Spent a couple of hours last weekend reading through all 35 soup recipes in the book, and found about 15 that my good friend and occasional dining companion, CS, (who claimed not to be big on soup) and I both thought sounded good. Of the other 20 or so, about half are ones I thought sounded pretty good, so I’ll either make those for myself or for other friends (should I, and they, be so brave).
CS and I had dinner plans for Tuesday, and we picked grilled salmon noodle soup for our first soup adventure. However, as we looked at the recipe again the other night and talked about going to the Asian market to buy the necessary ingredients, she decided she’d rather have New England Clam Chowder. Unlike the salmon soup, which the book claimed “can be on the table in about 8 minutes—30 if you’re chatting and enjoying yourself over a glass of wine,” I could tell the clam chowder was going to be a two-night endeavor. So, I made a list of all the ingredients I’d need, and off I went to HyVee after work on Monday so I could make the fish stock and begin preparing the soup a night ahead of time.
After finding the onions, celery, carrots, fresh thyme, and flat leaf parsley in aisle 1, I ran into a friend, GP, who helped me find the leeks in the same aisle. To my great relief, she also strongly encouraged me to buy fish stock (which she said I’d find in the canned soup aisle) instead of trying to make it from scratch my first time out. She recounted having made it herself from scratch, but said I might be better off not trying to do that my first time. To my dismay, however, I found only beef and chicken stock in the canned soup aisle; so, I resumed my search for stock ingredients. After picking up safflower oil, bay leaves, and cracked black pepper, I headed for the seafood counter where I saw shrimp, oysters, salmon, catfish—BUT NO CLAMS! I asked the nice young man behind the counter if he had any clams, and he checked in the back but there were no clams to be found. How can I make clam chowder with no clams? Just then GP came up to the seafood counter, as did another acquaintance, KQ, and both advised me as to possible options: I could make salmon soup (but I didn’t have my salmon soup recipe with me and I couldn’t remember all the ingredients I’d need for that), or I could use oysters or muscles instead of clams (yuck), or I could make catfish soup (again, yuck, and also no recipe). Then WGJ came over and tried in his ever-so-supportive way to be of assistance—why not just use canned clams (but my grocery list called for “quahog clams in the shell”, not canned clams). Why, he wondered, was I trying something so difficult if this was the first time I’d ever tried to make soup? Because that’s what my friend wanted, and I didn’t want to let her down.
As I returned to aisle 1 and began to put the vegetables and other ingredients back where I found them, I called CS, nearly in tears, and told her there were no clams to be had for her clam chowder. Not to worry, she said—just pick up a couple of steaks and we’ll throw them on the grill. We’ll try the soup again next time—either with a simpler one, or on a Saturday or Sunday night when we have more time to shop and prepare a more complex dish.
"Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape." - Michael McGriffy, M.D.
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