Magnets and Soups and Why an Apprenticeship is a Good Thing

I got a big magnet for the car today and hope that will help get the word 

out about Fresh Fun Foods.

 If you see me out on the street, flash you lights a few times.  I'll pull over and give 

you a 10% off coupon.

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I’m a big National Public Radio listener.  It is my main source of news. Since I want long-form discussion and interviews with folks who are on the inside, NPR is my go-to when a story is breaking. Their initial coverage is usually just a sketch.  When all the facts are known, they can be counted on for a comprehensive story. Entertainment and lifestyle stories are the same.  I first heard Trombone Shorty on American Routes. The book features at the end of Fresh Air have turned me on to numerous fiction and nonfictions as the listing stack beside our bed will attest. I look forward to Kathy Gunst’s food features on Here & Now.

Earlier today, I heard a promo for Gunst’s bit where she was to tell everyone that there are soups that could be made and served either hot or cold.  That didn’t seem right to me.  When the story came on, I quickly scribbled notes, angry, contentious notes that would voice my disagreement in a snarky blog.  Needless to say, I don’t want to be that way, so I sat down to write a blog that would show respect for Gunst, who really seems like a fine person and a creative chef, while suggesting that there is a vast difference between cold and hot soups, a substantial difference that goes well beyond temperature. 

As I was organizing my thoughts, a promo for an upcoming program came on where a manufacturing executive said that in order to make high quality goods in the US; we need replicate the German apprenticeship program. Yep, and since today is the first day of school here in most of Pennsylvania and since I am a chef who went through a formal apprenticeship in addition to being a retired high school teacher, I am uniquely qualified to comment. 

But first, let’s get the cold/hot soup out of the way.  Ms. Gunst is correct that during this time of year both hot and cold soups can be appropriate. Weather dictates, along with what is in the market, the kind of soup that should be served. During the hot daytime, it is OK to go with a cold tomato soup. Likewise, as the sun goes down and the nights cool, a hot soup ought to be served.  Those hot soups should not be the hearty thick things we reserve for mid winter.  They should be soups made with the late summer bounty of tomatoes, zucchini, onions, peppers and herbs.  Where I very respectfully disagree with Ms. Gunst (especially since she is a published author with a radio show and I’m a guy typing in his kitchen) is that cold and hot soups require different cooking techniques to produce, since their aims are different.  A hot soup demands an extended period of simmering to marry flavors, while a cold soup often is just blended and served.  The flavors in a cold soup are married by careful selection and pureeing, an entirely different way of arriving at a finished product.  Additionally, the texture and seasonings are different.  You palate perceives flavors differently based on temperature. In my opinion, a chef has to decide what soup they are going to make then choose the proper technique to produce it.  Techniques to make cold and hot soups aren’t interchangeable.  Got that?

Back to the apprenticeship thing.  I spent a long time learning to cook and during that time I am grateful that a bunch of French chefs saw something in me that was worth teaching.  Maybe it was that I am reasonably bright and incredibly good looking or that I was willing to work for minimum wage or that I had a special ability where I was able to bully waiters with deft skill…I don’t know.  What I do know that I would not have invested the time and energy into someone as rough as I was in my early twenties.  I am grateful for the work that they put into me. I had the opportunity to teach other ragged kids in a similar way.

When I was coming up, places like the Restaurant School were just opening.  The C.I.A. was not really on the popular radar.  If you wanted to learn to cook you joined the army or sold your soul to a chef for at least five years.  My deal was that I agreed to work for minimum wage, $3.60/hr at the time. I would be paid for 40 hours, but would work as many hours as the chef decreed.  There was no democracy here. Many labor laws were ignored. If I wanted to learn, I had to do whatever the chef asked for however long he said. It was 10 years before I let anyone call me chef.

