The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern_ Knockout Dishes With Down-Home Flavor - Matt Lee [27]
Soups don’t have to fit into the Campbell’s range of options, either. Liquefying your favorite ingredients, even ones you don’t expect to find in a soup, like bread to thicken a tomato bisque or lettuce (see our Lettuce Soup), can produce some great results.
We have endeavored to give all the soups here delicious flavor but also a riveting structure: like the spine of acidity in the Chilled Tomato Soup, or the textural contrast in the Creamy Asparagus Soup with Grilled Asparagus, or the satisfying inversion of the Oyster Soup, where the oysters enter each serving bowl first, followed by ladles of hot bisque, which gently cooks them to perfection.
RECIPES
Oyster Soup
Fresh Vegetable Broth
Collard Greens and Winter Roots Soup
Creamy Sweet-Onion Soup
Lettuce Soup
Butternut Squash Soup with Rosemary
White Gazpacho
Chilled Tomato Soup
Creamy Asparagus Soup with Grilled Asparagus
Hominy Stew with Chicken and Chiles
OYSTER SOUP
serves 2 to 4 • TIME: 15 minutes
Oyster stews thick enough to hold a spoon straight up are missing the point: it’s about the oysters, not the cream (and cornstarch or flour or whatever else they use to accomplish this unappetizing feat). Our light bisque uses cream only judiciously—and a splash of white wine and a wisp of nutmeg—so that the briny flavor of the oysters is front and center. Serve it with a side dish of Collard Greens with Poblano Chiles and Chorizo, and a glass of the white wine you used in the soup, for a perfect supper.
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 bunch scallions (6 to 8 scallions), white and green parts thinly sliced and kept separate
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
⅛ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon crushed dried red chile flakes
½ cup Bar Harbor or Look’s Atlantic brand clam juice
½ cup dry white wine, such as Sauvignon Blanc or unoaked Chardonnay
1 pint freshly shucked oysters with their liquor (about 24 pieces), oysters and liquor reserved separately (see Oyster Shopping Notes)
2 cups whole milk
½ cup heavy cream
1 In a 3-quart saucepan or stockpot, melt the butter over medium heat until frothy. Add the sliced white parts of the scallions and the salt, nutmeg, and chile flakes. Sauté, stirring, until the scallions are fragrant and translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the clam juice, wine, and oyster liquor, and continue to cook until the liquid is reduced by half, about 6 minutes. Add the milk and the cream and cook until the soup just steams, to avoid separation.
2 Divide the oysters among 4 warm bowls. Remove the hot soup from the stove and ladle it directly over the raw oysters in their bowls. Shower with the scallion greens and serve.
garnish it smoky
•••
Smoke-cured ham is a superb garnish for this soup. Sprinkle some diced-up golden-browned slab bacon or paper-thin shavings of uncooked country ham or prosciutto on the surface of the soup just before serving.
FRESH VEGETABLE BROTH
makes 1 quart • TIME: 10 minutes
When there are decent brands of vegetable broth on the market, making your own would seem as crazy as blowing your own lightbulbs or fashioning paper clips out of a spool of wire. Do us a favor and try it just once. You’ll be blown away by the bright, fresh vegetable flavor this raw juice adds when you start a soup, risotto, or grits with it. Our no-cook recipe isn’t complicated: to a bunch of fresh celery, we add 2 pounds watery vegetables such as tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, radishes, turnips, or tomatillos—whatever you happen to have on hand—plus any small amounts of other nonwatery vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, and winter squash, or crisp herbs like dill and parsley that are still alive in your fridge (we avoid dry, fibrous veggies like eggplant or summer squash). You buzz them all up in a food processor with 2 cups of water and strain it, and the resulting juice has a natural