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“Want to go to Brussels this weekend?”  My friend Stu emailed, posing the question.  You know I did.   

“Only if we can see the Atomium,” I  banter back. “Deal.” “AND that I get to eat Waterzooie, classic Belgian soup.”  “Okay, okay!”

Four hours and a lot of traffic and and a lot of rain later, first stop: the Atomium.  It was the centerpiece of the 1958 World’s Fair, and it is still breathtaking and breathtakingly modern, sitting off in its own remote field.

Now for the waterzooie.  Here’s what I said about it 10 years ago when I published the chicken version on soupsong.com: 

“Waterzooie or Waterzootsje–originating in Flanders–is one of the great national soups of the world. Belgians are pretty loose with the ingredients, though. Not only does every family have its own recipe that varies eggs, cream, and lemon–but some use fish instead of chicken. In fact, Escoffier himself captured the recipe as a fish and wine soup. Apparently wine is the ONLY ingredient all these variations have in common–and even then I have heard of variations that recommend dark Belgian beer instead of wine. This particular recipe, however, is made for the hearts and stomachs of poultry lovers–it is chicken times a thousand, and wonderfully silky and rich to boot. And just exactly what does Waterzooie mean? I hunted for weeks to find out. It translates to “a simmering, watery thing.” In other words, eggs and cream notwithstanding, the broth should not be too thick. Serve hot as a meal to 8 people–ideally with boiled potatoes, brown bread, and butter on the side.”

But as we listened to the blandishments of resto pimps on the crowded rue des Bouchers (street of butchers), we heard “Free aperitif!” “Free waffles!” “Special beer!” “Waterzooie with lobster!”

“Lobster! Did you hear THAT?”

Now we are in a bidding war of restaurants promising this heavenly dish and eventually end up in La Belle Epoch, where we are ushered to a tight little table in an elevated corner overlooking the street’s wet cobblestones. The waiter stares at us in disbelief. “We have no waterzooie with lobster.” We assure him that’s the only reason we’re sitting in his restaurant. He huddles with the man out front and comes back, grim-faced. “Okay, we have waterzooie with lobster.” “How much for it?” Stu thinks he says 13 euro.

And here you see it. Not a soup. Not 13 euro, but 30–about $43. So we don’t recommend La Belle Epoch by a long stretch. But for all that, the lobster waterzooie was absolutely delicious. And we highly recommend the chicken waterzooie recipe on soupsong.com. Marvelous!

  

 It’s November 20 in Paris and the streets are littered with gigantic wine bottle balloons labeled Nouveau Beaujolais 2008.  “Come on,” said Dominique, “let’s meet at Bouillon Chartier for lunch.”

I love this place. It’s hiding in an alley (see above) not far from the Bourse, has the look and feel of an earlier century or two, serves great food, and today is serving the first sips of the New Beaujolais.

Our maitre d’ guides us over oceans of empty tables and invites us to squash into a tiny table in a tight corner that’s already occupied. The attractive couple looks up in surprise. We protest; it’s no use. Non, no tables for two people only, says the maitre d’, the place will soon be packed. And of course it is, but in the meantime we have bonded with the couple over the unfairness of life. When my soup arrives (above), the woman asks me what I think of it. Deficient, I say. They laugh and agree. It’s the only soup on the menu, potage aux legumes, and it’s thin, ungarnished, and served in a lugged metal bowl that’s clearly been banged all over the kitchen. The woman gamely lends me her glass of the new wine to add a little class to my photo.  “My empty glass would tell a better story,” says the man.

The soup is tasty, though, with the bite of onions, pepper, and a splash of cognac enlivening the dark green lentil puree–and a great entree to the excellent quenelle de brochet sauce nantua that follows.  The conversation is stimulating and convivial. The atmosphere amusing–all rosy walls and impossibly high ceilings with elegant moldings; waiters bustling in their traditional “room clothes” scribbling the order and adding up the bill on the white table cover; passion for dining and arguing just about evenly divided.   All in all a delicious lunchtime on a festive winter day in Paris.

