Around My French Table (19 page)

Toss in the pears and thyme or rosemary and stir to blend them with the vegetables. Pour in the broth, add the chestnuts, increase the heat, and bring to a boil. As soon as the soup bubbles, turn the heat to low, mostly cover the pot, and simmer gently for another 45 minutes or so, or until the chestnuts can be mashed easily with the back of a spoon.

Working in batches, puree the soup in a blender or food processor until it's truly smooth; or use an immersion blender. Taste the soup for salt and pepper. If it has cooled in the process of pureeing, pour it back into the pot and reheat it gently—like most soups, this one is best when it's really hot.

Ladle the soup into plates or bowls and garnish, if you like, with cream and the pear and/or chestnuts.

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

SERVING
I like to serve this soup in shallow soup plates with nothing more than a circle of cream in the center. If you want, you can put a little mound of shredded pear or a small spoonful of chopped chestnuts on top of the cream.

STORING
The soup can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 3 days or packed airtight and frozen for up to 2 months. Reheat over low heat before serving.

T
HIS CLASSIC DISH FROM THE SOUTH OF FRANCE
is so typical of what we love in America that it's easy to imagine it coming from Napa Valley. It's technically a soup, but it's so jam-packed with vegetables that it could double as a stew and a whole summer meal. The only ingredient that must appear in it is the
pistou,
or French pesto. (In fact, the French call this
soupe au pistou.)
You can play around with the vegetables, although I'd suggest you keep the zucchini, green beans, garlic, tomato, potato, and beans. I use canned beans—chickpeas or cannellini—but dried flageolets or white or red beans are more traditional. If you're using dried beans, soak them in cold water for about an hour, then simmer until almost tender; drain before you add them to the soup.

In this version, I've used macaroni and every vegetable that I've ever had in a
soupe au pistou
plus one: corn, which I love for its color, crunch, and sweetness.

Pour the olive oil into a large casserole—a stockpot or a Dutch oven that holds at least 5 quarts—and warm it over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, season fairly generously with salt (about ¾ teaspoon), and white pepper (about ¾ teaspoon), lower the heat, and cook, stirring, until the onion is soft, about 10 minutes. Add the broth or water and herbs and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes.

Stir in the carrots and potato and cook for 10 minutes. Add the pasta and cook for 10 minutes, then stir in the beans (green and canned) and zucchini and cook for 10 minutes more. (This is not a soup in which any of the vegetables should be crunchy) Finally, add the tomatoes and corn kernels and cook for 3 minutes.

Finish the soup with some pesto, drizzle with a little olive oil, and scatter the basil over the top. Top with Parmesan, or pass the cheese at the table.

MAKES ABOUT 6 SERVINGS

SERVING
You can add the pesto to the soup in the pot, or you can ladle the soup into bowls and add a big spoonful to each serving. Either way, top each bowl with a few drops of olive oil and scatter over the fresh basil leaves. You can add some Parmesan or pass it at the table.

STORING
The soup can be kept covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, but after you reheat it, the pasta will be pretty mushy. If the soup thickens too much in the fridge, as it probably will, thin it with a little water or broth.

E
VEN BEFORE I'D TASTED MY FIRST
GARBURE,
I fell in love with it. Once I heard that the bean, cabbage, and duck soup would traditionally sit on the back of the stove (wood-burning, of course) simmering gently until it was thick enough for a heavy spoon to stand upright in it, I fell for it. It was the whiff of rusticity that did it for me. When I finally tasted a
garbure
(in a not-so-rustic Paris restaurant), I wasn't disappointed, just surprised—there were no heavy spoons, no woodstove, just a big bowl filled with a long-simmered soup not unlike one my own non-French grandmother would have made. Essentially, it is a hearty vegetable soup made heartier with the addition of meat.

