‘Prunes!’ he called, and cooks hurried up with a large handful. ‘Cherries!’ and they came up with a cupful of dried delicacies, which he tossed into the brew.

“He tended the soup all afternoon, tasting it now and then and soliciting advice from his professionals. ‘I want this to be the best. More salt, do you think?’ When it was done to everyone’s approval, a distinguished golden Polish soup, he stirred in a large helping of crumbled honey cake to bind the various elements together.

“‘An excellent soup,’ he said before the evening meal, and when he heard the guests assembling in the dining hall he divided his soup into two portions, one extremely large, the other so small that it would serve only one person, and into this latter helping he stirred the dark blood and vinegar, keeping it over the fire until it turned an ebon black.

“‘Dinner!’ he shouted as he left the kitchen, and behind him came four servants bearing soup bowls for the guests, who sniffed approvingly as their rich portions of amber colored soup were placed before them. Ignacy took the final bowl from the fourth servant and walked silently, ceremoniously to where Feliks Bukowski sat. Deftly, using both his big hands, he placed the bowl of black soup before the impetuous suitor, and when Feliks looked down at it and saw the terrible blackness he knew that his proposal of marriage had been rejected, and so did everyone else at the table.

“Convention required that he make no comment, betray no emotion. Like a soldier assigned a hateful duty, he ate his black soup, cruielly aware that the soup of the others was a rich golden borwn, and after Feliks had finished his bitter dish, Ignacy Mniszech, big and bald and brazen, rose and announced to his guests, ‘On this day my daughter Elzbieta is announcing her engagement to Roman Lubonski, son of my dear friend–Count Lubonski in Poland, Baron Lubonski in Austria. Wedding’s to be at the Mniszech palace in Warsaw, and you are all to attend.’”

Nancy, I’m missing you a lot. Your absence is a bitter, black soup to eat. “Humph,” I can hear you say.

Wawel Cathedral--the spiritual heart

Bigos--the culinary heart

I was not going to leave Poland without a fine dish of Bigos–one of the most popular soups on my website, at least in drawing extremely opinionated commentary. Not for vegetarians! It is crammed with meats and sausages, with the sweetness of apples more than balanced by the sharpness of sauerkraut–and it is traditionally served as a good-luck New Year’s dish. Well, I say that, but it’s a relatively recent tradition since only Polish aristocracy could hunt game on their estates…and only they could afford so much meat.

Adam Mickiewicz, in his 1834 epic Pan Tadeusz , speaks to the heart of this tradition, which resonates with Poles around the world:

“Bigos was being cooked in every kettle
In human language it is hard to settle
The marvels of its odor, hue and taste;
In poetry’s description one has traced
Only the clinking words and clanging rhymes….
This bigos is no ordinary dish,
For it is aptly framed to meet your wish.
Founded upon good cabbage, sliced and sour,
Which, as men say, by its own zest and power
Melts in one’s mouth, it settles in a pot
And its dewy bosom folds a lot
Of the best portions of selected meats;
Scullions parboil it then, until heat
Draws from its substance all the living juices,
And from the pot’s edge, boiling fluid sluices
And all the air is fragrant with the scent.”

But the soup itself, it’s not pretty, is it? And unexpectedly thick. So I leave you to contemplate the culinary heart of Poland in the very heart of Polish history–at Krakow’s towering Wawel Cathedral, home of the relics of St. Stanislaw and Saint Jadwiga, boneyard of Jagiellonian kings, and final resting place of that extraordinary poet and patriot Adam Mickiewicz. And do rush out to get the fixings of Bigos–recipe at http://www.soupsong.com/rbigos.html.

Limoges: A town to dine for

Chinois? Thailandais? Is there a difference?

It all started with a clock. Stu bought a magnificent pendulum table clock on French eBay and needed to fetch it, somewhere on the “1000 cow” plateau (Millevaches) in Limousin (200 miles south of Paris), by noon. What’s the street address, he’d asked Madame X. “Il n’y a pas de rue, Marcy est le nom du hameau ou lieu-dit. Il y a 9 maisons. Merçi, cordialement.” No street, she said, it’s just a little hamlet called Marcy made up of 9 homes. Thanks, cordially.

Stu picked me up in Paris at o’dark thirty and I was purring by the time we broke south on local roads, down through the flat and fecund Loire then suddenly up into rocky hills spotted with dark evergreens, patches of snow everywhere. We’d arrived in the Limousin. Cows galore. Sheep and goats too. Bye bye agriculture; hello animal husbandry.

Not easy finding Marcy! You had to be zen about it–use the GPS, follow your intuition, then call Mme. X when you were in shouting distance but had lost confidence.