I highly recommend it:  Le Bouillon Chartier
7 RUE DU FAUBOURG MONTMARTRE 75009 PARIS
01 47 70 86 29
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It was a funny day, me deliberately leaving behind all the heavily “planned activities at US battlefield cemeteries for Veteran’s Day” to strike out into the French countryside.  On such an autumn holiday I thought why not explore the landscapes of the Barbizon school, maybe even climb around the fabled rocks and crags of Fontainebleu forest?   I sure wasn’t in any hurry to get up or get out; wasn’t even sure the car would start after all those weeks in Amman.  But there I was in a parking lot behind the town around noon, picking my way over  John Constable Way and up and down the steps of St. Martin Chapel, emerging, to my complete surprise, into the main town square just as the music struck up.  You can see the chapel in the picture, partly blocked by the giant head of Vercingetorix, doomed leader of the Gauls against Caesar’s legions in 51 BC, who was the centerpiece of the town’s war memorial, funded in part by American subscription. 

Everyone in town showed up.  It was not our Veterans’ Day commemoration; it was specifically the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of the brutal and devastating trench warfare of WWI that literally destroyed the flower of France.  And those losses were very specific for the families who showed up at the ceremony.  Old fat guys carried the flags and laid the flowers.  The mayor, sashed in red, white, and blue, gave a moving speech.  Eight kids read the poems they’d written to honor the dead and (always) La Gloire de France, though all the red-faced boys had to be coaxed by the local teacher to read their works of art.  I was completely surprised and moved–this was no big orchestrated ceremony with political overtones; this was all about people like you and me thinking about family members who went off to war for any number of reasons and laid down their lives for it–or, with any luck, lived to tell about it.

So what’s the upshot?  Everyone left the ceremony and immediately filled up all the restaurants in town to enjoy the day.  Restaurant La Boheme featured one of the great soul foods of France–pot au feu.  It is exactly the right dish for a cold day in autumn and so soulful in its simplicity and heartiness that I hope you will just bite the bullet and make it from scratch.  Easy enough to do, if you just take it in stages: Classic pot au feu.

Ahem, may I first say:  it’s a great day to be an American.

Okay, I promised you Madame de Pompadour, a Sèvres tureen, and a soup recipe, and I am going to deliver.  Just look at the pictured beauties.  Disoriented from 3 weeks under the hot blue skies of Amman, I set out on a cold, rainy lunch hour to reconnect with Paris.  Bang!  Almost immediately I found this gorgeous pot à oille, (a round instead of oval tureen) in the Petit Palais, just across and up the street from my office.  Funny how one little item can lead you such a merry chase all over French history, manners, customs, and cuisine.

It turns out that soup tureens were not made or used until the late 17th century.  Before then, poor families would eat directly out of the cooking pot with big spoons; rich families had their soup ladled from the kitchen marmite into individual bowls, covered, and served at table.

Then Saxony porcelain companies created gorgeous tureens for serving the soup course at table.  Think Royal Meissen/Dresden china.  Suddenly there was a charming way to focus attention on the Lord or Lady of the table doing the ladling, which, after all, is graceful and not as tricky as carving a roast.  This new fashion caught the attention of Louis XV’s official mistress, Madame de Pompadour, and she thought it would be awfully nice to rival Dresden with a French china that would blow it out of the water.  That’s when she discovered the small Sèvres factory around Chateau de Vincennes, very French, on the southeastern corner of Paris.

In no time at all she got the King’s interest and endorsement, moved the operation not far from Versailles, and hired the most exquisite artists (Boucher!) and craftsman to produce a soft-paste porcelain brilliant with colors and designs never before imagined.  Like the beauty pictured here.

And there you have it.  At the end of the production line, there were the petits soupers, two or three times a week, where Madame de Pompadour would cosily serve the King and an intimate group of guests–like her favorite, Voltaire–in the King’s private dining room, appropriately decorated with De Troy’s “Lunch with Oysters” and Lancret’s “Lunch with Ham.”  On the menu:  an exquisite soup to whet the appetite.

Two have come down through history named after the woman herself.  The clear Soupe à la Pompadour is a delicate consommé thickened with tapioca, then heated with thin strips of black Italian truffles (ideally from Norcia in Umbria), of poached chicken breasts, and of tongue.  The thick Purée a la Pompadour , by contrast, is a tomato purée garnished with pearls of sago palm and a julienne of lettuces. I am going to try them out this week and post the recipes on the weekend.  Perfect for an election party?  Why not?