TWO SISTERS PLUS ONE BOOK equals two soups. This is the sisterly cooking math we did when our friend and uber-agent Kris Dahl sent us both a new book, and two households went on a pretty much liquid diet. But oh, what liquid!
Love Soup by Anna Thomas is a wonder, and just out by W.W Norton & Co. If I could fit the camera in my kitchen, I’d photograph the counters, stainless steel prep table, and kitchen island, except you cannot see them right now but for the produce I’ve hauled home from the CSA, harvested from my garden, and also from my compost (oh, I love those compost volunteer plants!) in just the last two weeks. I was thinking of learning to juggle squash, though that would only take care of one species of the problem, since are we are also happily full of potatoes, leeks, onions, garlic, kale and chard.
I don’t have to learn to juggle, after all, since soup (as all cooks know) is the great reducer.
So, what did the Roach sisters cook up this week? I went to an old favorite, the leek and potato, and tightened up my otherwise by-memory version, adding fresh thyme and a splash of cream, as recommended by author Thomas. Margaret mastered the book’s “green soup with sweet potatoes and sage” (the author uses lower case titles, so we will here, as well).
Thomas has made the cookbook vegan-friendly; it includes 160 vegetarian recipes, which is marvelous, since Margaret, a vegetarian, prefers this while I, a hot-blooded, meat-eating omnivore, am good either way.
And you? Love soup? Here’s your book. (And here’s what Margaret thought of her copy.)
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks to Anna Thomas and “Love Soup” I will have to buy another whole freezer, I suspect. At first I didn’t even notice that more than 50 recipes at the end (breads, sides, salads, sweets) turn soup into a meal. About to start digging into those, too.
Cook on, sister. And let me know your favorites.
I ate meat, then didn’t for 10 years, now I do again. My husband calls me a switch hitter. Too many great meals out there to ignore.
Every time I swear I am not going to buy another cookbook, along comes one that I must own. Now, who’s going to help me buy an extra room to house them all in?
Hey, Amy: Ha ha ha: a switch hitter. And ooooh: a cookbook room. I like it. I’m on it. Let’s get the sisterhood behind this idea and change American architecture forever!
Oh, I love Anna Thomas cookbooks!
There are two soups of hers I love from her other cookbooks that I haven’t seen anyone else ever do — fresh pea soup with butter dumplings, and tomato soup with couscous dumplings (what can I say? I have a hard time passing up dumplings! :-)).
Mmm… wish I had brought my Vegetarian Epicure books with us to Switzerland!
Dumplings? Monika, did you say dumplings? I’ve never met a dumpling I didn’t like, no matter what the continent on which it was either from or being served. Oooh, dumplings. It is dumpling season isn’t it? How lovely of you to remind us. But butter dumplings. Well, now there’s a phrase to make a grown woman smile. Thank you. So good to see you here again. Wishing you a perfect dumpling every time. Come back soon.
Marion — and Margaret, of course! You are both my sisters in the kitchen. The gardens and produce covered stainless steel counters sound just right to me. And thank you for the kind words — I’m so pleased that you like my new book. It sounds like Margaret will soon have cooked every recipe in Love Soup. She is quickly learning what I have long known — the kitchen is an excellent way to procrastinate writing.
And Amy — can you make your kitchen the cookbook room? Is there a bit of wall space left? I liked the idea of cooking in a library, or in the living room — so I did both in my new house. I built floor to ceiling bookcases on both sides of the big kitchen island. I got rid of most of my walls, but what I left, I lined with books. When I stand at my range, I have a stainless steel counter behind me, the living room in front of me, and the library (cookbooks) on either side. Sometimes, when things are really perfect, I have my sister sitting on a barstool at the island.
Cheers! Keep cooking!
Anna Thomas
Hello, Anna. And welcome to TSP, where we adore you and your fine work. Oh, how I love the description of your at-home kitchen-living room-library-sister connection. That sounds perfect. If you promise to keep writing them, we promise to keep reading those books of yours. Cook on, sister. We’re eating it up.