French Provincial Cooking (36 page)

Disliking cauliflower cooked in its more ordinary ways, I find this soup a very satisfactory method of dealing with this vegetable, its normal coarse flavour and soggy texture being transformed into a delicate and smooth cream.

The white part of 2 leeks,
lb. tomatoes,
lb. of potatoes, 1
oz. butter, a little cream, chervil or parsley.

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan; before it has bubbled put in the finely sliced leeks; let them just soften in the butter. Half the success of the soup depends upon this first operation. If the butter burns or the leeks brown instead of just melting the flavour will be spoilt.

Add the roughly chopped tomatoes; again let them cook until they start to give out their juice. Add the peeled and diced potato, a seasoning of salt and two lumps of sugar. Cover with 1
pints of water. After the soup comes to the boil let it simmer steadily but not too fast for 25 minutes. Put it through the food mill, twice if necessary. Return the purée to the rinsed-out saucepan. When it is hot, add about 4 oz. of cream. In warm weather it is advisable to first bring this to the boil, as if it is not quite fresh it is liable to curdle when it makes contact with the acid of the tomatoes. Immediately before serving stir in a little chervil or very finely chopped parsley. Enough for four good helpings.

For all its simplicity and cheapness this is a lovely soup, in which you taste butter, cream and each vegetable, and personally I think it would be a mistake to add anything to it in the way of individual fantasies. It should not, however, be thicker than thin cream, and if it has come out too solid the addition of a little milk or water will do no harm.

The chef’s soup known as
potage Solférino
is based on this purée of tomatoes, leeks and potatoes but is complicated, needlessly to my mind, with a final addition of little pieces of french beans and tiny marbles of potatoes scooped from large ones with a special implement.

A richer version of the potato and watercress soups found in household cookery all over France.

Peel 1 lb. of potatoes and cut them into even sizes but not too small, or they will become watery. Even so elementary a dish as potato soup is all the better for attention to the small details. Boil them in 2
pints of salted water, adding the stalks of a bunch of watercress. Keep the leaves for later. As soon as the potatoes are quite soft, after about 25 minutes, sieve the whole contents of the pan through the food mill, using the medium mesh.Mix a tablespoon of rice flour
(crème de riz
) or potato flour
(fécule)
to a paste with a little of the soup; add this to the rest, heat gently, and simmer for 25 minutes; sieve again, this time through the fine mesh. The result should be quite a smooth cream, more cohered than the usual potato soup in which the potatoes always tend to separate from the liquid. Before serving add a pinch of nutmeg, about 2 tablespoons of the finely chopped watercress leaves and a good measure of cream, say about
pint. The result is a soup of the delicate colouring and creamy texture of so many of the dishes which charmed me when I first experienced French cooking with a Norman family. Plenty for four.

lb. carrots, 1 large potato, 1 shallot or half a small onion, 1 oz. butter, 1 pint veal, chicken or vegetable stock, or water if no stock is available, seasoning, parsley and chervil if possible.

Scrape the carrots, shred them on a coarse grater, put them together with the chopped shallot and the peeled and diced potato in a thick pan with the melted butter. Season with salt, pepper, a scrap of sugar. Cover the pan, and leave over a very low flame for about 15 minutes, until the carrots have almost melted to a purée. Pour over the stock, and simmer another 15 minutes. Sieve, return the purée to the pan, see that the seasoning is correct, add a little chopped parsley and some leaves of chervil. Enough for three.

Sometimes boiled rice is served separately with Crécy soup, which makes it pretty substantial. Fried breadcrumbs or small dice of fried potatoes are alternatives.

This is a slight variation of the above recipe, and made in a larger quantity.

Prepare 1 lb. of carrots, 4 medium-sized potatoes and 2 chopped shallots as for the previous soup, and stew them in 1
oz. butter in the same way. Add salt and 2 small lumps of sugar. Add 2 pints of stock, or half stock and half water. Cook until carrots and potatoes are quite soft and then sieve them or purée them in the blender. Do not make too smooth a purée; there should be perceptible little pieces of vegetable in the soup.

Return the soup to the saucepan, heat it up, and if it is too thick add more stock or water; taste for seasoning; stir in a good large lump of butter (its very buttery flavour is part of the charm of this soup) and some very, very finely chopped parsley. This will serve six people.

For both these soups it is of course important to have very good quality carrots, and both the taste and the colour of the soup will depend on this, and will vary accordingly. Young carrots will give a clear bright orange colour and a sweet flavour; later in the season the full-grown carrots will give a yellow soup and will probably need more sugar in the seasoning. The little stumpy French carrots called
carottes nantaises demi-longues
have an intense flavour all their own; but when carrots are old and cracked and woody in the centre they will not make a good soup at all, so it is not worth spending the time and the trouble on it.

The consistency of the soup depends to a certain extent upon the quality of the potatoes, which makes it almost impossible to give an exact quantity for the stock.

This old-fashioned French soup is the cheapest and one of the nicest of all vegetable soups.

1 lb. potatoes, 3 carrots, 2 large leeks, 1
oz. butter, 2 pints water, seasoning. To finish the soup, a little cream, parsley, or chervil when available.