Tag Archives: Food and Cooking

The Idea of Soup

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It’s cold outside and there’s a thin layer of snow on the ground. January. My mind is filled with The Idea of Soup.
Really, I should say it is filled with My Idea of Soup. Yours may be quite different. My Idea of Soup tends to be filled with chunks of vegetables, possibly also with beef but not chicken, and garnished with chopped parsley. I don’t think I ever actually garnish soup with chopped parsley—I rarely remember to add parsley at all. But in My Idea of Soup, there is fresh green parsley.
My Idea of Soup. Where did it come from? I can think of several sources.
One is my favorite jigsaw puzzle, “Cubbyhole Cottage.” I was six or seven years old when I received it—my younger brother got a 60 piece puzzle with a jet plane on it. We used to have competitions to see who could put their puzzle together faster.
Cubbyhole Cottage jigsaw puzzle by Springbok
Cubbyhole Cottage, by Springbok
I liked to imagine myself as one of the people living in this old-fashioned house. Most often, I imagined myself as the girl in the purple dress and cap—the one stirring the soup. She seemed like the most important person in the house, as she was making the meal. The others were tidying, or setting the table, or watering the flowers, or just playing. Not nearly as important. Also, I liked the girl’s ruffle-edged apron.
Close-up of kitchen in Cubbyhole Cottage jigsaw puzzle
The hearth is the center of the home, even if not quite the center of the puzzle.
Another source for My Idea of Soup is a story by Margaret Wise Brown, “Mister Dog”, in a book of bedtime stories from long ago. The illustrations are by Garth Williams, one of my favorite illustrators.
The story is about Crispin’s Crispian, a dog who belongs to himself. One day, after various adventures,  he meets a boy who belongs to himself and invites the boy to come live with him. They stop by the butcher shop on the way home, and the dog buys a bone while the boy gets a lamb chop and “a bright green vegetable.” The dog makes soup and gives some to the boy, who contributes some of his bright green vegetable to the soup.
Page from Mister Dog, showing boy and dog with soup and green vegetable
See the bright green vegetable in the soup? Also, I love the cuckoo clock.
And now you know why My Idea of Soup is garnished with fresh parsley.
Finally, there is the old story of Stone Soup. There’s something appealing about all those people contributing a bit of this or that to the pot, and ending up with a tasty, nourishing soup “from a stone!” I love that idea.
Alas, in practice I’ve found that adding random vegetables to my soup tends to work about as well as mixing a lot of random paints together. The result is muddy and not particularly appealing. Even when I try to stick close to basics, the results are variable. However, the following ingredients generally work for a “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” soup (except that as I said earlier, I tend to forget the parsley.)
·         Some chopped onion, usually sauteed in a bit of oil first
·         Bite-size stew meat, dusted in flour and browned a bit before adding liquid (now cooked on the side so the rest of the soup can be vegetarian—but add some broth to the meat to take advantage of the browned bits on the pan)
·         Canned diced tomatoes with liquid
·         Carrots, diced or bite-size as you wish
·         Water as needed
·         Potatoes, in bite-size pieces
·         Salt and pepper
·         Sage, rosemary, and thyme
·         Parsley, either dried with the rest of the seasoning, or fresh and added at the end
Sometimes I add a bay leaf or a splash of soy sauce. Sometimes, if it doesn’t need to be vegetarian, I add a dash of Worcestershire sauce. I’ve tried adding mushrooms, but results vary. Sometimes I add some broth along with the water, but I don’t like the way a lot of vegetable broths taste and I’m not sure whether they help the soup or not. Basically, I keep messing with it, but I haven’t been keeping accurate records so I don’t have a good sense of what’s working.
So I guess that’s what I should do, to fulfill My Idea of Soup. I should keep records the next time I make some vegetable (and beef) soup. Maybe I’ll even make some tonight. After all, it’s freezing outside and my husband has a cold.
Coziness and caring. Isn’t that what soup is all about?

"They Spoke French"–how stories get lost between generations

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The stories you think you’ve passed on to your children are not necessarily stories they know.
Earlier this year, I was talking with my daughter about who-knows-what, something to do with languages, and I said that since my grandmere and grandpere always spoke to each other in French, and usually spoke in French to my father as well, I had grown up thinking it perfectly ordinary that grown-ups sometimes spoke to each other in a language the kids didn’t understand.
“What!” She nearly fell off the sofa. “They spoke French? I didn’t know that!” She had assumed that they spoke Italian, which would be a reasonable thing to assume if I hadn’t told her otherwise. My grandparents had come over from Italy, after all. Just… a French-speaking part of Italy. At least for Grandmere.
“I’m sure I told you!” And I probably had. Once. When she was very young. And apparently never again.
So she hadn’t known, and hadn’t had the slightest idea that her own Granny and Grampy could also speak French (though they didn’t normally speak it to each other, and probably hadn’t spoken it for years.)  Had she known, she said, she might—might—have considered taking French in school instead of Latin.
Suddenly things were clearer. I had wondered a little about her choosing Latin. I had offered good reasons why French or Spanish might be more fun (including that fact that I knew some of both and we would be able to talk together), and in the back of my mind I had wondered that the family connection didn’t seem to enter into her decision. But I’d never actually said, “Why don’t you take French? Your great-grandparents spoke French and your grandparents would probably be delighted.” No, I just assumed she’d considered that fact and decided that Latin would be more fun, especially since she already knew the Latin teacher and liked her.
And she did get a series of very fun Latin teachers. Later she went on the Latin Club trip to Italy, so the family connection did come in, sort of.
But how had I failed to pass on such an important bit of information? What else had I failed to tell her?
“You know Grandpere was a baker?” Yes, she did know that. Good.
“And Grandmere worked as a maid?” Yes, and now that my daughter knew Grandmere had spoken French, the story that Grandmere had passed herself off as a French maid, not Italian, made more sense. (Apparently French maids were desirable back then—Italian maids, not so much. Prejudice has a long history, though the groups involved change.)
But she had a question for me. “What did my other great-grandpa do?”
Uh.
Photography, though I don’t know whether he made any money at it. Some acting, apparently. And my mom always says that there was a brief spell when he sold used cars. And…uh…
I need to go back to my mom and ask more questions, I think. I wonder what stories she told me that I have now forgotten?
At any rate, this discovery led to a discussion of the family tree, a search for the two books I have relevant to that side of the family (though one is mostly a photo book), and the conclusion that we really ought to get a genealogy program and sort this all out. And, as my daughter said, we should write down all the stories I can remember, and all that Granny can tell us, so that my daughter can pass them on to her own children some day.
Maybe they’ll decide to take French in school.
The Aunts by Isabella Halstead, The Fabulous Hooper Sisters, and assorted genealogy papers
Till next post.

