Ruhlman's Twenty (35 page)

I could have made any number of clear soups because the method used here is infinitely variable. Use any kind of sausage you like: bratwurst; spicy sausage; lamb, chicken, or pork sausage; or a smoked sausage such as kielbasa. You could replace the sausage with chicken, and cooked white beans could be used as a garnish to add more heft to the soup. For a corn tortilla soup, cook corn and garlic, season heavily with lime, and finish with chunks of avocado, cilantro/fresh coriander, and fried corn tortillas. Replace the sausage with mushrooms and the chicken stock with vegetable stock for a vegetarian soup. If you want a very lean wonton soup, substitute scallions for the onions, sauté along with garlic and ginger, and add stock and cook to infuse the stock with the aromatics. Then strain the resulting broth into a clean pan, add wontons, and finish with finely sliced scallion.

I accompany this soup with a baguette. If you like, you can garnish it with croutons made by sautéing cut-up day-old bread in olive oil until crisp.

1 large onion, cut into small or medium dice

1 tablespoon minced garlic

Canola oil as needed

Kosher salt

4 cups/960 milliliters
Easy Chicken Stock

1 pound/455 grams sausage, browned in a frying pan or roasted at 325°F/165°C for 10 minutes, cut in chunks

½ pound/225 grams escarole/Batavian endive, cut crosswise into ½-inch/12-millimeter ribbons

2 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced

1 tablespoon fish sauce

2 teaspoons lemon juice or white wine vinegar, or as needed

Cayenne pepper (optional)

1 baguette, whole or split, toasted

Olive oil

In a large saucepan, sweat the onion and garlic in just enough canola oil to coat them. Season with a three-finger pinch of salt. When the vegetables have softened, add the stock and bring to a simmer. Add the sausage, greens, tomatoes, fish sauce, and lemon juice and cook just until the greens are wilted. Taste and adjust the seasonings with lemon, salt, or fish sauce, and some cayenne, if you wish.

Brush the toasted baguette with olive oil and lightly sprinkle with salt. Serve the soup with the baguette.

Traditional thick, creamy soups like this one use a roux-thickened base of stock or milk (a béchamel) and are flavored by the main ingredient, which can be anything from broccoli to celery root to pumpkin. These soups are economical, easy, and enormously satisfying. Following the method here, you can replace the celery root with cauliflower, potato, parsnip, turnip, or carrot. To make a creamy green vegetable soup, use asparagus, broccoli, or another vegetable and substitute chicken or vegetable stock for the milk, creating what’s called a velouté (vuh-LOO-tay) rather than a béchamel.

3 tablespoons all-purpose/plain flour

5 tablespoons/70 grams butter

1 medium onion, cut into small dice

3 cups/720 milliliters milk

Kosher salt

1 pound/455 grams celery root, three-fourths cut into a large dice, the remainder cut into a small dice for garnish

1/3 cup/75 milliliters heavy/double cream

Lemon juice or white wine vinegar

Optional garnishes: fresh parsley,
Brown Butter

In a large saucepan, cook the flour and butter over medium heat until the flour takes on lightly baked aroma. Add the onion and cook until soft. Add the milk and bring to a simmer, whisking to disperse the flour. Season with a three-finger pinch of salt. When the béchamel has thickened, add the large pieces of celery root and cook until tender, 10 to 15 minutes.

Purée the soup in a blender, leaving the blender cap off and covering the blender with a kitchen towel. Otherwise the soup can explode out of the blender and make a scalding mess. Pour the soup through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean saucepan. Taste and add more salt if needed. The soup can be refrigerated for up to 2 days.

In a small saucepan, simmer the small pieces of celery root in water to cover until tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Drain and put on paper towels/absorbent paper.

Return the soup to a simmer. Stir in the cream. Add 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Stir and taste, then add more if necessary.

Reheat the celery root garnish in a pan or in a microwave. Divide the garnish among bowls. Ladle the soup over the garnish, top with the optional garnishes if desired, and serve.

Boiling and shocking green vegetables is a great way to ensure they have vivid color and are perfectly cooked when you need them. Purée those perfectly cooked and chilled vegetables until they can pass through a strainer, and you’ve got a delicious soup. This is a wonderful summer soup to serve when snap peas are hanging on the vine. In the winter, use the same technique to make warm broccoli soup. Reheat the soup and whisk a little butter into it, season with lemon, and garnish with blanched broccoli florets.

8 cups/2 liters water

¼ cup/55 grams kosher salt, plus ½ teaspoon and more as needed

1 pound/455 grams snap peas

12 large mint leaves

Ice cubes

1 tablespoon honey

Lemon juice

Optional garnishes: 1 cup/ 115 grams blanched and shocked peas, dollops of crème fraîche, a few drops of truffle oil

In a large pot, combine the water and the ¼ cup/55 grams salt and bring to a boil. Boil the snap peas until tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the mint leaves and immediately drain the peas. Transfer the peas and mint to an
ice bath
and stir occasionally until thoroughly chilled. Drain.

Put the peas and mint in a blender with a few ice cubes, the honey, ½ teaspoon salt, and a squeeze of lemon and purée until smooth. Pass the soup through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean bowl, pressing down on the thick purée with a ladle or spatula to pass it through the strainer. Taste for seasoning, and adjust with honey, salt, and lemon as necessary. Ladle into bowls, top with one of the garnishes if desired, and serve.

Want to impress your nearest and dearest with a truly soigné soup? This easy, rich cream soup is straight out of The French Laundry kitchen and yet would not make Rachael Ray feel that she’s overcomplicating her food. The key is a tool, a finemesh strainer, which creates a voluptuous texture. The bell peppers/capsicums are steeped in cream, then the mixture is blended until smooth and strained. It’s a lovely way to prepare a soup. The result is so rich that I only recommend serving a small amount as a canapé or starter, which makes it all the more enticing. The soup, which has an appealing pastel color, can be served hot or cold. If you serve it cold, be sure to taste it for seasoning when it’s cold (cold food usually needs more aggressive seasoning than hot food).

The same method works with nearly any vegetable, but the best choices are nongreen vegetables such as root vegetables, fennel, cauliflower, and mushrooms. The recipe makes the most heavenly mushroom soup you’ve ever tasted. Unlike the other vegetables,
mushrooms should be seared
and seasoned with freshly ground pepper and perhaps a pinch of curry.

1 pound/455 grams red, orange, and/or yellow bell peppers/capsicums, seeded and cut into 2-inch/5-centimeter pieces

1 cup/240 milliliters heavy/double cream

Kosher salt

Lemon juice

Combine the vegetables and cream in a saucepan and bring the cream to a simmer over high heat. Reduce the heat to low and cook the vegetables until tender, about 5 minutes. Purée, adding a three-finger pinch of salt and leaving the blender cap off and covering the blender with a kitchen towel, until the contents are thoroughly puréed, about 2 minutes. Taste and add more salt if needed. Add a squeeze of lemon. Pass the soup through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean pan or bowl. Taste again for seasoning and adjust if necessary. Serve in ¼-cup/60-milliliter portions.