Soups, Glorious Soups!

My dad detested soups, thought it was a waste of stomach volume which could have been filled with food instead. Soup was for poor people who couldn’t afford food, in his mind. So my mom, who was a fan of lightly flavored broths, gave them up. It was one of those Sixties marriages, where it isn’t worth the work and effort to make two dinners if the wife doesn’t like what the husband wants for dinner.

So early in our marriage when my husband told me how he loves soups in the winter months — lentil, butternut squash purees, split pea, minestrone, chicken with egg noodles, French onion, cauliflower — I realized there was an entire category of cooking in which I was completely unschooled. And I had to admit that accompanied with the right bread, it was a filling meal.

Then I remembered all those cooking shows where the vegetables are sauteed then finished in a Cuisinart, or with a hand mixer right in the pots. That seemed kind of neat, trying something higher on the difficulty scale and with so much flair!

I’ve mastered quite a few now, and they are all tasty. One reason I wasn’t interested in soups was because it seemed I’d never had a good homemade soup. In many kitchens, the soup literally is the previous day’s leftover vegetables thrown into a pot with water and salted. There wasn’t any effort, but there’s an entire world of soups and cooking techniques and flavor mastery out there.

Tonight I’m making what’s modestly called “Hearty Lentil Soup,” when I think it’s the best lentil soup I’ve ever had. It has lots of flavors layered on top of each other, and on a cold evening like tonight, I can’t wait to tuck into it with some toasted Dutch Crunch bread with real butter. (I only indulge in real butter from Thanksgiving through the New Year).

Bon Appetit!