Not all soup is created equal. Photo / 123RF
Everything means something. Even soup.
I recently included soup in a list of my pet hates. I put it up there with tattoos and “Your call is important to us”.
A woman wrote in response. Yes, yes, she said, she shared almost all of my aversions, and in particular broccoli and FAQs, but what was this about soup?
There was nothing wrong with soup, she said. Soup was a wonder. Soup was one of life’s great consolations.
Her letter gave me pause. I had included soup in my list without hesitation. Soup is the food you’re having when you aren’t having food. It’s failed stew.
It is neither meat nor drink. It’s a deceiver. Surely that is reason enough for its inclusion.
But at the same time I had to admit that there are certain soups I like. Top of that list is seafood chowder.
Every so often I even make the stuff myself and if I had the space I would explain how I first soften a mirepoix in butter (don’t be ashamed if you have to look up the meaning of mirepoix.
Enquiry is the only way to learn and to learn is to grow, whereas not to learn is to shrink towards the beckoning grave) then stir in a tablespoon or two of flour which I let cook for a minute before adding a bay leaf, thyme and chicken stock (you can of course use shop-bought chicken stock but how much better it is to make your own using boiling water and one of those darling foil-wrapped stock cubes that are fiddly to open but worth the effort) into which you then stir as much seafood as you can afford, ideally including both shrimps and fish, (but please do not sink to one of those frozen seafood mixes that go under the name of marinara and prove to be just packaged disappointment) and once the fish is more or less cooked through I add a bottle of cream and a tablespoon of turmeric, which not only turns the chowder duckling yellow but also adds an earthiness you’ll not regret – but sadly I do not have the space. (If you’d like the recipe, which I got off the internet originally but now have by heart, feel free to send me an email containing a stamped addressed envelope.)
So yes, I’m partial to a well-made seafood chowder, and also to French onion soup.
Though, on reflection, what I like best about French onion soup is the little raft of bread and cheese that floats on top of it (the bread a slice or two of light-as-gossamer baguette, the cheese the nutty, melted loveliness of Swiss gruyere with special attention paid to the grave accent on the penultimate e, which I don’t seem to be able to do on this anglophone computer).
So vis-a-vis soup (ah, that grave accent once again. It pains me to omit it.) I find myself in much the same position as Jonathan Swift found himself vis-a-vis people.
“I heartily loathe and detest that animal called man,” said Swift, who not only wrote Gulliver’s Travels but also became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, “but I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth”.
So though some individual soups are fine, it is the general class of stuff called soup that just does not sit well with me. Consider soup. Soup is the can of Watties tomato that retreated to the back of the pantry shelf however many years ago and skulks there still, the meal of last resort that hasn’t yet been called on.
Soup is the steaming crock pot at the near end of the smorgasbord that everyone walks by en route to greater things. Soup is cabbage and lentils, stewed.
Soup is the emergency kitchen set up by the road to feed a stream of wartime refugees.
Soup is the vat of gruel before which stands a line of Dickensian orphans, weeping. Soup is the keep-them-alive-and-no-more diet of prisoners of war. Soup is a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. Soup is the dented black pot suspended over embers in the waste of a nuclear winter.
And there I think we have it. Soup is the antithesis of plenty. Soup is a metaphor for penury. Soup is existential dread. Soup is the state you fear being reduced to. Soup is what happens when the ground gives way.