“In this dish you may know heaven,” Pablo Neruda wrote in “Ode to Conger Chowder.”
The poem walks readers through how to make the soup in slow, romantic verses. These are not mere instructions, but invitations to bask in the act of cooking:
Now
you take
garlic,
first, caress
that precious
ivory,
smell
its irate fragrance,
then
blend the minced garlic
with onion
and tomato
until the onion
is the color of gold.
If you treat it as such, soup can be one of the most decadent, satisfying and enchanting dishes to make and to consume. It’s often brushed off as a side dish or a way to use up leftover ingredients, but if that’s all you think it is, you’re not doing it right.
As the days start to feel shorter and darker and colder, soup can warm both our bodies and our souls. It can also be a love language: Piece together a loved one’s favorite herbs, vegetables and other ingredients to create a custom concoction and serve it to them.
Soup-making can be cozy, quirky or both. Light a candle as you peel your carrots and measure your cayenne, take in the peacefulness and multisensory nature of this ritual. Or pretend you’re a witch brewing up a potion in your cauldron — cackle as you toss in your white beans and sage, whisper the names of your enemies as you stir.
It’s an excuse to bring people together, too. Around this time each year, I love to host a gathering where each guest brings a different kind of soup and we all spend the evening sampling everyone’s creations.
One of my favorite soups is rasam, a simple but spicy South Indian dish made with tamarind, tomatoes, red chiles and other herbs and spices. Every time I make it now, the memory of my mother feeding it to me when I got sick as a child washes over me like an aroma.
Whatever soup holds history and meaning to you, whatever soup you love or whatever soup you feel like trying out, carve out time to savor it.
The post Make a Soup, Any Soup appeared first on New York Times.
