Soup Night (32 page)
Authors: Maggie Stuckey
Summer
Summer — is there anything better? Fireflies and crickets, long hours of sunlight, spur-of-the-moment barbecues, and air so soft and sweet you wish you could bottle it. People who love to cook are downright giddy over the bounty of fresh vegetables and fruits in farmers’ markets and home gardens, and eager to experiment.
Soup lovers turn their attention to recipes that feature the fresh vegetables of the season — tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, summer squash. This is also the season for fruit soups, using the bounty of fresh-as-can-be berries and peaches; they sparkle as either dessert or a first course. And now good cooks look for inventive ideas for cold soups, including the all-time summer classic: gazpacho, presented here in three versions.
Chilled Cucumber Soup with Shrimp (
page 267
), Raspberry-Lemon Pie (
page 284
), and Ariana’s Pink Potato Salad (
page 276
).
The last Soup Night of the season brings nice weather. In Oregon’s fickle climate, late spring comes with no guarantee, but tonight is pleasantly warm — not soft like the evening air in August, but sweet with the promise of summer. Many folks take their soup bowls and wineglasses out to the front steps. It gives them a good view of the brand-new treehouse, now being christened by all the kids. It’s the latest Stanton Street adventure, and a tangible demonstration of what happens when people come together in joyful cooperation, creating something for all.
It started with a sidewalk encounter. A teacher at the local elementary school, who lives a few blocks south but walks down Stanton Street on his way to work, stopped to chat with Becky and her young son Sam.
“I have an idea,” he said. “We have this wooden play structure in our backyard that our kids have outgrown. Your boy is about the right size, and I’d like to give it to you.”
Next thing Becky knew, a pile of used lumber and rusty bolts appeared by her front porch. Becky, who is codirector of an alternative school, firmly believes that children need adventures. So she said, “To heck with a play structure, let’s build a treehouse.”
Her first step was to find a library book on treehouses, and her second was to enlist Chuck, a retired attorney with lots of construction skills. Chuck in turn recruited his son Sam, a third-year architecture student.
Some parameters became clear immediately.
The tree needed to be in someone’s front yard, because all the life of the block happens out front, and it needed to be tall enough, strong enough, and with a branch structure open enough to accommodate the treehouse. Only one tree fit that bill, a cherry tree growing in the parking strip at Becky and Lisa’s. A perfect location, since that house is already central for all the kid activities.
All the pieces of donated lumber were 4 feet long, so the construction plan had to start with that common denominator. Safety was paramount. And the goal was to make the treehouse look like kids built it.
When all this was agreed on, the father-and-son team started work. There was always a gaggle of kids bouncing around, wanting to help, offering suggestions (Reuben wants a crow’s nest; sorry, Reuben), asking when will it be finished. Four-year-old Sam (known on the block, inevitably, as Little Sam) spent most of his time trying to figure out how to keep a carpenter’s pencil behind his ear, so he could look just like Chuck.
The safety mechanism is brilliantly simple. About two-thirds of the way up from the ground, wooden rungs are bolted to the tree trunk. If kids are tall enough and strong enough to get to them on their own, then they are free to do so. The smaller kids have to use a ladder built especially for the purpose, and it is kept in the backyard under adult supervision — the little kids have to ask for it, and they can’t climb the tree without it.
Construction was halted at one point when Alex wandered over and expressed some concern that the side walls made of threaded ropes left large enough openings for little kids to fall through. And since Alex the MD is the one who would get called on in the event of bloodshed, he asked the designers to reconfigure the ropes. So extra cross-members of wood were added and the ropes rethreaded.
The finished treehouse is seldom unoccupied. On any given day, several kids are up there, giggling and making up pirate games. It was meant to be a platform for creativity, and I have no doubt it has succeeded magnificently. But I can’t tell you what goes on up there because grown-ups are not allowed.
And it definitely looks kid-made. The flat surfaces aren’t quite even, and the corners aren’t exactly square. This is deliberate, and it only adds to the charm. Reuben the Fearless has a suggestion for the next step: add a zipline from the roof of his house across the street to the top of the treehouse. Sorry, Reuben.
This night, watching the kids enjoy the treehouse, the adults turn their conversation to plans for the summer. Several offer suggestions for upcoming movie nights, a favorite summertime activity on the block. They spread out blankets on two adjoining lawns for picnic suppers, and screen movies using equipment borrowed from the teacher’s school.
It’s also not too early to start thinking about the block party. Soup Night is on hiatus in the summer, and the block party in September, the first “official” get-together for the whole block, takes the place of Soup Night for that month. It is at the block party that the sign-up sheet for the coming year’s Soup Nights is posted. Discounting the three summer months, and September, that leaves only eight slots to be filled in. There’s no difficulty getting hosts, in fact there’s some fairly serious competition for the privilege. In a matter of minutes, the whole Soup Night calendar for the coming year is filled.
