The Wednesday Chef

Anya von Bremzen's Potato Soup with Fried Almonds

I've just checked weather.com and according to the map over there, not a single part of the continental United States has any sun right now. (Darn Hawaii.) So let's all take a collective breath and remember, February is the shortest month of the year for a reason.

It is nasty out there today - New York City's streets have those all-too-familiar rain ponds at every street corner and the wind keeps whipping the rain horizontally, so it sneaks under your flabby umbrella and smacks you (gently) in the face. It's one thing to have velvety snow falling in large clumps and turning a loud city into a muffled wonderland. It's another entirely to wake up to flooded subways and dank, drippy shoes.

If I could, I'd stay home on days like today, baking bread and futzing around the apartment in felted slippers, planning trips to warmer climes. Instead, I've decided to just give myself up to the cold and wet. Such is winter, such is life. Why fight it? It'll be gone before too long. I'm grateful right now that I have pretty pink tulips in a vase to come home to, smooth wooden floors underfoot in the morning that feel so fresh and cool, and pure sunshine in the form of potato soup to warm me.

Sunshine? Potato soup? Come again?

My readers in Germany will probably be as perplexed as I was when I first saw this soup come together. After all, we're used to potato soup being a wan and wintry sort of thing. Flecked with parsley and small discs of hot dogs, Kartoffelsuppe is delicious, no doubt, but not a stunner in the looks department. It's rib-sticking in a way that is absolutely essential in the dark winter months, but I wouldn't exactly call it sultry.

This soup, however? Practically flaunts its hot, sunny curves in a mini-bikini by comparison. This is Spain's answer to that northern stuff. Instead of onions and Wuerstchen, it has garlic and silky Serrano. Instead of pallid milk or cream for thickening, it has toasted almonds pulverized to a chewy grit. Shot through and through with gossamer shards of saffron, ground finely in the palm of your hand, this potato soup is gutsy and brazen. It parades around on peep-toe stilettos, shows off its admirable cleavage, practically throws itself at you.

It is, pardon me, the sexiest soup I've ever eaten.

Make it, and your house, so cold when you first came home, will warm quickly with the scent of fried garlic, toasting almonds, and shreds of Serrano giving up their porky oils to the pan. Eat it, scraping the bottom of the bowl most impolitely, and you'll feel your cheeks flush. The texture is both silky and coarse, and the flavor (the flavor!) is irresistibly complex. I don't think I've enjoyed dinner this much in a long time.

Just watch out: it might make you do things you can't be held responsible for afterwards, like booking a last-minute flight to Barcelona. Such is the power of soup like this. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Potato Soup With Fried Almonds
Serves 4 as an appetizer, or 2 for supper

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup whole blanched almonds
6 large garlic cloves
1/3 cup finely diced Serrano ham
1 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into irregular 1 1/2-inch chunks
4 cups chicken broth
1 pinch saffron, pulverized in a mortar
Salt and pepper
2 teaspoons sherry vinegar (or more to taste)
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. Heat the olive oil in a 3-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the almonds and garlic and cook until golden, 5 minutes. Spoon out the almonds and garlic; reserve. Add the ham to the pan and cook for 1 minute. Add the potatoes and cook for another minute. Pour in the chicken broth and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam that rises to the surface. Reduce the heat and simmer.

2. In a food processor, grind the almonds and garlic. Add all but 2 tablespoons to the soup. Steep the saffron in a few tablespoons of the soup broth for 2 minutes; then add to the soup. Season with salt and pepper and cook until about half the potatoes have disintegrated, about 35 minutes. Skim the soup regularly.

3. Using the back of a spoon, crush some of the potatoes to thicken the soup. Add the vinegar to the reserved garlic mixture and stir it into the soup. Add the parsley. Cook for a minute. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Marcella Hazan's Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup

More patience.

Less anxiety.

More seizing-the-day, more exploration, more adventure.

Less routine, less ruts.

Oh, and more vegetables.

* * *

New year, new resolutions. Every January rolls around and I feel mildly twitchy and on edge about any number of things I'm meant to be improving Right Now (the state of my cuticles, the number of times a week I find myself gyrating to a hopped-up 80's music in a class full of other Spandex-clad ladies, the amount of letters I hand-write to my acquaintances, and my determination to make this year the year I finally join a choir).

I try not to get too caught up in the clean slate, fresh page thing, but it's hard. After a month of excess - too many truffles from gift baskets at the office, too much alcohol from one too many holiday parties, too many heavy meals that mark each celebration at the end of the year - it seems a given that January become an ascetic month. Early-to-bed, early-to-rise, frequent visits to the gym, main-course meals made of nothing but plants, and wholesale rejection of anything sweet... oh, it's all so dour.