Later, when I quit the biz and went back to college, you see I found that I really liked my wife and kids; I got a job teaching high school. Since they knew my background, the guidance counselors always wanted me to talk to the kids who were on the fence about tech school. For some reason, after our talk none of these kids signed up for vo tech, which was the sole objective of the counselors, no matter the student’s needs. The reason the kids ran scared from vo tech was that I told them that there was a different route, one that would actually help them in their dream to be a chef. Instead of insisting that they should essentially become free labor for the tech school and be qualified to work in a cafeteria after graduation, I suggested that they stay in the high school and take every business class they could fit in their schedule. Also, they should get a job in the best local restaurant that they could beg their way into, all the while angling to move up in that kitchen or to move on when they have soaked every bit of knowledge out to that chef. They should get Serve Safe Certification and an AS from someplace like MCCC when they graduated, because you need the paper. In this way, they would have about four years experience, business skills, knife skills, a degree and a clue as to whether they liked restaurant work.  As a bonus, their debt would be minimal, probably none, since the student would be working in better and better places while going to school.

The guidance staff didn’t like this and eventually they stopped sending kids to me.  Enrollment at vo tech went up.

The apprenticeship system worked for me. The only hole was business education, something that could easily be built into a more formal program. Maybe, with the crazy changing job market that we have, a system where people enter into a formal agreement to learn job skills would be a better way to go. Right now, all the jobs with growth don’t require a degree, but also don’t pay a living wage or any kind of benefits that would permit someone to raise a family. Something has to change. The Germans might be onto something. 

A Soup for James (Cold Peach Soup)

Peaches are just about ready to come in Pennsylvania.  The better ones are available at farmer’s markets.  You should test the peaches before you buy.  They should look and smell like late summer.  Are they warm or cold?  Peaches that have been refrigerated are more likely to have traveled far, maybe from the Carolinas or further south.  If the peaches are warm, it is likely that they have been picked and rushed directly to you.  Secondly, feel the fruit.  As you lift them they should feel heavy in your hand, filled with juice, not mealy.  Lastly, gently with your thumb, press down on the top of the peach.  It should yield slightly and not be firm to the touch.  If it is still hard, put it back.  You want a tree-ripened peach.  If your thumb punches through, it is probably either just perfect or over ripe.  Either way, you have bought that particular fruit.  Don’t try to sneak it back on the table.  You’ll be sticking the farmer, since no one else will want to buy a peach with your thumb print

Make cobbler.  Fannie Farmer has a great recipe.  Make pie using Julia Child’s crust.  A simple tart, made with impeccably fresh peaches and glazed with apricot jelly is just one of those things that let us all know we are loved.  Eat them up, because peaches don’t get any better in the fall.   

The first time I got a compliment from Chef Jean Pierre Petite at the Café Royal in Philly was for a peach soup I made in August of 1984.  Normally, he spit out the food that I cooked and cursed about how much money I was wasting, how much time he would have to spend to fix my stupid mistakes, how my palate was made of tin…you get the picture.  This time was different.  He actually liked my cooking and put it on the daily menu.  Here is the recipe.

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Cold Peach Soup (serves 8)

4 pounds fresh peaches, peeled, seeded and roughly chopped

2 cups dry white wine

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 cup buttermilk

the juice of 1 lemon

4 tsp. fresh mint, chopped

Combine the wine, water and sugar in a medium saucepan.  Bring it to a boil, simmer for five minutes, then remove the liquid from the heat and cool completely.

In a large nonreactive soup pot, mix the peaches, buttermilk and lemon juice.  With a hand blender or food mill, puree the fruit.  Slowly stir in the wine syrup, mixing until it comes to a thick soup consistency.  Taste for sweetness.  You may want to add more sugar, but if the peaches were perfectly ripe that will be unnecessary.  Chill the soup for one hour.

Serve the Cold Peach Soup in chilled bowls garnished with chopped mint.  This recipe also works well with melons and many other soft fruits that puree smoothly. 

The cooks used to add vodka to the leftover peach soup and drink it down.  I can’t endorse that kind of bad behavior.

Mirepoix Is Not a Childhood Disease! (chicken and vegetable puree soup)

What we are really doing as cooks is working to bring out the best in our ingredients.  Most of the time, you simply want to get out of the way of the food and let flavors shine.  That means using quality ingredients and easily understood technique that allows for clean, clear, unimpeded taste. 

