Comfort Brothers: Personal Chefs

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Aug10

Summertime is Cold Soup Time

By Bill no responses

I’ll get around to Vichyssoise, my favorite, but Gazpacho is the first cold soup I can remember tasting. In the summer of 1970, armed with a U-Rail Pass, backpack and a copy of Europe on $5.00 A Day, I found myself in Sevilla, Spain, halfway through a life changing three month trek that ranged from Helsingborg, Sweden to Marakesh, Morocco and most of Western Europe in between. I recall the soup that night as a pale red, tangy thin and with garlicky croutons, not the chunky, brightly colored dish that’s so often served up by Food Network inspired home cooks and uninspired restaurants. There might have even been an ice cube involved as my two travelling buddies and I were eating on the cheap out of college student neccessity. And the delicious soup was a happy by-product of our visit because we had not travelled to Sevilla in search of Gazpacho. We were there on the trail of a group of French Canadian school teachers, all young women on a two week tour of Spain, Portugal and the Canary Islands.

 

After a week in Madrid, Tom, Denny and I had made our way south through Toledo and eventually west onto Lisbon, where my dominant culinary memory of our short stay there is of the freshly caught sardines, grilled on the beach by the fishermen, and of the cheap but good rose wine, dry enough to crack your teeth. As aimless wanderers we decided after a day or two to head south to a place called Faro where we would cross back into Spain with the ultimate goal of going south once more over to Tangier. It was on the bus that would take us across the border where we encountered the teachers, about ten of them, in their early twenties like us, on their first trip abroad and speaking English with flirty French enough accents that added a particular allure to the romance of being on the road in a foreign country. When we discovered their group was bound for Sevilla, it didn’t take long for our trio to decide we could put off Morocco and the Marrakesh Express for a little while longer. After all, unlike the girls who had a tightly scheduled itinerary,we didn’t have to be anywhere, anytime, except London in early September to catch the flight back to Cincinnati. A detour seemed the absolutely reasonable thing to do. So we did.

The only hitch in the plan was that the girls were being led by an older, shall we say, starchy chaperone of a woman. She and the girls had a separate travel plan that would take them to Sevilla, and when we departed the bus, the chaperone shepperded them along to their next tourist attraction and the three of us went to a cafe and drank beer and plotted. Looking back it seems charming but antiquated that twenty-somethings would require a chaperone, but it added a measure of challenge to the escapade, so overcoming an obstacle would only add to the adventure.    

I can’t remember how we got to Sevilla, but when we arrived, we were able to meet up with a few of the girls who were exploring the city during some free, unstructured, unobserved by Herself the chaperone, time. We drank wine in cafes, ate ham sandwiches on hard rolls, wandered and continued the flirtation. We discovered things about one another and we discovered Gazpacho. So maybe my fondness for the soup is inextricably linked to a fine day and night as a young guy in a new place enchanted by a girl named Jennette, who pronounced “this” and “zees” and “that” as “dat.” 

Our day together ended at dusk as the girls informed us that they had a curfew and had to return to he hotel. They were leaving early the next morning for the Canary Islands. We cajoled, we implored, we begged, all to no avail, so, after some hugs and kisses, we said our goodbyes and exchanged addresses and walked them to their hotel. Tom, Denny and I repaired to a cafe nearby and mourned what could have been and the foul luck to run across fun girls in the grip of a rigid old crone. Then, sometime later, ready to move on, the night growing long, there were giggles around the corner  followed quickly by Jennette and her two friends. It was a jail break. “We snuck out! We just have to sneak back in by dawn!”  

A week later, back in Madrid recuperating after a Moroccan induced bout of intestinal misery, I stood outside the Prado Museum waiting to cross the street. A bus passed and I thought I saw a friend of Jennette’s looking back at me and remembered the group had planned a stop in Madrid after the Canary Islands. My heart lifted and I spent the next two days walking in and out of hotel lobbies looking and asking to no avail. And that was that. Almost. Back in Cincinnati I wrote Jennette a letter telling my story of searching for her in Madrid, wondering if we could pay one another a visit, either in Cincinnati or Montreal. When she wrote back she said she had a boyfriend. It was too complicated, but the day and night in Sevilla were special and she would always remember them. And yes, she had been in Madrid.

It’s reassuring how food can fire the imagination and spark memory. What follows is a recipe for Vichyssoise. There’s a story behind that as well, but I suggest you make it taste it, share it and then I’ll tell.  

  Vichyssoise

 

Ingredients

  • 2 leeks, chopped
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 3/4 cup thinly sliced potatoes
  • 2 1/3 cups chicken stock
  • salt to taste
  • ground black pepper to taste
  • 1 1/8 cups heavy whipping cream

Directions

  1. Gently sweat the chopped leeks and the chopped onion in butter or margarine until soft, about 8 minutes. Do NOT let them brown.
  2. Add potatoes and stock to the saucepan. Salt and pepper to taste; do not overdo them! Bring to the boil, and simmer very gently for 30 minutes.
  3. Puree in a blender or food processor until very smooth. Cool. Gently stir in the cream before serving.
  4. Note: You can subsitute Half & Half for the heavy cream

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