(Except that while I was in Brussels with my family, eating meal after meal of amazing vegetables (my Sicilian uncle, man, he has his sources - boiled broccoli rabe, braised artichokes (every day!) filled with seasoned breadcrumbs, tender slices of raw fennel, and spunky little puntarelle (which sparked a discussion about the various kinds of endive/chicory were best and things got a little heated, I won't lie, because people have their favorites and you can't go around impugning someone's favorite green, you really can't), just to name a few, I realized that, if vegetables are as delicious as the things I ate there, it's not exactly deprivation.)

(Swear to God and I hope that doesn't make me a total nerd.)

(Tragically, and somewhat predictably, the fare available to me at my local Key Foods, and (to be honest) even at the somewhat more upscale organic grocer in my neighborhood is a pale, pale comparison to the tasty shoots and leaves we ate in Europe. Everything there was sweeter, greener, more tender, more flavorful. Why? I don't know. It just was. And I promise it's not because someone else was cooking either.)

(Okay, enough of this.)

In Berlin last week, I appalled some friends by admitting that Ben and I routinely polish off an entire head of cabbage in one sitting. I was thinking, specifically, of Marco Canora's braised cabbage, but then the other night, fueled by Marcella Hazan's urging and my determination (my trousers, they are snug), I turned an entire head of Savoy cabbage into soup and - zing! - it was gone in a minute. Hey, presto! Think of it as my version of the cabbage soup diet. (Ba-da bing.)

It's so much richer, though, and delicious than it sounds. You shred cabbage and braise it within an inch of its life with a bit of vinegar (a Venetian treatment, this is). Then you take the whole lot of it (I know, it's rather wan. But so tasty!) and boil it with broth and rice into a soupy, sludgy stew. You beat butter and Parmesan into it, kind of like with risotto, let it sit for a few minutes and then you eat it.

It fulfills quite a few January requirements - some low, slow cooking; a goodly amount of vegetables and just a wee bit of fat; and has the stick-to-your-ribs quality that you simply need when the wind howls around the corners and your pipes threaten to freeze. It's not much to look at, that's true, but who said January was pretty, anyhow?

Rice and Smothered Cabbage Soup
Serves 2 if that's all you're having for dinner

Smothered Cabbage:

2 pounds Savoy cabbage
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon wine vinegar

1. Detach and discard the first few outer leaves of the cabbage. Shred the remaining head of cabbage very fine, either with your food processor's shredding attachment or by hand. Be sure to remove the cabbage's inner core.

2. Put the onion and olive oil and a large saute pan and turn the heat to medium. Cook the onion, stirring, until it's softened and taken on some color. Then add the garlic. When the garlic has turned a pale gold, add the shredded cabbage. Turn the cabbage over 2 or 3 times to coat it well, and cook it until it has wilted.

3. Add salt, pepper, and the vinegar to the pan. Turn the cabbage over once, completely, then lower the heat to minimum and cover the pan tightly. Cook for at least 1 1/2 hours, or until it is very tender, stirring from time to time. Add 2 tablespoons of water, if needed, during the cooking if the cabbage becomes too dry. When done, taste and add salt and pepper to taste, if needed. Allow it to settle a few minutes off heat before serving.

Soup:

The smothered cabbage
3 cups homemade meat broth or 1 cup canned beef broth diluted with 2 cups of water or 1 1/2 bouillon cubes dissolved in 3 cups of water
2/3 cup Arborio rice
2 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1. Put the cabbage and broth into a soup pot, and turn on the heat to medium.

2. When the broth comes to a boil, add the rice. Cook, uncovered, adjusting the heat so that the soup bubbles at a slow but steady boil, stirring from time to time until the rice is done. It must be tender, but firm to the bite, and should take around 20 minutes. If while the rice is cooking, you find the soup becoming too thick dilute it with a ladleful of homemade broth or water. The soup should be on the dense-ish side when finished.

3. When the rice is done, before turning off the heat, stir in the butter and the grated cheese. Taste and correct for salt and pepper. Ladle the soup into individual plates and allow it to settle a few minutes before serving.

Amanda Hesser's Zucchini Soup

Hello, hello, it's me, I'm back; though, of course, I wasn't really gone, just swept up in a whirlwind of work, dinners out every night, and get-togethers with out-of-town friends in for their biannual visits to this city of ours. The company was, every night, more memorable than the meal, except for a plate of spaghetti with baby clams at a hidden gem on 13th Street, Trattoria Maurizio, that tasted as good as the stuff does when I'm in Italy (also of note, an appetizer of braised artichokes with delicate, quenelle-shaped mozzarelline). But for the most part, what kept me fed were the stories and laughs from my friends.

