Soup

December 07, 2008 | Category: Recipes

Through the years, the one thing that I've learned to cook well is soup. I started about 15 years ago, when I had a taste of home-made squash soup (albeit made in the home of a chef). It was a revelation.

A year later, a woman named Brenda invited me over to her house for Borscht. I hated beets. Or so I thought.

By now, I can make about a dozen different soups well. My tomato-basil was my favorite last summer. I made ham-baked potato for CD earlier this week. And last night, feeling kinda blue, I simmered up some french onion with the last of that nice tawny port I had.

If pressed, I can served it with the bread and broiled cheese on top but I tend to eat it naked in a mug, steaming, with a roll for dipping and some cheese and apple wedges on the side.

I'm just my family's cook and too often I get dinner wrong. Clearly? I'm not a chef. I've never trained. Not even in my own childhood. No one made soup a part of their repertoire. My dad worked at Campbells for some years, so our soups came from a can with a red and white label.

But making soup is more than a sort of hidden, and probably somewhat useless, talent. It never fails to lift me from ennui, or sadness. And it makes me feel connected to the millions of pots of soups that have nourished and do sustain so many homes, hearths, and bellies for millenni. The different flavors, the different cultures, the different recipes handed down on index cards that grow grubby from use.

I guess there's something about making soup - the chopping, and stirring, the steam and scents - that heals my soul.

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