Straight from the Farm

 

Wow, I can’t believe it’s Friday.  Know what that means?  We’ve reached the end of SFTF’s Week of Soup – already!  I have to say this has been one of my favorite weeks to date here on the blog.  I mean, how could it not be?  I love soup.  And many of you do too, it seems, from all your great feedback! 

Back on Monday, when this whole affair started, I mentioned that I’d be ending the week with a little self-challenge to prove that making soup doesn’t require a fancy recipe as long as you have the basic blueprint for building your own.  While I observed that anything can go into soup from watching my mom, I really learned this basic soup blueprint from a wonderful woman named Mary.   About a decade back (gosh, writing that makes me feel old), I did a stint in Northern Ireland – Belfast to be exact.    I was studying at Queen’s University and just soaking up life in my favorite part of the world (I’d been there before and I’ve definitely been back since…there’s just nothing quite like it). 

Since renting a flat there wasn’t cheap and my savings were meager, I needed a job and set out looking for one right away at some of the cafes with “help wanted” signs in their front windows.  I guess my accent turned them off as I didn’t get a single bite.  Dejected, I walked the 20 or so blocks back home to save the cab fare.  Just across from the university’s campus where I’d be studying in a few weeks, I saw what I thought was a used book store.  Nothing, save for a good piece of chocolate cake, cheers me up like browsing the dusty shelves of a used book store.  I pushed open the heavy red door and entered a world that would, over the coming months, literally re-shape who I was. 

Bookfinders, as it turned out, was really a tiny bookstore in the front and a cave of a café in the back, presided over by Mary, a chain-smoking, outspoken, aged-beyond-her-years, passionate-as-heck cook/owner.   I sat down for a bowl of her Five Spice and Courgette Soup and, even though there was no sign in the window, immediately knew I had to work there to learn how to make that soup. 

Back then, I was a timid country mouse, not used to going after the things I wanted with the same bull-headedness I possess today.  I shyly approached Mary, who was obviously in charge, and hesitantly asked if she might be looking for some help.   I’m not sure why she hired me.  I came to find out she didn’t need the help.  I think she wanted to see what I was made of…to see if she could put some fire in my bones.   Or maybe it was just because she, unlike the rest of the Belfast population, enjoyed hearing the American accent. 

Someday I’ll write the novel that my time at Bookfinders deserves, including its entire cast of characters – Jo (crazy Aussie trying to find her way home), Neil (ridiculously talented concert pianist gone slightly mad), Maeve (second-tier British royalty with the most lovely personality) and the other Mary (wizard behind finding the most obscure old books for the operations up front).   But all you really need to know about now is the way my time in the tiny kitchen in the back changed my cooking habits forever. 

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I find myself giggling over here, tucked behind my computer monitor.  What’s so funny, you ask?  I’m just realizing as I type in this post for Citrusy Cream of Carrot Soup that I’ve already discussed the two things I was planning to this time… 

I was going to rave about A Good Day for Soup. 
PBeen there. 

I was going to talk about how adding the parsnip gives just a hint of extra sweetness. 
PDone that. 

And here I was trying to get a really diverse group of soup recipes together for you.  Now I’m starting to feel a bit sheepish…

But, wait!  This recipe is unique!   How many of you have managed to mix the three distinct flavors of sweet, tart, and creamy all into one bowl of vitamin C and beta-carotene overload?!?  Hands in the air, people!   Yeah, that’s what I thought.  I only saw two hands.  The rest of you will find this recipe refreshing, both on the page and in your mouth. 

I’ll step aside now and let the pretty pictures do the rest of the talking. See, carrot soup is good for your eyes!! 

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Let’s ponder the humble parsnip for a moment, shall we?  For starters, I’ve always been a little disturbed by its phallic appearance.  Still, if that were enough to stop me, I’d have quite the limited vegetable repertoire without carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, slender eggplant, and even some radishes and potatoes.  I guess it’s the color of parsnips that makes them just a tad bit more disturbing than the others…   Okay, enough pondering on that aspect of the humble parsnip.

