Soup Saturday

Tortilla soup: Mexico’s world class comfort bowl

Tortilla soup: Mexico’s world class comfort bowl

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

Clever recipes born of pantry cooking in pandemic

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

Pepper and mint conjure memories of Turkiye

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

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

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
At Mardi Gras, gumbo is as much a lifestyle as a soup

At Mardi Gras, gumbo is as much a lifestyle as a soup

Some 80 communities in Louisiana celebrate Mardi Gras but New Orleans has claimed the holiday of unbridled excess as its own. The locals have made the French Catholic cycle of temptation and atonement into something of an art form. If you're not sorry the next morning, cher, then you didn't have fun the night before. Not for nothing does St. Louis Cathedral (below) dominate the skyline of the French Quarter. Mardi Gras in New Orleans is founded on the idea that you need to pack enough warm memories into the week before Ash Wednesday to last the entire 40 days of Lent. If, like us, you can't be in town for the parades and general shenanigans, be sure to visit Mardi Gras World (1380 Port...Read More
Sopa de ajo cures whatever ails you

Sopa de ajo cures whatever ails you

When we were working on our various guidebooks to Spain, we would often spend an intense period of time researching and photographing from dawn into dark. We really couldn't afford any down time. But when we arrived in Madrid one January for a month of work, David was completely knocked out by a head and chest cold. He picked up an over-the-counter cold syrup from a friendly farmacia and promptly went to bed. Pat hit the streets with notebook and camera in hand. When she returned to our room at the Room Mate Oscar (room-matehotels.com) in Chueca that evening, she dragged David from the bed, made him get dressed, and headed for the outdoor dining spots around Plaza Mayor (photo above). Her answer for David's...Read More
An Irish solution to dark and dank winter days

An Irish solution to dark and dank winter days

Not long ago, when travel was a tad more carefree, we spent Boxing Week in Dublin. That's the week between Christmas and New Years. December 26 has been ‶boxing day″ forever, but the merchants of Ireland and the United Kingdom have made what evolved into a one-day sale into a week-long event of inventory-trimming bargains. The mercantile nature of Boxing Week, it turns out, transforms a potentially grim and depressing holiday letdown period into a social occasion that turns out crowds in the streets. It also fills the cafes and pubs with shoppers whose cheeks are ruddy with the cold. Truth be told, it's a lot warmer in Dublin than in Boston. For us, visiting at the turn of the year was actually a respite...Read More
Hearty fare from the Dolomites in Alto Adige

Hearty fare from the Dolomites in Alto Adige

You might be wondering what the heck this photo has to do with soup. The picture shows the unveiling of the speck at a Speckfest. David attended the festival in the mountains of Alto Adige near the Austrian border. Like so many of the edges of what is now Italy, Alto Adige was long considered part of another country—Austria, to be exact. In fact, it's known in the local German dialect as Sudtirol, or South Tyrol. Our soup this Saturday (when we are forecast to receive around 2 feet/60 centimeters of snow) is warming winter fare. The Alto Adige version of barley soup gets much of its flavor from speck, the smoked mountain ham that is something of a fetish in the region. It's such...Read More
French onion soup chases ‘les températures glaciales’

French onion soup chases ‘les températures glaciales’

When we arrived in Paris in January 2020, the French were shivering and complaining that the temperature was downright glacial. Of course, that meant ‶freezing,″ as in 0 degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit. For New Englanders, that was winter as usual. We could always duck indoors to warm up. But not the Parisians. For all their griping, they flocked to their beloved sidewalk cafes. Come hell, high water—or hell frozen over—they were determined to eat outdoors. And following their example, so were we. The French have perfected winter outdoor dining. A combination of windbreaks, awnings, and overhead sidewalk heaters combine to make the tables in the salle à manger en plein air passably comfortable. As you might expect, Parisians also know how to dress—and...Read More
Hungarian gulyás launches Soup Saturday

Hungarian gulyás launches Soup Saturday

A small tuxedo-clad orchestra doesn't serenade us when we eat Hungarian gulyás soup at home. Too bad. It was a nice touch when we tasted our first authentic Magyar version of the dish in Budapest at the legendary Gundel restaurant (HU-1146, Gundel Károly út 4., Budapest; +36 30 603 2480; gundel.hu). Often bastardized as ‶goulash,″ gulyás (pronounced GOO-yash) has been the country's national dish since the early 19th century. That designation was made to differentiate Hungarian cuisine from the Austrian cooking of their oppressors of the moment. The soup's historic roots offer a nice international analogy to the chile con carne of Texas. Magyar herdsmen would spice, cook, and dry the flesh of lean cows culled from their herds and pack the meat into their...Read More