Soup?

[lsanderson]

MAKE A SPOON HAPPY Meaty beef shin bones are the base for this borscht.
By JANE SIGAL
Published: February 20, 2009

MY pipes froze. I had shoveled 1,350 linear feet of snow in the last five months. I wanted soup.

Hearty lima bean soup is flavored with lamb neck bones.

If it’s damp, I haul out the soup pot. Usually I prefer water-based vegetable soups, because I think stock muddies the flavor. Besides, no matter how easy it is to simmer a few bones with an onion and a carrot, I hardly ever do it. To me, making stock is a hassle, and antithetical to home cooking. It belongs to the realm of professional kitchens with salaried dishwashers.

And I don’t like the taste of most store-bought broth. (Some people call it “crayon water.”)

But while waiting for my faucets to start flowing again, I felt as if I needed a soup with more richness, more body. My cousin Marion’s steaming borscht, for instance. More

Recipe: Tangy Red Lentil Soup With Niçoise Olives (February 25, 2009)
Recipe: Creamy Celery Root Soup With Ham (February 25, 2009)
Recipe: Lima Bean and Porcini Soup (February 25, 2009)
Recipe: Beets-With-Greens Borscht (February 25, 2009)

Comments

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

And to me, a big kettle of bones & meat scraps (and some onions, of course) simmering more-or-less permanently (the bones being replaced, and water added as stock is removed, from time to time) on the back of the stove is the very _essence_ of Home Cooking. It really should be on the back of a wood-burning (or coal-burning) cast-iron stove, but I'll make concessions to Modernity and allow a gas or electric stove. Mind you, doing this in the (cooking) fireplace now seems ridiculously archaic.