Suddenly, there it was: a tiny sign on a tiny road that said (in black and in French) MARCY, then (in red) “village burned on 15 July 1944″, then (in black, large print) “by the Nazis”. We were impressed that 9 houses would have the nerve to describe themselves as a village, but when we asked about it, our sellers sniffed that in 1944 Marcy been made up of FIFTEEN homes. And when the Nazis were alerted it was serving as a safe house for the resistance, they torched the place. Six homes were obliterated. We could see on the remaining 9 homes where the new stones started and the old stones left off.

I don’t know why we were so surprised. Vichy is close by. It was a great hiding place. Deeds of derring do were hoped for and dreamed of. Really thrilling to feel that life-and-death drama come up through our shoes from the rough soil. Stu, overcome, insisted on giving Mme. X the bottle of wine he’d bought for us to take the curse off the day. We were a little sad about that later. But we had made the clock purchase by noon, right on schedule, and now were loose in the Limousin, with hours to get to our nighttime destination of Limoges and me ready to read out at length about all the best sites between here and there from the zillions of books I’d brought.

On the agenda: Aubusson (capital of extraordinary handmade French tapestry and rugs since the 12th century); anything that looked remotely interesting or had a historical marker on it; above all, any flea market, brocante, troc, or roadside table that we could paw through. We were so happy with the clock, we were hungry for more deals.

And so all our good resolutions to hit Limoges’ museums and cultural activities and porcelain houses went right out the window. We bonged around the countryside, picked through flea markets, and bought loads of cool stuff, not arriving in Limoges til well after dark. Thus the shot of cathedral square in rosy fingered dawn, as we were about to head back to Paris next morning. Thus the silly picture of our soups at Kim Lin’s “Baguettes of gold”, where we ended up after striking out everywhere else.

So, what do you think about these two soups from completely different cultures on the same table? I am excited to tell you that this illustrates perfectly something I have long wanted to share: viz., the French are so nonspecific about Asian food that Asian restaurants simply cannot make a profit unless they bundle Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese menus under the same roof. Incredible, huh? It’s okay for Japanese restaurants to be pure, but no one else. In Limoges, in Marseilles, in Strasbourg, in Bordeaux, and above all in Paris, you cannot go into an Asian restaurant without being offered a menu that features Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai dishes. Forgive me, I can’t get over it. I am amazed.

But the proof is in the pudding. I ordered Potage pekinois; Stu ordered potage d’asperge au crabe. A little nutty, but a great way to end an enchanting day. We recommend it, obviously a local favorite:

Restaurant Kim Lin “Baguettes d’or”
9 rue Montmouller
87000 Limoges
05.55.79.44.52

Hungarian actor in the mood for soup

Fowl soup, Újházy style

Once upon a time, a great Hungarian actor in the 19th century had a yen for making soup–his own Hungarian version of the French poule au pot. To ensure a concentrated flavor, Újházy Ede used a rooster, then added vegetables that differed markedly in color, shape, and texture. At the end, he served the soup over delicate egg noodles to make a dish fit for King Matthias.

His friends were enchanted. Újházy was some character, as you can see in his photo. On the Budapest stage, he was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Malvolio, Molière’s Harpagon, Beaumarchais’s Bartolo, and Gárdonyi’s Gabor. He had a growly voice. My friend Sanyi translated a description that said words would explode from his enormous mouth like smoke puffs from an engine. And that, actor to his bones, his favorite word was Marha!–a Hungarian expression for stupidity–that he would deliver with such unctuous rotundity or with such heartfelt softness that the object of it felt loved rather than insulted. Plus, of course, he loved soup.

George Lang, restauranteur extraordinaire, details in his Cuisine of Hungary a number of possible variations on the original Újházy Tyúkhúsleves: brown the carrots and onions in chicken fat to achieve a Transdanubian “yellow”; add a pinch of saffron for the same effect; ditto by dry browning unpeeled onions cut in half in a frying pan and adding to the soup. Or, start out by simmering a pound of beef in the soup water before beginning the recipe. Or add marrow bones for flavor, first salting the ends of the cut bones to keep the marrow from coming out during the cooking. Or serve on the bone…or remove and discard the bones before serving.

All well and good, but the original is quite heavenly–a rich chicken soup that is just perfect for these vile and viral winter nights. Really, are you beginning to wonder, like me, if winter is EVER going to end? A blizzard rages outside my windows today AGAIN in usually snowless Paris.

