The only – and I mean that – the only thing I like about winter is the freedom to and what I firmly believe is my responsibilty to make soup on a regular basis.
(Yes, you can make soup when it’s hot outside. But it doesn’t have the same punch, and in fact even thinking about it during the summer makes me even hotter. When it’s summer. Which it’s not at the moment. Yeah, yeah, gazpacho, etc. Cold soups are not what I’m talkin’ about here. Frankly, I don’t even get the concept of this “cold soup” of which you speak.)
I don’t know why I love soup so much – the same reason I love salad, especially composed salads. The mixture of flavors and textures, the frequency of garlic..who knows. I’ve never been a slab-of-meat – veggie-starch-on-a-plate person, and honestly, as the years go by, the more repulsive the whole “slab of meat” part of that scenario seems to me. I think I 
simply inherited my mother’s palate, heavily French, in which Salade Nicoise and a cassoulet are things I could live on for weeks.
(But not Vichysoisse, obviously…)
I have a few favorites, although I try not to get stuck on them, as Katie’s words from this fall echo in my mind. I said, “Oh, it’s getting cool, time for soup,” and she muttered something like, “And soup…and soup…and soup.”
The gist being…too much of a good (or, in her mind, probably..”okay”) thing.
The two soups I could presently live on are both from this cookbook, The Essentials of Italian Cooking by the great Marcella Hazan: the Minestrone and the Pasta e Fagioli- I made the lentil last week, at it was fabulous, too.
They like Tortilla Soup unless I go a little too hot on it. There’s a really simple “Sopa de Mexicano” at a local restaurant that I want to try to figure out how to make. I’ve made a couple of leek soups the past few months. I’ve been meaning to do something with barley, but haven’t got to it yet. I’ve not made Italian Wedding Soup yet this winter, I just realized…hmmm.
And I don’t like cream soups – at all. Last week I just constructed something - I’m not sure what – out of the last of the Christmas turkey stock, many vegetables (including leeks. This is the Winter of the Leek) sauteed with much garlic and then with a few handfuls of ditali tossed in at the end ..and it was fabulous. At least I thought so. I’m almost at the point of giving up pleasing anyone else but myself in the kitchen, anyway, to be honest. As my mother said in one of her most memorable moments. to a whiny young teenager who’d just rejected every one of her suggestions for what to eat, “Fix your own damn dinner, then.”
What she said. I’ll just sit here with my soup. Happily.
Update: Okay, all you people posting about kale soups. Are you going give us recipes?
Another Update: We have a recipe for Portugese Kale Soup. Can another type of sausage be substitued? Like Chorizo? Or is that blasphemy? The blogger/cook does give a link to ordering the required types, but I was just wondering…
Amy,
I hear it’s bitterly cold up there; Florida is ‘cold’, but only to the natives (it got up to about 68 today).
I have the same cookbook and I agree, it’s great. She has a recipe for a basic tomato sauce, with about five ingredients. Absolutely the best i’ve ever tasted.
I’ll make the lentil soup for Brian; he loves lentils.
Kathryn
From Amy: HI Kathryn!! I made another lentil soup recently – this one, I think. It too was good.
Oh, and yeah. It was -2 when I took everyone to school today. -2. But honestly, once you get below 20, it’s all the same misery.
I made split pea yesterday. Mmmmmm.
As it happens, I just now sat down to the computer after a surprisingly satisfying meal of homemade soup! Ok, so it was only Weight Watchers Garden Vegetable, and not Pasta e Fagioli, but considering that the only other soup I’ve ever attempted is the “Magical Leek Soup” from FRENCH WOMEN DON’T GET FAT (indeed, Amy, it is the Winter of the Leek), I was pretty darned proud. Also inspired to do more soup in the future. And now you’ve given me a cookbook recommendation with which to follow up; how providential!
I, too, am a big soup maker, mostly out of simplicity. In one pot I can hit a few food-groups and sub-food-groups.
For Christmas one of my American friends gave me a new Mollie Katzen soup cookbook that is an easel book. Convenient and yummy.
Tortilla soup? — Do you share recipes? (Well, not that I can cook but if you’ll part with yours it sounds delightful)
Kale soup – the New England Portuguese descendent of caldo verde – is tops except in the hottest of months. Broth, potatoes, beans, linguica and kale (if you want to get fancy, cavolo nero or lacinato kale). Tourists always want a gloppy clam chowder (hint: real clam chowder, hard to find, has no thickener other than potatoes and the dairy of choice; no flour or cornstarch), locals know to get the kale soup.
I was just about to sing the praises of kale, especially the black kind, but Liam beat me to it. Another version of what he describes uses pieces of chicken, chicken broth, diced sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, garbanzos, and shredded kale.
My award-winning Galician bean soup has great northern beans, onions, garlic, smoked sausage, diced potato, a bay leaf, finished off at the end with shredded kale or mustard greens.
And Marcella Hazan’s books are great! They also read as well as they cook.
Check out this site- “Soup Song/Soup of the Evening” – not just great recipes but soup trivia, soup stories, soup jokes, if you love soup, this is your happy place! (Or at least mine)
http://www.soupsong.com/
And don’t forget to listen to 12 year old Michael Bannett’s recording of Lewis Carroll’s “Soup of the Evening, Beautiful Soup” guaranteed to cheer you up on the coldest of January days.
http://www.soupsong.com/mocksong.html
Two words: rotisserie chicken!