After a week of restaurant meals, there's nothing I love better than getting back into the kitchen. Last night, we roasted a baking sheet full of tomatoes, peppers, leeks and garlic into a sweet, stewy mess and sauced a tangle of spaghetti with it. Afterwards, we sank into the soft couch and ate squares of bitter chocolate while watching six-year-old episodes of 24 (we've just gotten started and I'm both totally hooked and completely annoyed). Dolce far niente, for sure.

Today a fierce wind buffeted the puffy clouds encircling the sky here and swept one of my Danish placemats clean off the balcony table just before lunch. Ben, ever the hero, zipped downstairs and found the placemat, improbably blowing down the street straight towards him. We moved our lunch operations indoors after that - two bowls of hot, green soup, both sweet and peppery, brightened with a squeeze of lime juice. We dragged crusty bread through the dregs of the soup at the bottom of our bowls, the crispy crust softening just a bit.

Amanda calls this zucchini soup, but it almost reminded me of a stronger-flavored potage St-Germain, that sweet, Gallic lettuce-and-pea soup that tastes so perfect when spring is just emerging and you see life exploding greenly out of every corner. The lemon juice (or lime, if that's what you've got) is essential, of course, in elevating this soup from muddiness to sprightliness. It would help, too, if you didn't make this in a food processor, because a blender's the only thing that can actually liquefy all that cellulose into something creamy and smooth. If you don't have a choice because, like us, you don't own a blender (ridiculous, I know, but I'll remedy it soon, which reminds me, readers, to ask for your recommendations ), just know that your soup will be a little...grainy and textured. It's not awful, not at all, but it's not how it's supposed to be.

An ascetic, little, home-cooked lunch was just what we needed to prepare us for tonight - our first excursion to Sripraphai, a trip at least five years overdue and not to be put off now that we live within minutes of the place. And in a few days, my mother arrives, coming to bless the place with her presence, at least for me, to teach me just exactly how to get stains out of the tablecloth, help us explore the neighborhood, and sit on the couch in all her mamma-ness, smelling just like she always does. I can't wait.

Zucchini Soup
Serves 4 to 6

1 clove garlic, peeled and smashed
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
1 small dried chile de arbol, finely sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound zucchini, in 1/2-inch slices
2 cups hot chicken broth
1 cup frozen peas (or, an entire package, if you're me)
6 to 8 ounces watercress, stems trimmed
Salt
Juice of 1/2 lemon, or to taste
10 basil leaves, torn into small pieces
Freshly ground black pepper or grains of paradise

1. In a large pan, combine the garlic, onion, chile and olive oil. Place over medium heat and saute until onion is soft, about 5 minutes. Add zucchini, broth and 2 cups hot water. Bring to a simmer, and cook until zucchini is almost soft. Add peas, simmer for 1 minute, add watercress and remove from heat. Season with salt to taste.

2. Allow soup to cool slightly. Working in batches, transfer soup to a blender (do not fill container more than halfway) and, holding onto lid tightly with a dish towel, puree until very smooth; begin at low speed and gradually increase to high.

3. Season soup with lemon juice and adjust salt to taste. Stir in basil and ladle into soup bowls. Sprinkle with pepper or grains of paradise and olive oil to taste, and serve.

Bill Telepan's Tomato Bread Soup

This is urgent, everyone, pay attention. I'm going to be forced to be bossy - it's that serious a situation. It's Wednesday, right? That must mean that there's a farmer's market in your area. If there's not, I send condolences and prayers for strength, as you'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'm just so sorry. The rest of you, put down what you're doing and get yourself to the market right now. Before you leave, jot down a shopping list:

-three pounds of plum tomatoes (this, if you're as fortunate as we have been with this ridiculously perfect summer, shouldn't set you back more then four or five dollars)

-a bunch of basil (unless you're lucky enough to have a plant of it growing on your fire escape or balcony or backyard garden)

-sourdough bread

-ricotta salata (if you've got a market that sells cheese, that is. You'll have to make a detour, otherwise, to your cheese store. It's okay, it's worth it.)

(You've got the rest - onions, garlic, olive oil, salt - lying around the house already, right? Of course you do.)

