Garlic is a Spice

In the Middle Ages, the term spices was applied to all costly goods (except gems) imported to Europe from the East, and extended to items no longer commonly called spices, such as dyes, drugs, perfumes, textile fibers, aphrodisiacs, and sugar, as well as what we today call spices, like pepper (meaning peppercorns), cardamom, ginger, turmeric, various herbs, the chilies (newly arrived from America), garlic (called the peasant’s theriaca by the thirteenth-century doctor Arnold of Vilanova), and saffron, a true luxury.

Garlic is a spice, yet even though its history in the Mediterranean is very old, the mad desire of Europeans for the exotic spices of the East led them to overlook garlic. Europeans traded gold and silver for the spices of the East, a fact that displeased kings and finance ministers, who thought it a poor trade. Ferdinand of Spain tried to stop the importing of cinnamon and pepper in exchange for silver by saying, “Buena especia es el ajo” (Garlic is a perfectly good spice). However, popular opinion held that garlic “sempre è cibo rusticano” (always is a peasant food), although with the right preparation it could become gentlemen’s food. Perhaps garlic is the “plant of civilization.” It enlivens food.

In the meantime, try this garlic soup. More garlic soups are in my latest book Best Soups in the World.

Tuscan White Bean Soup

This smooth soup or velouté is the height of simplicity nevertheless any diner eating it will ask you for the recipe because its taste is soothing and delicious. You can find this recipe and a couple of hundreds more in my new book The Best Soups in the World. Tuscans favor a variety of small white navy beans, called cannellini beans, and use them to make a thicker version of this soup into a spread for crostini (toast points) as an antipasto. If you leave the carrot out, the soup will be whiter.
1 cup (1/2 pound) dried white beans
1 leafy sprig fresh sage
Salt to taste
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 small carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped fennel bulb (optional)
For the garnish (choose 1)
Twelve 1-inch squares thinly sliced pancetta, cooked until crispy
1 cup croûtons, fried in olive oil until golden
1/2 cup cooked tiny shrimp
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley
1. Place the beans in a pot with 1 sprig sage and cover with water by several inches, but first pull off two leaves of sage from the sprig and set aside for later. Bring to a boil over high heat, salt lightly, and then cook at a boil until tender, about 1 1/2 hours, replenishing the water when necessary.
2. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat, then cook, stirring, the onion, garlic, celery, carrot, and fennel, if using, until soft, about 6 minutes.
3. Drain the beans, saving 4 cups of the cooking liquid. Place the beans in a blender with the vegetables from the skillet and 4 cups of the cooking liquid. Blend until smooth. Transfer to a clean pot, add the 2 leaves of sage, and turn the heat to low. Cook until bubbling and hot, about 5 minutes. Serve hot with one of the garnishes.
Makes 4 servings

Soups from the Mediterranean

Paparòt is an interesting spinach soup from Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the region of northeastern Italy, and is far more exciting than its humble list of ingredients would indicate. It’s a spinach soup made with fine cornmeal flour used as a thickening agent. Paparòt, in the dialect of Friuli, means “pulped” used as a noun (in other words “pulped soup”) and indicates that the spinach is treated like a pesto but is pulped by chopping rather than pounding in a mortar. The kind of cornmeal to use is the one used for polenta, and I prefer the slightly coarser one because I enjoy the resulting gruel-like texture. The taste is surprisingly rich and filling.

The recipe is in my latest book THE BEST SOUPS IN THE WORLD

Soups of Morocco

Harīra (ﺣﺮﻳﺮﺔ)is a traditional soup made in Morocco to observe the breaking of the daily fast during Ramadan, the ninth and holiest month of the Muslim calendar that celebrates the first revelation of the Quran. The soup itself is originally a Berber dish, also known in Algeria. In fact, in tenth-century Tunisia the soup known as samāsāhiyya was a synonym for harīra.

There are many variations of this soup, not only because there are many families, and many different families of different economic classes, but also because the Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar and Ramadan falls during different months of the year so the seasonality of ingredients changes. A summer Ramadan soup will be different from a winter Ramadan soup. Moroccans make this particular harīra when Ramadan falls between October and December. The first decision you have to make is if you want a version with meat or not. Both the meatless and the meat version are traditional. The cooking should be slow and long.

Harīra exists throughout the Maghrib, but it is this Moroccan version that seems to be the most famous.
Traditionally one eats dates and elaborate honey cakes called shabā’k (or shabā’kiyya) or mahalkra with the soup. Some cooks add pasta or rice, chicken liver or gizzards, dried fava beans, or yeast (in which case the flour mixture in Step 4 is not used) in addition to the elements below. Or rare spices such boldo (Peumus boldus syn. Boldea fragrans, Peumus fragrans) called balduh al-faghiya in Arabic, the berry of a slow-growing evergreen in Morocco that is used in place of caraway. The tomato mixture in Step 2 and the flour and water mixture used in Step 4 is known as the tadawīra in Morocco. Great souvenirs to bring back from Morocco are the little earthenware soup bowls used to eat harīra.

Soups in Morocco tend to be supper dishes, heavy and filling, and not as a first course. In Morocco, when one encounters a soup served as a first course that is most likely a French influence.

You can read more about Ḥarīra and find the recipe in my new book THE BEST SOUPS IN THE WORLD to be published in December by Wiley.

Good Cookbooks Teach How to Cook

Although I teach cooking classes and people seem to love them, I will tell the students that one of the best ways to learn to cook is by using cookbooks. They don't have to be beginner cookbooks (very few of exist). I also don't recommend chef/restaurant cookbooks because they are not appropriate for the home cook (most of them anyway). I usually recommend books that provide a certain cultural perspective on the type of cuisine someone is interested in. Right now, there is a resurgence in interest in classic French cuisine as a result of the popularity of the movie JULIA & JULIE and bookstores report a rise in sales of Julia Child's classic MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING. But there are other more manageable cookbooks for the home cook interested in French home cooking such as Richard Olney's SIMPLE FRENCH COOKING, any of Patricia Wells' books, Michael Robert's PARISIAN HOME COOKING, or Martha Rose Shulman's PROVENCAL LIGHT. The reason a cookbook is a good place to start is not merely because it provides "ideas" but because a good cookbook will give you the essence and confidence necessary for the understanding required to cook from a particular cuisine. You do it over and over and suddenly you will actually be able to tell someone the difference between the food of Normandy and the food of Provence. You will get not only ideas but the IDEA. I try to write cookbooks like this and my next book out in December, THE BEST SOUPS IN THE WORLD, will give you the introduction to a world of delicious soups.

Soupe au Pistou

This famous soup from Provence is literally “soup with pesto.” But, oh my, how much more it is than that. Rich with vegetables in the late spring and summer it’s one of the most satisfying of soups. And that dollop of pesto is what truly makes the soup remarkable and so much more than vegetable soup. Pistou is the Provençal word for “pounded” derived, just as the pesto of Liguria, from the Latin pestare, meaning the same. In fact, pesto and pistou, are more or less the same thing, a condiment of pounded basil, pine nuts, garlic, and olive oil. One of the earliest descriptions we have of something similar comes from the Roman poet Virgil who writes in verse in his Ecolgue II,
“now even the cattle court the cooling shade
And the green lizard hides him in the thorn:
Now for tired mowers, with the fierce heat spent,
Pounds Thestilis her mess of savory herbs, wild thyme and
garlic.”
You will find a recipe in my new book THE BEST SOUPS IN THE WORLD, forthcoming in December published by Wiley.

[Photo: Clifford A. Wright]