Perfect for quick chicken noodle soup, white chicken chili, etc. etc. I’ve even stooped to buying it at Wal-Mart.
My other winter soup staples are vegetable beef (sometimes without the beef) and chili.
I probably should branch out a bit more
Today I made onion soup. It was excellent. You make a stock by boiling some old onions, carrots, black pepper corns, lots of coriander seeds, a bay leaf, and salt. You take four onions and cut them in half. You place them in a roasting dish. You lay butter on them. You begin to roast them, in an oven on 200. After turning them twice, you remember they need salt and pepper on the third turning. You roast them until they have some brown and black bits – these taste good. You take them out of the oven and chop them up a bit. You pour a glass of white wine into a sauce pan. You empty the roast onions into the wine and boil it gently until there is almost no wine left. You add the stock, and simmer the whole lot for about 20 minutes, then eat it.
I am also a Marcella Hazan fan, as is my mother. I like the puddings particularly. I have not tried the soups.
YES!!! Let’s hear in for Kale soup, THE soup that locals on Cape Cod and in New Bedford – Fall River know is the best.
Amy, no recipe here, but I have consumed it everywhere, and THE best is at “Land Ho” casual restaurant in Orleans MA. See you all there some winter night!
Soups have recipes?! I make soup when things in the vegetable bin are slightly flexible.
I’ll have to pull out my recipe for Caldo Verde when I get home from Mass and post it.
I am more than a little surprised to see so many mentions of Fall River here.
No better place for Portuguese Kale Soup than Fall Reeve, and New Beige.
ANother resource on kale soup:
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/284695
Explanation of the sausages: linguica and chourico are Portuguese sausages nearly universally available in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island (and online) – chourico is spicier.
Make it. Eat it. Love it.
No cream soups here either, except for cream-of-garlic soup. Absolutely in a class by itself.
Ask and you shall recieve.
The recipe for Portuguese Kale Soup is posted here.
http://dominisumus.blogspot.com/2008/01/portuguese-kale-soup.html
This is a fabulous soup recipe book written by a monk:
http://www.amazon.com/Twelve-Months-Monastery-Victor-Antoine-DAvila-Latourrette/dp/0892439319/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201453298&sr=1-5
We just tried the potato-artichoke one and it is delicious!
He’s written a host of beautiful recipe books.
I have never made it with chorizo, but I have heard of people who use it as a substitute. I am under the impression that they are close enough for it to work.
I married a New Bedford native and lived there for a few years. I agree with my father who said, “If kale soup were the only food on earth, I’d starve to death.”
De gustibus and all that jazz.
Amy, you can make the portugese kale soup with any decent sausage — even supermarket industrial grade italian sausage. Tastes fine. There’s a good recipe for this soup in Julia Child’s Art of French Cooking, vol 2, if I remember right. She uses a very good enriching at the end, which doesn’t involve … cream. Beat two egg yolks, whisk in half cup good olive oil. Add to soup but don’t bring to boil again after adding. Beautiful gold color.
Does your cream phobia mean that you can’t allow yourself to make simple cream of broccoli, cream of red pepper, cream of cauliflour, etc. soups — all of which involve onions fried in butter, a little flour added and cooked, chicken stock and water, the fresh vegetables, a quick immersion blender puree, and some cream or half and half, and maybe curry.
The best Sunday night soup, and by far the most beautiful soup of all with its red broth and variously hued cubes of vegetables, is borscht.
During my theology courses at the Archdiocesan Seminary in Rio de Janeiro (1960-63), Cardinal Don Jaime de Barros Camara taught Pastoral Theology. He taught us inter alia, how to make Rock Soup. He claimed that it worked for him in a few instances during his pastoral life when he was in remote areas surrounded by the very poor. Naturally, it started with a pot, a fire, some water and whatever ingredients he could persuade people to add to the pot. Lucky for me, during my years in Brazil, I never had to employ this method. We Americans were viewed as super-nourished and it was largely true. which made us slow on the soccer field.
I must speak in defense of my favorite “cream” soup: Creamy Cauliflower Soup from my old Laurel’s Kitchen cookbook. But, there is no cream. The creamy texture comes from potato. The only other ingredients are stock, celery, onion, garlic, and of course cauliflower, all purreed into a white, warm, wonderful winter soup. We have it about once a week and even my little kids lap it up.
About the Portuguese Kale soup: one substitute that we love and which is much more commonly avaiable than linguisa or “chourice” (that’s my friend from Fall River says it, maybe it’s a New England dialect), is kielbasa (smoked, not fresh). After all, they are plenty of Poles in Fall River too!
Another of our winter favorites: plain beef stew, with barley and potatoes.
I am late to the recipe sharing party but….
I would be *amiss* if I did not claim Lamb Stew w/kale as an favorite way to eat kale in soup.
Good basic recipe here:
http://www.cleanhomejournal.com/view.aspx?pid=234
Nothing warms me more. Excellent for St. Patrick’s Day also.
-BarbaraKB