Most of the time, I’m Tom Hanks in “Big,” awestruck by the life I’m allowed as a veritable adult living in Manhattan — visits at my favorite vintage store are my giant FAO Schwartz piano, the pink velvet couch I got for free from a stranger is my SoHo loft trampoline. But all those trappings of autonomy don’t always hold their luster — the caviar at the office party tastes disgusting, your stomach aches from one too many trips to your living room Pepsi machine, and you just want to be thirteen again.
Hot off the heels of December, with its open bars and glorious gluttony, the vast, three-month-long month that follows leaves me feeling exceptionally jaded by my own autonomy. I just want the sweet, sweet bliss of being told what to do. I want a break from living from whim to whim, albeit my own. I want my mom to tell me, “no, for the love of God, you can’t have Frosted Mini Wheats for dinner. I made soup. Eat the soup.” I want to eat the soup.
Soup is the answer. Soup is the means through which I infantilize myself, and in turn care for the newborn-me that I’ve made. Soup is bonafide baby food — a nutritious, spoonable puree, primed and ready for “here comes the airplane” treatment, should the opportunity present itself. With soup, meal times are no longer stumbling blocks, chances to quick-assess my cravings and ultimately fall short when the thing I throw together from last week’s Trader Joe’s run doesn’t satisfy. Instead, dinner becomes the champion’s podium. Every time I eat my lovingly homemade stew, I’m accepting laurels, I’m holding my hand over my heart and tearfully singing the anthem of the country that is Kate. (“Something to Talk About” by Bonnie Rait would be my ideal choice at this moment. Not for the message necessarily, but for the fact that it is one of the greatest songs ever and is within my range.)
In the first days of the new year, I resolved to make seven soups in thirty days, I selected my candidates at once, ensuring the septet was varied, but accessible, that each individual soup was hearty enough to make a full meal, and that I was equally as excited about soup one as I was about soup seven. I spent the month of January cooking them back to back, and eating each for lunch and dinner until my little pink Le Creuset was empty, ready for the next.
I started with a soup I’d made many times before and knew that I loved and reader guess what? I loved it again. This soup is utterly delicious, so full of disparate textures that all somehow harmonize like they’re the Mamas and the Papas — the mushrooms are the altos, the farro is the bass, the celery is the soprano note, and the parmesan rind is Mama Cass. It should also earn points for being self-brothing — I’m always in awe of a soup that calls for straight water, not premade broth or bullion, for its confidence in the ability of its own ingredients to transubstantiate the liquid, Jesus-like. The resulting mushroom juice is absolutely heaven sent.
I’ve never met a bean I didn’t like and this soup was no exception. It’s simple and straightforward, not heavily spiced, and you can really taste every ingredient — I was able to deconstruct it mentally in my mouth when my friend Sara asked “YUM what’s in this?” I also love any blender element in a soup. Let’s not beat around the bush, we both know why i’m here, make it as close to a bean dip as possible, maestro.
This soup knocked my pants off. Classy coriander and powerhouse curry powder get together in the dutch oven and make sweet, sweet love to each other, building a beautiful base for the one pound (!!) of sliced carrots they’ve invited over for a swingers night. Ginger, garlic, fresno chili, and shallot (a world-famous quartet formerly known to me as the Spice Girls) enter the mix too, and just when you think the dutch oven can’t take anymore? You guessed it — immersion blender, sweetheart. Top with greek yogurt and cilantro and you’re in business and you’re the CEO of that business.
Put the blender back in the cabinet because we’ve got chicken stewing, ladies and gentlemen. Making this soup felt like completing an obstacle course, but one where wit was favored. You start by making the titular “Jammy Onions,” frying them until they’re golden brown (mine were more brown, less golden, but that’s no problem). Then the ingenuity kicks in — you remove the onions while the oil remains, and you coat the red lentils IN the onion-infused oil (!!!). Now your red lentils have on a beautiful evening jacket, mink or velvet or somesuch. Water and turmeric comes next (yes, another self-brothing soup!), the chicken boils away until it's butter-soft and shreddable, and the whole gorgeous golden mix is ready to serve. But wait! Remember those onions? The Checkhov’s Gun of this entire operation? THOSE chewy little morsels go RIGHT ON TOP! And boy was I glad to have them there. Delicious.
It’s at this point I began to deviate from my original plans, straying from the straight and narrow path I’d laid and, like Icarus, fell to my doom. Next on my list had been a potato and leek soup, but It didn’t sound as appetizing when we met face to face. What I wanted instead was a good chili — I had sweet potatoes, I had cans of black beans left over from soup number two, and I had an easy recipe to boot. But, reader, I’d had no idea how much I would come to boot. I don’t know that I can blame it on the stew, which was delicious, but what followed on the fateful Sunday evening that I ate my first bowl was the worst bout of stomach flu I’ve ever had in my life. Through perhaps no fault of its own, this soup is obviously repulsive to me now. The first thing I did when I’d gained the strength to stand was overturn the entire pot into the trash.
This soup again represents a stray from script, but desperate times were screaming for desperate measures. My immune system weakened by a fight to the death with my intestinal tract, plus international travel (I went to Mexico one day after my flu’s last gasp, but that’s a story for my memoirs), I came back to New York with a knock-down-drag-out head cold. “What soup eat sick,” I Googled, typing with one finger, so pathetic and sad. The answer, appropriately, was Sick Soup. I made like Charlie Puckett’s grandfather when it’s time to see Wonka and peeled myself out of bed, shuffling to the farmer’s market a block away. I bought all the ingredients I needed there, a few potatoes, an onion, eggs, and broth, and had the hot soup ready in the time it takes to watch an episode of “Derry Girls,” which I’d been binging all morning. With the first spoonful I felt the sun setting on my sickness, or at least peeking out from behind the clouds. It's completely perfect, so comforting and warm. I had it for lunch and dinner.
Carrot Soup Again
For my seventh and final soup, I decided to let the spirit move me, setting out on a self-guiding pot practice. Using all the lessons I’d learned in my month of soup school, from order of operations to puree technique to key bases for self-brothing, I made a soup of whatever I’d left over in the pantry. The result, a mix of carrots, ginger, shallot, garlic, onion, turmeric, and a splash of coconut milk, was unsurprisingly delicious, and even better, obviously, blended. Here comes the airplane indeed.
Come out to Westchester and I will expand your soup repertoire! Even if someone we know (Carey) says "soup is not food." !!!! So wrong.