Then, clear your schedule for this evening and go home to make this soup - this totally incredible soup that rendered us, and Ben's mother, practically speechless when we first ate it on Monday night. It's as simple as could possibly be - just a bunch of chunked plum tomatoes (ours were so perfect they were deep red and dripping with juice) cooked for an hour with onion and garlic, but then - then! - you stir in cubes of bread and let them simmer in the soup before serving it with little strips of basil and a snow-white grating of ricotta salata, and suddenly you're faced with what has turned out to be the best summer soup you ever ate, I swear it.

Take a cooled spoonful in your mouth (if you can wait long enough for it to cool, that is) - you'll feel the bread, like custard, suspended in the gently silky tomatoes, the basil adding perfume and heaven-sent flavor, the crumbly, dry-ish cheese providing salt and kicky texture.  The whole thing will be exquisite. Swallowing will be tragic - it's one less spoonful you've got to savor. You might swear to never eat anything else ever again.

The recipe comes from Bill Telepan (I can't for the life of me remember its context in the NYT), but his version adds a can of peeled tomatoes. Perhaps, if your plum tomatoes were a bit mealy and less than perfect or if you were making this in winter, I could see why you'd be interested in adding canned ones, but with the glorious specimens available right now? It just seems silly. Also, he says to use stale sourdough and soak the cubes in water before squeezing them by the handful and cooking them in the soup. I'm sure that's fine, but my bread was fresh and it worked perfectly, so you can go either way on this one. Third of all, he says to peel and de-seed your tomatoes. I am far, far too lazy for that kind of behavior, but I am testimony to the fact that it doesn't matter at all - with seeds and peels, this soup is still one of the best things I've cooked all summer.

Okay, that's it, enough reading, off you go. You've got tomatoes to buy and soup to prepare. And if I may offer one more bit of advice, buy twice the amount of tomatoes required. Because when you're standing in front of your stove looking down at an empty soup pot, wondering what could have possessed you to be so generous as to share your meal with the people at your table, you'll feel some relief at the prospect of being able to whip up another batch, right then and there.

Tomato Bread Soup
Serves 3 to 4

3 pounds plum tomatoes
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, minced
3 cloves garlic
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups sourdough bread, without crusts, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup grated ricotta salata
1 tablespoon minced fresh basil leaves

1. Core and quarter plum tomatoes. Place tomatoes in food processor and pulse to chop, but not too fine.

2. Heat oil in 4-quart saucepan. Add onion and garlic and saute until soft, but not browned. Add tomatoes and their juices. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a slow simmer and cook 45 minutes, covered, stirring from time to time.

3. When the soup has simmered for 45 minutes, stir the bread cubes into the soup and simmer for an additional 10 to 15 minutes. Check the seasoning.

4. Serve hot or at room temperature, with grated ricotta salata and minced basil strewn on each serving.

Azizeh Koshki's Chickpea and Chicken Dumplings

Ah, the humble matzo ball. Few can say they do not hold affection for the fluffy bubble floating in its golden pool of fatty broth, even if they didn't have a Jewish grandmother shaping the balls by hand and dropping them gently into a steaming pot of chicken soup at least once a year. I actually had a Jewish grandmother, but I can't remember her ever making these (what I do remember her cooking were odd condensed-tomato-soup-and-noodle casseroles, pretty fantastic briskets, and the best stewed pears in all of human history). So much for that.

Matzo balls are like comfort in a bowl: almost creamy and agreeably bland against the salty chicken soup. In America, they're universally touted as being The Emblem of Jewish Food. But since my own taste memory doesn't lead me down any particular recipe road, I found Joan Nathan's article on Jewish dumplings all the more interesting.

Gundi are dumplings from the Jewish community in Iran and are simple, simple, simple to make. The hardest part will probably be finding chickpea flour (I got mine at Buon Italia, New Yorkers). You pulse some onions in a food processor and then a piece of chicken breast before mixing the mince with an array of Middle Eastern spices and letting the cold, clammy mixture sit for several hours. Chicken soup is brought to a boil, the mixture is formed into little balls and they are simmered for 40 minutes.

While they cook, gundi expand and lighten, going from soggy little balls to puffy yet substantial dumplings. Do not make my mistake and use Better Than Bouillon as your chicken soup. It's fine if used in small amounts for making a sauce or deglazing a pan. But in this case, where chicken soup really has a starring role, make your own. Otherwise you won't really be able to taste anything besides SALT, SALT and more SALT. Also, as the start to a holiday dinner, these would be tasty and interesting (who doesn't like talking about the Jewish Diaspora? Well, you might not, but your Uncle Hi will be impressed for sure). As The Only Thing For Dinner on a ho-hum Tuesday night? A little gundi overkill.