A true
garbure,
born in Southwest France, always has vegetables, chief among them white beans, cabbage, and potatoes, cooked in duck or goose fat. While there may be bacon or salt pork, cured ham, and/or garlic sausages, there is almost always duck confit.

Sadly, duck confit is not as easy to find or as reasonably priced in the United States as it is in France, where you can pick it up along with other household staples at the corner grocer. But since the soup is too good to pass up even if you can't lay your hands on confit, I've created this almost-
garbure,
which can be put together any day of the week with ingredients from a market in any part of America and is guaranteed to make everyone around the table happy.

For a more authentic recipe for
garbure,
see Bonne Idée.

Rinse the beans, pick out any stones, dirt, or debris, and put them in a Dutch oven or soup pot. Cover with several inches of cold water, bring to a boil, and boil for 1 minute. Cover and set aside for 1 hour at room temperature.
(The beans can be prepared ahead to this point and refrigerated overnight.)

Drain the beans and rinse out the pot. Set the pot over medium-high heat and brown the pork shoulder on all sides. (If you're using a ham bone, skip to the next step.) If the pork isn't producing enough of its own fat to brown nicely, add a little vegetable oil or bacon fat to the pot. When the meat is browned, transfer it to a plate, leaving the fat in the pot.

Reduce the heat to medium and toss in the onion, leeks, shallots, and garlic. Stir the vegetables around until they're coated with oil, then turn the heat to low, cover the pot, and cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are soft and translucent but not colored, about 10 minutes.

Pour the broth or water into the pot, add the carrots, celery, turnips, potatoes, and cabbage, as well as the reserved beans, the pork shoulder or ham bone, and the duck leg, if using it, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat so that the soup simmers gently, partially cover, and cook for I hour, stirring now and then.

Season the soup with salt, pepper, and piment d'Espelette or pepper flakes, if using, and cook for another hour or so. If it looks as if the liquid is cooking away quickly—it shouldn't be—check that it's only simmering, not boiling, and add another cup or so of broth or water. You want the ingredients to be covered by liquid at all times.

Add the sausage, if using, to the pot. Continue to cook the soup for another hour—with or without the sausage.

Very carefully pull the pork shoulder out of the pot. If it's held its shape (a rare occurrence) and you can slice it, do it; if it hasn't, shred the meat, discarding the skin and any particularly fatty pieces. If you've used a ham bone or if you added a duck leg, shred that meat, discarding the skin and bones. Return the meat to the pot, and check for salt and pepper. Reheat, if necessary.

Ladle the soup into big bowls and serve.

MAKES ABOUT 10 SERVINGS

SERVING
I serve the soup in the biggest bowls I've got, making sure that everyone gets some of every vegetable. If you've got hearty country bread and butter on the table and a salad for later, the soup is all you need for a filling and very satisfying supper.

STORING
You can make the soup up to 3 days ahead, keep it covered in the refrigerator, and reheat it as needed. The longer you keep the soup, the thicker the beans and potatoes will make it. To thin it or not is your call. You can freeze the soup for up to 2 months.

BONNE IDÉE
A More Authentic Garbure.
Adding duck confit to this soup (alone or with the pork shoulder or ham bone and garlic sausage) and cooking the vegetables in duck fat will bring it closer to the original. (D'Artagnan makes an excellent duck confit; see Sources
[>]
.) Figure ½ duck leg per person. Remove the fat that surrounds the legs and use some of it to cook the vegetables; save the rest for another use, like roasted potatoes. Add the duck confit, which is fully cooked, to the soup during the last hour of cooking. At serving time, remove the duck legs, slice or shred the meat, and divide it among the soup bowls, then ladle over the broth and vegetables. Finally, you might want to offer the soup the way it's often served in Southwest France: Separate the meats and vegetables from the broth and slice the meat. Serve the broth over hunks of toasted bread, and bring the vegetables and meats to the table on a platter. Have coarse salt, cracked pepper, and a mustard pot within easy reach, and let everyone dig in.