Soups

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Flavor on ice: cold soups for a hot summer

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By Leslie Brenner

When the going gets hot, cold soup is the answer.

My four favorite chilled soups — cacik, gazpacho sevillano, green gazpacho and cold beet borscht — are all wonderful in very different ways. In fact, they each have such distinct personality that you can keep them in rotation all season long and they’re always a thrill and a chill.

The first three can be made without even turning on the stove; the fourth — my mom’s borscht — requires simmering, but just half an hour’s worth.

Cacik: electricity not required

The traditional Turkish cold cucumber-and-yogurt soup known as cacik, which gets lovely herbal character from fresh mint and dill, requires no more elaborate equipment than a box grater and a whisk; I love how low-tech it makes me feel. Just grate some cukes, chop some herbs, whisk it all into yogurt with a little olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, and you’ve got cold comfort in a bowl. Not cold enough? Add a few ice cubes.

RECIPE: Cacik

Garnishes for Gazpacho Sevillano

Gazpacho Sevillano: a cold soup with rich history

Probably the most famous cold soup in the world, Gazpacho Sevillano is the tomato-happy classic born in Spain and loved all over the world. You may be surprised to learn that the original gazpacho Sevillano was made with bread, garlic, salt, olive oil and vinegar — no tomatoes (or cucumbers or peppers); its creation pre-dated the arrival of tomatoes in Europe. That’s why cooks who want to respect the soup’s origin story always include bread.

In Spain, the ideal is the smoothest gazpacho possible, and cooks love to have fun with the garnishes. The riper and more flavorful the tomatoes you use, the better your gazpacho will be — which is why I only make this soup in the summertime.

The Greenest Gazpacho: Tangy, vegan, gluten-free and nutty-rich

To make Gazpacho Sevillano’s beautiful green cousin, just throw everything in the blender or food processor and whir it up. But the flavors and vibe couldn’t be more different: This one tastes deliciously green. Cucumber, green bell pepper, celery and parsley are the purée’s vegetable players. Garlic and sherry vinegar add pizzazz, and raw almonds or cashews add body and richness. Lots of assorted fresh herbs on top make it a show-stopper.

Joan’s Cold Beet Borscht: Ashkenazi favorite

This is the cold soup I grew up with; it was one of my mom’s specialties — passed down from generations in her family. It’s one of my favorite summer foods.

Truth is, though, it’s similar to the cold beet borscht enjoyed by the Eastern European Jewish diaspora around the world. It’s very simple: Grate beets, then boil them with a handful of their leaves, plus salt. Add lemon juice and sugar, then chill and garnish with sour cream, chopped radishes and cukes, and whole boiled potatoes (if you feel like it).

It’s insanely good — way better than its humble ingedients would suggest.

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5 favorite chilled soups — all of them vegetarian or vegan

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Turkish cacik — chilled yogurt and cucumber soup with mint and dill

By Leslie Brenner

When the weather is sizzling hot, there’s nothing like a cold soup to refresh and restore.

Here are my five current faves. Two are vegan (the gazpachos); three are made without even turning on the stove (the gazpachos and the cacik). All are vegetarian. The borscht can also be vegan, if you leave off the sour cream stirred in at the end.

Cacik — Turkish Yogurt and Cucumber Soup

I love the traditional Turkish yogurt-and-cucumber soup known as cacik, first because it’s delicious and simple, but also because it you can make it in no time flat, by hand, without turning on the stove or even plugging anything in. Just whisk some yogurt to smoothness, add cucumber you’ve grated on a box grater, and whisk it together with chopped fresh mint and dill, a little white wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Drop an ice cube in each bowl, top with more herbs (if you like) and enjoy.

Making cacik is a decidedly low-tech endeavor.

Gazpacho Sevillano

Have some gorgeous ripe tomatoes? Seville’s classic tomato gazpacho is the play. Its beautiful sherry tang makes it super refreshing.

The Greenest Gazpacho

Easy, herbal and honestly pretty dreamy, this green vegan gazpacho gets body from raw almonds or cashews.

My Mom’s Cold Beet Borscht

This is one of my favorite summer meals — my mom’s recipe. It’s lightly sweet, tangy and transporting.

Chilled Minted Pea Soup

Our Ridiculously Easy Mint Pea Soup — based on a traditional French potage Saint Germain — is normally served hot, as shown above. Leave off the crème fraîche garnish and chill it, and it’s fabulous eaten cold.

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Soups galore: We've got one for every winter mood

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By Leslie Brenner

You can say what you want about Gen Z, but here’s what I love: They know a good thing when they see it. And then they immortalize it with memes.

Take soup, for instance. My favorite four-letter meal has conquered the internet!

I couldn’t be happier about this development. In college, I majored in Soup. Soup is my middle name. Soup soup soup soup soup.

Here at Cooks Without Borders, we’ve got a soup for every winter mood. Gen Z, I’m talking to you.

Mood: Stop (all day) and smell the roses

Persian Chicken Soup with Chicken-and-Lamb Meatballs

When you’re in the mood for a major project — one that will fill your living space with the dreamiest fragrances you can imagine — this transporting soup adapted from Najmieh Batmanglij’s Food of Life delivers. Called abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi in Farsi, it’s garnished with grated garlic, fresh herbs and dried rose petals.

Mood: Get me back to a clearer space

Miso Soup

In a perfect world, you can have miso soup anytime you want it. But hey — you can even have it in a highly imperfect world! Take ten minutes to make a batch of dashi, keep miso and tofu in the fridge (both keep for a long time) and the foundational soup is yours practically on demand. Stir in miso, garnish and enjoy.

Mood: Navel-gazing

Maria Elena Machado's Sopa de Ombligo

Sometimes you just need to stare at your belly button. Or you could stare at the belly-button-like dumplings in a sumptuous pinto-bean soup — and then eat them.

Mood: Get me outta here!

Tom Kha Kai (Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup)

If you’d rather be somewhere warm, sunny and far away — Bangkok, for instance — this irresistible Thai soup will take you there. Ours is adapted from Leela Punyaratabandhu’s seminal Simple Thai Food.

Mood: Virtuous vegan fridge-clearing brawl

Sunday Super Soup

This bad boy clears your crisper drawer, empties fridge shelves of veggie leftovers and helps you achieve zero waste — all while filling your kitchen with warm and spicy smells. Our master recipe is fully customizable according to what you’ve got. It’s also devastatingly delicious.

Mood: Snowed in, feeling nice and lazy

Classic Split Pea Soup

Make this once, and you could probably do it blindfolded next time. I keep split peas in the pantry and a ham hock in the freezer all winter just in case the mood strikes.

Mood: Fed up with fundamentalism

Ab Ghooshte Fasl (Iranian Bean and Vegetable Soup)

There are many ways we can support the brave women of Iran — starting by continuing to be engaged in the struggle for their freedom from tyranny. Make this soup in their honor.

Mood: I want to join Club Nixtamal

Heirloom Corn Pozole Rojo

If you’re nixtamal curious but don’t happen to own a molino to grind corn, I invite you to make heirloom corn pozole from scratch. If you’re serious about Mexican cooking, consider doing this once in your life — it’ll be the best pozole you’ve ever had. Recipe links to a shortcut version, too.

