THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 4, 1995 TAG: 9508040461
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
With farms of Eastern Carolina and Hampton Roads erupting vegetables, let's talk soup.
I favor fairy tale Stone Soup.
A beggar, near famished, tells the townspeople he can make soup from a stone, if they'll fetch it.
He asks for a bucket of the best water, salt and pepper, and, as the water boils, says they might as well throw in a carrot or two. Then he wonders if anybody has a spare potato or a stray onion, and on and on.
Soon the square is awash with people waiting to taste the fabulous stone soup. ``Just imagine,'' one cries, ``he did it with only a stone.''
I begin with a modest steak, baking it the night before, pouring its juices into a jar, storing the jar in the refrigerator, and removing next morning the collar of fat formed at the top of the jar.
Dicing the meat on a glass cutting board, I add it and its juices to the water boiling in a 16-quart stainless steel stock pot.
Stainless steel because it is easy to clean thoroughly. Sixteen quarts because of a host of beggars, ages 3 to 9, who troop into the house hungry.
Into the pot go the vegetables; first, the root sort, - potatoes, carrots, onions - and others of stout nature, such as cauliflower, turnips, corn, and, last, the frailest: peas, butterbeans, string beans, squash, okra, tomatoes, celery, broccoli, whatever comes to hand or mind. I aim to get 'em all done at once.
Out of concern for the beggars, not myself, I wash my hands many times and cleanse each vegetable, first under the hot faucet, then by bringing it to a boil in a small pot, draining the hot water and adding the vegetable to the big pot.
It takes an unconscionably long time cutting up vegetables Saturday morning, listening to Car Talk on public radio, finishing at noon.
At the end, I'm nonplussed at where the time went. Women cook much faster, their hands flying. How do they do it! But it's only fair, since they bear the race, that God gave them the edge in intelligence. I don't overcook the soup, and I refrigerate it in huge Pyrex containers. Bowls of it will be reheated through the week and shared. Now and then, I add a half-cup to the Labrador retriever's morning chow.
Just the other morning I had a bowl for breakfast, with half a cantaloupe. It is sustaining. Near the end of a bowl, when the vegetables are thinning, is a good time to crumble in corn pone. The Lab prefers corn pone as is. He figures it is a kind of interesting bone with crusty covering and mealy marrow.
While the soup is just setting on top of the stove, cooking itself, so to speak, I bake in the oven two iron skillets of corn pone. Those two dishes - stone soup and corn pone - are the only two I can do. Even when the soup is gone down numerous red lanes, cold corn pone with a large glass of buttermilk suffices.
Do you have a good recipe for vegetable soup? If so, let me know. by CNB