French Provincial Cooking (37 page)

Melt the butter in your soup pan, put in the cleaned and finely sliced leeks and the diced carrots. Let them get thoroughly hot and saturated with the butter; add the peeled and diced potatoes, the water, a little salt, a lump or two of sugar. Cook steadily but not at a gallop for 25 to 30 minutes. Sieve through the finest mesh of the
mouli,
twice if necessary. Taste for seasoning, and when ready to serve add the cream, and parsley or chervil chopped very, very finely. Enough for four.

The carrots are not essential to the soup, but they add a little extra flavour and colour.

lb. potatoes, 1 large leek, 2 large onions, a few sprigs of parsley, 3 oz. of single cream, butter.

Cut all the vegetables except one of the large onions into large pieces and simmer them in 2 pints of water with seasonings, until quite soft. Sieve them, and return to the pan. Slice the second onion very finely, and melt it in butter. Don’t let it brown; when it is pale yellow and quite soft, add it to the soup, with its butter, and simmer 10 minutes. Add the boiling cream.

This soup may not sound much, but it is extraordinarily good, and makes five or six helpings.

lb. sorrel, 6 lettuce leaves, 1 oz. butter,
pint chicken or vegetable stock,
lb. dried white haricot beans, 4 tablespoons cream, salt.

Cook the previously soaked beans in 2
pints water until they are quite soft. Meanwhile melt the washed sorrel and lettuce leaves in butter, and cover the pan until they are soft. Add the stock and simmer 10 minutes.

When the haricot beans are ready, drain and sieve them with the sorrel mixture. Add to the purée enough of the liquid from the beans to thin the soup to the right consistency, and stock or more water if it is still too thick. When it is hot and ready to serve stir in, very cautiously, the cream, previously boiled and slightly reduced. Ample helpings for four.

Watercress makes an admirable alternative to sorrel, so rarely obtainable in England. A small bunch will be enough, for stalks as well as leaves can be used. It will, of course, produce a soup of a rather different flavour, peppery instead of acid, but many people will prefer this.

Cook
lb. of previously soaked green or brown lentils in 2
pints of water until the lentils are quite tender, adding salt only towards the end. Add about
lb. of sorrel, washed, chopped and cooked in butter; sieve the whole mixture. Heat up, and if too thick add more water or, better, a little meat stock; taste for seasoning—a little sugar may be necessary. Stir in a good lump of butter before serving. Enough for four.

As with the haricot and lentil soup, watercress may quite successfully be used instead of the sorrel.

This is an old-fashioned way of making mushroom soup in which bread rather than flour is used for the slight amount of thickening needed. It is a soup with a very fine flavour, but it does need some sort of mild chicken, veal or beef stock.

For
lb. of mushrooms the other ingredients are 2 oz. of butter, garlic, parsley, nutmeg, a thick slice of bread, 1
pints of stock, 3 to 4 oz. of cream, seasonings.

Rinse the mushrooms in cold water and wipe them dry and free of grit with a soft damp cloth. Do not peel them or remove the stalks. Cut them in small pieces. Melt the butter in a heavy soup saucepan, put in the mushrooms and let them soften; when the moisture starts to run add a very small piece of chopped garlic, a tablespoon of chopped parsley, a little salt, freshly milled pepper, grated nutmeg or mace, and let the mushrooms continue to stew in the butter for several minutes.

A thick slice of crustless white bread should have been soaked in a little of the stock while the mushrooms were being prepared. Now squeeze out the moisture and add the bread to the mushrooms. Stir until the bread amalgamates with the mushrooms. Now add the stock, and cook for about 15 minutes until the mushrooms are quite soft. Put the soup through the coarse mesh of the
mouli,
then through the next finest one. Or better still, sidestep these two operations by blending the soup in the electric liquidiser. You will not get the thick or smooth purée usually associated with mushroom soup, but rather a mixture of the consistency of thin cream broken by all the minuscule particles of the mushrooms. Return it to the rinsed-out saucepan and when it is reheated add the boiling cream and another tablespoon of parsley, this time chopped very fine indeed. These quantities should make enough for four.