Mood: Wish spring would hurry up!

Ridiculously Easy Minted Pea Soup

This beautiful bowl is made from lettuce, butter, salt, pepper, mint and a bag of frozen peas. My take on a classic French soup called potage Saint-Germain, it’s simple enough for a weeknight yet elegant enough for a big-deal dinner. You’d swear those peas were fresh.

Mood: Spa retreat

Vegan Spring Beauty Soup

Here’s another one to help you channel spring. There’s already asparagus from California in the markets, and this is another that offers a frozen pea-cheat.

Mood: Pass the penicillin

Joan’s Chicken Soup

Of course winter is chicken soup season, and my mom made the best — of theJewish penicillin-variety, anyway. I’m so happy to share the recipe with you. Feel better.

Mood: Winter greens wonderland

Chloé’s Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes

Gumbo Z’herbes is a Louisiana tradition more associated with the season of Lent than the dead of winter, but our friend Chloé Landrieu-Murphy’s delicious version is packed with a ton of winter greens, so please be our guest!

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The flavor-packed, vegan, zero-waste lentil-and-greens soup that earned a hundred encores and endless spins

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By Leslie Brenner

Feel like eating vegan today? Treat yourself to a pot of an easy, surprisingly quick-to-make lentil soup. It’s deliciously multi-dimensional: underlined with warm spices, brightened with tomato, umamified with dried mushrooms, enlivened with tender greens. It’s packed with phytochemicals and health-enhancing super-foods. It’s a colorful, health-enhancing heavy-lifter for your zero-waste aspirations that will fill your kitchen with gorgeous aromas.

It cooks in about an hour. Make a pot in the morning, and if you’re working at home, you have a week’s worth of magnificent lunches. Work somewhere away? It’s quick enough to pull together when you get home.

If you keep lentils and a can of tomatoes on hand, and tend to have greens in the fridge (including that half-bag of tired arugula, or a some frozen spinach), you can put the soup together whenever you feel like it without shopping.

This is not the first time I’ve written about this soup; I dreamt it up 7 years ago and have been sustained by it and spinning on it ever since.

Start with aromatic vegetables: onion, carrot, celery and friends. Add herbs and garlic, then spices — turmeric and coriander. The base can be French green lentils or black Umbrian lentils, or both. A can of diced tomatoes plus water, and simmer for 45 or 50 minutes. Toss in greens — half a bag of baby kale, spinach or arugula, maybe some cayenne or harissa. That’s it.

Make it once, and then you can spin endlessly. Stare into your fridge before you start and see what vegetables need to be used up — raw in the drawer, or cooked leftovers. Is a turnip or a piece of daikon lurking therein? Dice it and throw it in with the carrots. Raw cauliflower or broccoli? Dice ‘em up and in they go with the tomatoes. Cooked spinach, carrots, cauliflower or what have you? Toss them in halfway through, or near the end. You are not sacrificing the soup’s integrity by cleaning out your fridge into the pot: You’re making something even more delicious.

You can play with the spices, too, depending on your mood. Sometimes I feel like pushing the soup in an Asian direction, and add ginger — fresh or ground. When I do that, I frequently throw in some red lentils for added dal-like creaminess. Maybe I’ll triple the turmeric and swap dried shiitakes for the porcini.

Anyway, you get the idea. If you’re the follow-a-recipe type, here are two — the original, and the gingery, turmeric-happy spin.

RECIPE: Gingery Lentil and Greens Soup

Are you more the let-me-loose-to-improvise kind of cook? Here’s a master recipe with endless opportunities to spin. I love to do this on Sunday, for the fridge-clean win.

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Taste my Ukraine in a bowl of cold beet borscht

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 By Leslie Brenner

There is only one thing in the world that my adventurous, handsome husband does not eat: beets. And so it happens that one of my favorite foods from my childhood — cold beet borscht — has never once graced our family table.

Until last week. Borscht, you see, is the national dish of Ukraine.

Recently, I have had a devastating personal loss. My brother David, who was two years my junior, died last month quite unexpectedly. It was our younger brother Johnny who called and delivered the irreparable, impossible news.

There is a thing that ties us together in my family: Our souls reside in our kitchens. They lurk in the bottom of a Dutch oven, to be scraped up and deglazed with a gurgle of wine; they flutter within a bowl of heavy cream, about to be whipped into lightness and loft. They waft about, now in the fridge, next in the pantry, whether we’re still of this world, or whether we’ve left long ago.

The love of cooking shared by my brothers and me came from our mom, Joan. She didn’t exactly teach us to cook; she taught us to love cooking. We watched her in the kitchen; we learned by osmosis. The methodical chop of the onion. The quiet sizzle in the pan. The aroma. 

Joan was hilarious. She was so funny and so sharp that you almost didn’t consider why she should be sad. The three of us, David and Johnny and I, would remember her, since we lost her six years ago, by texting each other about what we were cooking, or eating, or about our childhood food memories, or how funny Joan was.

Dave was also hilarious. As a teenager, one night — as we sat around the dinner table — he took a large handful of mashed potatoes and smeared it onto his face, a solid white beard. He then proceeded to shave it off, onto his plate, with his butter knife.  

The last thing David texted to Johnny and me, two days before he died, was about something he had just cooked for his family. It involved chuck roast, which made him remember Joan and the way she made beef stew. 

What’s happening in Ukraine — what has happened in the last month, since we lost Dave — would have torn my brother apart.

And not because Ukraine is our ancestral homeland. Our paternal grandfather was born in Zobolotov (now Zablotiv) in Western Ukraine, near the border with Moldova. But because of what Ukraine is now.

And so, I’ve been thinking about borscht — of which there are many kinds.  From what I’ve read, the borscht that is the national dish of Ukraine is the hot-and-hearty style, the beef-based borscht, rooty and earthy and deep.

But if you say “borscht” to just about any American of a certain age who was raised in a Jewish household, something cold and refreshing and pink is what springs to mind. Something light and vegetarian, with a touch of sweetness, a touch of tang. This is the borscht of Ashkenazi Jews a hundred and fifty years ago, who were chased out, or escaped the pogrom. Or who escaped or were exterminated a few decades later. Perhaps it is also the borscht of the Ashkenazi Jews who somehow have remained. The Volodymyr Zelenskys.  

Pink borscht — cool, refreshing, and hopeful — is what ties me to president Zelensky, and to the people, brave and bold and besieged, of Ukraine.

It means the world to me to share my mom’s recipe, passed down from her family, from who-knows-where in Eastern Europe, with you.

Help feed the people of Ukraine by donating to World Central Kitchen. Its Chefs for Ukraine initiative is feeding people across the region, at border crossings into Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary.

Now through Sunday, March 18, 100% of our proceeds from our $5 e-cookbook, 21 Favorite Recipes Cooks Without Borders, will be donated to World Central Kitchen.

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Recipe for today: Beat the heat with zingy, cool and refreshing Gazpacho Sevillano

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Gazpacho Sevillano: cool summertime happiness in a bowl

By Leslie Brenner

Yipes! The mercury reached 112 degrees in Portland, Oregon yesterday! Let’s hope for quick relief for our friends in the Pacific Northwest.

