Connections: Soup, Beautiful Soup

There’s nothing better than soup when you’re snowed in for two days — or when you expect to be. The weather forecasts were dire on Saturday morning, but the larder was full and I was ready to cook.

I’ve made lots of soup in my time and don’t really have to use recipes, but I enjoy expanding the repertoire and my attention had been drawn to a bag of fancy dried red lentils that had been sitting on a shelf in the pantry for longer than I cared to remember. I decided to give it a try.

Thumbing through cookbooks and imagining all kinds of tasty combinations is fun, and I sat down to browse through them for inspiration. The lentil soups I came across were all a bit too conventional, so I went to the computer, where I found recipes specifically for red lentils, but none seemed quite right for the soup I had in mind. Did you know that red lentils are different than the common brown ones, in part because they soften quickly and turn yellow when cooked? 

Eventually, I grew impatient and decided to wing it (as I usually do). How could carrots, garlic, and turkey broth go wrong? Most of the red-lentil recipes I’d seen online called for tomatoes and cumin, so I decided to toss them in, as well. 

Winter weather is soup weather, and not just because of the cold and snow: In January, our freezer is usually jammed with stock left over from Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am not one to let a good carcass go to waste! In addition to turkey stock, ours held more than a quart of stock from a poached bass, as well as a couple of containers of goose broth from a Christmas Eve roast, and some good goose fat, too. 

Earlier in the week, I had made what I thought was a yummy fish soup using the poached bass stock. I bought some monkfish and cod and added a fennel bulb, which I had hoarded, to the other vegetables.

The red, then yellow, lentil soup turned out fine, and, as testimony, Chris didn’t even suggest adding balsamic vinegar, to which he has become addicted. (As certain children relate to ketchup, Chris relates to balsamic: It makes everything better.) I made too much of the lentil soup, however, and by the time the storm was over we were bored with it and had to put what remained in the freezer.

There was a time when Star staffers brought in soup to share on Wednesday nights when the paper was being put to bed. They were usually leftover, but occasionally someone made soup especially for the occasion. 

The paper goes to bed before suppertime nowadays, which is a good thing, but I do miss those good broths. When the weather moderated this week, I was a little sorry. There was no longer a good excuse for staying home and indulging in one of life’s simple pleasures: making soup.