This simple broth is the cornerstone for many a delicious soup. Even though it involves an extra step browning the bones and vegetables it comes out perfectly clear and appetizingly brown. The trick is adding only enough water to barely cover the chicken.
Each summer, Johannes Sailer—chef at Les Abeilles in the Provencal village of Sablet—creates an all-tomato menu. One year he opened the meal with this stunning soup: all red, all fresh, all full of honest tomato flavor. This liquid blend of tomatoes, seasoning, top-quality olive oil, and vinegar makes you fee as though you are drinking your salad!
This soup can also be served cold, with a few fresh chervil leaves rather than the Parmesan cream. And it makes a nice small appetizer if presented in espresso cups, in which case it will serve at least 12.
The essence of cure-the-cold chicken soup, merely bending your head over the steaming bowl will make you well.
For Vietnamese living abroad, a trip to Saigon would be incomplete without a visit to Ben Thanh Market, a huge maze of fresh food and sundries. Near the center is a food court where vendors hawk popular Viet treats. As you sample their wares, you are apt to strike up conversations with other gluttonous Viet kieu (Vietnamese expats). On one occasion, a man from Texas visiting his family for Tet told me part of his daily routine while in Vietnam included eating mien gá, which was so deliciously light that it allowed him to order more dishes from other vendors.
In truth, I came upon this perennial favorite of the Soupies using my most trusted and successful research technique: theft from a grandmother. A good friend named Brigitte, of the Austinite sub-species Priori manhattanitus, sat me down to a bowl of this, her Algerian Jewish grandmother's recipe. At the time, I couldn't afford a commercial immersion blender, so I couldn't produce it in quantity until a year later.
A mere tablespoon of cream turns fresh tomato soup into swoon material. Don't cook it in, add it at the table.
Scale up the recipe according to how many lobster shells you have; sauté them in batches if necessary.
Fennel blooms in mid-summer with airy umbels of tiny yellow flowers that have a sweet anise flavor. Soon after, the umbels are covered with soft, intensely flavored green seeds. A spice called fennel pollen is made from the sieved dried fennel flowers. Use whichever form you can come by; flowers, green seeds, or dried pollen. All will impart a similar wild, grassy fennel flavor to this soup, which is delicious served chilled if the weather suggests it.
If any of your guests have a problem with shellfish, you can make this soup without the shrimp and it will still taste sublime, just set a helping of soup aside before you add the shrimp. Look for fennel bulbs with light green fronds in the center.