Until the outdoor thermometer cooperates, delicious relief can be a cool bowl of Gazpacho Sevillano. Down here in hot-as-blazes Texas, it feels like this week opens gazpacho season, as our friends with gardens and farms have been gifting us with gorgeous heirloom tomatoes bursting with flavor. When a windfall like that happens faster than you can gobble up the treasures (or when finally start seeing tasty-looking tomatoes in the markets), it’s the moment to grab some cukes as well, pull out your sherry vinegar and plug in the blender.

Our recipe for the classic Spanish summer refresher is a smooth-as-silk, elegant, purist version; the headnote offers a couple of short-cuts for a quickie version that gratifies instantly and deliciously.

Pro-tip: You don’t even have to wait for it to chill in the fridge — just drop a couple of ice cubes in each bowl and enjoy right away!

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Recipe for Today: A super-light spring vegetable soup for purists — vegan or not!

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By Leslie Brenner

Memorial Day has come and gone, which means true summer is just around the corner.

Meanwhile, the delightful produce of spring — asparagus and peas, leeks and tender young carrots, and spring-happy herbs like dill — still taste so right. Before we know it they’ll be yesterday’s news, and we’ll have moved onto corn and tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and okra.

So, quick — make this soup, which eats like a poem about springtime. You can make it vegan, as it was conceived, or swap store-bought chicken broth for the leek broth, if you want more instant gratification.

Either way, if the longest intensive cooking spree in American history has left you a few pounds over, it’s a beautiful way to eat light and pure.

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Recipe for Today: The Greenest Gazpacho

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Our recipe for green gazpacho (the greenest!), vegan and gluten-free, tangy and craveable.

By Leslie Brenner

Cucumbers, celery, green bell peppers, parsley and a serrano give this green gazpacho its gorgeous color. Raw almonds or cashews add body, and sherry vinegar provides zing and olive oil (use your best, freshest one) makes it silky and deep.

Because there is no bread in it, it is not technically a gazpacho, but that vinegar-and-nut vibe definitely makes it eat like one — not the vibrant tomatoey kind that’s the word “gazpacho” usually brings to mind, but its cousin ajo blanco, or white gazpacho. (Ajo blanco, beloved in its birthplace of Málaga, Spain, is made with bread, garlic, almonds, salt and sherry vinegar — and in summer, garnished with green grapes.)

Our Greenest Gazpacho is just the thing for a meatless Monday. (It’s vegan! And gluten-free!) It’ll keep you cool and happy all through the summer.

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Beautiful, light, and herbal: This easy-to-customize vegan soup gracefully celebrates spring

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Cooks Without Borders’ Spring Vegan Soup

By Leslie Brenner

A couple weeks ago — shortly after spring had sprung — a recipe in the Washington Post captured my fancy. Its lede photo depicted a brothy bowl with peas and spinach, leeks and dill in varying shades of green, set off gorgeously with pink-skinned, white-fleshed potatoes. The story’s author and the recipe’s creator, Ellie Krieger, offered it up as “Proof spring is soup season, too.”

Had to have it! I made the soup that very evening, and absolutely loved it. No question I’ll make it again and again.

Still, in my mind’s test kitchen, I couldn’t help but riff. Wouldn’t it be lovely with some asparagus tips? English or snap peas still clinging to their pods? Fresh favas or field peas, if I happened upon them? Wouldn’t turnips be just as nice as potatoes — or even nicer, if it’s optimal healthy one is after, or if you could find those beautiful tiny Tokyo turnips? Sure, I’d lose that pretty pink flourish, but I could add slices of slender springtime carrots instead.

And hey, couldn’t this soup be made vegan — if I created a broth out of the castaway tops of leeks I’m forever gathering in the crisper (the WaPo recipe added to my stash), would that have sufficient flavor?

Well, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes! The very next night, that riffing went live — and the result was grand.

I call it Vegan Spring Beaty Soup partly because it’s beautiful to look at, and partly because of its healthful purity: I imagine that the more frequently you eat it, the more beautiful you become.

Even after I created our vegan version, the test kitchen lobe of my brain continued to riff. You could use just about any kind of soft herbs: chervil, tarragon, cilantro, mint. If the vegan part’s not important to you, you could swap dashi for leek broth, and maybe add a dash of white soy sauce, and lots of sliced scallions in place of the herbs.

Of course, if you want to keep it super-easy, you can use the store-bought chicken broth, as Krieger’s recipe does — do that, and it comes together in 25 minutes or less.

Ain’t that beautiful?

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Around the world in chicken soup: Here's how the elixir is enjoyed in 7 delicious cultures

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Chicken soup is a nearly universal expression of love, nurturing and care-giving — one that deliciously manifests itself from culture to culture.

In this series of stories, we have explored chicken soups on five continents and one sub-continent. (Excuse us, Austrailia! Sorry Antarctica!) We thought, as the Northeast is blanketed in snow, that it would be cozy to round them up.

Thailand: Tom Kha Kai (Coconut-Galangal Chicken Soup)

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“If you can smash things, cut things and boil water, you can pull off this classic on the first try,” writes Leela Punyaratabandhu in the headnote to her recipe for coconut-galangal chicken soup in Simple Thai Food, from which this recipe is adapted. (Read our review of the book.) She’s right: Once we had those key fresh ingredients, which we found at a local Asian supermarket, making the soup was remarkably quick and easy — and stunningly delicious.

It has lovely richness from the coconut, tang from lime juice and beautiful perfume from lemongrass and makrut lime leaves. Though it was based on store-bought chicken broth, it was as fabulous as any we’ve had in Thai restaurants.

Chef Junior Borges’ Canja de Galinha — Brazilian Chicken and Rice Soup

In Brazil, chicken soup comes with rice. “Canja de galinha is the soup my grandma used to make — not just for me but for our whole family,” says Junior Borges, a super talented Rio-born chef in Dallas.

The chef still enjoys his canja. “I think it’s definitely one of those comforting, comforting things. For us, it’s our chicken noodle soup.” (Read more about it here.)

For this one, you’ll start with chicken parts, so it’s a homemade broth, soothing and aromatic. It’s finished with cilantro and parsley.

RECIPE: Junior Borges’ Canja de Galinha

Ethiopia: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba (Peanut-Chicken Soup)

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Thick, warm and satisfying, Ethiopian ye ocholoni in doro shorba gets its richness and body from peanuts; it’s beautifully spiced with Berbere spice mix. Ours is adapted from Jenn Louis’ The Chicken Soup Manifesto — a marvelous cookbook that explores chicken soups and stews from 64 countries. Lately Louis, a well-known chef in Portland, Oregon,has devoted herself to feeding her city’s homeless people, who have been suffering terribly during the pandemic. (There’s a link on her website to help her with donations, or even with cooking.) Thank you, Chef!

RECIPE: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba

Eastern Europe: Ashkenazi Jewish Chicken Soup

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This is the chicken soup I grew up with, which is in the same vein as the chicken soup Jewish mothers all over the United States have made for their families for eons. I happen to think the one my mom taught me is the best in the universe. It starts with a whole chicken. Very basic, very delicious.

