Soup/Stew

Hmong farmers, fleeing Laos to escape persecution, began arriving in the United States in the latter half of the 1970s, with the majority arriving in the 1980s. Most of them eventually settled where they could continue their agrarian life: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, and California, especially in the fertile land around Fresno, California. This occurrence is especially remarkable to me because it is where my Armenian relatives also settled three generations ago to farm in one of most bountiful growing places in the world. And I benefit still from that abundance. Notwithstanding the lengthy trip to the Bay Area, Hmong-grown vegetables from Fresno appear in glorious array at my local Oakland farmers’ market every Saturday, alongside the Armenian stand from the same area with its effusive display of fruits, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, and Armenian cucumbers. Among the Hmong staples for sale are sturdy Asian brassicas, such as Chinese cabbage, Chinese mustard greens, and choys of several kinds; luffa (ridged gourd) and Chinese bitter melon; okra and small pickling cucumbers for my holiday pickle jars; and long beans for my Asian-to-new-Californian dishes. Together these two vendors supplement each other and pay tribute to the marriage of Asian and Mediterranean culinary ingredients in California’s hot and prolific Central Valley. It’s enough to incite a food frenzy and cook up something healthful and delicious, such as this hearty yet delicate Hmong-style main-dish soup.

In the annals of folk medicine, watercress soup is said to be good for soothing a dry throat or for when a general system-cleansing tonic is needed. Here, the nip and pep of watercress infuses chicken broth made rich with slivers of shiitake mushroom and plump sausage-filled wontons to produce a new take on wonton soup that is both healthful and delicious. Hydroponic watercress, meaning watercress grown in water and without soil, closely resembles watercress you might pick alongside a running stream in spring, but it has finer, more delicate stems and far less dirt and sand on its leaves. It is often available year-round in supermarket produce sections.

Vindaloo originated in the tiny state of Goa, on India’s southwest coast, which was colonized by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. Because the Portuguese are traditionally Christian, pork is not proscribed in Goa, as it is almost everywhere else in India. Vindaloo, however, has been embraced throughout India and beyond, reinterpreted sometimes with chicken, sometimes with beef or lamb, so that it can be enjoyed within religious bounds. In fact, vindaloo with any meat, or even as a vegetarian dish, has an irresistible sweet-salty-sour-hot flavor. And though it seems intimidatingly spicy at first, one taste and you are hooked. A fruit chutney, to both soothe and stimulate the palate, is an expected complement for many Indian meals. Here, dried plums fit that bill in a chutney that can be enjoyed year-round not only with this dish, but with nearly any pork, poultry, or game dish, as well. I won’t tell you any lies: this dish is for a day when you feel like cooking. The good news is that it is a one-pot meal and worth it.

Minestrone has a long history in Italian cuisine and, not surprisingly, many interpretations. Old tales recount how Roman soldiers lived on a diet of minestrone and chickpeas, a strange assertion since many of the soup’s classic ingredients—tomatoes, potatoes, beans—are New World foods that were not available at the time. By the end of the sixteenth century, the core concept had become a tasty mixture of vegetables, including dried beans, with pasta and/or potatoes. If you can find them, use borlotti (cranberry) beans, a specialty of Tuscany. Swirling a pesto of arugula, rather than the more prosaic basil, into the minestrone imparts a refreshing change. Other unusual elements in the soup are a tiny spritz of vinegar and the use of shallot instead of garlic. The pesto is also good for dolloping on plain boiled potatoes or a simply cooked fish fillet or chicken breast, or on bruschetta, for serving as an appetizer.

In many Mexican marketplaces and town plazas, the aroma of garlic soup wafts from nearby restaurants, beckoning as you shop, promenade, or just wander and gawk. It’s an ancient soup, dating from the time the Moors introduced a brothy concoction to the Iberian Peninsula, which the locals thickened with pulverized almonds (Chicken and Almond Meatballs in White Gazpacho, page 115). In the New World, the soup was re-created to include tomatoes and dried chiles. That rendition came to be embraced by lovers of Latin fare from the coast of Spain to the zocalos of Mexican towns to the American cities of the Pacific coast. It is an ardently delicious, deep red, beautiful soup that brings with it a blessing of health to the diners, and is blessedly easy to make.

A glory of black beans, in addition to such qualities as their beauty and healthfulness, is that they don’t need to be presoaked: they easily yield to softening when boiled straightaway. Then, they are ready to accept all manner of embellishments, such as sausage, Mexican spices, and sweet-sour-hot chipotle cream.

