Soup Archives - Hungry Travelers

Soup

Pining away for spicy autumn soup with piñons

Posted on December 13, 2024December 13, 2024 by Pat and David

Driving up a remote single lane road north of Taos, headed to the D.H. Lawrence Ranch, we had to weave around cars and pickup trucks parked on the roadside every 50 yards or so. We saw people of all ages crouched on the ground, picking away at the dirt or picking over something on blankets they'd spread under the bristly branches of roadside pine trees. It finally dawned on us that they were collecting piñons, aka pine nuts. Piñons are one of the great delicacies of New Mexico, and one of the region's most ancient foods. The trees grow wild and the nuts are apparently free for the taking on public land — including the roadside rights of way. Once we started paying attention, we...Read More

Ferry, bus, and nature hike lead to beachside lunch

Posted on July 9, 2024July 5, 2024 by Pat and David

Sometimes we go to great lengths for lunch. Literally. After two fun excursions by ferry, we were eager to get back out into the archipelago. But we were hoping for a less obvious journey. We found a good option on the Stockholm city tourism website, VisitStockholm.com. Called ‶A day trip with the commuter ferry,″ the suggested itinerary combined a long ferry ride with a bus and a hike that ended at a beach on Lake Mälaren. There was, of course, lunch at a lakeside cafe. We caught the first #89 ferry of the day from Klara Mälarstrand, close to City Hall, since we knew it would be a day-long outing. As we set out on a carefree trip, we felt a bit sorry for all...Read More

Beer with us #1: Onion soup

Posted on February 15, 2024February 15, 2024 by Pat and David

Now that was fun, wasn't it? We're talking about Super Bowl LVIII (or Super Bowl 58, for readers who don't do Roman numerals), in which the Kansas City Taylor Swifts beat the San Francisco Forty-Niners by a score of 25-23. Once the cheering subsided, we managed to convince our friends to eat the last deviled eggs and take home the remaining dip, chips, and chili. But they left behind a bucket of miscellaneous bottles of beer. Rather than hoard them to drink in warm weather, we decided to have more fun now and cook with the beer. It so happened that we also scored a terrific bag of yellow onions at the winter farmers market here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Grown at Busa Farms in nearby...Read More

Green chile chowder an all-season pleaser

Posted on September 21, 2023September 21, 2023 by Pat and David

During our sojourn in Santa Fe last spring, we took ample advantage of green chile — even though the vegetable was out of season. Every supermarket stocked at least a few brands of frozen green chile. The peppers were invariably fire-roasted, peeled, and chopped. While frozen green chile doesn't seem to have made it to our Boston-area markets, seeing local chiles at the farmers markets reminded us of a favorite dish we made in Santa Fe. That would be green chile corn chowder, amped up with diced roasted chicken and simmered with potato cubes. The potato cubes are a New England thing, we suspect. But with corn, potatos, and some green chiles in the local markets, we revived the dish for the sudden chill of...Read More

Legendary Western vibe still animates Las Vegas, NM

Posted on May 10, 2023May 10, 2023 by Pat and David

Long before Nevada's famous Sin City sprouted in the desert, a New Mexico town by the same name was literally America's gateway to the West. Set in the foothills of the Rockies just west of the Great Plains, Las Vegas, N.M., flourished as a key node on the Santa Fe Trail. For traders heading west from Old Franklin, Missouri, Las Vegas was the first city they would encounter after more than a thousand miles crossing the open plains. That was assuming they survived the weather, the outlaws, and various bands of Indigenous warriors who thought they had no business there. Las Vegas's heyday began with the Mexican-American War, when U.S. forces used the Santa Fe Trail to invade Mexican territory in 1846. The arrival of...Read More

Icelandic lobster soup warms a chill evening

Posted on March 17, 2023March 9, 2023 by Pat and David

We had read that Iceland's famous ‶lobster soup″ was a special dish widely served at the winter holidays. Given that there's only about four hours of daylight at Christmas, Icelanders definitely need something to cheer them up. But during our Reykjavik visit in late August, lobster soup was ubiquitous on the city's menus. So much for seasonality — or don't believe everything you read on the Internet. According to Iceland Fisheries, the lobster season is April into September All of our research — including asking locals — pointed us to the Seabaron, or Sægreifinn in Icelandic (Geirsgata 101, Reykjavík; +354 553 1500; facebook.com/saegreifinn.seabaron). Everyone agreed that it was famed for lobster soup. The casual grill house squats at the harbor's edge in a lurid green...Read More

Tortilla soup: Mexico’s world class comfort bowl

Posted on March 26, 2022March 23, 2022 by Pat and David

Because our trips to Mexico have mostly focused on the central highlands, we've been acquainted with tortilla soup as long as we've been going to Mexico. You might find it in some coastal resorts, but it's primarily a staple of the inland Mexican cities. We can't count how many different versions we've eaten over the years. Sometimes the soup is gussied up with fresh chopped herbs, cubes of avocado, or diced hard-boiled egg. Often it is simply thin chicken broth thickened with fried tortilla strips. But we've never eaten a bad version of tortilla soup. Sitting in a small back room or under the arcade (as in Morelia, above), tortilla soup makes a dependably tasty and economical lunch. Over the years, we've perfected a version...Read More

Clever recipes born of pantry cooking in pandemic

Posted on March 19, 2022March 18, 2022 by Pat and David

We sympathize with lifestyle journalist Ronda Carman. Known best for her work writing about entertaining, decorating, and traveling, she found herself suddenly grounded by the pandemic. The avid cook suddenly felt the need to minimize trips to the supermarket. We know. We know. Many of us experienced the same restlessness compounded by agoraphobia. We converted a large portion of a supply closet into the overflow for extra food. Why should one giant cardboard canister of old-fashioned oats suffice when we could stockpile three? Carman took a more practical approach and began to catalog her pantry and adapt her aspirational cooking to suit. (We suspect she enlarged her pantry, too.) The upshot was this lovely cookbook out next week, The Art Of Pantry Cooking: Meals for...Read More

Pepper and mint conjure memories of Turkiye

Posted on March 12, 2022March 9, 2022 by Pat and David

We first tasted Turkish red lentil soup around 2010. We were researching Food Lovers' Guide to Boston when we encountered it at a now-vanished Financial District lunch buffet restaurant. The chef was Turkish and, after some nudging, he gave us a recipe for the soup to publish in the book. When we visited Istanbul the year after that book appeared, we realized that the recipe we had printed was good, but was only the most basic version of the soup. Well-suited to a buffet line, it was too one-dimensional to enter our home soup rotation on a regular basis. Thus began our quest to perfect red lentil soup. Eating in Istanbul was probably the most important part of the research. We had our tastiest bowl...Read More

Cock-a-leekie is a winter warmer with a Scottish burr

Posted on March 5, 2022March 1, 2022 by Pat and David

We confess that much of our usual menu reflects the sun-baked cuisines of the Mediterranean rim. They are dishes full of tomatoes, citrus fruit, garlic, and fresh herbs. But those dishes don't always sync up with our New England climate, which has more in common with Scotland than with Sardinia. Okay, Scottish dining usually conjures up images of haggis, cullen skink (don't ask), or deep-fried Snickers. But Glasgow also gave us Gordon Ramsey. This time of year the Scottish markets (and ours in New England) overflow with root veggies such as leeks, parsnips, celery root, and carrots. The leek is the real clean-up hitter of the Scottish kitchen. It lends a rich flavor to everything it touches, especially the myriad of Scottish soups based on...Read More