RECIPE: Joan’s Chicken Soup

Mexico: Sopa de Lima (Yucatán-Style Chicken-Lime Soup)

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I love this bright, light chicken soup from Mexico’s Yucatán region, which also comes to Cooks Without Borders via Louis’ The Chicken Soup Manifesto. It’s a good one to make when you don’t have time to make homemade broth. I do like to take the time to fry up some tortilla chips — which is also a great way to use up stale corn tortillas. If you miss Mexico as much as I do — or always wanted to go there — you’ll love this.

RECIPE: Jenn Louis’ Sopa de Lima

Tibet: Thukpa (Tibetan Chicken-Noodle Soup)

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Thukpa, a fiery chicken-noodle soup from Tibet, is just the thing when you want super-flavorful chicken soup with lots of veg — it has cabbage, green beans, tomatoes, carrots, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots and bell peppers. It comes together quickly, as it’s based on store-bought chicken broth.

We found it in Maneet Chauhan’s Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India. Read more about it here.

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Thukpa

Iran: Abgusht-e Morgh Ba Kufteh-ye Nokhodchi (Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs)

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I saved my favorite for last: a Persian chicken soup with tender lamb meatballs and an incredible garnish of dried rose petals, herbs and garlic.

This is the most aromatic and interesting chicken soup I've probably ever tasted — tinted with aromatic saffron and redolent of cardamom and cumin. It’s adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks — Food of Life by Najmieh Batmanglij. We wrote about it last month.

Making this soup is a huge project, so reserve a whole afternoon for it — it’s the perfect project for this weekend!

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Rose petals, saffron and tender lamb meatballs: Now that's a chicken soup!

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Persian abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi — or chicken soup with chickpea and lamb meatballs — prepared from a recipe in Najmieh Batmanglij’s ‘Feast of Life’

This is the fourth story in our series, Around the World in Chicken Soup.

The Great Confinement has been for me, as much as anything, a year of cooking. My time in the kitchen — chopping, simmering, marinating, braising, baking, slicing, stirring, researching dishes, poring over recipes — has kept me sane, kept me focused, provided escape, resulted in joy and kept my family well fed. We are extremely lucky that we can afford to eat and that we have access to food — facts that have not escaped my consciousness for a single moment, and for which I’m continually grateful.

During these 11 months, if there’s one dish that took me out of myself and away from that narrow physical and mental place that the pandemic has wedged us into, it would be the Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs called abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi.

The obvious and immediate miracle of the dish is its incredible flavor and aromas: the perfume of saffron, the gorgeousness of mint leaves and rose petals strewn on top, the tender lusciousness of the lamb meatballs, the soothing comfort of the rich and aromatic chicken broth. I still have a hard time conceiving that we ate something so delicious, so unusual, in our own home. Honestly, it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve eaten ever, anywhere.

But equally (if not even more) transporting was the experience of cooking this soup. The afternoon I spent discovering its mysteries was one of the most pleasurable I’ve spent all year long.

Consider the premise: You stuff a whole chicken with rice, spices and dried rose petals. (Rose petals!) Wrap it in cheesecloth, submerge it in a broth scented with cardamom, rosewater, saffron and more, and simmer it gently for an hour and a half. Remove the chicken and debone it. Then drop in meatballs you’ve made from ground lamb, aromatic spices, onion and chickpea flour. Chickpeas go in the broth as well, along with the chicken meat and stuffing, and all that wonderful stuff cooks some more. 

Your home now smells heavenly, and for a grand finale, here comes a whopper of a flourish: Chopped mint or cilantro, plus garlic and more dried rose petals. You’ll pass that in a bowl around the table for everyone to add on top just before eating. 

The meatballs are spectacular. The scents of rose and saffron and cardamom and cumin and herbs are intoxicating. The garnish sends it into a transcendent dimension. 

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After I made the soup and recovered from my saffron-and-rose-petal high, I wanted to learn more about the recipe, so I called Najmieh Batmanglij — the Washington, D.C.-based author of Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, in which I found it. The 1986 cookbook is widely considered to be the definitive tome of the genre; Yotam Ottolenghi called Batmanglij “The goddess of Iranian cooking.” 

She and her husband fled Iran in 1979 during the revolution, relocating to Vence, in the south of France, where she wrote her first cookbook, Ma Cuisine d’Iran. Recently Batmanglij spent three years researching her latest book, Cooking in Iran, published in 2019. “I traveled all over Iran,” she said, “and I noticed they love meatballs.” 

Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs — abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi. The Iranian dish is served with sabzi khordan, the fresh herb platter ubiquitous on Iranian tables.

Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs — abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi. The Iranian dish is served with sabzi khordan, the fresh herb platter ubiquitous on Iranian tables.

Talking with the author was nearly as much fun as making the soup. I knew from her headnote that it’s traditionally served by Jews in Kashan and Hamedan for sabbath dinner (those two cities are south and southeast respectively from Tehran), that it should be served with “saffron flavored rice, pickles and a platter of herbs,” and that it was inspired by one Professor Abbas Amanat, who had gotten the recipe from his mother. Batmanglij told me that Professor Amanat teaches history at Yale University. 

She also revealed that she brought a couple of her own thoughtful touches to the dish — among them, deboning the chicken.  “Traditionally,” she told me, “they use the whole chicken, and when they serve it, the whole thing is in the soup. Wrapping it in the cheesecloth, that’s my French background.”

Diluting the saffron in rose water rather than plain water was her innovation as well, inspired by a technique she’d seen in a medieval Persian cookbook. The two ingredients together do something truly magical.

I made a couple of slight modifications of my own, including adding an option to use canned chick peas rather than soaking overnight and pre-cooking dried ones. More significantly, I also suggest passing of the rose-petal-and-herb garnish at the table. Batmanglij’s recipe calls for stirring it all before in serving it. 

Nan-e-barbari — Persian Bread. We fashioned ours from store-bought pizza dough.

Nan-e-barbari — Persian Bread. We fashioned ours from store-bought pizza dough.

Of course the author’s way is culturally correct. A soup like this, Batmanglij told me, is usually eaten “by people from humble backgrounds. They put the garnish on top, and they put the pot in the middle of the table, with plenty of bread. Serving individual things means more labor.” 

While at our house, we skipped the saffron-flavored rice accompaniment, I did serve the soup with nan-e-barbari, Persian flatbread, and a sabzi khordan, the fresh herb platter Batmanglij suggested, and which is ubiquitous on Iranian tables. (Here’s a hack for making home-made nan-e-barbari from store-bought pizza dough, courtesy of Nilou Motamed, former editor of Food & Wine.)

The herbs of the sabzi khordan brought beautiful freshness to each bite.

Obviously, building this marvelous soup is a project, something to take slowly and enjoy, not something to be rushed through on a busy weeknight. But should you find yourself wondering how to fill a long and lazy Sunday or Saturday afternoon, I can’t think of a more delicious undertaking.

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Around the world in chicken soup: Flavors of the Yucatán shine in Jenn Louis' Sopa de Lima

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Jenn Louis’ Sopa de Lima (Yucatán-Style Chicken-Lime Soup)

This is the fourth story in our series “Around the World in Chicken Soup.”