Which is why, as I promised, Gergely and I met the other weekend to shop for and make this excellent soup. But we were lazy, and Woodrow Wilson Market was being dismantled by the time we got there. And here’s where Paris is so nice. We just ambled over to Trocadero, crossed the river to the Eiffel Tower and crunched over snow down Champ de Mars to end up at Rue Cler and its market. Hungry and cold, we made the soup as fast as we could, the heck with the variations. Then washed it down with a flinty Sancerre and blotted the last drops with a crusty country bread–fantastic!

Újházy Tyúkhúsleves (Chicken Soup), for 6-8 people

1 fowl (your choice: rooster, stewing hen, or tender fryer), cut into 8 pieces
12 cups cold water
1 Tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon peppercorns
slice of ginger root
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tomato (canned is fine), peeled, seeded, and chopped
3 small carrots, peeled
2 young parsnips, peeled
1 whole celery root, peeled and cut into cubes
1/2 head cauliflower, broken into flowerets
1/2 cup peas (frozen are fine)
1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced
1 green Hungarian pepper (long, thin, and spicy), chopped
parsley, for garnish
soup noodles (which are served separately)

Put the fowl in a large soup pot with the cold water, salt, and the peppercorns and ginger tied into a cheesecloth bag. Slowly bring to a simmer, removing scum as it forms. Keep at a simmer, adding the onion, garlic, and tomato, and cook for an hour (or 2 hours, if you are using a stewing hen or rooster). Keeping the heat at a simmer, add the carrots, parsnips, celery root, cauliflower, and peas and cook for an hour or more, until the vegetables are tender. Just before you are ready to serve the soup, discard the cheesecloth bag of pepper and ginger; add the sliced mushrooms and green pepper and cook 15 minutes. You may keep the chicken/rooster pieces whole in the soup–or you may fish them out, removing the meat and putting it back in the soup, then discarding the bones and skin.

While the mushrooms and green pepper are cooking, cook the soup noodles (as many as you like) separately in plenty of salted water. When done, drain, return to the pan, stir in a little butter, and keep hot until they are served. Traditionally, they are served separate from the soup.

Bring the noodles and the soup (sprinkled with minced parsley) to the table in separate dishes. Spoon the noodles into individual bowls, then ladle the soup over top.

For another variation and for recipes of Hungarian soups and other dishes, I highly recommend you visit http://www.cookbook.hu/index_angol.htm#Soups, the Hungarian recipe site (in English) of dear friend Sanyi Fenyvesi, father of my soup partner Gergely.

Le Pain de la Bourse

A day away from the national strike, Dominique strikes a pose in front of the Bourse

Yes, it LOOKS like there’s “Pain in the Bourse” in Paris, and today’s national strike to draw attention to France’s part of worldwide international fiscal misery would support that, but in fact Le Pain de la Bourse is a darling little cafe just across the street, as you can see, from the Bourse–and its name means “The Bread of the Bourse” (and not the kind of “bread” that means money).

Do you love it? The heart of French financial markets is located in the Palais Brongniart, neoclassically built in the over-the-top 19th century by Emperor Napoleon’s architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart. Why did Napoleon commission Brongniart to build it? Because he loved how Brongniart had designed the layout for Père Lachaise Cemetery, now, of course, the revered home of (sigh) Jim Morrison of the Doors and zillions of other really more interesting people. Not that Jim isn’t interesting.

So Dominique (pictured) and I arranged to meet to discuss the state of things. Obama’s first days as President–she’d gone to the inauguration party at Hôtel de Ville, with lots of noise, interminable lines to get drinks, but high joy from beginning to end; I’d stayed home and watched first French TF1 then CNN with champagne and a friend. Then an embassy bookclub trip she is arranging to Orleans to follow in the footsteps of Joan of Arc, after reading Mark Twain’s fictionalized biography on same that he (wrongly) described as his “greatest work.” An Opera Comique performance that we couldn’t get tickets to. The upcoming national strike that would shut down metro, regional and neighborhood trains and flights across the country today. “Let’s try Le Pain de la Bourse,” she said. And so we did.

It was such a cute little place. Menu of the day on the chalkboard. 11,80 euros ($17) for soupe de potiron (pumpkin soup), open-face sandwiches of ham and gouda cheese on Poilâne-style bread, and salad.

