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No!  Here you see Nitsa, in the village of Choulou in South Cyprus, tending meat (mostly pork) for a souvla she is cooking up for me, my old school chum Anne, and a table full of delightful expats.  “Nitsa,” I said, “tell me about Cypriot soup.”  “I don’t make soup,” she replied. “Nobody wants it–it’s too hot.”

She was certainly right about that.  With no air conditioning, no screens on the windows, and a relentlessly blazing sun in a clear blue sky,  it was witheringly hot.  We would get up at 6 am, hike in the hills and dales of  Ezousa valley, below Mt. Olympus and the Troodos mountains, then either siesta through the day or climb into the blessedly air conditioned car to go adventuring.  Yes to see the ruins of ancient Paphos, including the pillar where St. Paul was reputedly chained and whipped.  Yes to see the spot where Aphrodite was born of sea foam–and explore Sanctuaries to both Apollo and Aphrodite.  Yes to monasteries and churches and abandoned mosques and wineries and Mediterranean beaches and ruins from the 4000 BC Chalcolithic era.  Yes to medieval castles and the remains of Kourion.  Yes to late-night performances of Media, Philoctetes, and Lysistrata in Greek and Roman theaters.

But no soup, despite my best efforts.  Finally in Pissouri we found a restaurant that had chicken and tomato soups on the menu.  And I got what I deserved:  canned chicken broth thickened with flour, absolutely awful.  Let me repeat it:  NO SUMMER SOUP IN THE LAND OF APHRODITE.

But!  Southern Cyprus has a wealth of soups in more temperate seasons.  Nitsa told me about Avgolemeno (egg and lemon) and Trahana (wheat and sour milk). And Amaranth Sitas, in her cookbook Kopiaste describes meatball and fish Avgolemono, a traditional sour lentil soup for Good Friday, and Patcha, a soup made from lamb brain and tongue or lamb head.

Once home in my deliciously air conditioned house, I tried out Sitas’ Yavarlakia avgolemono, the meatball soup.  Delicious.

YAVARLAKIA AVGOLEMENO (for 8)

• 2/3 pound ground pork
• 1 cup raw rice
• 1 egg
• finely chopped mint or parsley
• salt to taste
• plate with some flour to roll the meatballs
• 10 cups chicken stock
• For the Avgolemono:  2 eggs and the juice of 1 big lemon

Mix the meat, rice, beaten egg, mint/parsley, and salt, then form into very small balls (because the rice expands the size).  Roll lightly in flour.

Bring the stock to a boil in a large pot, then carefully add the meatballs.  Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, partially covered, for 30 minutes, until the rice is tender.  When ready to serve, take the soup off the heat and put to the side.  Beat the eggs and lemon juice for the avgolemono, then beat a cup or so of  hot soup into it, a little at a time.  Add this back into the soup, stirring so that the egg does not curdle.  Taste for seasoning–both salt and lemon–then ladle into bowls.  Garnish with a sprig of mint/parsley and serve extra lemon slices on the side.

A last word:  Nitsa told me she would teach me a soup when I came back in cooler weather.  Stay tuned!

 

How excited are Costa Ricans about the World Cup?  So excited that after the first grudge-match victory against Uruguay, a little Pino grocery in remote Northern Zone bedecked its entrance with balloon enthusiasm worthy of a stadium entrance.  Imagine what it’s done today, defeating Italy.  Wahoo!

I am just back from visiting family in San Jose and confess I have caught FIFA fever.  What better way to celebrate than with Sopa de Pollo, a soup so traditional and so revered that a local cookbook, Meals a la tica by “Sandy,” calls it “Old Hen Soup–It revives even the dead!”  I had a bowl (pictured) at La Choza de Laurel in La Fortuna, at the foot of Arenal volcano, and I can testify to the fact that it revived me, at least half dead from a long, dizzying drive through the Cordillera de Tilarán.  Just look at that scrumptious chicken soup, stuffed with corn, potato, yucca, chayote, carrot, peppers, onion, garlic, herbs and spices–and served with rice and hot corn tortillas on a banana leaf with homemade chilero (piquant, pickled veggies) and salsa lizano on the side.  The restaurant is also charming:  open-air, farmhouse style, chicken on the rotisserie, grandkids so happy after that long drive to be running out to the back barn to play with the kittens.  I recommend it if you are planning a trip (and you should!) to Arenal volcano.  Check it out at http://www.lachozadelaurel.com/.