I really miss traveling, and especially traveling to Mexico — which in the last five years had become almost an addiction for my husband and me. Our last two trips were to the Yucatán Peninsula, where we mostly explored the beautiful towns and cities inland — Valladolid and Mérida — and coastal towns like Sisal and Campeche and Champotón. And of course the archeological sites: Chichen Itza, and Uxmal and Ek Balam.

The peninsula’s bright and sunny flavors came back to us deliciously in the form of a recipe I found in Jenn Louis’ delightful new book, The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Sopa de Lima — the region’s tangy, limey chicken soup.

As Louis writes at the start of the book, it’s always great to use homemade chicken stock in soups “because the end result is worth the time, and your home will smell amazing.” So true.

But there’s not always time to make stock. And when you jazz up a chicken soup with assertive flavors, like the exhilarating spices that went into the Tibetan Thukpa we wrote about in December, the convenience of using store-bought broth or stock as a base becomes much more attractive.

That’s definitely the case with Louis’ Sopa de Lima. The original version in her book calls for starting with either home-made chicken stock or water, but because the chicken pieces cook in the liquid less than 20 minutes, I chose store-brought broth instead of water.

In the Yucatán, the lime they use for this soup is the region’s native lima ágria. Because we can’t get it here, Louis brilliantly swaps a combination of regular (Persian) lime and grapefruit juice, and that works great. Spices and herbs — cinnamon stick, black peppercorns, cloves, garlic, oregano and bay leaves — add some depth of flavor and balance the brightness; a big handful of chopped cilantro and hot, crisp tortilla strips are the finishing touch.

You could certainly swap the tortilla strips for store-bought tortilla chips if you don’t feel like frying the strips, but just-fried, they do add a lovely flourish. (And it’s a great way to use corn tortillas that have seen better days.)

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Around the world in chicken soup: Next stop Tibet, for a fresh and fiery bowl of thukpa

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Thukpa, Tibet’s fierychicken-noodle soup

Think chicken soup is bland or boring? You’ll sing a different tune after one taste of Thukpa, the fiery chicken-noodle soup of Tibet.

We found this one in Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India.

“The first time I tasted thukpa was after I arrived on a train in Guwahati on a cold winter’s day,” writes James Beard Award-winning chef Maneet Chauhan in the headnote. (Chauhan, who has several restaurants in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote the book with Jody Eddy.) “Seeking warmth, I followed the aroma of chicken soup to a vendor spooning golden thukpa into dented metal bowls. In that single bowl of soup I found all the reassurance that the long journey had been worth it.”

It became a favorite comfort food for her and her husband when they spent chilly winters in New York City. 

Guwahati, in case you’re a bit rusty on your Indian geography, is in the northeastern part of the subcontinent, next to Bhutan, about 200 miles from the Tibet border.

Chock full of shredded cabbage, carrot, bell peppers, green beans, chicken and rice noodles, scented with ginger and cumin, fired up with serrano chile, garnished with scallions and bean sprouts, it’s a nourishing meal in a bowl. 

And because it’s based on store-bought chicken broth, it comes together quickly (cooking time is about 30 to 35 minutes, once you’ve got everything prepped). It’s simple, too: blitz together tomatoes, ginger, garlic, chiles and cumin with a little oil, cook the paste briefly with cut-up boneless chicken thighs, add broth and vegetables and simmer till the chicken’s cooked through. Add rice noodles and a splash of lemon juice, dress up with scallions and bean sprouts and dinner is served.

I’m thinking that whether or not anyone in your crew is under the weather, it’s just the thing for an easy, light holiday-week or between-the-holidays dinner — lively, bright and spicy and filled with fresh veg. The rice noodles keep it squarely in the comfort food zone.

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Thukpa

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a cooking project sure to enthrall kids over the holidays, consider making paneer — fresh Indian cheese — also from Chauhan’s book.

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Jenn Louis' new 'Chicken Soup Manifesto' celebrates the feel-better elixir as expressed in 64 countries

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‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto’ photographed with a cookbook shelf in the background

No sooner had we embarked on an epic voyage around the world in a bowl of chicken soup, when the startling revelation that we were not the first to do so splashed into our soupy consciousness.

Of course to travel well, one must be open to diversions, and this one is so fortuitous: Renowned Portland, Oregon chef Jenn Louis has just published a new book, The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Recipes from Around the World.

Next-day delivery put the book in our hot little hands. It spoke to me right from the intro:

“Looking at the world through the lens of a simple bowl of chicken soup reveals volumes about a society and its people: the ingredients within their reach, the techniques that mark their style of cooking, and, often, a folkloric or family history, too.”

Almost all cultures have chicken in common, Louis continued; her manifesto is an account of “the diversity of a commonality.”

After taking a spin through its delightful pages, I picked up the phone and called the author, who was happy to talk about why and how she wrote it.

Traveling home several winters ago from a charity event, she had come down with a bad cold — so bad she couldn’t even imagine how she’d survive a two-hour plane flight. She texted her sister, who surprised her by leaving a giant pot of chicken soup on her doorstep to greet her on her arrival home.

“I ate three bowls, really fast,” Louis recalled. “Though I was still sick, I felt so much better. And I just kept thinking: This is a thing. This is magic!”

The experience led her to think about how chicken soup is a culinary connection that is shared by cultures around the world, while expressing different flavors and sporting different garnishes from land to land. To explore them, she launched her into a soupful odyssey, as she collected, developed and researched chicken soup recipes from all over — many crowd-sourced from her friends and followers around the world. A Palestinian woman she sat next to on another plane trip told her unbidden about her mother’s (Hanan’s Mom’s Palestinian Chicken Soup, page 176). Some of the soups came to her through Facebook posts.

The result is deliciously diverse — filled with bowls both familiar (Greek Avgolemono, Mexican Pozole Verde, Thai Tom Kha Gai) and new to me. There’s Kubbeh Hamusta from Iraq: a turmeric-tinged chicken and chick pea soup with zucchini and semolina dumplings filled with minced chicken, onion, parsley and spices. Dak Kalguksu from Korea — a rich broth with shredded chicken and hand-cut noodles (kalguksu means “knife noodles”), garnished with scallions and a chile-soy-sesame sauce.

Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba, prepared from a recipe in ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto,” by Jenn Louis

Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba, prepared from a recipe in ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto,” by Jenn Louis

I’d been looking for one from Ethiopia for this “Around the World in Chicken Soup” series of stories, and I found it on page 34: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba, a peanut-chicken soup.

I gathered ingredients – chicken broth, chicken breasts, peanut butter, a plump sweet potato, onions and carrots. I toasted whole spices (green cardamom, cloves, fenugreek seeds, coriander) and ground them up to make a Berbere spice mix. I got out my soup pot; it didn’t take too long to put together.

Thick, warm, comforting, garnished with chopped roasted peanuts and an extra sprinkling of Berbere spice, it hit the spot.

I’ll be dipping back into the book once or twice for this series, with a review in mind as well.

In the meantime, it goes without saying that the book’s timing is impeccable. Heading into what’s likely to be a brutal winter, so many of us will be needing chicken soup.

So please: Help yourself to a bowl of Ye Ocholoni Ina Dora Shorba.