Parsnips, to me at least, are highly underrated.  They’re the unsung hero of the root vegetable world with their uniquely sweet flavor.  Add just a chunk of parsnip to any dish, and it transforms something like a run-of-the-mill Thanksgiving side dish into a Bon Appetite recipe worthy of clipping.  Parsnip in soup has been a long-standing affair in my kitchen, especially in winter squash or potato based varieties. 

But honestly, I’ve always hesitated to make soup, or any dish for that matter, with parsnips flying solo.  As much as I liked their flavor, I labored under the presumption that, on their own, they’d just be too sweet for a savory dish.  That’s not to say I haven’t on occasion pondered putting them in a dessert and just might still with the few locally harvested ones I have left.   Anyone have any clever ideas to share? 

As you might have realized by now, here in the SFTF kitchen, we (and by “we”, I mean “me” since D most definitely does not abide by this) have a creed.  It’s not ground-breaking, but it certainly steers the creative cooking juices in the right direction:  Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained.  A recipe for parsnip soup in one of my cookbooks caught my eye, and, while parsnip soup recipes are a dime-a-dozen, I decided it was time to give it a shot since this particular recipe seemed to waylay any concerns about overwhelming sweetness by piling on the spicy heat.  

Nary a doubt will I have about letting parsnips take center stage in future dishes.   Served with a rustic grilled cheese sandwich on the side, this soup was sublime.  The fried garlic and mustard seed garnish was just the thing to add a little punch and really must be included when you serve it.  What a great combination – I wish I’d thought of it myself! 

What I did think up myself was a second ingenious (parsnips may be humble, but I am not) and delicious use for this soup.  After eating it for both lunch and dinner the day before, I was interested in something a little different to make it more of a complete meal.  I sautéed some soy chicken strips in a large skillet, added some frozen shelled peas, and simmered it all with enough soup to make a nice thick sauce.  I added a pinch of my newly acquired garam masala spice mix (thank you, Santa) and served it all over some Israeli couscous.  Lip smacking, I assure you.   In fact, I have altered the recipe below to include a pinch of the Indian spice mix.  It’s not necessary by any means, but it did add a greater depth of flavor that shouldn’t be missed if you have garam masala on hand. 

What’s your favorite recipe for parsnips? 

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In my quest to find some distinctive soup recipes for SFTF’s Week of Soup, I flipped through just about all my cookbooks.  I got a good workout lifting them up and down from the high shelf in my kitchen that they call home.  I have big books, little books, soft cover books, hard backed books, spiral bound and saddle-stitched, all-text types, pictures- on-every-page types, black and white graphics, vivid color graphics, thick books and thin books… In short, while I might not have every cookbook in the world (an achievement I have to admit contemplating tackling on occasion), I do have quite the variety of them.

As I’ve talked about before though, A Good Day for Soup seems to stand above the others, at least when I’m looking for portage inspiration of course.  To look at it, you might not be quick to pick this book up at the store.  It’s paperback and not terribly pretty.   By that I mean, the cover is nice and graphic but not scrumptious as so many cookbooks’ are.  The recipes are copious but there’s nary a picture to be seen, something that’s almost guaranteed to have me putting a cookbook back on the store’s shelf instead of the cashier’s counter.  But, for whatever reason, I did buy this picture-less book, and I’ve always been glad I did.  The recipes are written with such passion and interest that I just know, deep down in my soup-making bones, the authors are kindred spirits of mine.  

Having thumbed through its pages many a time before, I was surprised to see a recipe I hadn’t noticed before this time – a chilled soup made from tomatillos.  This recipe was perfect…if it were August!  But in January I’d be hard pressed to 1) find local tomatillos and 2) work up the will to eat cold soup.  Rarely daunted by such problematic points, I thought to myself that I might have luck adapting this recipe to use up some of my frozen stores of salsa verde…hmmmm…  You see, the farm had absolute GOBS of tomatillos this summer, and I had no choice but to make GOBS of salsa verde to freeze.  I have since regretted this non-choice on the occasions when my big toe has gotten an unhappy reception when I open the freezer door and a container falls out.  Too much frozen salsa verde can indeed be a bad thing. 

