The Countere Guide to Seasonal Soups
Art by Tanzanian Wojak
Cooking good food can change your life. This seems dramatic, but it’s true. You can dazzle a date with a well-prepared meal. You can abandon bad eating habits by providing yourself, and loved ones, with delicious alternatives. You can inject a little wonder into the day-to-day drudgery of calorie consumption. Soups and stews are one of the best ways to get started in the culinary arts. They are complex enough to feel like an accomplishment, provide days of leftovers, and when prepared properly they are a veritable health tonic in a bowl.
Why “seasonal soups?” I like to punctuate the year with self-made traditions, and while these are by no means rigid rules, they serve as guidelines to give my 365 days more excitement. I've assigned the four seasons a dish, and while I cook other soups throughout the year, it’s my hope that the first lamb navarin of spring is imbued with extra importance...that the last venison bourguignon of the year becomes appropriate punctuation to another winter survived well....the sanctifying of the seemingly mundane through tradition is integral to a healthy and meaningful life. In an era where many of us find ourselves bereft of good multigenerational traditions, it’s up to us to make new ones, informed by the past and infused with our own intuition and excitement for life. But enough philosophizing, let’s get to the soups!
I've chosen New England Style Clam Chowder for fall, Venison Bourguignon for winter, Lamb Navarin for spring, and Seafood Ceviche for summer. Right off the bat we're in trouble, as according to technical definitions there are only 1-2 proper “soups” on this list. Navarin and bourguignon are stews, ceviche is often considered not to be a soup or a stew at all, what's going on here?! Well dear readers, I hate semantic nitpicking. This is an article about the seasons and tasty foods that you eat out of a bowl. Let’s give the purists their due, and recognize that there's a difference between a slow-braised stew and a puree. But instead of saying “things you eat out of bowls,” I'm making the executive decision to simplify and call these dishes soups.
Author’s note on the recipes: As a hot-blooded chef of action I find the experience of slavishly following a recipe to be an exercise in boredom. “Does it call for a heaping tablespoon or a true tablespoon? How many ounces of butter was it again...” and I'm falling asleep already. Let's leave the precise stuff to the bakers, and suffice to say that you can eyeball most of these ingredient amounts. In fact, doing this will help you become a better cook in the long run. You love shrimp? Double the shrimp and see what happens. Substitute shrimp in place of venison in the bourguignon, who knows, maybe you'll love it; we're intrepid culinary explorers here. But in all seriousness, don't overthink it—if your medium onion is my large onion it won't ruin the dish. Use the instructions below as a framework, and modify as you feel inspired.
Fall
New England Style Clam Chowder
A warm bowl of creamy clam chowder is one of the best meals a man can look forward to during the shift from summer to winter. We're not looking for the heavy, sludgy seafood variants of the canned soup brands here. My preferred preparation carefully treads the line between a light broth and a thick stew. With this chowder, you're leaving the airy haze of a well-lived summer and venturing towards the serious challenges of winter. There's a chill in the air such that a nice warm bowl of soup can't go amiss, but it’s not yet time to pull out the heavy guns that are winter's rich stews and casseroles.
Recipe customization: Add in or substitute other forms of seafood such as shrimp, scallops, mussels, or cod. Substituting leeks in place of onions seems like an interesting avenue of research. If you prefer a bit more heat, try adding some red pepper flakes. If you have access to salt pork, try subbing it in for bacon. That is how chowder was traditionally made, but I've personally never been able to find salt pork in my local grocery stores, so I cannot speak to its effect on the recipe's flavor.
Ingredients
2.5 pounds live, fresh, cleaned clams (you can find these at any local seafood market and most big supermarkets. If you do not have access to fresh clams, you can use 4 cups of canned clams roughly chopped into bite-size pieces)
1 cup clam juice or seafood stock
1/2 pound bacon, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons butter
1 finely chopped medium to large onion
2 stalks celery finely chopped
1 quart whole milk
1.5 pounds peeled potato, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 bay leaves
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper
Makes about 4 servings.
Instructions
Fry the bacon in a stock pot or dutch oven. Low and slow is key so as to brown it without burning.
Add your onions, celery, and butter. Give them no more than 5 minutes to soften, and then add your clam juice or seafood stock and bring to a boil.
If using live clams, add them to the pot now. If you aren't, ignore this and skip to step 4. Cover the pot and increase the heat to high for 4-9 minutes, until the majority of your clams open their shells. Discard any unopened clams and place the rest in a strainer set over a bowl to catch all the liquids. Remove the clams from their shells and roughly dice them.