RECIPE: Ye Ocholoni Ina Dora Shorba (Ethiopian Peanut-Chicken Soup)

And yes, this book will make a marvelous holiday gift.

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Around the world in chicken soup: First stop, Rio de Janiero, for a comforting bowl of canja de galinha

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Clockwise from upper left: Thai Tom Kha Kai; Tibetan Thukpa; Mexican Caldo de Pollo; Brazilian Canja de Galinha

Clockwise from upper left: Thai Tom Kha Kai; Tibetan Thukpa; Mexican Caldo de Pollo; Brazilian Canja de Galinha

It’s a rare dish that appears in cuisines all over the world. Chicken soup — the global feel-better elixir — is one of them. Soothing and comforting at a time when so many Americans are ailing from a pandemic or smarting from a bruising political battle, it is this season’s perfect panacea.

Chicken soup can celebrate what so many of us have in common: When someone sniffles, moms and grandmas (and increasingly pops and grandpas) around the globe drop chicken in water with aromatics and simmer away.

At the same time, from the Americas to Asia, from Eastern Europe to the Levant and Africa, chicken soups have the qualities and tastes that make every culture deliciously unique.

There’s the American-Jewish version I grew up with: a chicken in the pot with celery, onion, carrots and dill; egg noodles went in at the end. There are more colorful versions, like a Mexican caldo de pollo, zingy with lime, that might feature cabbage, zucchini, garbanzo beans or chunks of corn-on-the-cob — plus lots of cilantro.

Joan’s chicken soup — a classic Jewish-American bowl

Joan’s chicken soup — a classic Jewish-American bowl

There are tangy, herbal, coconutty versions, like Thailand’s tom kha kai; fragrantly spicy chicken soups called djaj from Lebananon or Morocco; peanutty versions like Ghana’s nkatenkwan. In China, there is rich and tonic qing dun quan ji, in which a chicken is blanched then long-simmered in water with a big piece of smashed ginger, scallions and Shaoxing wine; some cooks add tonic roots or goji berries toward the end. 

 Tibetan Thukpa has tomatoes, vermicelli, vegetables and chiles; in Iran, chickpea-and-lamb meatballs swim with the chicken in abgusht-e-margh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi; and in Vietnam, big rice-noodle-happy bowls of pho ga, whose broth is scented with star-anise and cinnamon, come with an array of fresh herbs, bean sprouts and chiles to add in at the table.

 Is it too much to dream that a trip around the world in a bowl of chicken soup might bring us together, help us understand each other, heal us as a nation?

Well, as my Jewish grandma would have said, “It vudn’t hoit!”

If you’ve always wanted to visit Rio, you might instead dive into a bowl of canja de galhina, Brazil’s beloved chicken-and-rice soup.

“Canja de galinha is the soup my grandma used to make — not just for me but for our whole family,” says Junior Borges, a super talented Rio-born chef in Dallas. Borges’ highly anticipated restaurant, Meridian — which will feature American cooking with Brazilian influences — is expected to open early next year.

The chef still enjoys canja; in fact his mom, who’s originally from Bahia, but now lives in Dallas, made him a bowl just last week.

“I think it’s definitely one of those comforting, comforting things. For us, it’s our chicken noodle soup.”

Canja de Galinha, from a recipe by Rio-born Dallas chef Junior Borges

Canja de Galinha, from a recipe by Rio-born Dallas chef Junior Borges

The chef’s grandmother usually started with chicken neck, wings and thighs, “and served it with the bones and everything. Sometimes it had carrots or whatever we had in the kitchen, but always rice, chicken, the stock, and then you put a decent amount of olive oil and herbs — parsley, cilantro, maybe some scallions. Primarily green stuff, which goes into almost everything the Brazilians do.”

Gently seasoned with lime and finished with lots of parsley and cilantro, the version Borges shared with us — which is close to his grandma’s —starts with bone-in chicken legs or breasts (or both), which you remove from the bones for nicer presentation; it gets extra body from diced potato. The canja comes together surprisingly quickly; you can have it on the table within an hour.

 Rio is just the first stop on our tour: In the coming weeks, we will feature chicken soups from all around the globe.

Stay well, everyone.

RECIPE: Junior Borges’ Canja de Galinha

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Classic split pea soup, stupid-easy and satisfying, will keep you cozy and happy all week

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Classic split pea soup

There’s something almost magical about classic split pea soup. Sweat some chopped onion and carrot in oil, dump in a bag of dried split peas, add water and a ham hock, and an hour and half later, you’ve got soup.

OK, there’s a tiny bit more work involved. You had to cut up the onion, peel and slice a few carrots. You might have to skim a little oil off the top as it cooks. You need to remove the ham hock, shred or cut up the ham and put it back in, and add salt and pepper.

A ham hock cooking with split peas

But really — can you imagine a soup that requires less of the cook? You don’t have to purée it to get that lovely thick texture: The peas purée themselves, breaking down as they cook, but magically retaining just the right amount of integrity. A marvelous alchemy turns just those four simple main ingredients into something beautiful and soul-sustaining.

You could probably add all kinds of things to it, but none of them would make it better than it already was. On top of it, it’s highly affordable, and requires no special equipment. It’s so nutritious and satisfying, it’s a meal in itself.

As it cooks, it fills your living space with beautiful aroma.

We love split pea soup. Make a pot early in the week, and it’ll sustain you and your family for days.

Want in? Here’s the recipe.

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Fridge-clearing and fabulously flavorful, Sunday Souper Soup will set you up deliciously for the week

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Sunday Souper Soup with lentils, carrots, celery, onions and greens in a white bowl on a green Tiffany basket-weave plate. In the back ground is harissa from a tube.

When a nation of restaurant-goers turns (almost overnight!) into a society of captive home cooks, the stresses caused by fridge management can be monumental.

Keeping everyone in comfort food is easy: There’s pasta and cheese for that. Rice concoctions galore. Potatoes are a no-brainer in any form. Pizza is a track-pad click away.

Still, you diligently keep the fridge stocked with healthy fresh things: broccoli and kale, carrots and cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, salad greens and herbs.

So that by Sunday, the crisper drawer is stuffed with stuff that’s not so crisp, and you’re left beating yourself up about waste. Meanwhile, what are you going to put on the dinner table in the coming week?

If besides all that stuff you can rustle up a few basic staples, I’ve got great news for you: You can turn those hapless refrigerator victims into a Sunday super-soup that’s so incredibly flavorful that no one would ever suspect you of anything so nefarious as using up tired greens. It’ll solve the coming week’s lunch question and provide a dinner or two — all while saving money and helping you dodge a food-waste bullet.

It gets even better: You can pack the soup with an arsenal of life-affirming, enchantingly aromatic spices and herbs that turn the whole project into an anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, flavonoid-rich powerhouse. It is vegan and gluten-free, and therefore sends you into the coming week feeling vital and positive. That gigantic pan of bacon-enriched mac-and-cheese you devoured on Thursday, washed down with three glasses of wine? It is vitamin water under the comfort-food bridge. Today is a new day.

The essential staples you’ll need: onions, carrots and celery (diced together they make what the French call mirepoix); lentils; a can of tomatoes; olive or other oil; salt and pepper. These, plus water, form the base of the soup. And if you follow our master recipe, that’s all you really need for a delicious one. The basic outline is sweat the mirepoix in oil, add lentils, tomatoes, water, salt and pepper, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer till it’s soup — under an hour.