We agreed the soup was terrific, but not for the reasons you’d suppose. It was so pure and simple…so French. Pumpkin cooked in seasoned water with a little mince of parsley, then pureed. That’s it. It’s not meant to bowl you over; not meant to challenge your palate with different flavors and textures and colors; not meant to fill you up. Soup in France, for the most part, is, in the words of Auguste Escoffier (that early 20th century “king of chefs and chef of kings”) designed to “put the heart at ease, calm down the violence of hunger, eliminate the tension of the day, and awaken and refine the appetite”

And it did. Markets are failing. Davos is dour. Strikes are pending. But Dominique and I sat in the shadow of the French Bourse (Per Bloomberg, “France’s CAC 40 retreated 2.2 percent” that day) and felt as if our hearts were at ease, the violence of hunger had been calmed, the tension of the day just evaporated, and our appetites were awakened and refined–which was too bad, when you look at the rest of the plate with its little cheese tartine, its little ham tartine, and a big mass of mesclun salad, not very well dressed. Oh well.

All things considered, it was a very enjoyable lunch indeed and we recommend the restaurant for its breakfast, brunch, and lunch:
Le Pain de la Bourse
33, rue Vivienne
75002 Paris
telephone: 01.42.36.76.02

And if you’re hankering after true French housewife pumpkin soup, please take a look at the original recipe of my marvelous Touraine professor of many years ago, Mme. Marie-Josie Diacre, at Soupsong’s Soupe au potiron. I cannot help be reminded, during this perilous fiscal time, that Jack Sprat also turned to pumpkins in times of trouble.

Fatos in the kitchen

lentil soup in snowy Ankara

You know you’re in Nanna heaven when you wake up on Christmas eve morning in central Turkey and find your world suddenly covered in a thick blanket of snow…with grandchildren pulling off your wool one and telling you to get your *** out of bed, downstairs, and outside to build a snowman.

Oh, you don’t think that’s enough to qualify for heaven? How about coming back into the house, hands stinging with cold, to find Fatos in the kitchen making a big pot of mercimek çorbas?

Fatos rushes up to me, brandishing a 12-inch chef knife and a can of tomatoes. Before I have time to get scared, I figure out she’s telling me that she usually opens cans with a knife, but it’s just not working on this American can. I rummage around and find the can opener. Then stick around to watch her bring the tomatoes to boil with water in a kettle, add handfuls of red Turkish lentils, masses of salt, spicy red pepper, and garlic. That’s it. In another pot, she boils up bulgur with brown lentils and lots of salt. Thirty minutes later, we’re all at the table. The soup is simple but great–and when we get close to the bottom of our bowls, she shows us we should spoon in the thick bulgur to absorb the last bits of soup and eat until we feel like we are bursting. Everyday lunch in Turkey. Why not try Ezo Gelin corbasi, a traditional wedding lentil-bulgur soup complete with tragic story, for the best of both worlds?

There’s more to Turkish soups than lentils, though. My Paris neighbor David Berry, in fact, claims that Turkish soups are the best in the world, and he tells endless stories of fabulous meals in odd places that all boil down to a Turkish chef in the kitchen.

Here’s another one to support his claim: Christmas shopping at the lush Panora mall in Oran, Angi, the 4 kids, and I stop for a snack at the food court. Not your usual pizza/taco/wok n’ roll/chick fil-A kind of a place. Almost all Turkish specialties…and each shop has its own homemade soup. Decisions, decisions. We stop at FISHO and my bowl of balik corbasi is so yummy, so creamy, so nicely spiced, and so packed with tender white fish, that I just had to track it down for you:

BALIK ÇORBASI, for 6 people

2-pound red gurnard or other tasty whole fish
1 onion, peeled and sliced
12 black peppercorns
1 dried chili pepper
3 sprigs parsley
2 cups celeriac root, peeled and cut into small cubes
2 cups potato, peeled and cut into small cubes
2 carrots, peeled and cut into small cubes
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and cubed
6 Tablespoons minced parsley
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup lemon juice
Black pepper, salt, turkish red pepper (pul biber)

In a large saucepan, put the fish, onions, black pepper, red chile, and parsley sprigs in 12 cups of cold water, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Strain, ideally through cheesecloth layers, into another saucepan, letting the fish cool in the strainer. Bring the strained stock to a boil then add cubed carrot, celeriac, potato, onion, and garlic. Reduce heat to medium and boil the vegetables until soft, about 45 or more minutes. Peel the skin off the fish and remove all the bones, then scrape large chunks of pure fish into the soup and also the minced parsley. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and red pepper. Beat the egg yolks and lemon juice together, then add a cup of the hot broth to it, beating constantly; pour into the soup and let it thicken. Ladle into bowls and top with a lemon slice, minced parsley, and a sprinkling of hot pepper.

And did I mention the sweet spice of people strolling by and stopping to hug the grandkids and offer them treats? How about the guy who took a fancy to 18-month-old Cort and carried him off to buy him a race car at the local toy store? Just to be nice. Surely there’s no place on earth with a more generous and child-friendly people.

