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Soup for Spring
By Ivy Knight
Spring is officially here but the daffodils, trilling robins and frolicking lambs are nowhere to be seen on our dirty downtown streets. Don't cry, they'll be here soon enough but for now we have to kill the winter blahs with a sledgehammer right between the eyes. So tie a sarong around your bulky fleece jacket, slide into a tanning bed to allay the debilitating effects of S.A.D. and then sashay down to the produce section of your local overpriced Loblaws or hit an independent produce stand. While being insanely expensive, Loblaws usually boasts a great produce section with all those beautiful fruit and veg that come to mind when spring is in the air. None of them are in season here, but they are in season somewhere and you are allowed to eat them. Alice Waters won't come and arrest you if she hears you bought corn on the cob in March. She's too busy. I doubt even the most hard-core slow foodie could stomach another rutabaga or sweet potato right now.
I was talking with my friend and former colleague Ravi Kanagarajah the other day. He was showing me around what will soon be his new restaurant, a lunch place dedicated to soup to be called Ravisoups. I first met Ravi in 2000 while working at Mildred Pierce where he was known as the Prince of Soup. He's very passionate about soup so I asked him what he would do with a few spring ingredients off the top of his head.
First up were fava beans, "I would put them in a broth, something nice and clear like a vegetable broth with lemongrass and lime. Very simple and just add the cooked fava beans to that. It's nice to keep the fava as a bean and not puree it or anything, that kills the fava."
I like that, it's vegan and it would showcase the delicate fava flavour.
Another vegetable I always think of as a ‘Spring' (I just had my colours done, I'm a winter.) is asparagus so I shot that his way.
"I think a starchy broth for that, like a kohlrabi puree but kind of thin. Just add some blanched asparagus tips and a touch of cream to finish."
Now we are trained to think of lamb as the big deal to eat this time of year. Lamb are better in the fall when they have had the whole spring and summer to drink milk and eat clover and wear blue silk ribbons around their necks, but I still like lamb in the spring, I can't help it buddy, that's the way I was raised. When I see that first crocus poke up through the earth I start to yearn for lambchops and salivate like Pavlov's dog.
So, what would Ravi do with lamb for a soup? Given his Sri-Lankan background he thinks of a curry. "Yeah, I would do an authentic curry with yellow lentils, braised lamb and some Asian long beans. A mild curry broth finished with some cilantro. Coconut milk would be good in there too."
Given my propensity for making vegan soups at the Rushton I wanted to talk more with him about vegan soups but this guy is opening his first restaurant, he's really fucking busy. He's mind-bogglingly busy so I leave Ravi and head home to think about what kind of soup I'll make at the restaurant tomorrow. Just to set the record straight, I'm not vegan but going vegan for awhile did make something click on in my head. I really enjoy the challenge of coming up with animal-free recipes that taste good and don't leave you feeling like you're missing out on something. Also, we're all a bunch of fat losers anyway who just spent the winter laying on the couch being depressed and eating baked potatoes, time to lighten things up a bit you dirty slob. Vegan recipes are either low in fat or fat free and I have spent my whole career living by the advice stitched on a crocheted pillow, which reads "Fat is where the flavour is". It's exciting to try and get flavour without relying on the old tricks. That being said I head into work and make a light starchy broth with potatoes and zucchini, lots of white wine and seasoning. I puree this to a lovely pale green then add small diced leeks and zucchini that will cook as the soup cools in the walk-in fridge. It's a nice soup that will not make you fat and heavy, it'll perk you up and tune your appetite for a beautiful rack of lamb.
This is the third in my unintentional series of articles about soup. First I covered the Empty Bowls event at the Jamie Kennedy's at the Gardiner Museum last year, then I told you to make hot and sour soup to kill your hangover from New Year's Eve. (By the way, I didn't make it. Why? I was too hungover.) Now, here I am telling you to make soup to bring some spring into your life. So, that's it darlings, no more soup for you.
[Photo credit: Leslie Vineberg.]
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