Wizard Recipes

Making soup is not only incredibly satisfying, it’s also ridiculously easy. At its most basic, you start with water, add some means of making it taste better-usually meat, poultry, fish, or aromatic vegetables, along with seasonings-and finish with a few (or a slew of) vegetables and/or grains.

Really, it’s almost impossible to make “bad” soup. If you start with good ingredients-and you should-the results are likely to be great, because every bit of flavor remains in the part you eat. When you’re done, you have an ideal first course for entertaining or weeknight suppers or an easy course to build a meal around.

The process need not be elaborate or time consuming, and it rarely requires precision. There’s little measuring and a lot of room for improvisation; even the timing is flexible. In fact, most soups are simple and forgiving, and many take less than thirty minutes to prepare; if one takes longer, most of the cooking time is unattended. And almost every stock and soup can be made ahead.

There are a few issues to consider in soup making:

Preparing foods for soup: Cutting vegetables or other ingredients to about the same size allows them to all cook at pretty much the same rate; you don’t want your carrots tender while your potatoes are still hard. And using small pieces allows you to eat soup elegantly, without cutting in the bowl or cramming too-large pieces of food into your mouth.

Using leftovers in soup: One of my first cooking teachers made cream-of-something-or-other almost every night with leftover vegetables. She rinsed the leftovers with boiling water, combined the vegetables with stock and seasonings, puréed, and reheated, sometimes with cream, sometimes with milk or yogurt, sometimes with nothing.

Almost any leftover whose flavor does not conflict with the basic seasonings of your soup is fair game: pasta, rice, bread, meat, fish, poultry, vegetables - even mashed potatoes, which can blend in nicely.

Heating stock for use in soup: Most soups begin by cooking some meat or vegetables, then adding stock or water. If you heat the stock or water while you prepare the solid ingredients, you will cut your cooking time by as much as ten or fifteen minutes.

Puréeing soup: Upright and immersion blenders can purée almost any soup in an instant. (A hand-cranked food mill is not a ton of work, but it’s not nearly as fast.) If the purée is too thick, stir in some water or half-and half, which will add flavor, enhance texture, and thin the soup all at the same time.

Incidentally, guilt factor aside, heavy cream is a sensational thickener, adding wonderful flavor and silken texture. And you don’t need much-1/2 cup or even less is usually enough for 6 cups of soup.

Adding pasta or rice to soup: Rice or pasta add body, flavor, and variety to soups, but they’re best cooked in separate water, because they absorb so much water and give off so much starch that cooking them directly in the soup changes the character entirely. (There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but you should be aware of it.)

Storing soup: Many soups can be made in advance, or at least partly so (I’ve noted the best time to interrupt cooking when there is one), and freeze brilliantly for a month or more, so there’s rarely a reason not to double or even quadruple a given recipe to reserve some for another time.

Generally, it’s best not to freeze or even refrigerate a soup once you’ve added starches like rice and pasta. Since they continue to absorb water even during storage, they break down, becoming soft and thickening the soup unnecessarily (of course if you like these qualities, go right ahead). Nor should you freeze soups made with dairy, which are likely to curdle when reheated

SOUP is a liquid food that is prepared by boiling meat or vegetables, or both, in water and then seasoning and sometimes thickening the liquid that is produced. It is usually served as the first course of a dinner, but it is often included in a light meal, such as luncheon.

While some persons regard the making of soup as difficult, nothing is easier when one knows just what is required and how to proceed.

VALUE OF SOUP IN THE MEAL.

Not all persons have the same idea regarding the value of soup as a part of a meal. Some consider it to be of no more value than so much water, claiming that it should be fed to none but children or sick persons who are unable to take solid food. On the other hand, many persons believe that soup contains the very essence of all that is nourishing and sustaining in the foods of which it is made.

This difference of opinion is well demonstrated by the ideas that have been advanced concerning this food. Some one has said that soup is to a meal what a portico is to a palace or an overture to an opera, while another person, who evidently does not appreciate this food, has said that soup is the preface to a dinner and that any work really worth while is sufficient in itself and needs no preface.

