Surviving Nasty Soup

Soup: one of those dishes that seems so easy… and can be so good. And then it can totally, fully, thoroughly screw up on you. It’s the alchemical thing, methinks. Some of us want to just throw everything and the kitchen sink in there. Consider mi papí, with his penchant for flinging fleshy huge mushrooms in EVERYTHING, or mi mama, with that unholy Creole trinity of green bell peppers, onions and celery — and I loathe bitter green bells and celery cooked. Shudder. Those were the soups of my childhood — limp, overcooked vegetables in a watery broth; or horrible broccoli soups with garish flavors all competing; soups layered with some floaty unidentifiable green stuff with a green bitterness undergirding it all. Long ago I determined that these are not the soups I will spend my adult life eating.

One of the best things I’ve discovered with soups is that it’s not too hard to tell what things go together, and what things don’t. Summer soups are easy — chuck fresh veggies in a clear broth, and serve with tortilla strips and a sprinkling of cheese or croûtons, and you’re good to go. Corn soup, fresh tomato gazpacho — yum. In the autumn, it becomes only slightly more complex: beans generally go with other beans, and tomatoes. (The Italians do that well with minestrone, or Pasta y fagioli.) Root vegetables go with root vegetables — carrots and potatoes go nicely with onions, and the Germans have even been known to add apples to that mix. (Or sweet potatoes and chestnuts! Mmmm!) It may not be to your particular taste, but they go well together, or well enough, anyway. Winter squashes make great creamy soups into which you can add pears or apples, and dried tomatoes make a great creamy soup all alone. It’s just when you start mixing things like broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, mushrooms and beans that you run into trouble. Just add huge mushrooms, and you’re living my father’s dream, and my personal culinary nightmare

You know, the best fix for a bad soup? The stick blender, that model of culinary helpfulness, and a block of plain, pale, creamy, silken tofu. Theoretically you could fix a blended soup with mashed potatoes, but the consistency wouldn’t be quite as velvety. Ditto white cheeses or rice. The glutinous nature of these things means that eventually your soup would either break, and you’d have watery/creamy divisions, or it’d clump into something truly vile looking, or after blending it, you could be left with a grainy consistency like you get when you blend certain kinds of lentils (and note to the universe? Lentils? NOT meant to be pulverize-blended, okay? Let’s just all — stop that. Unless you’re going to add crème fraîche or curry powder, please don’t fully blend lentils into some hideous paste. Just. Don’t. Lentil soups deserve some chunks.). Tofu and a stick blender has turned out to be the ultimate soup saver for me. Too many veggies and hideously vying tastes? No worries. Just add plain tofu and blend. Funny colors, weird consistencies, and odd textures from limp, overcooked veg vanish magically when blended. I add a pinch of salt, a little wine, a dash of curry, and all is well. Because it’s not dairy based, the acid doesn’t curdle the tofu, and really, the soy protein in your soups means your meal will just stick with you a bit longer.

Since it really and truly is freezing for this part of the world — it was 22°F this morning (5.5°C for those Fahrenheit impaired), I am inspired to make a soup a day as the cold weather ramps up. I have a monster head of Nappa Cabbage in the fridge, so this is what I will try this afternoon:

Baechu Gook, As Adapted from Dok Suni, A Korean Cookbook

• Ingredients:
• 12 ounces Nappa cabbage
• 4 ounces white radish
• 4 ounces beef short ribs – or some vegetarian equivalent
• 4 ounces scallions
• 2 tablespoons soybean paste
• 6 cups water
• 1 teaspoon red pepper sauce
• 2 teaspoons crushed garlic

Instructions:

Clean the cabbage and shred with hands as desired, but in a wringing motion that will help soften the cabbage. Thinly slice the radish. Thinly slice the beef (or for me, it will be Quorn Naked Cutlets, which hold up well, and have scared some vegetarians into thinking I was feeing them chicken. Hee!) Cut the scallions (or leeks or onions, what have you) into 1-inch lengths. In a pot, dissolve soybean paste in the water (I think just adding a little silken tofu for smoothness will also work). For a smooth consistency, use a fine-mesh strainer with handle to remove the chunks of soybean paste floating in the soup and discard. Add the red pepper paste (Which I actually have! I knew I bought that for some reason), cabbage, beef, radish, scallion, and garlic and cook for 7 minutes over a high flame, then for 3 more minutes over a medium flame. Serve hot with white rice, kimchi, and sautéed anchovy (Um, again – an adaptation… no anchovies for me! And I’m amused at serving cabbage soup with kimchi, which is yet more cabbage, but… hey – this way I’ll use it up, right?).

I believe I’ll rummage around in the freezer and see if we have any frozen egg rolls left, steam a basket of rice, and voilá… dinner. I’ll let you know how it all goes.

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