A friend of mine volunteered to make soup for the Nebula Awards coming to DC this May, and told me she needed some recipes for vegetarian soups. I’ve been meaning to make some soups without meat, but every time I see the words “vegetable stock” in a recipe, I flinch. This week I decided to grab the tuber by the stalk and shake it until it cried uncle. So to speak.

The notion of a chickpea soup had been on my mind, and a bit of research turned up two recipes right off that were virtually identical, one in my copy of 400 Soups by Anne Seasby, and the other on AllRecipies.com. My version starts where they start, but as usual winds up on it’s own. No animals were harmed in the making of this soup, though a cow may have been coerced to give up the half and half. Continue reading →

I’d been getting signals from Kaylen, one of the YearOfSoup testers, that it was time for another white bean soup, and maybe something with some kick to it as well. I’d really liked Barb Wilmer’s Awesome White Chili w Cumin and Clove when she resouprocated me with a sample, and thought I might actually follow a recipe from start to finish for once. I should have known following a recipe was beyond me, but what I came up with was quite decent on its own. I used a fresh jalapeno, but somewhere along the way decided that I wanted to use some of the preserved ones as well. The result is a bit hotter than some might like, though really, it’s still mild for chili. Continue reading →

My wife was raised in Africa, among other places, and when I told her that this week I was making a peanut soup, she had definite opinions about what that meant. For one thing, it had to have beef in it…and it had to be tender. The fact that only about one in twenty recipes add beef to peanut soup didn’t phase her, though she confessed that her mother might have been using the soup as a way to use up really cheap beef. Personally, I’m a fan of really cheap beef. My grill’s best friend is named Chuck. He’s a cheap-steak and can be kind of tough at times, but he’s got good taste.

But I didn’t so much want to go there with the Peanut soup. Then there’s Vanessa, one of my soup tasters, who’s allergic to peanuts. Trying to please everyone gets complicated.

Or does it? Continue reading →

I kind of adopted an Italian family when I was a teenager. Actually, Audrey was Californian and Scandinavian, Mike was an Italian from Brooklyn, and they’d lived in some pretty exotic places along the way. Between the two of them, I learned a lot about cooking and a lot about family. Meals were often a two or three day affair, with soups looked forward to from the leftovers of whatever the big family meal was.  Pasta and beans, whether thick (fazule) or soup (fagioli) was always a treat. Continue reading →

What’s St. Patty’s Day Soup? Corned beef and cabbage, of course. Oh sure, there are lots of candidates for Irish Soup: Potato Leek, Mulligatawny, Mutton Broth…even Beef with Barley, which I just made a few weeks ago. But I really like corned beef and cabbage, and am determined to get my St. Patty’s day fix. It may come out more stew than soup, but if we’re lucky it will be good enough to overlook that little detail.

As with a lot of soups, the key is staging the ingredients so that they’re all done perfectly when the soup is finished.

On the other hand… Continue reading →