Sausage in a gumbo usually means smoked sausage. Sometimes Louisiana smoked ham, called tasso, is also added or is used in place of the sausage. A roux (a mixture of flour and fat) is the traditional thickener, usually augmented with filé powder (ground dried sassafras leaves) or okra. In keeping with today’s taste for lighter fare, I swap the smoked sausage and/or ham for my homemade sausage and eliminate the roux. The okra alone does the thickening, and the step of soaking the okra pods in a salt-and-vinegar bath before adding them to the pot ensures they won’t be overly viscous. It is important to use dried herbs and canned tomatoes to produce the distinguishing flavors of this dish from a cuisine built around preserved goods. Make sure the okra is fresh, however. I like to use shrimp in the shell because they enrich the broth. That does make for somewhat messy eating, however. If you want to save your guests the trouble of peeling their own shrimp, remove the shells and simmer them in 1 cup of the broth, then strain the liquid into the pot when adding the remainder of the broth. Shell-on shrimp are easy enough to devein, if it’s necessary to do so, by simply cutting through the shell along the back of each shrimp with a sharp paring knife.

Season: more or less anytime. A good vegetable bouillon or stock can be the making of many a soup, risotto, or sauce. Preparing your own stock from scratch is easy enough–but it does take a little time, so an instant alternative is often welcome. The choice of vegetable bouillon powders and stock cubes on the market is pretty limited. There are one or two good products, but if you use them frequently, you might find an underlying uniformity creeping into your cooking. This is my solution. Whip up your very own souper mix–a concentrated paste of fresh vegetables simply preserved with salt. It’s quick and easy to make and the stock it produces is delicious. You can use just about any herbs or vegetables you like–the important thing is that they are fresh and taste as vegetable-y as possible. My preferred ingredients are indicated in this recipe, but you could also use young turnips, shallots, celery, rutabagas, beets, or peppers, as well as bay leaves, thyme, lovage, or mint–almost anything, really. Just bear in mind that the character of the stock will vary depending on the ingredients you choose. The following are prepared weights; i.e., the ingredients should be washed, trimmed, and peeled (where necessary).

Makin’ your own stock is a bit time-consuming, but the reward is in the depth of flavor it brings to any dish. There’s nothing hard about the preparation, and it makes your house smell delicious.

Homemade stock is the foundation of all truly great soups and stews. Not everyone has the time to make it, but if you do you’ll find it really makes a difference in your cooking.

A few years back, we were closed on Sunday. People kept turnin’ up anyway, so we gave in and opened with a limited menu. We created this soup just for that day. It has a good Sunday vibe.

Here’s a stew that comes and goes on our menu, rotating with a couple of other meat stews. It’s lighter than the others and is simmered with ten different vegetables. It’s healthy food for your meat-lovin’ soul.

This has been the Dinosaur’s Wednesday soup special for as long as I can remember. It’s a good, hearty soup that’s perfect for places like Syracuse and Rochester, New York, that are blessed with six months of winter a year—not that folks stop eating Corn & Potato Chowder in the summer. Made with fresh corn, just picked and cut from the cob, this soup takes on a real summer attitude. Best of all, you can make it in less than half an hour any time of the year.

Now this is real comfort food. It makes me feel like I’m doing something good for myself every time I eat it. Delicious and healthy—what more do you want?

Here’s another good old Louisiana dish we transported north for our menu. We thought its distinctive spicy, earthy taste was just what our customers were cravin’. Our gumbo is thick like a good hearty stew, and although we’ve personalized it, we’ve still kept it related to all other gumbos by thickening it with Brown Roux (page 139). The flour toasted in oil makes a dusky mix that binds all the veggies, meats, and seasonings into a veritable swamp of broodin’ flavors.

Texans like meat, and in Texas, chili is all about meat and spices. We make ours with chunks of sirloin and season it with a blend of ancho chiles, which lend an earthy, sweet, raisin flavor, and pasilla chiles, which give a spicy, deep taste. Our Texas Red Chili is a “wanderin’ special” on our menu, showin’ up every now and then. During deer season in November, we may even make it with venison.

Back in the early days of the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, I made a pilgrimage to New Orleans, and it seemed natural to bring some of the wonders of the Big Easy back up north. The thing that really grabbed me was jambalaya, a dish with infinite possibilities. There’s no one recipe for jambalaya because its whole reason for bein’ is to let the cook get personal and real creative with the bits of meat or fish hangin’ around in the fridge. You can give it your personal touch any way the spirit moves you. Try makin’ it with other veggies, throwin’ in some shellfish, messin’ with the seasoning—this is your chance to be a link in the evolution of one truly great leftover dish.

I’m a big fan of anything braised, and these lamb shanks fit the bill. The fall-off-the-bone tenderness of the meat and the richness of the stock really turn me on. Served on a pile of grits, it’s outstanding.

The best description I can offer of my sister’s baked potato soup is that it tastes just like the best potato bar you ever tried. I always used to love twice-baked potatoes, mainly because the work of “fixing” a baked potato with the sour cream, cheese, and so on, was all done for you. It’s the same with this soup. It’s like someone fixed the ultimate baked potato just for you and put it into a bowl. All you have to do is enjoy it.

Some recipes in this book have been passed down from generation to generation, and some are newer recipes discovered in the past few years that have become family classics. This is one of the old-timers. My mom used to make this soup when I was a child, and I remember how much my dad loved it served over biscuits. For me, when a recipe has a great memory attached to it, it tastes even better. I make this soup at the first sign of cold weather every year and serve it poured over Buttermilk Cornbread (page 154).