But anyway. We sprinkled chopped parsley and mint over the soup, slurped up the exotic dumplings and a lot of cooling water, and felt a little closer to our (sort of) Jewish brethren very, very far away.

Chickpea and Chicken Dumplings (Gundi)
Makes 8 servings

4 medium onions, peeled and quartered
½ pound skinless, boneless chicken breast
8 ounces (about 2¼ cups) chickpea flour
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
¼ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon cardamom, or to taste
½ teaspoon cumin
4 quarts chicken soup
Handful each of finely chopped basil, parsley, mint and cilantro

1. Using a food processor with a steel blade, pulse onions until finely chopped. Transfer to a bowl and set aside. Pulse chicken until it has the consistency of ground meat.

2. Combine onions and chickpea flour in a bowl and mix well with hands. Add chicken, oil, salt, pepper, turmeric, cardamom and cumin. Mix well, adding a bit of water if needed, to make a dough about the consistency of meatballs. Refrigerate until well-chilled, about 3 hours.

3. Dip hands in cold water and divide mixture into 16 portions. Shape into balls about 2 inches in diameter. Bring soup to boil. Gently add dumplings one at a time and simmer, covered, for 40 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, toss together basil, parsley, mint and cilantro.

4. Ladle soup and dumplings into serving bowls, and sprinkle with mixed herbs.

Maggie Barrett's Ribollita di Luana

After the excesses of the Thanksgiving table, all I wanted was a light, vegetarian end to our weekend, which is why a big plate of stewed vegetables sounded like the perfect Sunday dinner. But I should probably also note that as I'm nearing the end of The Omnivore's Dilemma, I've become frantically wide-eyed and horrified at the thought of most of the food accessible to me (with the exception of the goods on display at the farmer's market), so eating a pile of vegetables whose origin I (mostly) know just seems so much safer.

For now.

Maggie Barrett's recipe for ribollita (a twice-boiled bread-and-vegetable soup) is a quicker, breadless version of the classic Tuscan dish. Not only is the ingredient list simple and pure, but the preparation is peaceful and I wanted nothing more than a easy cooking experience after a relaxing day of lunching with friends and reading in bed. Sometimes Sunday cooking is about pulling out all the stops, but sometimes it's just about simplicity.

You cook most of the vegetables together in oil until they start to caramelize before throwing in water, tomatoes, the beans and the herbs. Although I halved the recipe (and left out the yellow squash, because yuck), I needed to use the same amount of water, so keep that in mind if you make this yourself. I wonder if the full recipe, cooked as Barrett indicated, would turn out too dry? After an hour of simmering, I added frozen leaf spinach instead of the fresh stuff, but I wouldn't do that again - I'd buy chopped frozen spinach. The leaf stuff is too long.

We drizzled our bowls with olive oil and sprinkled grated Parmigiano on top. We breathed the savory steam in deeply and ate our stew with crusty Portuguese rolls. The long-cooked vegetables were sweet and tender, the beans yielded gently in each mouthful, and the grassy oil complemented the verdant spinach. This isn't the prettiest dish you'll ever make, but it's so satisfying, healthy and warming you'll find yourself making it again and again. It's such good winter food.

Ribollita di Luana
Serves 6 to 8

1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 stalks celery, cut intо 1/3 -inch-thick slices
4 carrots, peeled and sliced intо 1/3 -inch-thick rounds
2 zucchini, halved lengthwise and cut intо 1/3 -inch-thick slices
2 yellow squаsh, halved lengthwise and cut intо 1/3 -inch-thick slices
1/2 fennel bulb, cut intо 1/2 -inch-thick pieces
1/4 savoy cabbage, roughly chopped
2 15-ounce cans cannellini bеans, drained and rinsed
1 14-ounce can peeled whole tоmatоes, drained and divided intо pieces
1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary
1 tablespoon finely chopped sage
1/2 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 bay leaf
1 bunch spinach (about 6 cups), rinsed and roughly chopped
Red-pepper flakes
Extra-virgin olive oil
Parmesan cheese, grated
Crusty bread, optional

1. Heat a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add thе oil. When hot, stir in thе onion, garlic, celery, carrots, zucchini, squash, fennel and cabbage. Season with salt. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Add thе beans, tomatoes, herbs and 2 cups water. Seаson with more salt, thеn gently fold togethеr until combined. Press on thе solids so thеy are submerged in the water. Bring to a boil, then lower thе heat and simmer uncovered for 1 hour. Stir gently only once or twice.