Our master recipe — which we first wrote about pre-Covid, in a story back in January — explains how to incorporate all those vegetables crying for rescue from the fridge: everything from root vegetables (turnips, parsnips, celery root, beets) to Brassicaceae (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and whatnot) to fresh legumes (string beans, peas and such) to leafy greens. The veg can be raw or cooked, so that small dish of roasted cauliflower with Punjabi spices left over from Friday dinner can find a new life in a lush (and zero waste!) soup, and the lonely cupful of sautéed greens from four days ago may gain delicious new purpose.

And you’ll want to spice it up: turmeric, coriander seed and cumin seeds are great places to start; ginger and garlic are your aromatic allies; fresh and dried chiles are always welcome; nigella seeds and flax seeds add nutritional heft; so do mushrooms, dried or fresh. Herbs — fresh and dried — are superb additions.

Again, our January story gives a lot of the health background and zero-waste benefits. Give it a read first if you’re interested in making the soup as powerfully healthful as possible. Otherwise, I invite you to explore the recipe.

And then take a deep dive into that crisper drawer and make soup!

MASTER RECIPE: Sunday Souper Soup

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Celebrate tomato season with salmorejo (a cousin of gazpacho) or tomato-burrata salad

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Heirloom Tomatoes.jpg

We like to eat pretty simply and lightly at home during summer — that is, when it’s just Thierry and me. When Wylie’s here, he’s happiest making something complicated and involved, with as many ingredients as possible, especially well marbled proteins — and bonus points for flambéing, searing in cast-iron on maximum heat so the smoke alarm goes off or finishing a sauce with a fat knob of butter.

While tomatoes are bursting with flavor, I’d be happy eating nothing more than tomato salad with crusty bread three nights a week — especially if it can be the burrata variation of a classic Caprese, just sliced heirloom tomatoes, burrata, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Tomato Burrata.jpg

I’m embarrassed to write about the salad, as it’s so obvious and doesn’t require a recipe. But it feels disingenuous to assemble a dish so frequently and never mention it once in years of publishing — especially as there are young cooks and beginning cooks who may be less familiar with it.

You probably already knew how to make it (maybe you have your own version). To me what elevates it is using great olive oil, the freshest and fruitiest you can find, and my favorite finishing salt, Maldon (love those large, fragile flakes). When burrata’s not to be had, good ricotta can be nice in its place, and of course mozzarella goes back to the classic, if you’re feeling more nostalgic.

Here’s an actual recipe for the burrata version, just for the record (or if you want to forward it to your 19-year old nephew who’s learning to cook):

Classic Gazpacho Sevillano also shows up constantly on our summertime table; it’s one of my favorite dishes of all time. But until recently, I had never made salmorejo, its close cousin from nearby Córdoba (though I mentioned it in a 2003 Los Angeles Times story that won me a James Beard Award). Both Córdoba and Sevilla are in Spain’s southern region of Andalusia, a hot region where cold soups refresh in the summer.

Salmorejo is a cold, smooth, creamy cold soup whose basic ingredients are fewer than gazpacho’s: just tomatoes, bread (quite a lot of it), garlic, oil and salt. Vinegar is commonly included, though it is not necessarily traditional. The traditional — and still ubiquitous — garnish duo is chopped hard-boiled egg and serrano ham.

At a reader’s request I pulled out my blender and my history books and began salmorejo R & D. (Yes, we love cooking to order: If there’s something you’d like us to cover, let us know!)

Claudia Roden tells us in her marvelous, encyclopedic 2011 book The Food of Spain something I hadn’t known when I wrote that long-ago gazpacho story: that Seville was the province where tomatoes were first grown in Spain, and that gazpacho was the meal that farm works made when they worked the vegetable fields. They actually carried with them a dornillo, the large wooden mortar and pestle used to pound the ingredients and made the gazpacho on the spot.

Roden describes salmorejo as “a thick, dense, creamy version of gazpacho made with more bread,” one that you find at all the flamenco festivals and other festive occasions, served with a glass of wine, as well as at “every bar and tavern in Córdoba, topped with chopped hard-boiled egg and bits of jamón serrano.”

Salmorejo landscape.jpg

In fact, there is quite a lot of bread in salmorejo. If gazpacho is like a liquid salad, salmorejo is like a liquid sandwich — though it eats like a refreshing cold soup. “Some recipes have as much bread as tomatoes,” writes Roden. Needless to say, Keto adherents need not apply.

Another Spanish cooking expert, Anya von Bremzen, calls salmorejo in her 2005 book The New Spanish Table “Andalucia’s other tomato and bread masterpiece.” She describes it as “a cream with a texture that falls somewhere between a dip and a soup,” and points out that besides being a soup, it’s also wonderful as an accompaniment for crudités or “a pile of poached shrimp.” She also likes to serve it in shot glasses as a tapa, topped with a poached or grilled shrimp on a skewer. (Note to self: do that!)

South of Córdoba in Antequera, a town about 30 miles north of the Mediterranean coast, a cousin of salmorejo called porra is garnished with bits of tuna. And of course you can garnish salmorejo with a wide variety of things — von Bremzen suggests small poached shrimp, diced cooked potatoes and/or chopped tomatoes and onions, or those small chunks of canned tuna.

Von Bremzen and Roden both offer recipes that look excellent, and that I’ll definitely get around to trying theirs. (Curiously, I didn’t find one among the 1,080 recipes in Simone and Inés Ortega’s 1080 Recipes. Originally published in 1972 by Simone Ortega, 1080 recetas de cocina, as it’s called in Spain, is known as the Bible of cooking for Spanish home cooks.)

This batch, made with a combo of yellow and red tomatoes, turned out more orange than red.

This batch, made with a combo of yellow and red tomatoes, turned out more orange than red.

Instead I went with Spanish-American chef José Andrés, who published a brilliantly simple version in Food & Wine in 2017 (it’s always safe to side with a superhero!).

For his recipe, toss tomatoes, crustless rustic white bread, sherry vinegar, garlic, salt and water in the blender, give it a good, long, thorough blitz so it’s very smooth, stream in some olive oil as the motor’s running, then serve, garnished with torn slices of serrano ham, a swirl of olive oil and chopped hard-boiled egg. I was surprised at how little vinegar Andés calls for — just a teaspoon for 2 1/2 pounds of tomatoes — but it was perfect.

Got tomatoes? Here’s the recipe:

Once you try it as is, you might want to riff on it, adding more or less bread, vinegar and salt to taste, and of course playing with garnishes.

All the recipes I found called for chilling the soup before eating, but I don’t imagine those farm workers who invented it brought coolers, and I couldn’t wait; besides, things tend to be more flavorful when they’re room temperature.

In, any case, it was deliciously refreshing straight from the blender jar.

Happy tomato season!

[RECIPE: Salmorejo]

[RECIPE: Tomato and Burrata Salad]

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Say hello to the green gazpacho of your dreams

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Green Gazpacho.jpg

There are a grillion versions of green gazpacho out there — many of them likeable, some (like Yotam Ottolenghi’s in Plenty) lovable. But I’ve never found one that made me stop and say, OK, you are the green gazpacho of my dreams.