Here’s an example.  When I teach soup making, we do a side-by-side test.  Using identical ingredients, we boil everything together in one pot and in the second we sauté the aromatics then simmer the soup.  It is a crappy v. good technique face off.  The boiled soup really does taste different.  It has a flatter taste.  It has less depth of flavor and the texture, its mouth feel, isn’t as velvety.  Proper procedure and good cooking technique matter.  When you sauté the aromatic vegetables, you build layers of flavor.

Today we’ll be working to understand the value of that classic French mix of aromatics, mirepoix.  This blend of chopped carrot, onion and celery is the flavor base for numerous stocks, soups and stews in the western tradition.  Like the Spanish sofrito or that Cajun combination of green bell pepper, celery, scallion and parsley, mirepoix provides a distinctive character which identifies the food as French.  Think of it this way, without ginger, garlic and scallions Asian foods would not have their great flavor complexity.  The same can be said for mirepoix.

Our recipe today is a variation on the soup that Cathy Farrell cooked for dinner last night.  She is a very good cook.  It is the perfect thing for a winter night, thick, rich with a huge, complex flavor.  Additionally, it is almost fat free and is packed with healthy vegetables, and if you must, gluten-free.  We had deep bowls of her soup with thick slices of crusty bread with butter.  The recipe makes a big pot, so do like the Farrells and have a bowl for breakfast or for lunch with a grilled cheese to dunk.

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Chicken and Vegetable Puree Soup

1 3# chicken, quartered

1 c. carrots, peeled and roughly chopped

1 c. onion, peeled and roughly chopped

1 c. celery, peeled and roughly chopped

2 white turnips, peeled and roughly chopped

10 oz. canned crushed tomatoes

12 c. water

3 tbs. chopped parsley

salt and pepper

Put a large, heavy stockpot on the stove on low heat.  Remove the thick fat from the chicken.  Put it in the pot and sweat out about a teaspoon of fat.  Remove the remainder of the fat, the part that has not liquefied, and discard it.

Increase the heat to medium, sauté the mirepoix (the carrots onions and celery) in the chicken fat until their aroma is released and the onions are transparent.  Add the turnips, sauté for about 5 minutes, until they soften.  Season with salt and pepper.

Add the chicken.  Season with salt and pepper and sauté everything until the chicken begins to brown.  Add the tomatoes and water.  Increase the heat to high and bring the soup to a boil.  Skim any proteins that rise to the top, reduce the heat to medium and slowly simmer the soup for 45 minutes, skimming occasionally.

With long handled tongs, remove the chicken and set aside to cool.  With a hand blender or food mill puree the soup and keep it warm.  Adjust the flavor with salt and pepper. 

When the chicken has cooled, remove and discard the skin and pick the bones clean of the meat.  Shred the meat into bite-sized pieces with your hands.  Return the chicken to the soup.  Save the bones for stock.  Bring the soup to a high serving temperature.  One final time, adjust the flavor with salt and pepper.  Stir in the chopped parsley before serving in large bowls.

I'm a Teddy Bear! (puree of broccoli soup)

I’m told that I can be cranky.  I’m doing my best to moderate that, anger isn’t my “go to” anymore.   Seriously, in the past, I was one of those chefs that threw things, rolls, pots, sauté pans, rolls, even knives.  The little paring knives get the point across to the waiters, because with a little practice, you can stick them in the wall, right beside their head as they are gabbing instead of running “this %#@& venison to table eight!” I will admit to have been less than pleasant at times. 

But that’s all in the past.  I’m cuddly now.  I like kittens and flowers and puffy clouds.  I decorate with posters of puppies.  Yeah, my heart rate is no longer like that of a hummingbird and my gastric juices are not swirling like Hell Gate.  Life is good, really good, at least until I start looking at recipe web sites.  It’s good to keep up with the competition.  I like to see what the other folks are doing.  It also sets me on edge.

