Huett Annika - Love soup : 160 all-new vegetarian recipes from the author of The Vegetarian Epicure

love soup

160 ALL-NEW VEGETARIAN RECIPES

from the author of The Vegetarian Epicure

anna thomas

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANNIKA HUETT

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

The Vegetarian Epicure

The Vegetarian Epicure, Book Two

The New Vegetarian Epicure: Menus for Family and Friends

Copyright 2009 by Independent Productions, Inc.

Illustrations copyright 2009 by Annika Huett

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

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write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

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Manufacturing by Courier Westford

Book design by Studio 421

Production manager: Devon Zahn

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thomas, Anna.

Love soup : 160 all-new vegetarian recipes from the author of The Vegetarian Epicure / Anna Thomas ; illustrations by Annika Huett.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-393-06479-7 (hardcover)ISBN 978-0-393-33257-5 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-393-34758-6 (e-book)

1. Soups. 2. Vegetarian cookery. I. Title.

TX757.T47 2009

641.5'636dc22

2009019632

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

To the farmers

And to all the workers who labor
in the fields and the orchards

Thank you! Gracias!

To make the book vegan-friendly (and heres a shout-out to my two vegan sons), vegan recipes are indicated with a V in the table of contents. This designation includes recipes that are entirely vegan and those that are vegan up to the point of the garnish.

contents

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HOW I LEARNED TO COOK

I grew up in an immigrant family, passing my childhood in a leafy neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan, where all the kids I ran around with in the backyards and streets yelled in English and all the families who came into our house spoke Polish. This felt entirely normal to me.

In the kitchen of the sturdy brick house my father built, cooking was always going on. My mother made stuffed cabbage rolls, mushroom pierogi with beet broth, cucumber salads drenched in sour cream and dill, cottage cheese dumplings, a hunters stew full of sausage and sauerkraut, thin buttery pancakesand Old World soups: krupnik, barszcz, and chlodnik, soups that were eaten with slabs of dark bread smeared with more butter. There were many family gatherings, and they were always at home. I dont remember eating in a restaurant until we moved to California, when I was ten, making the great trek across the country in a station wagon and stopping at roadside cafes.

I didnt start cooking until I left home to go to college and had to learn to live on my own. What I didnt realize then was that I had already learned something primal in the kitchen in Michigan. I knew that taking simple, fresh ingredients into a kitchen and turning them into a nourishing meal was part of the natural rhythm of life. I couldnt cook yet, but home cooking was already part of me.

Scraping by on student loans and dreadful jobs, I made food for myself and my college friends and taught myself to be a pretty good home cook. I was moving away from meat then, but the vegetarian culture of that timethe self-denying schooldid not appeal to me. I wanted food to be pleasure as well as nourishment, and so I began to develop my own style. And then I wrote a book. What audacity!

The Vegetarian Epicure would change my life. Blithe and fearless as only someone so young can be, I sent off a manuscript to New York, a foreign land, and turned my attention back to my film classes. To my amazement, the book was publishedand then sold and sold. It turned out that there were many other people who had stopped eating meat, but had not stopped eating .

I had written about the things that I liked: food that drew on tradition but was not bound by it, vegetarian food that tasted real and didnt try to imitate anything else, food that wasnt apologetic but was fresh and delicious. That just seemed sensible to me; I had no idea it was revolutionary.

The revolution for me was that I could quit my job as a waitress and finish my student films. Many years later, when I was at a book-signing party for my third cookbook, a man about my age came up to me and said, I bought your first book when it was published in the seventies. You helped me get through college, and I want to thank you. I shook his hand and replied, I want to thank you. You helped me get through college, so were even.

When I left university I worked in film and I traveled; I ate and drank my way through great cities and tiny villages. In Italy I discovered pappa al pomodoro and Tuscan bean soups, and in Greece avgolemono. In Lisbon I ate a bowl of caldo verde, the famous peasant soup of kale and potatoes. I remember it distinctly. Years later it was the influence for my Green Soup. In France I got a Ph.D. in sorrel soups. I married a Mexican American and spent time in Mexico, honing my taste for the pre-Columbian flavors of chiles, chocolate, corn, and black beans.

Cooking was always fun. I never cooked professionally, so I always cooked only what I felt like cooking, for the people I loved. And the more I learned, the more my cooking moved in the direction of simple, vibrant foods made from fresh, local ingredients. Canned and processed foods played a very small part in my kitchen. Farmers markets drew me like magnets. I wanted food that had history but also a future.