Turn the heat on your pot down, and allow to simmer uncovered. Add potatoes, bay leaves, and milk to the pot. Stir occasionally so nothing burns on the bottom. After 10-20 minutes the potatoes should be cooked and falling apart a bit to the touch. Pour the pot's contents through a colander to separate the broth from the solids. If using live clams, mix the bowl of drippings you saved in Step 4 with the broth now.
Pour the broth into a blender and blend on high until well mixed, no more than 3 minutes. This emulsifies our broth, ensuring we don't end up with any separation of fat and heavy cream in the next stage.
Pour the blended mixture back into the pot, then add the strained solids, bacon, heavy cream, and clams. Bring to a gentle simmer. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and Old Bay. Your chowder is now ready to serve.
Winter
Venison Bourguignon
For winter I've chosen venison bourguignon. Imagine a cold, wintry, day; a mother on a traditional homestead assembling ingredients from the remnants of her larder in preparation for a celebration; herbs, potatoes, onions, garlic, a few dried mushrooms, a good bottle of wine, and a nice haunch of venison from the bottom of her ice box. In my home, venison bourguignon is a Christmas dish anchored in the timeworn tradition of assembling a celebratory meal from the preserved remnants of last summer's bounty. My preparation is geared towards a more formal dinner: slow-cooked venison topped with a rich, dark sauce and garnished with freshly prepared mushrooms and herbs. But waste not want not, I greatly enjoy mixing the next day's reheated leftovers with the rendered-down bacon and vegetables set aside from our fancier presentation the night before, as outlined in the recipe below.
Recipe customization: Substitute beef brisket, stew beef, or chuck steak for venison if you wish. Either way, I highly recommend cooking your bourguignon down with any bones you have handy. I cut my venison off the bone into properly sized cubes, then throw the bone into the stew to cook down with the meat, optimally broken in a few places so as to allow the marrow to permeate and unlock the maximum health benefits. Fresh mushrooms are my preference, but dried are more traditional, and they bring their own rich flavor to the dish.
Ingredients
1 large roughly chopped white or yellow onion
1 large carrot sliced into 1/2-inch-thick medallions
10 cloves finely minced garlic, separated into two equal piles
10-20 small pearl onions
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley, divided for garnish and recipe (1 tbsp respectively)
1 pound fresh or dried white or brown mushrooms (cut into quarters if fresh)
2 bay leaves
Olive oil
1/2 pounds bacon, each slice roughly chopped in half into squares
4 pounds venison, cut into 2-inch chunks (any roasting cut is good, I've used anything from scraps to a whole venison hind-leg on the bone).
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons flour
3 cups drinkable dry red wine (pinot noir, merlot, or chianti)
2 cups beef stock/bone broth
2 tablespoons butter
Makes roughly 4-6 servings.
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350ºF.
Put your oven-safe stock pot or Dutch oven on your stovetop and fry the bacon in olive oil until slightly browned. Make sure to keep temperatures relatively low so as to not burn the bottom of your pot. Set the bacon aside.
Salt and pepper the venison, then sear it on all sides in the fat/oil from the bacon. Add to the plate/container where you've put your bacon.
Add carrots and onions to the pot, then fry in the oil/fat from earlier until soft (add more oil if vegetables are sticking to the bottom of the pot). Add half the garlic, fry for 1 minute, then add the bacon and venison back in. Stir in flour, salt, and pepper.
Add wine, and scrape the fond that's built up on the bottom of the pot. Add the stock/bone broth, tomato paste, and herbs (withholding 1 tbsp parsley for garnish). Stir to combine, cover, and place in the oven for 2-4 hours or until the meat is fork tender. If liquids have evaporated midway and you're in danger of burning, add more stock/bone broth.
Bring a small pot of water to a boil, cut the ends off one side of your pearl onions (this will help in removing skins), then toss them into the pot for 2-3 minutes uncovered. Remove from the water, and once they are cool enough to touch you should be able to just squeeze the onion skins off. Reserve in a bowl for later.
Place a colander over a bowl and pour the venison and liquid through this. Take the resulting liquid and bring to a gentle simmer on your stove top. Separate the meat from the vegetables. Discard any bones. Separating the vegetables from the meat and sauce allows you to creative a very rich and professional-looking dish, so I do believe it to be an important step. I like to save the cooked-down vegetables to add to leftover stew the next day.
Once the simmering liquid has reached a consistency thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, it’s ready. If it’s not getting there properly, or you're in a rush, you can fork together a 50/50 mixture of 1 tbsp butter and flour. Mix this into the liquid and you will notice it thickens quite well. If it’s too thick, mix in some more bone broth or stock.