3. Fold in the spinach and simmer 30 minutes more. Remove thе bay leaf. Stir in more salt and red-pepper flakes tо tаste.

4. Ladle the soup into individual serving bowls. Drizzle each with olive oil and sprinkle with grated Parmesan. If you choose, serve with bread.

Julie Powell's Garlic Soup with Poached Eggs

I'm surprised that it's taken me this long to get around to cooking something by Julie Powell (and thereby, of course, Julia Child). I probably don't need to introduce Julie to you lot, but just in case there's a poor soul among my readers who hasn't discovered the side-splitting misadventures of Julie Powell as she cooked her way through Every Single Recipe In Mastering The Art of French Cooking, then stop reading this right now and head on over to settle in for a long day of catch-up.

Several months ago, Julie wrote an article in the NY Times Magazine about a temporary separation she and her husband Eric endured, and the cooking she did in those lonely days to keep herself distracted and fed. Like many of her former bleaders who had read her blog so devotedly they started to think that Julie was a close personal friend, I found myself shocked - just shocked! - that her marriage to her husband was on the rocks. After all, Eric had been just as much a part of the Julie/Julia Project as anything else. He washed dishes selflessly, he made spicy Tex-Mex when neither of them could look at another stick of butter, and he brought Julie to her senses when she wallowed a bit too long in self-pity.

Why, then, would this seemingly perfectly matched pair feel the need to take a break? I couldn't imagine Julie without Eric, perhaps just as Julia couldn't be imagined without Paul. The separation was long over by the time the article went to press, and I felt palpable relief when Julie assured her readers that she and Eric were back together. But the melancholy that Julie described about being alone after a long period of, well, not being alone, stayed with me.

Last night, I was at home by myself, with little appetite to speak of and no energy for grocery shopping. I'd have to make dinner with what was left in the house, and it was precious little, I knew. (Well, there was a full jar of this ridiculous stuff that I brought back from Berlin, but I hadn't stooped to the point where that'd be acceptable for dinner. There have been nights when that would be the case, but last night it wasn't. Thank God.) When I spied Julie's soup recipe, I knew that'd have to be it.

I filled a small pot with the requisite water and pinches of herbs and a spoonful of oil and before long the kitchen filled with a lushly aromatic scent. After the broth had steeped long enough, I drained the clear liquid into a clean pot and pressed all the creamy juice out of the garlic cloves, rendering the broth a milky white. The eggs I had were just two days old (fresh, fresh eggs are key here), and when I cracked them into the hot broth, the whites barely separated. After just a minute of poaching, I spooned the quivering egg and some broth into a bowl, grated Parmigiano on top and settled down to eat my one-bowl meal.

It was like the best-tasting medicine ever, medicine for heartbreak or disillusionment or depression or gluttony. It was warming and soothing, but nourishing, too. You know you're doing something good for your soul when you eat this soup. It wasn't necessarily pretty to look at (in fact, I hope you don't find the picture of that glowing orb of a yolk too gruesome - it was exceedingly difficult to photograph), but it had huge amounts of flavor. And maybe a little bit of magic, too.

Garlic Soup With Poached Eggs
Makes 6 servings

1 head garlic, separated into cloves and peeled
2 teaspoons kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon dried sage
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
4 parsley sprigs
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
6 eggs, as needed
Chopped parsley, for garnish
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Crusty bread, optional.

1. In a large saucepan, combine the garlic, salt, pepper, sage, thyme, bay leaf, parsley sprigs and olive oil. Add 2 quarts of water. Place over high heat and bring to a boil; then reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes.

2. Pour through a fine-meshed strainer into a heatproof bowl, pressing on the garlic to squeeze out as much flavor into the broth as possible. Let cool and then transfer to a covered container and refrigerate until needed.

3. To prepare a serving for one, ladle about 1 1/3 cups of broth into a small saucepan. Place over medium-low heat and bring to a simmer. Carefully break an egg into the broth (do not break the yolk) and poach until the white is just set, about 1 ½ minutes. (It will continue to cook off the heat.) Transfer the egg to a soup bowl and pour the broth gently over it. Garnish with parsley and cheese. If desired, serve with crusty bread.

Celia Barbour's Beautiful Soup

A week in Berlin with my mother ensured that I got my requisite amount of fresh vegetables after being stuck, for the previous week, in a smoke-filled, sunless convention center where Wuerstchen and chocolate bars were the standard fare. But after returning from Berlin this past weekend, I've found that I'm still craving vegetables, especially ones that are transformed into silky, warm versions of themselves. Ah, fall. I'm so glad to see you.