Chocolate Tofu Mousse–a foamy chocolate tofu for you

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Today I’m going to give you a recipe for Chocolate Tofu Mousse.
Six bowls of Chocolate Tofu Mousse
Why would you want a recipe for Chocolate Tofu Mousse? Good question. There are plenty of delicious recipes for chocolate mousse that use wonderful rich cream instead of tofu. There are even recipes that don’t use any dairy at all, without using tofu. And I’m not going to tell you that you won’t taste the tofu. My daughter claims not to be able to taste it, but she likes tofu so much that she eats silken tofu right out of the package. Unless you like tofu as much as she does, you’re going to notice a slight tofu taste. It takes a little getting used to.
One possibility is that you are looking for a dessert with protein. Between the egg white and the tofu, this mousse does have some protein. But beware! This is not a health food. It has sugar and chocolate. It contains no vegetables, and probably has negligible fiber. If you want something really nutritious, make a fried tofu dish with lots of veggies, or a veggie-filled omelet! Those can be tasty, too.
It is possible that you are looking for a dairy-free mousse. Sorry, I use milk chocolate in this (although you don’t have to—the original recipe uses three ounces of bittersweet chocolate.) Alice Medrich has a dairy-free mousse in Bittersweet (I had the wrong title earlier) Chocolate and the Art of Low-fat Desserts, and I even made it once, though that was twelve years ago. I remember it as being tasty, if rather intense.
You might be looking for a dessert that will boost your calcium intake. I am still checking to see if there is a silken tofu that is high in calcium. The brand I used for this recipe turns out to use a different coagulant, apparently, and so has little calcium. I don’t know if that’s a feature of silken tofu more generally, as compared to the non-silken type used for frying.
It’s probably pretty safe to say that it has less fat than more typical versions of mousse involving heavy cream. It doesn’t taste as rich either—you wouldn’t want to serve a cream-based mousse in the portions I show here. You’d get indigestion. I’m not sure whether “can be eaten in larger quantities” is actually a selling point, but there you are. A foamy chocolate dessert that is lighter than a cream-based mousse.
Chocolate Tofu Mousse (6 generous servings or 9 discreet ones)
12.5 oz silken tofu (the kind in aseptic packaging is unrefrigerated till opened)
3/8 cup Dutch-process cocoa
2 oz milk chocolate, chopped
1 ½ oz semi-sweet chocolate chips (about ¼ cup)
3/8 cup boiling water
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
9 tablespoons liquid pasteurized egg white
½ cup sugar
Bring measured pasteurized egg whites to room temp or thereabouts if possible. They will not whip as well as regular egg whites, so give them every advantage. Also be sure that the measuring cup, mixing bowl, and whisk are all free of oil or grease. (Note: you want to whip egg whites around room temp, whereas you whip cream when it is good and cold.)
Ingredients
Puree the tofu in a food processor until it is velvety-smooth, perhaps 2 minutes.
Velvety smooth silken tofu
Combine cocoa and chopped chocolates with boiling water in medium bowl. Stir till smooth. Then I like to add the chocolate to the food processor, along with the vanilla, and really mix it into the tofu. But you could also put the pureed tofu in the bowl and stir there, I expect.
Rinse bowl (if you did as I do) and then scoop all the chocolate mix back into it.
Chocolate mixture blended with silken tofu
Be sure to wash or at least thoroughly rinse all parts of the food processor before the tofu dries on it.
Now whip those eggs whites. Start in stand mixer (if you have one) with a whisk on medium. After they get a bit frothy, start adding the sugar. Increase the speed to high. It takes a while, maybe ten minutes, to get soft droopy peaks. Maybe if you continued, you could get it stiffer—I chicken out at this point since I’m not confident pasteurized egg white can whip that stiffly. Soft peaks still works for this mousse.
Whipped egg whites
Gently fold about a quarter of the whipped egg white into the chocolate mix to lighten it. Then add the lightened chocolate mix to the bowl of egg whites and fold till just blended. Spoon or pour mixture into dessert cups. Cover with plastic wrap (plastic should not touch mousse) and refrigerate three hours or more before serving.
 
The original recipe for this (from Weight Watchers Magazine) was for a mint-chocolate tofu mousse that used only bittersweet chocolate and cocoa, and added 3/8 tsp peppermint extract. You can use 3 oz bittersweet chocolate instead of the mix of milk and semi-sweet, for a more intense chocolate flavor. I would not recommend more than 1/8 tsp peppermint, though.
You can use powdered egg white and water instead of liquid egg whites. It would probably whip better. I just don’t like the extra step of hydrating the egg.
Till next post.