THE VERSATILE SOUP

The Versatile Soup

            What does an everyday cook do when he/she has to leave town for a couple of weeks and the refrigerator still shows a variety of produce and leftovers that just won’t keep?  One could go in denial, shut the door and face on return a level of mold and odors unacceptable in polite society. Besides, did not the wise Ben Franklin intone: ”Waste not – want not!” The simple answer to this dilemma happens to be – ‘Make Soup’!

            Soup seems to have been the answer to this problem long before the invention of the refrigerator, when cooks needed to create tasty meals from perishable materials. After all, Pot-Au-Feu, Petite Marmite and Minestrone have been enjoyed and date back for centuries. In the old folk tale “Stone Soup” a bunch of strangers persuade the citizens of a town to share their food in making a soup. This concept has ingeniously evolved in a community in New York that teaches young people about cooking by having everyone bring a vegetable and making a communal soup as a potluck supper.

            Well, my refrigerator was a more prosaic matter. It started by my wondering what to do about 3 parsnips. We could have had roast vegetables again, but then there were other items that needed attention. So, vegetable soup was the answer. The basic components of any soup are: meat or vegetable stock: some form of starch such as potato, rice, pasta or barley; a variety of vegetables to give both sweet and tart flavors and herbs and salt for the savory taste of it all.

 Such a combination is guaranteed to yield a healthy and nourishing meal and depends only on what is available in your refrigerator and kitchen. If using leftover barley, cooked pasta or rice, stir these in the soup a couple of minutes before the soup is finished cooking. At this point you can also add any cooked leftover chicken, ham, sausage or even hot dogs cut in small pieces. As a child I recall my mother serving “cork soup”, so called because of hotdogs cut up to resemble small pieces of cork. She claimed it was a trick the cook used to stretch available soup at the music conservatory kitchen if too many of her fellow students showed up for lunch.

                                    The catch-all vegetable soup           

            Brown 1 chopped onion in 1 Tblsp. butter in a 3 quart pot over medium heat, stir in 1 clove chopped garlic, 2 stalks chopped celery, 1 tsp. dried oregano.  Cook for an additional minute and stir in 4 cups beef broth or 4 cups water and 1 Tblsp. ‘Better than Bullion’. Bring to boil and stir in 1 coarsely chopped potato, 3 cubed parsnips, 2 sliced carrots, 1-2 cups coarsely chopped cabbage, 1 Tblsp. Worcestershire sauce and 2 Tblsp. tomato paste. Cook for 20 minutes. Stir in 1 cup leftover sautéed Swiss chard, 3 cut up beef hotdogs and any leftover parsley, cook for an additional 5 minutes. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper. Serve hot, sprinkled with coarsely grated Parmesan cheese (optional).

            A stale piece of French bread made an excellent accompaniment to the soup, when lightly browned in butter on a hot pan.

            Like all good dishes that can be reheated, this soup comes with the bonus that it can be frozen and reheated at a later time. It can even make a meal for when you return home and the cupboard looks a bit bare.

            (I. Winicov Harrington lives in Waldoboro and is the author of “How to Eat Healthy and Well for Less than $5.00 a Day: the Smart-Frugal Food Plan”; website: www.winicov-harrington.com)