As for the soup, well!  You don’t have to wait for a Costa Rican vacation to try it.  Here is Sandy’s recipe:

SOPA DE POLLO (for 6)

• 1 stewing hen, plucked and cleaned
• 9 cups water
• 1/2 pound yuca, cut in pieces
• 1 pound potatoes, peeled and cut in pieces
• 1 green chayote, peeled and cut in pieces
• 1 carrot, peeled and cut in pieces
• 1 sweet red pepper, seeded and cut in pieces
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• chopped cilantro, celery leaves, and thyme
• 1 nest of angel hair pasta
• pinch of achiote
• salt to taste

Boil the chicken for an hour or more, until tender.  Remove chicken from pot and let cool while you skim the broth.  Add all the vegetables together, return to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 25 minutes.  Shred the chicken and add it back into the pot with the herbs, pasta, achiote, and season to taste.  Cook 5-10 more minutes, until the pasta is cooked and the chicken heated, then ladle into large bowls with rice, corn tortillas, chileros, and hot sauce on the side.

Pura vida!

 

 

 

I woke up this morning thinking about soup. Still too early for Paris to turn on the heat so, with all my casement windows open, I was double wrapped in down and still had freezing feet. Another sign of the season — old friends from early soupsong.com days are checking in. All of it feels good, heading into days of kicking through horsechestnut leaves after work, anticipating the warmth and goodness of the soup kettle just steps away.

Do you know this book? Lois Anne Rothert published The Soups of France in 2002. It’s a beauty. Forget about haute cuisine, formal restaurant service, and, in the words of 19th century gourmand Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de la Reynière, that “soup is to dinner what the portico or the peristyle is to an edifice. That is to say, not only is it the first part, but it should be conceived in such a way as to give an exact idea of the feast, very nearly as the overture to an opera should announce the quality of the whole work.”

Forget all that. In this book, soup IS the edifice; it IS the feast. Rothert focuses specifically on “big” meal-in-a-pot soups that are tied to specific Franch regions. Soupe au Pistou from Provence. Garbure from South West France. Matelote from Normandie and the Loire. Cotriade from Brittany. She says that, at this point in time, her book is “an essential work of safekeeping.” And it’s true: I rarely find these soups on a menu anywhere in France. They are disappearing. And you know I’ve been looking.

Likewise, Lois Rothert herself is hard to track down. She permits a small smiling picture of herself on the flyleaf of the book, proudly wearing her age with frazzled hair, oversized glasses, and an open collared jeans shirt–but is otherwise mostly invisible in the book and on the web. Fluent in French; educated at La Varenne; restauranteuse for 7 years in Fort Wayne, Indiana; mother of 4 children; winters in Indiana and summers outside Seattle in Cle Elum–that’s about it. But she knows France, knows food, and has produced a book that sings. Just look at that bowl of Soupe Locmariaquer, fat with oysters and smoked ham, from Brittany. I’ve adapted the grandmother’s recipe that she sweet-talked from the owner of the Hotel L’Escale at tiny Locmariaquer. This version is much simpler–basically the classic French potato soup that every housewife used to have on the burner…then stuffed with fresh oysters and crisp lardons right before serving.

Soupe Locmariaquer: Soupe Bonne Femme with Oysters and Crisp Ham Bits (for 6)

1 Tablespoon butter
4 leeks, cleaned and washed, then sliced (up into the green) into a 1/3-inch dice (1 and 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup diced onion
4-5 potatoes, peeled and diced (3 cups)
6 cups hot milk
sprigs of fresh rosemary, thyme, and a half bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoons butter
1/4 pound lardons (or thick bacon), cut into 1-inch pieces
24 medium-sized oysters (at least! This would be a measly 4 per bowl)
2 Tablespoons butter enrichment
Garnish: thinly sliced leeks and toasted croutes

Heat 1 T. butter in a saucepan over medium low heat, stir in the leeks and onions, and sweat slowly, covered, until they are soft, but not brown. Add the potatoes and hot milk with the salt and herbs, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 30-40 minutes, covered, until the potatoes are soft.

While the soup is cooking, saute the lardons/bacon in a Tablespoon of butter over medium heat until the fat has rendered. Drain on paper towels and reserve.

Shuck the oysters, carefully reserving the juice and strain through cheese cloth if necessary.