All the makings of a great borshch

Enough to send you off carolling

Way back in 1997, not long after I’d launched soupsong.com, Sándor Fenyvesi–air traffic controller at Budapest approach–contacted me over my website with this great recipe for borscht, which he’d acquired under the communist regime when he was sent as an 18-year-old Hungarian boy to a special school in Latvia. Thus began a great friendship between my family and his. We freely exchanged recipes between our websites, exchanged life stories and points of view, and met for the first time in Budapest in 2000 when I was in town measuring the Hungarian Police Museum for an exhibit the FBI was about to mount there.

What is it about soup lovers? Every contact I’ve made over my website has turned into a love feast. Sanyi and Kati welcomed me into their home, introduced me to their 3 young boys, and fed me Hungarian delicacies–a truly exquisite day.

Yet who could have predicted that 8 years later their eldest son Gergely would end up in Paris, a bright and raging capitalist at Société Générale? That’s him in the picture. He’s come to dinner when my family has been in town. He’s taken care of my cat Min and my apartment when I was in Amman. Now we are occasional and enthusiastic partners in soupmaking.

It was freezing when he arrived on Saturday morning with a fine bottle of Château Les Ancres 2005, a Grand Vin de Bordeaux, in hand. We stashed it in the kitchen, picked up the market bag, read over his Dad’s recipe, and headed to the fabulous open air food market on av. Woodrow Wilson, bottom of the 16th Arr. You see the results in front of him–gorgeous beef bourguignon with some bone thrown in; slab of bacon; veggies freshly pulled from the ground; herbs; seedy pumpernickel bread; crème fraîche d’Isigny. He’d also brought an ace up his sleeve–a special borscht flavor pack from his Ukrainian friend Marika.

Let me tell you, this was a day’s work, thanks to making the beef stock from scratch–and we loved it that way: time to do some Christmas shopping, time to watch Claude Chabrol’s “This Man Must Die”, even time to open that great wine as we were getting close, “just for a sip.” Then the payoff, which you can see with your own eyes. Absolutely heavenly layers of flavors and textures and colors.

Doesn’t it put you in the Christmas spirit for this eminently Christmas soup from the Ukraine and Russia? Gergely and I highly recommend that you dust off that soup kettle and get to work. You’ll find Sanyi’s recipe at Soupsong’s Ukrainian Borscht.

And stay tuned for future adventures into soupmaking with my Hungarian connection. “Are you telling me,” said Gergely in astonishment, “that you don’t know Újházy Tyúkhúsleves?” Sounds like a January project to me….

A toast to quick healing

French chicken soup will drink to that

My Dad took an awful fall this past Friday night and split his hip bone in half.  Not something a former B-29 pilot likes to admit, even if he is an octogenarian+ with the weakest pins a man could ever be cursed with.  The good news is that it happened in Durham, NC, and he’s in the great Duke hospital for care–now titanium/ceramic man, convalescing with a hip replacement.  The bad news is that it happened in Durham, NC, and I’m here in Paris, France, feeling like a complete dumbbell of a daughter.

When in doubt, make soup.  In this case, I made a completely magnificent chicken stock last night and got in tonight from work to skim off the congealed fat and find it pure, strong, and heady.  Add pressed garlic, soup noodles, salt, and white pepper.  Toss in chopped greens at the end and top with parsley.  It’s called Savoyarde soupe de fides and is a soup famous for curing farmers in the snowy French Alps of what ails them.  You DO know about chicken soup curing what ails you, right? So why not use it to hasten the cure of a hip replacement?  That’s what I’m thinking.

There it is pictured, can’t you just smell the fragrance and imagine biting into those slices of pavé châtaigne pain (chestnut bread) slathered in AOC butter…sipping that glass of flinty Sancerre?

Open your mouth wide, Dad.  I’m about to email you some big spoonsful of Soupe de Fides. I think I can already hear the sweet sounds of it knitting your bones back together.

Soupe de Fides (for 2)

3 cups rich chicken stock
1 garlic clove, pressed
1/2 cup broken-up fine soup noodles
1/4 cup chopped fresh greens and herbs
salt and white pepper to taste
sprigs of parsley to garnish

Bring the stock to a boil over medium-high heat with the garlic and cook for a minute.  Add noodles and cook, uncovered, until they’re just done, from 3-5 minutes.  Add the greens/herbs just as you take the pan off the fire.  Stir, season with salt and pepper, ladle into two bowls, and top with sprigs of parsley.

Bon appetit…and get better, Dad.