Such opinions, however, must be reconciled if the true value of this food is to be appreciated.

Probably the best way in which to come to a definite conclusion as to the importance of soup is to consider the purposes it serves in a meal.

When its variety and the ingredients of which it is composed are thought of, soup serves two purposes: first, as an appetizer taken at the beginning of a meal to stimulate the appetite and aid in the flow of digestive juices in the stomach; and, secondly, as an actual part of the meal, when it must contain sufficient nutritive material to permit it to be considered as a part of the meal instead of merely an addition.

Even in its first and minor purpose, the important part that soup plays in many meals is not hard to realize, for it is just what is needed to arouse the flagging appetite and create a desire for nourishing food.

But in its second purpose, the real value of soup is evident. Whenever soup contains enough nutritive material for it to take the place of some dish that would otherwise be necessary, its value cannot be overestimated.

If soup is thought of in this way, the prejudice that exists against it in many households will be entirely overcome. But since much of this prejudice is due to the fact that the soup served is often unappetizing in both flavor and appearance, sufficient attention should be given to the making of soup to have this food attractive enough to appeal to the appetite rather than discourage it.

Soup should not be greasy nor insipid in flavor, neither should it be served in large quantities nor without the proper accompaniment. A small quantity of well-flavored, attractively served soup cannot fail to meet the approval of any family when it is served as the first course of the meal.

GENERAL CLASSES OF SOUP

Soups are named in various ways, according to material, quality, etc.; but the two purposes for which soup is used have led to the placing of the numerous kinds into two general classes.

In the first class are grouped those which serve as appetizers, such as bouillon, consomme, and some other broths and clear soups. In the second class are included those eaten for their nutritive effect, such as cream soups, purees, and bisques. From these two classes of soup, the one that will correspond with the rest of the meal and make it balance properly is the one to choose.

For instance, a light soup that is merely an appetizer should be served with a heavy dinner, whereas a heavy, highly nutritious soup should be used with a luncheon or a light meal.

ECONOMIC VALUE OF SOUP

Besides having an important place in the meal of which it forms a part, soup is very often an economy, for it affords the housewife a splendid opportunity to utilize many left-overs.

With the French people, who excel in the art of soup making chiefly because of their clever adaptation of seasoning to foods, their pot-au-feu is a national institution and every kitchen has its stock pot. Persons who believe in the strictest food economy use a stock pot, since it permits left-overs to be utilized in an attractive and palatable way.

In fact, there is scarcely anything in the way of fish, meat, fowl, vegetables, and cereals that cannot be used in soup making, provided such ingredients are cared for in the proper way. Very often the first glance at the large number of ingredients listed in a soup recipe creates the impression that soup must be a very complicated thing. Such, however, is not the case.

In reality, most of the soup ingredients are small quantities of things used for flavoring, and it is by the proper blendingof these that appetizing soups are secured

Perhaps it ’s human nature, but I have far crisper memories of cooking failures than I do of triumphs. The time my omelets for six all stuck to the pan, the raw roast beef, and the curdled hollandaise all come rushing to mind every time I get near a stove to try something adventurous.

It’s with a similar wave of angst and embarrassment that I remember my first vegetable soup, boiled up for a group of friends in my one-room Mont- Martre flat-the one with the radiator that never got hot and the horsehair blanket with “1939″ embroidered on one corner.

In my own defense, the soup’s failure was partly due to poverty, but with a little of an old-fashioned French housewife’s cunning frugality I might have been able to pull it off. Had I known how to make a soupe au pistou, one of the glories of Provençal cooking, my soup would surely have been a long-forgotten triumph.

In soupe au pistou, as in other mixed-vegetable soups, the vegetables are simmered until done in water or broth and are added in stages appropriate to their cooking times. What turns a vegetable soup into a soupe au pistou is pistou-a paste of garlic, Parmigiano- Reggiano cheese, and basil either swirled into the soup immediately before serving orpassed at the table for guests to help themselves.

