Soup days

This is not a Spokane specific entry. Things haven't been happening in the food world of Spokane, at least, not things that I know about. The Elk has opened El Que, which is the perfect complement to Agave. Whereas Agave has good, sometimes great food but no atmosphere, El Que is all ambience with only adequate food. Another blogger described El Que as "taco truck minus the wheels," which is accurate in spirit. Taco trucks have larger menus, and more kick to their hot sauces. But, if you are looking for a snack, the tacos are adequate; the drinks are mighty tasty, and the cozy retro feel of the tiny establishment will convince you you've made a night of it. There is a new Mexican grocery on Division promising handmade tamales, so there may be a future tamale-based blog. Sante's continues to serve interesting, local food with unusual wine, and I will love them forever for their gnocchi if nothing else, but I do wish they would change their menu more often. As long as the gnocchi never goes away. Left Bank is suffering from Spokane-Restaurant Syndrome (SRS), which means that they are so busy trying to be all things to all people that they don't really do anything well. Serious wine bars should not have sports on a tv behind the bar, and I don't think they should have sandwiches and try to cater to a lunch crowd. There: that is about it for my thoughts on the recent Spokane food "scene."

So what is a foodie to do when the days are short, dark, and damp and the food scene is dull? My answer has been to make soup. I almost never make the same soup twice, but almost all of the soups I make are pretty darn good (yes, yes, call me arrogant. But they are!) I've been trying to figure out what I do that makes for this surprising consistency, and I've come up with the following rules:

1) Start with a pork product. Nearly everything in life is better with a little pork, and soup is no exception. Bacon, salt pork, pancetta, italian sausage, kielbasa, ham hocks. Start with a good base of pig.

2) Add aromatics. I almost always saute the traditional french mire poix -- two part onion, one part carrot, one part celery -- in the fat either rendered from the aforementioned pork product.

3) Pick a flavor family. Italian, southwest, french, asian. Like any good composition, your soup needs to have a genre. It will help you decide whether an ingredient should go in or not, and it will help you figure out seasonings. Italian means red pepper flakes, dried oregano, parmesan rinds, and basil to finish. Asian means Siriacha and soy. You get the idea.

4) Pre-brown your vegetables. One of the great things about soup is that you can pack it full of yummy vegetables. However, if you just throw them in the pot, you will have boiled vegetables, and that is not yummy. As much as possible, get some good brown on veggies before they go into the soup. Saute them in your soup pan (don't wash out the pan afterwards). Broil or grill them. Whatever you need to do to add brown and concentrate flavors. Remember: brown means flavor!

5) Add a starch. It will thicken your soup enough to give it a good mouth feel without making it gluey, and give it a little more staying power in your stomach. Diced potatoes, barley, and cubed stale bread (I learned this in Florence, where they thicken a vegetable soup with bread. It's called Ribollita, and it can be amazing -- especially when you add a little pork) are some of my favorites. I also really like wild rice in soup, but it doesn't release enough starch into the broth on its own, so I sprinkle a scant tablespoon of flour over the aromatics to make a light roux before I add liquids.

6) Your liquids should include wine, stock, and bones (as often as possible). I love to make soup after I have roasted a chicken, so that I can throw the carcass in the pan. Ham hocks also make a good but very smokey bone to put in. Bones add mouthfeel and richness, and while not completely necessary, I think they always make soup better. If you want a creamy soup, add the cream after you have simmered you soup a while, and then simmer another fifteen minutes or so.

7) Be careful of flavor bullies. There are some soup ingredients which, while wonderful, take over a soup. Corn, fennel, and grilled peppers come to mind. Used wisely, they elevate a soup, give it kick and personality. Unwisely mixed, they turn your soup into a confused mess. I would recommend thinking about one star, two only if they have a proven record of good chemistry, and then have the rest of the ingredients be supporting players.

8) Last one, I promise. Season! I think most soups suffer from being under-seasoned. Add salt, and when in doubt, add some more. It is amazing how much salt most soups can take.

So, there you have it. Nothing earth-shaking or original, I know, but perhaps some ideas to demystify soup enough that you can get away from the recipe book and be just go for it, soup-wise, that is.

Why I prefer taste over hearing

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague yesterday, a very smart man, professor of Romanticism, vegetarian, and somewhat obsessive cyclist. He told me this summer that he wants to weigh two pounds for every inch of his height, which would put him at ten pounds less than I currently weigh. He has about five inches on me, so I'm trying to discourage him from this extreme dieting plan.