I enjoy versions with yogurt, but the green gazpacho of my dreams is vegan. And even though a gazpacho without bread is technically not a gazpacho, the green gazpacho of my dreams is gluten-free. That’s because when I crave green gazpacho, I’m craving something very clean and pure. I’m wanting something intensely chlorophyllic, and herbal — but also tangy.

The green gazpacho of my dreams is something I can throw together in a flash, as a satisfying and energizing lunch, or a refreshing prelude to a lovely summer or late spring dinner. It should be basic enough to make for myself and family on a weekday, but gorgeous enough to start off a celebratory dinner party with friends (if we are ever able to do that again!).

Green Gazpacho Banner.JPG

It has to have body, and a little richness. I’ve seen recipes for versions involving avocado, but I’m nor looking for that kind of unctuousness. (Though I do adore diced ripe avocado as a garnish on classic Gazpacho Sevillano.)

Sometimes the way out of a culinary conundrum like this is to go back to the basics. I looked to traditional ajo blanco, the cold almond and garlic soup from Malaga, Spain that’s also known as gazpacho blanco, white gazpacho.

Yes! Raw almonds add just the right body to this soup, without the tannic bite that’s so nice with the walnuts in Ottolenghi’s Plenty version. If almonds work here, perhaps raw cashews would as well. I tried that on round two, and liked it even better — it imparted a little more roundness and depth. But either works great.

You’ll want to use your best sherry vinegar and olive oil in this soup; they are more than just supporting players.

Here is your ticket to summer-long green greatness:

As you can see in the recipe, the ingredients are basic, easy to keep on hand for when a craving comes knocking. No need for advance planning, as you don’t need to chill it; just plop two or three ice cubes in each bowl before you serve. Or make it ahead, and chill it in the fridge. For maximum delight, garnish it with a flurry of soft herbs — any combination of dill, chervil, parsley, cilantro, basil, mint, chives, tarragon, celery leaves and sliced scallion greens (OK, those last two are not technically herbs, but you get the idea). Or just add a swirl of your best olive oil on top.

RECIPE: The Greenest Gazpacho

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Use what you know, what's sitting in your crisper (and your imagination!) to make an Iced Green Disco Soup

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Cold Green Disco Soup.jpg

This coming Saturday (as we mentioned in a recent story), April 25 is World Disco Soup Day, organized by Slow Food Youth Network. To help with the goal of ending food waste (and having fun doing it!), we’d like to offer a way to think about those green vegetable odds and ends in your crisper in a new way. It’s easy to round up wilted greens and tired carrots, throw in some lentils or beans and turn them into a delicious hot soup.

But what about making them into something fresh and cool? Something that speaks of spring or summer and spotlights everything green? A delightful cold green soup!

To help you achieve that with whatever you happen to have that needs to be used in your fridge, let’s think about the world’s classic cold soups and what makes them work.

There’s vichyssoise, France’s purée of leeks and potato. The potato and leek combo can be a vehicle to which you can add leafy greens or lots of herbs. Add watercress (another classic) and you get a gorgeous, emerald-green cold watercress soup. You could also add a arugula or parsley or mint or basil — or any combo that sounds good to you.

There’s tarator, Bulgarian yogurt soup — a purée of cucumbers, walnuts, garlic, dill, olive oil and a lot of yogurt. (I make that all the time in the summer.) The cukes and yogurt (the same combo you find in cucumber raita) are a classic vehicle, and the walnuts add depth, richness and body.

Once it’s tomato season again, you can make gazpacho sevillano-style disco soups.

Once it’s tomato season again, you can make gazpacho sevillano-style disco soups.

Of course there’s gazpach sevillano, the most famous, but it’s not tomato season — and we’re going for the green. There’s white gazpacho, too, which gets body and richness from almonds, brightness from green grapes and a lovely bite from garlic.

Once of my favorite soups is the Green Gazpacho in Yotam Ottolenghi’s vegetarian cookbook, Plenty. Though it has much in common with tarator (Ottolenghi says it’s loosely based on it), the chef throws in a lot (6 cups!) of raw baby spinach, a cup of basil leaves, sherry vinegar (as in gazpacho) and peppers. So it’s hard to think of it as a disco soup — unless you have a garden that’s producing tons of spinach. But it does help give us a blueprint: You might have some spinach, and/or other greens you want to throw in raw. (You don’t need 6 cups to make it delicious.)

So think about what you have, and how it might behave like in ingredient in a classic soup.

Then dive into your fridge. We’re going to make a green soup today, so everything has to be green, or white, or something in between. (You’ll find another use for those beets and that leftover half a can of tomatoes. If you can’t think of something, drop us a note in a comment and we’ll help!)

• You want something for body: either nuts (raw or toasted), or potatoes (which you’ll boil before puréeing), a little rice (hopefully cooked and leftover), or even stale bread. I had raw walnuts in the freezer; I’d toast them in the oven (5 minutes at 350). If you’re using stale bread, soak it briefly in water.

• Grab anything green thing that you either enjoy eating raw (herbs or salad greens on their way out, scallions). I had a lot of parsley stems: They have great flavor and gorgeous color (and lots of super-healthy phytochemicals). I didn’t have carrot tops, but those are also delicious raw (or briefly cooked). Really! I also had a few sugar snap peas: I love them raw, but they leave Thierry and Wylie cold. I could sneak them in.

• What do you have that’s green that’s starting to look a little sad and that normally benefits from cooking? That might be broccoli, rapini, green beans, kale, etc. I had odds and ends from a farm box that were looking wilty — two baby bok choys, a little broccoli, a few green beans. And a bunch of radishes had lovely greens still attached. Those are good quickly cooked.

Rescued from the crisper drawer. If I hadn’t made Iced Green Disco Soup, who knows what fate they’d have suffered?

Rescued from the crisper drawer. If I hadn’t made Iced Green Disco Soup, who knows what fate they’d have suffered?

• If you have a few tablespoons of yogurt and a few cloves of garlic, your soup can resemble Ottolenghi’s Green Gazpacho. You’ll also want olive oil and vinegar, for gazpacho-like brightness and dimension.

With that, we’re ready to roll: Anything that needs cooking, you’ll simmer in water or vegetable broth (our master recipe tells you how to make vegetable broth from peelings and things you might throw away). Then you’ll throw in any greens that you’d rather not eat raw — like radish or turnip greens — for a quick blanch. That’ll get puréed.

Separately, you’ll purée all the other stuff — raw greens, cucumbers, green bell pepper, herbs, nuts, yogurt, olive oil, vinegar, salt and anything spicy you might want (serrano chile, white pepper).

Then stir the two together. Serve in small bowls, with a couple cubes of ice, another drizzle of olive oil, and any lovely fresh herbs you might like to feature whole (the last-minute add-ins are totally optional). Do a little dance: Your Iced Green Disco Soup will make a huge splash!

Here’s a master recipe that’ll offer more help, with all kinds of options built in:

If you stare into your fridge and need some advice or help, please don’t hesitate to ask in a comment — I’ll do my best to jump in quickly!

Happy dancing. Keep it green.