The basil and garlic release their pungent perfumes and the cheese gives the soup a nutty richness right under the diner’s nose.

To make a successful soupe au pistou, you must first make a vegetable soup, to which you then add some noodles, at least if you’re concerned about authenticity. Most of us almost reflexively use broth when making soup, but a soupe au pistou is more often than not made without it, forcing us to derive its flavor and aroma from vegetables alone.

This is one of the soup’s advantages, since most of us find making broth a nuisance and canned broth rarely worth bothering with. But even if you’re stuck with supermarket vegetables and the soup itself ends up a little insipid, the pistou will enliven it into something heady and satisfying.

The pistou, the Provençal relative of neighboring Liguria’s pesto, is a cause of much bickering, mostly about whether the pistou can be made in a blender or food processor or must be made by hand with a mortar and pestle. True, it is better if you make it in a mortar, but how many of us have mortars large enough to make the process anything other than agonizing?

The mortars and pestles sold at cooking supply stores work fine for crushing a pinch or two of herbs, but making a cup or two of pistou would take most of a day. So I must be honest and admit that I make pistou and pesto in a blender. It takes about a minute.

But now to the soup itself. The vegetables will vary according to the cooks you talk with, the cookbooks you read, and the time of year. Winter or summer squash are almost always available, as are fresh beans, either shell beans or string beans and sometimes both. Tomatoes are commonly but not universally used.

They are often added to the pistou, but because they turn it a rather dull hue, I prefer to add them directly to the soup. Potatoes, zucchini, the root vegetables turnips, carrots, and celeriac, and onions or leeks are also commonly used.

Some recipes call for sweating the root vegetables in olive oil before adding liquid, but usually the vegetables are combined all at once in a pot with water and simmered until done.

More careful recipes use a bit more common sense and call for adding the vegetables in stages according to their cooking times. My own versions are almost entirely seasonal and depend more on what I stumble into at the farmers’ market or supermarket than on any preconceived idea.

My summer soupe au pistou invariably contains zucchini or summer squash, tomatoes, fresh cranberry or lima beans (if I can find them), and string beans. Winter versions contain winter squash (common in many traditional versions), potatoes, and turnips.

Every version, regardless of season, contains leeks or onions and carrots. In traditional recipes, thick vermicelli noodles, called méjanels, are simmered in the soup just long enough to cook through.

Most modern recipes call for vermicelli, but I use little macaroni instead I make soupe au pistou for a crowd because it’s hard to make a small batch, since there’s such a large variety of vegetables.

Combined with bread, sprinkled with olive oil and cheese, and baked, leftover soupe au pistou becomes a gratin or panade.

Served at room temperature, it’s similar to the Tuscan ribollita. I often serve soupe au pistou as a main course, especially in the summer, but it also makes a good first course.

The pistou can be made earlier in the day or while the soup is cooking.

Here are some tips and tricks for successful cooking!

• when making a BBq, grease the grill a little bit so that it doesn’t stick to it. In order to remain juicy,

don`t poach the meat, and add salt when you serve it (or prepare the marinate  and leave it to soak

up for 24 hours for best results).

• Leave the steaks to rest for 4,5 minutes before cutting!
• Cut the steaks before you put them on the plate!

• The water for cooking spaghetti must be boiling before you add them. Also, you can add a little bit of butter or oil to prevent sticking to the pot.

• Rice gets cooked faster if kept in cold water before.

• Potatoes for mashed potatoes remain white during cooking with you add a little bit of vinegar in the water.

• Use warm milk for preparing the mashed potatoes, to give it a plus of flavor.

• Cook the soup at a small flame, to keep it clear.

• Mushrooms don`t go dark when cooked, if soaked for 5 minutes with water and vinegar.

• Grated apples remain white if sprinkled with a little bit of lemon juice.