While I was gone, quite a few appealing recipes were published - Garlic sausages with braised lentils! Monkfish-mussel-chorizo stew! Salted caramel mousses! - but for some reason I found myself gravitating towards this simple soup that Celia Barbour touted as her go-to winter fare. I left out the dill because I am not a fan of that feathery, frondy business: it always reminds of a traumatizing moment at the dinner table when I was a child and my father was going through an obsessive Hungarian phase, learning the language and the cuisine, and he made a veal stew that was flecked through and through with those fussy bits of dill and although, when I took a piece in my mouth, my throat just closed up and would not let that veal piece pass, my father insisted that I eat at least four pieces (like he made me do with Brussels sprouts, which I have to come to love, but the same just will not happen with dill, don't even try to convince me of it) and so I had to obey, with tears in my eyes, and yuck, by God, now that I am the master of my own domain, I will not eat the stuff, no way, no how, no sir.

But otherwise, I hacked and chopped and diced away at my pile of fall vegetables (though I have by no means mastered Knife Skills 101 and could care less, really, about the cubed uniformity of root vegetables in soups) and then cooked them into a shockingly bright mixture that miraculously didn't ruin a single article of clothing (I actually debated cooking with no top on, but decided against it... I do have roommates, after all). I put only half of the orange peel and orange juice in the soup, which was the right thing, for my palate at least - the soup is sweet enough with all those beets and tomatoes and butter. In fact, I think lemon juice might have been a better brightener.

Ben and I ate this for dinner (mine topped with plain yogurt, his unadorned) with toasted brown bread and found it a pleasing meal. It's wholesome and nourishing and that color certainly goes a long way towards the whole eating-with-your-eyes business. It won't go in my hall of fame of soups because it lacked something (beans? potatoes? parsley? I don't know) that would immortalize it. And that name, to be honest, sort of gets my goat. But it hit the spot last night, and that is, sometimes, enough.

Beautiful Soup
Yields 6 servings

6 tablespoons butter or 3 tablespoons butter and 3 tablespoons olive oil
3 medium onions, chopped into ½-inch pieces
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 small beets, peeled and cut into ½-inch dice
4 to 5 medium carrots, cut into ½- inch dice
4 stalks celery, cut into ½-inch pieces
½ medium celery root, peeled and cut into ½-inch dice
¾ cup chopped dill
2 quarts beef or chicken stock
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes with their juice
Finely grated zest and juice of 1 orange
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Sour cream, for garnish
Dark whole wheat sour bread or other hearty bread, for serving.

1. Place flameproof casserole or other deep, wide pan over low heat and add butter or butter-oil mixture. When butter has melted, add onion and garlic; sauté until soft but not browned.

2. Increase heat to medium-high and add beets, carrots, celery, celery root and half the dill. Sauté, adjusting heat as needed, until vegetables have released their liquid, dried and start to turn golden but not brown, about 20 minutes.

3. Add stock and tomatoes with their juice, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook until vegetables are soft, about 45 minutes. Add orange zest and juice, and remaining dill. Season with salt and pepper to taste. To serve, ladle into bowls and top each with a dollop of sour cream. Serve with hunks of bread.

Amy Scattergood's Carrot and Pomegranate Soup

After self-medicating with chocolate-toffee cookies (truly a splendid way to pass the weekend), life does seem rosier. The apex of my work hysteria has been scaled, the family crisis in Italy has been defused, and Ben is no longer a hospital-bound invalid. I've also decided to be less of a glutton, so I brought in the remaining cookies to work today, where I've been watching wretchedly as the pile grows smaller and smaller with each passing hour.

Generosity can be such a chore.

In an attempt to defuse the havoc that chocolate-toffee cookies for breakfast, lunch and dinner could be wreaking on my waistline and in order to feed a convalescent Ben something other than chicken broth or dry toast, I decided to make a carrot soup enlivened with pomegranate molasses that Amy Scattergood wrote about last week in her article on cooking for Rosh Hashanah.

It was my first time cooking with pomegranate molasses (found, quite cheaply, at Zabar's yesterday), though I feel like I'm about three years late to the party. Better late than never! What a find. In cooking, pomegranate molasses has the brightening effect that both lemon juice and vinegar have, but with a barely-there shimmer of exotic flavor and sweetness. I can't wait to use more of it.

The soup is quite simple - you cook onions and carrots and pomegranate molasses and cumin (though I substituted 1/2 teaspoon of ground coriander, and could have used even a 1/4 teaspoon more) together until they begin to soften, then you simmer all of it in chicken stock until it's pureeable. I didn't bother straining the soup after I processed it; I just thinned it with the extra stock.