I digress. We were having the standard, which sense would you give up first conversation. Amazingly, neither of us were high, nor were we eighteen year old philosophy "majors." We both agreed that sight is the most important sense. That seems a given to all except the most die-hard of musicians. He, however, said that he would give up his sense of taste long before his sense of hearing. This seems to me crazy, but perhaps you will think that I'm the crazy one when I say, in all seriousness, that I would gladly give up my sense of hearing before my sense of taste. The interesting this is that we both have the same reason for our very different responses: we both think that our chosen sense is crucial to some essential human experience, and that our lives would be flattened out and nearly unendurable without said sense. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this all is that we both actually used this language, even though we are both post-modernists who believe the entire concept of an "essential human experience" is mystifying bunk constructed by some big eastern syndicate.

I was thinking about this conversation as I made dinner tonight, and I am more convinced of my position than ever. Just to get rid of any unpleasant sense of suspense in this blog, I'll tell you right off the bat that dinner was good, but hardly great. It's just that the whole process confirmed why I love food and cooking so much. Here's the story: my grades are in, and I am officially on vacation for at least a week or so, so for the first time in a while I have some extra energy to devote to cooking. My idea for dinner tonight was a) to try something new and 2) to recreate an amazing dish I had in Florence last February. It was baked crespelle, filled with ceci beans (aka garbanzo beans, aka chick peas) and goat cheese. Crespelle are italian crepes, and traditionally used for cannelloni or manicotti (which are the same dish, just from different parts of the country) -- so much lighter and more delicate than some sort of dried pasta tube! The dish I had in Florence was so beautifully balanced: the beans were smooth and earthy and a little sweet, the cheese was melted and creamy and slightly tangy, and the crespelle themselves were lightly crisped.

I began the experiment with a ceci bean puree that I have made before, and that I love intensely. I sweat onions and carrots (have you all tried the amazing sugar carrots from Green Bluff? They sell them at Huckleberries -- so worth the extra money!) and maybe a very little celery in olive oil, hopefully with a couple of fresh bay leaves and/or rosemary and some flattened garlic. Once they are soft, add a can of Progressive ceci beans, drained, and some chicken stock, and simmer uncovered for about twenty minutes. When you are down to a couple of tablespoons of liquid, remove the herbs, and transfer everything to a food processor (or blender, or immersion blender -- you get the idea), and puree until very smooth. Add more liquid if the puree seems too thick or starchy; the consistency should be like loose mashed potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. I use this puree instead of mashed potatoes sometimes, dressed with just a little good olive oil, or, when I'm feeling really fancy, truffle oil.

Now I had my ceci beans, and some goat cheese, so it was time to work on the crespelle. I found a recipe: 2 eggs, 1 1/4 cup milk, pinch of salt, pinch of sugar, whisked together. Then whisk in 3/4 cup flour. Let stand for thirty minutes. Use about 3 tbls per crespelle, in a hot oiled non-stick 8 inch skillet. It took me a couple to get the hand of swirling the very thin batter to get a thin crespelle, and a few more to figure out how to flip them, but they weren't all that challenging. A silicon spatula helped with the flipping. I got about 12 good quality crespelle, which was about twice what I needed for my fairly small casserole and my small amount of filling.

I rolled my crespelle with the cheese and ceci beans, and here is where I went wrong. I should have just brushed with olive oil and put it in a hot oven. But, my head was turned with recipes for manicotti and memories of cannelloni, so I added a béchamel sauce and a little of Tulia's tomato sauce, which some grana on top. I baked it until it was hot and bubbly, and then broiled it until the cheese was brown. The result was tasty and satisfying, especially given my love of all things cheesy, saucy, stuffed, and baked. But, the goat cheese was all but lost, as was the balance and delicacy of the original dish.

So, hard to chalk this one up to a complete success, and yet it contained so much of what I love about food: the wonderful memory of Italy, and that big boisterous dinner with all my friends old and new from the conference. I remembered Marc trying to explain to Jeremy why Proust is the greatest modern novelist, and what is going on with the madeleines. I remember Mike's great ribbolita, a tuscan vegetable soup thickened with vegetables, and Erik's perfectly grilled swordfish. I remember Pat, the quintessential host, keeping the wine flowing and the toasts coming. And, I was able to be creative in my own small way -- researching some parts of the recipe, winging others on experience and hunch. At the end, I had something satisfying to share with Jeremy (he liked the finished product more than I did, I think). I know that, for many people, maybe even the majority, music offers this kind of rich experience, a blending of aesthetics, intellectualism, and memory. I like music, a lot, but what it offers me is just ambience compared to food.

Try the ceci puree. It's really good. And try the crespelle next time you are in the mood for cannelloni. They are totally worth it.