When the soup is done, remove the herbs and add the oyster liquor and 2 Tablespoons of butter enrichment. Taste to see if it needs salt–it may well not, since the oyster juice is salty–and maybe grind some white pepper into it. Mash the soup to thicken it with the potatoes, without completely creaming it. It should be lumpy.

When ready to serve, slide the oysters into the simmering broth (15 or so seconds is enough to plump them). Stir in the crisp ham bits. Ladle into bowls and top with thinly sliced leeks and croutons on the side.

Bottom line: if you want to grasp French foodways and see right into the heart of the French stomach, run don’t walk to your local online used bookstore. Lois Rothert’s The Soups of France is pricey, but all treasures are.

When I was in Seattle this summer and daughter Meg was in the urping first months of pregnancy, she said, “Mom, my refrigerator is crushed full of greens and veggies from the farm that are going bad. I can’t deal with them right now. Help!” Boy, do I wish I had had Anna’s book then. Yes I made some borshch, but all those semi-tired collards and mustards and spinaches and chards? Where was Love Soup when I needed it?

It was in the hands of publicist Rebecca Carlisle at Norton, who’d asked me if I’d review it…and it just arrived this week. I was so glad to get it, just as the weather has begun to cool and La Rentrée has commenced in France.

Anna Thomas, famous for her 1973 Vegetarian Epicure, written when she was a struggling grad student, has gotten marvelously comfortable in the kitchen since then. Her take on soup and her mostly self-created recipes in this book are exciting, but not precious–you can hear on every page that she is writing her book for real people and customizing recipes to please, not to be showy. That’s important when you’re making up soup recipes, I think, because unless soup is traditional or designed for a particular experience, it really doesn’t call for recipes–just for a sense of how to put available ingredients together in an inspired sort of way. And Ana has lessons to teach.

Love Soup is a big book; is written above all for vegetarians; and is romantic, matching produce with their just seasons in a way that connects each soup to the earth and to people. What’s new? A number of things.

• It is as specific and various on vegetable broth recipes as most soup books are on meat and fish stocks–and this is huge, as clear/dark/rich/light foundations to soups are at least and probably more important to vegetarians who want a soup that sings.
• It is crazy for “green soups”–just what I needed in Seattle.
• It is crazy for using roast vegetables in soups. I love this! Tapping into the density and sweetness of roasted vegetables, so different from raw-vegetable soup, creates all new flavors and textures in the final soup bowl.
• It is awash with inside information on ingredients and preparation, gained from both study and experience.
• American and European measures are detailed in every recipe.

Where to start? In honor of France and in honor of friend Stu, who is currently obsessed with all things lentil soup, I chose her “French lentil stew with roasted carrots and mint for 6″ to try out this weekend. Wow.

1 and 1/2 pounds carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 and 1/2 pounds onions, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch wedges
4 Tbsp olive oil
sea salt and pepper
1 generous cup French green lentils (Lentilles vertes du Puy)
4 cups cold water
4 cups vegetable broth
1 generous Tbsp. chopped fresh mint
1-2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1-2 Tbsp. red chile salsa (I used the classic Basque espelette pepper sauce, just cause I’m lucky enough to be able to get it)
Garnishes: feta cheese (I substituted Poitou goat cheese) and fruity olive oil drizzles

Begin by tossing the carrots and onions separately in a bowl with a Tablespoon of olive oil, salt, and pepper to coat them, then roasting them in separate pans in a 375 degree oven for an hour, stirring occasionally. You need to keep them separate as the onions may cook more quickly and need to be stirred more often. Take them out when soft and browned, let the cool a little, then chop them coarsely.

Meanwhile, wash the lentils and put them in a pot with 4 cups of cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer, covered, for 25 minutes. Add the chopped vegetables, the vegetable broth, 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice, salt to taste, and your pepper sauce of choice. I was lucky to have gotten a jar of Basque espelette peppers while visiting Bayonne this summer in the corner of southwest France–as a rule, the French do not like spicy foods and rarely use pepper sauce. But Espelette is extraordinary–buy it if you can find it.

Simmer the soup for about 10 minutes to marry the flavors. Taste to see if it needs more salt, pepper, or lemon juice. Add more broth if you want it soupier. Ladle into soup bowls and garnish each with cheese and a drizzle of fruity olive oil.

Many thanks, Anna, for a great contribution to the world of soup cookbooks.

Anna thomas, LOVE SOUP: 160 All-New Vegetarian Recipes from the Author of The Vegetarian Epicure [W. W. Norton & Company; September 21, 2009; $22.95 paperback original].