No kosher salt was needed - the chicken broth I use is salty enough - and I left off the molasses drizzle at the end, too. The soup was smooth and delicious, savory and sweet, and with a faintly acidic backnote that really made the carrot flavor pop. The pomegranate seeds on top were pretty to look at, and for a special occasion it might be fun to use them for garnish, but for every day use, I find them a bit too fussy.

It was the kind of Sunday meal, with a heel of crusty bread and a wedge of hard cheese, that I absolutely love: simple but interesting, satisfying and healthy. And as much as I enjoyed my bowl of soup for dinner, it was even better to see Ben eat it with gusto. I'm so glad he's better.

Carrot and Pomegranate Soup
Serves 4 to 6

4 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups coarsely chopped onion
4 cups coarsely chopped carrots
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses, plus extra for garnish
1 teaspoon ground cumin
4 cups chicken stock
3/8 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup pomegranate seeds

1. Heat the olive oil over moderate heat in a large heavy-bottomed stock pot. Add the onion, carrots, pomegranate molasses and cumin. Cover the pot and lower the heat. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Add 3 cups of stock and simmer, covered, until the carrots are very tender, about an hour. Take off the heat and let cool.

3. Purée, in batches if necessary, in a blender, adding the final cup of stock. The purée should be very smooth; if it isn't, you may want to pour the soup through a strainer.

4. Return to the burner and heat through until hot. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Ladle the soup into soup plates, spooning extra pomegranate molasses around the center (about one-half teaspoon per bowl) and sprinkling with pomegranate seeds. Serve immediately.

Leslie Brenner's Arugula and Potato Soup

For some reason, lately, I've been toying with the idea of a fast. Toying is the operative word here, because I'm hypoglycemic and I know intuitively that depriving myself of solid food for 24 or 36 or even 48 hours is a disaster in the making, especially if I'm at all interested in keeping my boyfriend and my girlfriends as slight social acquaintances.

And how does one even go about surviving a day (or two) of fasting? I imagine myself lying prone on my bed, raising my head limply every 15 minutes to drink a slug of some bitter-tasting brewed tea that's steeped with roots and herbs to provide "Vitality!" and "Energy!" and "Rejuvenation!". The room spins and I mostly just want to rip the heads off of the human beings closest to me and eat them for lunch.

That's usually when my fantasy shrivels up and dies, and I go placidly back to chewing on my afternoon cookie, because I (and others) have learned the hard way that not giving myself an afternoon snack is Bad News For Everyone.

What does all this have to do with what I had for dinner last night? Well, I set out to make a simple pureed soup of potatoes boiled in chicken stock with 10 ounces of baby arugula wilted therein, and ended up with something that looked and tasted akin to what I imagine a day of fasting would taste like.

I was expecting something lusher and more deeply flavored, but I got a very thin, watery broth that, except for the droplets of peppery oil on top and the nice, vaguely bitter flavor of the arugula beneath it, didn't taste of much at all. I do have to note that in the midst of immersion blending, my magic wand gave up entirely and spit the blade into the pot, so I was forced to use the food processor, which I'm convinced isn't the right tool for smooth soups. It leaves those disagreeble specks of unprocessed cellulose in whatever you're attempting to blitz into nothingness.

I suppose if you constructed the soup differently, perhaps starting with a leek sauteed in oil, adding the potatoes in chunks - more than 9 ounces, though - to take on some crusty, well-browned flavor, adding the arugula to cook for a while in the chicken broth, and then whizzing the whole thing in a proper blender, you might get a different result.

I paired my bowl of soup with two Wasa crispbreads and a small pile of pickled herring, which I suppose is as close to a fasting regime as I'm going to get these days. Fine with me.

Arugula and Potato Soup
Serves 4

1 carton (1 quart) chicken broth
2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes (about 9 ounces), peeled and sliced
2 (5-ounce) cartons or bags baby arugula
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil (or creme fraiche)

1. Pour the chicken broth into a large saucepan and bring it to a simmer. Add the potatoes and cook, covered, until they are very tender, 20 to 25 minutes.

2. Wash and drain the arugula. Add it to the saucepan. Stir to combine and simmer until the arugula is completely wilted, 1 to 2 minutes.

3. Puree with an immersion blender or in a food processor in one or two batches, transferring each batch to a clean saucepan or warm tureen. Stir in the pepper and swirl in the olive oil or creme fraiche.