Red Beans and Advice for Monday, January 23

Soup season has arrived, even here in New Orleans

I grew up in a soup family. My mother made endless vats of soup; chicken soup, vegetable soup, tomato soup and borscht. I ate it, but I never fell in love with soup until I went to France when I was sixteen.

My French family ate soup almost every day. The main meal was at noon, so the evening meal was often soup, with some bread and cheese, and fruit or a few cookies.

The soup I ate in France was completely different than my mother’s soup. It used a broth base, but it contained beautifully cooked and puréed vegetables, such as carrots, leeks, greens, potatoes and onions.

There was also a lovely seafood version, soupe de poisson, which was more labor intensive because the broth was distilled from all manner of fish. This is not boulliabaisse, which has different pieces of seafood in it. Soupe de poisson is hearty and flavorful, and sometimes finished with garlic mayonnaise.

I have never mastered either seafood soup, But I recently discovered a wonderful blog, Pardon Your French, which abounds with French soup recipes. https://www.pardonyourfrench.com/new-start-here/

I’ve made the cauliflower soup twice and the carrot will be next.