As a professional chef, I read cookbooks like literature.  Honestly, as I page through a cookbook, I know what the food is going to taste like.  Think that’s odd, well I know a bunch of musicians and they can look over sheet music and hear the whole thing, preformed, complete down to every nuance.  My recipe channeling is the same thing.  It is also a curse because, as I read I have the acrid taste of scorched onions or the combination of kiwi and shrimp in my mouth.  I know that the author never made the dish and that the result of following their advice will be horrid.  Some posters just don’t know what they are doing.  That’s OK, they’re not pros, but they are published authors so they should at least test out what they recommend.

One sin that has become so common is the reposting of someone else’s work.  This bugs me.  I’m asking for a little honesty here.  If you wrote the recipe, take credit for it.  Brag!  You have done something spectacular.  If not, tagging something like “Recipe adapted from Simply Recipes” on the bottom of the page doesn’t cover it.  (”adapted” means that they changed the font)  Even the most distracted middle school teacher would bust you for plagiarism if you tried that in the real world, so why is it cool online?

The other thing that works me up is that everyone uses chicken stock in every recipe they can, without thinking about what the final flavor is going to be.  Wouldn’t it be better to make broccoli soup with vegetable stock or water and let the green stuff shine.  Why mask those good ingredients with a reduced stock.  The reason may be the fault of poorly trained commercial chefs who feel that soup base or bullion, that salty, fatty evil substance that substitutes for stock, is included in most commercial recipes, from soup to Waldorf Salad (really, I’ve seen it).  Some chefs see it as a given, necessary to boost the “flavor profile.” 

I want to encourage you to think at the stove.  That’s why today’s recipe is, like the previous recipe for creamy salad dressing, is a chart.  You’ll get a basic recipe for broccoli soup and then a bunch of ways to vary it.  This way, you will have the technique under your belt and won’t freak out if there is no broccoli in the market that day, you’ll just hum along the aisles and grab up something to replace what you originally came for.  You’ll be able to make parsnip soup in the winter and tomato soup when it’s hot out.  While the ingredients may change, the technique will always be there in your back pocket. 

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Puree of Broccoli Soup to serve six

1 bunch broccoli, about 3 cups chopped

1 ½ cups white potato, peeled and diced

1 cup onion, diced

2 tsp. butter

6 cups water or vegetable stock

salt and pepper

Roughly chop the tops of the broccoli.  Deeply peel away the tough outer skin of the broccoli stems.  Chop the peeled stems into ½ inch pieces.

In a heavy bottomed stockpot, over a low heat, melt the butter then sauté the onions until transparent, about 5 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.  Add the broccoli and potatoes, continue to sauté the onions, potatoes and broccoli until the broccoli has wilted.

Pour in the water or vegetable stock, increase the heat and bring the soup to a boil.  Lower the heat, simmer for one hour, skimming occasionally to remove any proteins that rise to the top.

Puree the soup with a minipimer or pass it through a food mill.  Bring the soup back to a serving temperature, adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper and add an enrichment or serve as is.

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Use the following chart to make a soup of your own.  The process is easy.  Use the Broccoli Soup recipe above as your guide, then choose an ingredient from the chart below to vary the master recipe.  For example, you can make a great soup by substituting 3 cups of chopped spinach for the broccoli.  Additionally, you could make a butternut squash soup with rice as a starch to thicken it.  If you would add ½ cup of heavy cream to your squash soup, that would be a special thing.  If you want to get a little crazy, use 2 vegetables, say 1 ½ cup tomatoes and 1 ½ cup red peppers and thicken it with white beans.  Got it?  Use your head.  Play, have fun with your food.

Vegetable	Starch	Enrichment
carrot	rice,  ¾ cup uncooked	butter, 3 tbs.
spinach onion tomato red peppers celery sweet potato mushrooms parsnips asparagus salsify butternut squash pumpkin yam	ditalini, ¾ cup uncooked pastina, ½ cup uncooked bread, 2 cups diced red or white beans, 1 cup             cooked lentils, 1 cup uncooked	heavy cream, ½ cup whole milk, 1 cup yogurt, 1 cup buttermilk, 1 cup pesto, 3 tbs.