Aretha Franklin: Soup

"All I'm askin' Is for a little respect when you come home!" - Your Ingredients, and also, Aretha

I'm pretty convinced if food was a rockstar it'd be Aretha Franklin. Passionate, fiery, tender, soulful, food draws something out of its audience. But, it really does need a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T to get the most out of it. When I say respect I mean, know your food. Know what it tastes like raw, cooked in different methods. Focus on bringing what makes it so awesome out in your food prep, try using complimentary flavors, textures, temperatures. The goal is to showcase the food and delight your palate.

That's why soup is one of my favorite foods ever. It's simple, versatile, and focused on the ingredients. They're like sandwiches, only you use bowls and spoons instead of hands. And if you're doin a low carb diet, you can still eat real soup, unlike sandwiches, which then become lettuce wraps.

Soup should be exciting. The reason why lotsa folks don't think it is, is because like all great things, it's super easy to make terrible, even though it's not difficult to make it memorable. And, because it is simple, it comes in over-salted creepy cans. That's right, creepy cans. That and all the negative connotations with which our society has burdened soup's rep. Like the following:

-- Summer Camp cafeteria lady: Angry, uni-browed and you're pretty sure she hates you and laced it with hair and arsenic.
--  Childhood memories: Soup was whatever was leftover and gross in the fridge that needed to be tossed.
-- Diets: Cabbage or fake chicken broth.
-- Chick food: I'm lookin' at you, beefcake.
-- Seinfeld's Soup nazi: need I say more.

Luckily for me, my mom was a master soupierre (French for: one who makes soup. Don't go looking it up, just trust me.) We had chilled soups, chunky soups, hot soups, spicy soups, vegetarian soups, hearty meat-filled soups. Our soups were versatile, experimental, funky, fun, healthy, and most importantly, delicious. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of those times when I stood on a chair to help brown the meat, or saute the aromatics.

So two days ago, when I was eeking my way through life on motrin, sunglasses, and sleep, I made soup.

There are two important elements to good soup: the first is having good ingredients. The second is, when making your soup, DON'T USE WATER.

**Important sidenote/rant coming up **
I'm serious. if you use water to make soup, baby angels lose their wings and God sheds tears of shame and anger. You don't want either of those happening, so, for the sake of your soup, for the sake of the baby angels, and to save the tears of God, please don't use water.

What should you use, then? Stock, broth, juice, beer, wine, milk, pretty much anything but plain water. In cooking, water is used to boil, steam, poach, or thin stuff, and that's about it. Even when making stock or broth, I typically use a blend of water, wine/beer and juce. Why? Because the other materials add flavor, depth, and texture. If you use beer, for example, the malt breaks down and acts as a binding agent to make your liquid thicker. The hops add a depth and dimension to your dish that otherwise is difficult to create. If you have proteins, the wine, beer, and citrus juices act as natural tenderizers, making your proteins more...tender (there we go), and locking in the juicy goodness that it is. Milk adds a creaminess and creates a fuller flavor. Even using 1% (what I use). The sugars in all of these ingredients also help.

We can talk about how to make quick, flavorful stocks and broths later, but even for those who don't cook, seriously, write this on your shopping list: chicken/beef/veggie stock/broth. Even a bouillon cube (I just shuddered a little, won't lie) is better than plain water. Of course then it's a bit salty, but you get my point.
** Important sidenote/rant over. You may now come out of hiding**

Ok, so I started with some dried split green and yellow peas, lentils, barley, and little alphabet characters. Why? becase I had a "soup blend" of those ingredients. It said to add water. I wanted to fire off an angry email (or cannon) to the company, but the computer screen was too brightly lit for that, so instead I raised my fist to the ceiling and continued.

I added a 1.5 - 1 ratio of chicken stock to the dried barley and veggie blend, and 0.5-1 ratio of red wine. (Translastion: 1 c. of the blend, 1.5 c chicken stock, 1/2 c wine). As I could barely see, I didn't make my own stock, I used it from a box.

I brought it to a boil and then turned it down to a low simmer. I then added celery, and a can (yes, a can) of stewed tomatoes. Salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and a few hours later, I had soup. It was good but needed, cumin and fresh cilantro. And maybe ham. But overall, considering I could barely see, and as my housemate, L, is graciously allowing our home to be more like a vampire cave, not bad.

*before you judge me, please remember I have had my kitchen for 3 days. During which I've been unable to go grocery shopping because I'm blinded by light right now).

Yesterday, I was rummaging around my things and I found some dried wild mushrooms! Eureka! I reconstituted the mushrooms using 1 c white wine and 1 c chicken broth (again, water-free works for me). Once they were ready to rock and roll, I used the chicken-mushroom stock as the base for my soup, adding the pea, bean, and barley mixture, tomatoes, celery, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. I was really hurtin for some chili powder, cumin, and fresh herbs--thyme, cilantro, anything! Because of the heartiness from the mushrooms, I added much more pepper and cayenne, let the liquid soak in real good, and then added about 3/4 c of 1% milk and then simmered until it became sort of a creamed soup. Delish! Although I'd still like some spicy sausage in it. And fresh herbs. Fresh herbs are game changers, folks, but that's for another day. Oh, and onion or garlic. Unfortunately, I may as well have been wishing for unicorns and leprechauns because that was not going to happen. But that's the beauty of soup, guys--even a blinded post-PRK person like me yesterday could do it well enough to dish up and enjoy!