And so it continues.
It’s hard to overstate how great it is, how much the neighborhood means in my life. I believe that our lives are what we make them. We could choose to stay in and be lonely, or choose to find a way to bring people together. We’re making the neighborhood what we want it to be, in a positive way. And besides, it’s just so much fun.
— Alex
Recipe from
Eric and Kat Meyer
, Cleveland, Ohio
Serves 6
Like a great many peasant dishes, gazpacho allows for unlimited variations. The idea is to take advantage of the season’s vegetable bounty, using whatever is perfectly ripe and ready.
- 4 large tomatoes, diced
- 2 medium cucumbers, seeded and diced
- 5 cups V-8 juice (the spicy variety if you’re a glutton for punishment)
- 1 onion, chopped
- Juice of
1
⁄
2
medium lemon (about 1
1
⁄
2
tablespoons) - Juice of
1
⁄
2
medium lime (about 1 tablespoon) - 2 tablespoons vinegar
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 teaspoons honey
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
- 1
⁄
4
–1 teaspoon red curry paste (yellow curry is slightly less hot; we like Thai Kitchen brand) - Crème fraîche (facing page), sour cream, or plain yogurt, for garnish
- 1.
Set aside about one-third of the diced tomatoes and cucumber. - 2.
Put the remaining tomatoes and cucumber in the blender, along with the V-8 juice, onion, lemon and lime juices, vinegar, oil, honey, and basil. Add curry paste to taste, and purée. - 3.
Place the soup in a large serving bowl; stir in the reserved tomatoes and cucumbers. - 4.
Garnish each serving with crème fraîche, sour cream, or yogurt; serve with warm French bread.
Make ahead?
It only gets better. It’s best very cold, so the time in the refrigerator is a good thing.
For large crowds:
Easy to multiply, although you’ll probably have to do the blending in batches.
You can buy crème fraîche already made, but why would you, when it’s so very easy to make at home? In a glass jar with a lid that really fits, combine 2 cups heavy cream with 2 tablespoons buttermilk. Shake hard for a minute or two, and leave the jar on your counter for a day, or overnight. Stir, and then refrigerate 24 hours before serving. No buttermilk on hand? You can use plain yogurt or sour cream instead.
Serves 6–8
Pure summer, in a bowl. Refreshing, healthy, and beautiful to look at. In a perfect world, I would make gazpacho from vine-ripened tomatoes that I picked that very morning from my own garden and puréed with a little lemon juice or red wine vinegar. But I live in rainy Oregon, where we have all too many “green tomato summers” (not enough warm days to ripen anything), and so I have relied on commercial tomato juice instead. And it works just fine. If I happen to have a can of tomato paste open, I might add a tablespoon of that as well.
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, frozen (facing page)
- 1 (46-ounce) can tomato juice or tomato cocktail
- 1 cup peeled, seeded, and chopped cucumber
- 1
⁄
2
cup finely chopped onion - 1
⁄
2
cup diced green or red bell pepper - 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice or red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon hot sauce (optional)
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Prepare about 2 cups each of your choices from the following:
- Red, yellow, orange, or purple bell pepper, diced
- Red onion, finely diced
- Green or yellow zucchini, sliced thin and cut into half-rounds
- Avocado, peeled, pitted, and diced
- Scallions, diced
- Cucumber, diced
- Yellow tomatoes, diced
- Fresh cilantro, finely chopped
- Fresh-made croutons (see
page 248
)
- 1.
At least a day ahead (or whenever you have them on hand), freeze the cherry tomatoes. - 2.
Using a blender or food processor, blend the tomato juice with the cucumber, onion, bell pepper, olive oil, lemon juice, and the seasonings. Chill the soup for at least 1 hour. - 3.
Prepare the garnishes, choosing with an eye to color as well as taste. You have already put cucumber, onion, and bell pepper in the soup itself, because those flavors are traditional, but it’s nice to serve extra, along with other fresh ingredients from the list. - 4.
To serve, place all the garnishes in your prettiest bowls or clear glass tumblers, to show off the luscious colors. Return the soup to the blender, add in the frozen tomatoes, and blend. Serve immediately with warm bread.
Variation:
To make the soup spicier, you can either add hot sauce or substitute tomato cocktail (such as V-8) or Bloody Mary mix for the plain tomato juice.
Make ahead?
You’d be silly not to — the longer it waits in the refrigerator, the better.
For large crowds:
You can make a train-car full if you have enough veggies. This is a perfect thing to do in late summer when your garden is going crazy.