While the sauce is reducing, fry the mushrooms in butter. Do not move the mushrooms excessively, as this causes them to bleed liquid and lose the “crust” they develop. In the last minute or so of mushroom-cooking add the reserved garlic and a dash of parsley. When the garlic is golden, remove from heat and reserve.
Your bourguignon is now ready. Serve with mashed potatoes (rice or butter noodles are also acceptable substitutes). You can mix your meat, mushrooms, and pearl onions into your finished sauce before serving—or you can go fancy and place your meat on a bed of mashed potatoes, dot with pearl onions and mushrooms, and then coat in your sauce. Garnish with parsley, and enjoy!
Spring
Lamb Navarin
I believe lamb navarin to be the ultimate celebratory spring meal. In French navarin made with lamb is called navarin printanier, “spring stew.” It combines fresh ingredients from a new growing season with the hearty slow-cooked power of cold-weather recipes. Just as I imagine my ancestors lovingly assembling their venison bourguignon to celebrate a Christmas feast using the ingredients left in their cellar, I see lamb navarin being a product of spring's great Easter celebrations.
Traditionally this recipe would use onions, garlic, and canned tomatoes leftover from last year's harvest, where they'd meet the baby carrots, turnips, and string beans of spring. Fortified by the holdouts from last growing season and infused with the upstarts of a new year, this panoply of fresh vegetables crowned with young lamb braised to tender perfection in white wine is the perfect dish for spring.
Recipe customization: Many people enjoy peas in their lamb navarin, so if you love peas, feel free to blanch some up during Step 10 and mix in with your sauce. If you have other fresh vegetables handy, add them into the recipe as you see fit. Some notable possibilities are zucchini, parsnips, baby potatoes, and leeks. Like our bourguignon, I recommend cooking this with the bones in the stew if possible, to be removed and discarded before plating.
Ingredients
3-5 pounds lamb shoulder, chopped into 1-inch cubes
6-8 cloves garlic, finely diced
2 large onions, finely diced
1 cup whole or canned tomatoes, peeled, juiced, seeded, and crushed
Roughly 2 dozen pearl onions
12-16 baby carrots or 4 normal carrots
1/2 pound turnips, optimally smaller fresh ones
1/2 pound fresh young string beans
3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour
1 cup good-quality dry white wine
2 cups beef/lamb stock or bone broth
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves, finely diced
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, finely diced
1 large bay leaf
Finely diced parsley for garnish
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper for seasoning
Makes about 6 servings.
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 350ºF.
Get out that trusty oven-safe stock pot or Dutch oven and heat the olive oil up on your stovetop.
Salt and pepper the lamb cubes, and then brown them in the olive oil in your stock pot/dutch oven. Remove and place to the side.
Add the onions to the pot and allow to soften for 4-5 minutes. Keep the heat down to avoid burning anything. Add olive oil if it’s too dry and begins to stick.
Add garlic and 3 tablespoons of flour in the last 30 seconds or so of your onion-softening.
Deglaze by adding the wine and scraping up the crust that has formed on the bottom.
Add the stock/bone broth, herbs (reserving the parsley garnish for later), and tomatoes. Bring to a rolling simmer, cover, then place in your oven and cook until the meat is fork-tender (normally 1.5-2 hours).
While the meat is cooking, prepare your pearl onions. Bring a small pot of water to a boil, cut the ends off one side of your pearl onions (this will help in removing skins), then toss them into the pot for 2-3 minutes uncovered. Remove from the water, and once they are cool enough to touch you should be able to just squeeze the onion skins off. Reserve in a bowl for later.
Peel the turnips and carrots. If your carrots or turnips are larger, dice into 1/2-inch cubes, otherwise leave baby vegetables whole for a proper rustic presentation. Steam on stovetop until cooked but not mushy. Aim for al dente (typically 2-3 minutes).
Remove the stock pot from the oven, and strain through a colander to separate the lamb, onion/garlic/bones, and sauce. Discard the onions/garlic/bones and reserve your lamb for later.
Put the sauce back into your stock pot and reduce on the stove top on low heat until it can coat the back of a spoon. As with the bourguignon recipe, if the sauce is not thickening properly (or you're in a rush), you can fork together a 50/50 mixture of 1 tbsp butter and flour. Mix this into the sauce and it will thicken right up. If too thick, stir in more bone broth or stock.
Strain the sauce over your lamb into a large serving bowl.
