Thanks so much to everyone who responded to my last newsletter with a writing prompt, whether sincere or fanciful or both. I am putting them all in my back pocket and will return to them as the moment calls! Right now, though, I’m just writing about soup.
When I was in the middle of chemo, soup was my everything — watery vegetable soup from the Chinese restaurant, a heartier chicken and veg that the Cuban place down the road has perfected, the miso and wild rice broth that Paul can whip up in his sleep. I’m healthier and hungrier now, but I’m still craving hot meals in bowls. It’s winter, I’m cold all the time, and soup is just … good.
In recent weeks I’ve returned several times to my version of Roberto, the back-of-the-refrigerator soup made famous by New Yorker writer Helen Rosner. But I’ve also been revisiting some recipes from my own cookbook, a project I’ve been reworking and adapting for the past 13 years.
This book first came out in 2009 as a self-published, spiral-bound bespoke project with a letterpress cover. I sold it at craft fairs around Chicago, and via mail order, and it got enough attention that a literary agent in New York reached out to me about developing it into a more commercial project. Several versions of a proposal and thoroughgoing rejection by large trade publishers later, Soup & Bread Cookbook: Building Community One Pot at a Time was published in 2011 by Evanston-based Agate Publishing. It did well, by my own DIY standards, and netted a fair amount of local press. But I watched with some frustration as similar books later got greenlit and published on a larger scale, such as Kathy Gunst’s Soup Swap (Chronicle) and Maggie Stuckey’s Soup Night (Storey). Both of these (lovely, hefty, four-color) volumes start from the same premise as my own: that soup is uniquely suited to sharing, and that that simple act holds meaning.
It’s embarrassing to admit now that I saw these books as competition at the time. There’s nothing new under the sun, of course, and no one, least of all me, can stake a claim to the concept of sharing soup, but it stung. Why hadn’t my book gotten the same play? Was it too weird? Too local? Too scruffy? Was it bad? I felt like a failure — a conviction that wasn’t helped when, around 2014, a colleague urged me to leave reference to the book out of my professional bio, because it was too much of a curve ball, I suppose. For a long time I deflected any nice things people said about it, minimizing what it meant to me, and when it went out of print a few years later it was sort of a relief.
By 2020 though, I had mellowed. The book was too weird for New York publishing, and I probably was too. Had I gotten a Big 5 contract, I would likely have had to make some unhappy compromises. As it was, I had obnoxiously resisted my own publisher’s pleas to include a few more food-world “names” in the book we did publish, and wound up with a final product as idiosyncratic, grassroots, and unmarketable as the community meal project that inspired it. So, bored, and with the problem-solving fervor of the early pandemic surging, I decided to reissue it with a new introduction.
I’m no longer deluded enough to think it will take the world of narrative cookbooks by storm, but that’s also no longer the goal. I’m proud of this little book, the first one I ever published, and I’m happy to have it in the world, finding readers as it can. Mainstream success may never have been in the cards, but I stand by its earnest conviction — that soup is a unique vehicle for fostering community and connection — and the recipes still deliver. There’s more about it here, if you’re curious, and it’s available via an annoyingly formatted page on Bookshop or over at the long river.
Here’s a recipe I made a few weeks ago. It’s hearty and vegan, and spicy enough that I could never have eaten it during chemo. Enjoy!
Curried Squash and Red Lentil Soup
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut to a 1/2-inch dice
1 large onion, small dice
1 carrot, small dice
1 celery stalk, small dice
5 cloves garlic (yes, 5), minced
2-3 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons curry powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup red lentils, washed
4 cups vegetable stock
1 cup water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup vegetable oil (optional)
1/2 bunch cilantro, finely chopped (optional)
Preparation
Heat oil over medium in a large Dutch oven. Add squash, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, ginger, and salt. Sauté until the vegetables soften and start to brown, 15-25 minutes. Add curry powder and pepper. Cook for 1-2 minutes.
Add lentils, vegetable stock, and water. Cover, reduce heat to simmer, and cook until lentils are done, or about 25-40 minutes. Add lemon juice.
Blend oil and cilantro. Garnish soup with cilantro oil if you’re feeling fancy.
That is not enough garlic. The real answer is 10.
Not. Weird. Wonderful slant.