Sunday Soup Series

the basics of all things culinary through soup

Waking up this morning with that crisp fall day feeling my thoughts immediately turned to soup. I love the process of gradually adding ingredients and coaxing them to all meld together into a wonderfully satisfying concoction. A slow Sunday morning sipping on my second cup of coffee, I begin the process of mentally strolling through my pantry, imagining all of the spices, aromatics, herbs, rich broths, grains and little bits of leftover meats from the previous week all coming together. The process is relaxing and fills my soul. Today I made a Yellow Split Pea & Ham with a touch of smoked bacon, parsnips and red chard, topped with a bit of queso fresco, petit herb salad and a toasted slab of buttered baguette. It was quite delicious and inspired me to do this more often. Starting this week I am going to start a Sunday Soup Series where I make a soup and share the recipe with my subscribers on SubStack (it’s free to subscribe) The recipe will come out on Fridays. For those of you who have the time on Sundays you’ll be able to round up all the ingredients or ponder how you may put your own spin on it. My relationship with soup goes way back to when I was a little boy and has had a strong influence on shaping who I am as a chef. Here’s a short excerpt from my memoir Mending Broken Sauces about the amazing impact soup had on my life. Enjoy and join me on SubStack for weekly soup recipes

It was a brisk fall day day. I’d dug around in my closet for a sweater and scarf before I headed out the door for work. I didn’t have a car until my late twenties and the walk to work was about twenty minutes. The sun was shining but there was a chill in the air that makes you want to just crawl back under the covers. Most days I never made it out of bed before ten a.m. and as I walked to work my stomach began to rumble……

One of my greatest motivations for working in the restaurant business has always been food and the fact that I could eat it basically whenever I want. I’m not a huge fan of feeling hungry and having to figure how I’m going to find my next meal, well working in a kitchen solved this for me. There is always good food at my fingertips and plenty of options to choose from. As my stomach began to grow louder and the closer I got to work my mind turned to those options. The day before when I had arrived at work, chef Tony was just finishing up one of his marathon soup days. It was quite impressive. He would have all of the large stock pots on the stove, usually around five or six and be calmly adding ingredients to each pot. When he was done he would have five gallons of each soup, all a little different and amazing. There was an oyster bisque that evoked memories of my childhood vacation in Cape Cod, a sweet miso broth that brought back memories of my mother nursing me back from a bad cold. Creamy soups with tender pieces of chicken. A spicy, paprika laden Spanish broth soup with chorizo and black beans, minestrone bursting with vegetables, herbs, beans and pasta. I loved soup!! It was comforting, nourishing, simple yet the flavors could be complex. When chef finished all of these soups at once they would get funneled into gallon sized glass jars and sealed. He would make enough soup to last the busy restaurant a month at a time. As I approached the back door I wondered which soup had been heated up that morning and headed straight for the expo station where the servers would ladel it out to the guests. A loaf of warm focaccia had just come out of the oven and slicing off a nice thick piece, I slathered it with butter. Pulling off the lid to the soup well, I was excited to find the spicy Spanish soup. There was a glossy red sheen on top from all the fat that had come out of the chorizo. I ladled myself out a big bowl, dunked the bread in it and began slurping and shoveling it in my mouth as I headed towards the back prep kitchen to see what type of magic was being created today. Soup is the perfect quick meal for a chef. It could be eaten on the go and in my younger days I rarely took the time to sit down for a meal, to many other mouths to feed. As I rounded the corner into the prep kitchen, my eyes settled on Raimondo. He was standing over the two giant pots of water that where always there simmering. Those two pots never left the stove. We always needed boiling water and though we turned them off at night, the first thing chef did in the morning was turn the burners back on. Steam swirling around the top of the pots, Ray stood there with a big paddle in his hand stirring, a cigarette hanging from his lips with an enormous ash threatening to fall in the pot at any moment. Though none of us smoked in the kitchen back then, Ray was the exception. None of us dared to tell Ray not to. We would have been met with a gentle “fuck you” as he grinned at us and kept stirring. “What ya making Ray?” I exclaimed. “Stone soup!!” Ray’s voice boomed across the kitchen. As a child I remembered my mother telling or reading me the story of Stone Soup. A villager had set out to make a meal but had nothing to work with. A fire was started and a large cauldron hung over the fire. Having nothing but water to add to the cauldron, the villager reached down to the ground and picked up a large stone. Feeling sad he had nothing to create a meal with he tossed the stone into the cauldron and set out to try and find something he could cook. As other villagers began to pass by the cauldron they peered in and thought… what a fool. He will never be able to feed his family with just a rock, but as the day progressed a few more things stared showing up in the pot. A left over carrot, a few cloves of garlic, some scraps of stale bread. People began showing up with whatever leftovers they had laying around. When the man returned hours later, his head hung low having only managed to scrounge up a few wild greens in the forest. As he approached the cauldron he was struck with an intensely pungent aroma. But all I had was a rock, he thought to himself. As he got closer and peered into the pot he was taken aback. Simmering in front of him was a beautiful mixture of vegetables, bits of meat, herbs, a potato, some beans. The man tossed the greens he had foraged into the pot and the tears began to well up in his eyes. As he stood over the cauldron with tears of joy flowing down his face, the rest of the villagers began to gather around. After a long silence one of the elders spoke up. “Today we have been blessed. Though none of us had much to offer, we all were able to contribute in some small way to this soup. Let us rejoice and be grateful for this meal. Each small act of kindness has brought us together and today we are one”

Ray knew in his heart that we all needed each other. Young, old, the most experienced chef who could create gallons of soup effortlessly, to the dish washer and bus boy. We all had something to contribute and as I peered into this giant pot of water I could see the stone rolling around on the bottom. For the rest of the day, as each employee showed up for their shift, Ray would tell them the story of Stone Soup. It is important that we all be kind to each other and help in any way we can, it is what makes us all a family. We can nourish our bodies as well as our souls if we only pay attention.

After telling each person the story of stone soup, Ray would inform each one of us that this stone was to never leave this pot. Ingredients may be added or taken out but the stone must remain, and remain it did. Our restaurant family thrived, we ate together, laughed and cried together. We where kind to each other and with that kindness we all grew up. Some passed, others got married and started families of their own. Eventually we would all move on and go our separate ways but the love and kindness we shared would remain for the rest of our lives.