Add your carrots, turnips, and pearl onions to the pot and stir to combine. If the vegetables aren't the proper texture for your liking, allow them to simmer in the sauce for a period on low heat (keep heat low so as to avoid the sauce separating or burning).
In a separate pot, steam your string beans for 4-5 minutes. Again, you're looking for a crisp but cooked texture.
Plate out over a starch such as baby roasted potatoes or rice. You can serve without any added starch if you like. Garnish with parsley and string beans, and enjoy!
Summer
Seafood Ceviche
First off, let's address the elephant in the room: is ceviche a soup? I say it is, and I've got “research” to back it up. Etymologically, “ceviche” can be traced back to the Persian word “sikbāg,” a combination of their words for “vinegar” (sik) and “soup” (bāg). While the use of vinegar in ceviche has largely been abandoned in favor of citrus, it appears that the dish originally was a sort of fresh seafood pickle, where the seafood was denatured in vinegar instead of citrus. But it was a soup, okay? It’s in the ancient Persian name—doesn't get more traditional than that!
Summer is a time of free-floating action punctuated by hazy languor. Long days, short nights, and nature flourishing around you. What better way to celebrate such days than with fresh seafood, herbs, and vegetables prepared almost directly before consumption? In a perfect world, when you sit down on your back porch to enjoy your ceviche, the seafood would have been in the ocean that morning and the vegetables would have been plucked from your garden a few hours before. That is how to enjoy the bounty of summer properly: collecting ingredients directly from the land and sea and eating them before the sun sets. In proper happy-go-lucky summer fashion, you don't even need any heat to make this dish—just fresh ingredients and some deft knife work.
Author’s note on the preparation: if you're unsure of the quality of your seafood, by all means, cook it. I recommend steaming. Besides seafood quality, the most important thing in this dish is consistent knife work. This is a great opportunity for you to hone your dicing. Keeping the size of your ingredients consistent will lead to a beautiful presentation, which makes a noticeable difference in flavor. Evenly sized ingredients mix together better, and perhaps even taste better this way because they just look so damn nice (the human mind is funny like that).
Recipe customization: There's lots of room to make this recipe your own, starting with your source of protein. Almost any seafood that can be eaten raw when fresh—and this describes the majority of good quality fish and shellfish—can be substituted in for the shrimp in this recipe, and the options begin to get a little intimidating once you open the door to mixing multiple types! Some suggestions would be fresh scallops, squid, tuna, mackerel, or sea bass. I also hear that Peruvian limes are far superior to other variants for ceviche recipes, so if you can secure them you should absolutely use them.
Ingredients
1 pound raw shrimp, peeled, deveined, tail removed, cut into roughly 1/2-inch segments
3/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup of 50%-peeled cucumber (reference), de-seeded if excessively seedy, diced into 1/4 to 1/2-inch segments (removing 50% of our cucumber peel in an alternating pattern keeps the segments from liquefying into mush, while ensuring that the peel itself doesn't become too noticeable in the mouth-feel of the dish)
1 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
1/2-cup finely chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 cup red onion, cut into 1/2-inch segments. Run under cool water in a strainer for 1 minute and allow to dry a bit (they don't need to be perfectly dry)
1 jalapeno pepper, seeds removed, finely diced
Kosher salt (for seasoning)
1 medium to large avocado cut into, you guessed it, 1/2-inch segments
1 cup pineapple cut into 1/4-inch segments
Makes 4 servings.
Instructions
Mix your lime and lemon juice. Place your shrimp in a bowl with 1/2 of the resulting mixture. Stir perhaps 1-2 times to make sure all your shrimp gets time submerged in the citrus. Leave this somewhere cool (your fridge or a cooler) for 60 minutes. If 1/2 cup isn't enough to mostly submerge your shrimp, squeeze more lemons or limes (whatever you've got around) into bowl until it is. This process of soaking citrus denatures the protein in seafood—not quite cooking it, but still significantly changing the texture and killing some pathogens that may be present.
Mix everything but the avocado together into a bowl (if you add the avocado now you risk turning your ceviche into mushy green guacamole paste). Season with salt to taste.
Add the avocado and mix together gently. Garnish with cilantro and/or parsley. Enjoy!
Conclusion
It is my hope you'll not only enjoy these recipes, but that you'll also consider this concept of food as seasonal punctuation. These recipes serve as an excuse to celebrate and mark the shifting seasons, while simultaneously improving your dietary health and cooking skills. May this article inspire you to form your own seasonal family food traditions, lovingly tailored to your region and customs.
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