So really, I had nothing to loose.  As for the temperature thing, I figured if a soup can be cooked, why can’t it be eaten warm?  Indeed!  For the sake of experiment, I tried it both ways, and I really did prefer it warm.  In fact, I was pleased as punch with its flavor overall.   If you don’t have your own frozen stash of salsa verde on hand at the moment, this soup is still feasible using a jar of salsa verde from the grocery store.  Just give the stuff you buy a taste prior to putting it in the soup.  If it’s got a lot of hot pepper heat to it already, cut back on the minced jalapeno called for in the salsa topping.  I had made my frozen salsa verde relatively mild so that it might prove more adaptable for just such occasions as this when I’m trying out a new recipe. 

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I realize I wasn’t much of a lean mean posting machine last week.  I have a very good excuse for the lag.  I was busy preparing for this week.  See, this week is one I’ve been anticipating/planning for almost a month and required a little advanced cooking.  Now it’s finally time to kick off SFTF’s Week of Soup!  And, boy, do I ever have some wing-dinger recipes for you! 

My mom got me started (of course) on homemade soup when we used to can our own vegetable soup mix during the summer that then sustained us through the winter.   She didn’t have any hard-and-fast recipe.  Instead, whatever the garden was producing the most of that year is what inevitably led the chorus of flavors in the soup mix.  Surprisingly enough though, my mom rarely made other soups once she had a full larder of the vegetable mix and her other stand-by, chicken corn/noodle.   I didn’t care.  I never got tired of that vegetable soup!

Once I left home for college and started working in the Allentown Fairgrounds Farmers Market, I took advantage of the “one hour until closing time so everything must go!” frenzy by collecting ever-changing assortments of fresh vegetables and fruits to take back to my roommates and our tiny kitchen.  Since many of these vegetables where not the pick of the litter, having sat in the market stalls for three days, I often found myself with a sack of veggies that were in a “do or die” state.  I had to do something with them right then and there or toss them in the trash.   Since a poor college student never throws food in the trash, I got creative.  Soup, my friends, was the answer almost every single time (except for the occasional salsa).  

Thus ends the tale of how soup became my “thing”.  I quickly learned that just about anything can go into soup once you get the basic concept down.  In fact, after I’ve shown you a few tried-and-true recipes, I’m going to take you step-by-step through a challenge I’m issuing to myself.  Without going shopping and with no recipe to follow, I plan on making soup at the end of this week with whatever’s left in my kitchen prior to my weekly Friday night grocery run.  Should be interesting, right? 

For now, I wanted to kick things off with my favorite soup of all time, Georgia Peanut Soup.  Coincidentally, I ran into this soup for the first time also during college.  There was a great vegetarian café, the Green Café, across the river in Bethlehem that stood in as my dinner spot when I went to listen to the bands at the Fun House.  Their peanut soup was amazing.  I dutifully asked for the recipe but was told it wasn’t really up for grabs since the cook just made it as she went along.  Well, that was cool and all, but didn’t really help me out. 

Honestly, I forgot about the peanut soup once I graduated and moved to Philly.  That is, until I bought my copy of The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Soups and saw what could only be a great starting recipe for my beloved peanut soup.  After dabbling with it over the years, I think it’s just about a perfect replica of the Green Café’s version.  It packs quite the punch of spicy heat with the rich creamy peanut flavor acting as a nice counterbalance. And of course all that peanut butter makes the soup stick to your ribs.  

As with almost all soups, the vegetables in this recipe can be traded out for something similar that you might have on hand.  Turnips could work in place of the potatoes, and peas could easily stand in for the corn.  Just be sure to use the chunkiest peanut butter you can find and add the chopped roasted peanuts to garnish; there’s just something special about getting those nutty crunchy bites!

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