Brian Murphy, a sous chef at Oliveto, mixes up lentils for one of his signature soups

A recent posting on the Food Blog Alliance site urged writers not to use overused adjectives such as "nice," "wonderful" or "delicious" when writing about food.

Since I tend to dislike edicts even more than clichés, let me say this about the lentil soup recipe I am about to offer:

It is wonderful. It would be nice for you to try it. And if you did, you'd find this soup to be delicious.

Okay, maybe I could work harder in describing why a mere lentil soup deserves the forbidden D-word.

But believe me, it does. There is something about slow cooking of dried porcini mushrooms, wine and lentils that leads to magic. If you properly execute this dish, throwing in generous amounts of finely diced vegetables and finely chopped herbs, you will have a soup that is as complex and brooding as Caravaggio painting.

Some might say that lentil soup is an odd thing to prepare in the summer. That would be true in Sacramento (where I live). But in the Bay Area, where it is often cold and foggy, a lentil soup is just the thing to be enjoying on a back patio. I learned this basic recipe at Oliveto, one of many perks of working as a galley slave (intern) there.

Credit for this particular combination goes to Brian Murphy, an Oliveto sous chef who consistently turns out the kitchen's finest soups. Brian's nickname is "Chateau," as in "Chateau Brian."

So here's to you, Chateau. Salut!

Lentil soup with porcini and herbs. Why wait until fall to enjoy?

Chateau's lentil soup

Serves: 8-10

Ingredients:

1 1/4 pounds green lentils
2 red onions, medium dice
1 large carrot, medium dice
2 stocks celery, medium dice
1 head of garlic, clove peeled and finely sliced
1/2 bunch rosemary, finely chopped
1/2 bunch sage, finely chopped
1/2 tablespoon finely ground coriander seed
1/2 cup dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in dry red wine
Up to one gallon of water
1/3 cup tomato paste
1/3 cup olive oil
Sea salt to taste

Equipment needed:
Heavy stew pot or soup pot; hand blender or regular blender; sharp knives.

Preparation:

1. Dice onions, celery and carrot, and finely slice garlic cloves. Video: Basic instructions on peeling and dicing onion.

2. Soak dried porcini in wine, and have a glass for yourself. Grind the coriander. Open the can of the finest tomato paste you can afford.

3. Chop the heck out of the herbs. Get them really fine, but watch your fingers. Don't even think about using a food processor for this.

4. When onions, carrots, celery, garlic and herbs are ready, heat up your soup pot and pour in enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot. Throw in your veggies and herbs. Salt rigorously and cook under medium heat until vegetables are soft.

5. As veggies are cooking, pull dried porcini out of your wine and finely chop. Filter sediments out of wine and reserve.

6. When veggies are soft, add tomato paste to the pot, stir it around for a minute and then add reserved wine. Stir, and add half of your ground coriander.

7. Add lentils to pot and fill with the gallon of water. Add any wine from the bottle you haven't already enjoyed (about 1/2 bottle). Raise heat until lentils boil and then reduce heat to a generous simmer. Cook until lentils are tender and done.

8. Blend soup rigorously with a hand blender. If too thin, cook to desired thickness. If too thick, add water, judiciously. Add salt to taste. Add more coriander, if desired. When perfect, ladle into soup bowls and serve with a drizzle of olive oil.

(Note: Aftering ladling soup into soup bowls, Oliveto drizzles each with "Olio santa" -- olive oil cooked briefly with rosemary and red pepper flakes. Give it a try.)

Poor corn. It's been pimped out to animal feed and fructose companies, making it top the most-wanted list of dietary no-nos. But real corn -- and by "real" I mean those delightful yellow and white cobs that come in green husks and not the mass-produced grain in monoculture fields -- is a summer treat.

Corn is at its best roasted on the grill where that direct intense heat makes the kernels sweeter. After eating our fill of grilled corn a few weeks ago, however, I wanted to try something a little different. Soup. Yes, I know. Soup is not a summer standard. But we live in the Bay Area, where hot days are followed by cool, foggy ones, so soup is an every-season dish as far as I'm concerned.

Corn chowder is a favorite of mine. In the past, I have always just cooked the corn on the stove to make soup, but this time I wondered how everything would turn out if I roasted it first. I had to give it a try. Now keep in mind that this is a simple recipe. Unlike other corn chowders, which are usually made in the winter, this soup doesn't include root vegetables, like potatoes, or spices. Corn is now in season so I really wanted it to be the star and adding other ingredients meant it would have to share the stage. I therefore settled on just corn, bacon and onion along with stock and milk. The result was lovely: just-picked corn sweetness caramelized on the grill with a salty bacon accent. You could easily serve the soup just like this, but because I am growing parsley in my backyard, I decided to top everything off with an herb pistou to round out the flavors.

What, you may ask, is a pistou? It's just a fancy name for herbs blended with olive oil and seasonings. I often make a parsley pistou for my lentil soup, so whipped one up for the chowder. The result was more than I had hoped for. Like lime with jalapeno, or coffee with chocolate, the pistou heightened the corn's natural essence and elevated the flavor to a new level.

Roasted cream of corn chowder with parsley pistou has now become one of my favorite summer dishes, with or without a fog bank.

Roasted Cream of Corn Chowder with Parsley Pistou

Makes: 4 servings

Ingredients:
2 strips bacon
1/2 onion diced
3 large cobs of corn
1/2 cup half and half or whole milk
2 cups chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Heat grill to high.
2. Place husked corn on direct heat and turn down the grill. If using a charcoal grill, place on indirect heat.
3. Grill for about 5 minutes a side or until the kernels start to brown. You may even hear a popping sound.
4. When corn is thoroughly cooked, remove it from the grill. Set aside to cool.
5. Chop bacon into small pieces and cook in a medium pan. Add the diced onions when the bacon is 2/3 cooked through. Continue cooking until bacon is crispy and onions cooked through.
6. Trim kernels from the cobs. I place my knife at a slight angle, which makes it easier to remove the kernels.
7. Place bacon and onions in a blender along with the corn, chicken stock and milk. Puree until the mixture reaches the consistency you desire. I like it mostly smooth, but with some small chunks. You can also use a hand blender.
8. Place the soup into a medium-sized pot and heat through.
9. Ladle into bowls and top with parsley pistou.

Parsley Pistou

Makes: 1 cup

Ingredients:
1/2 cup parsley
1/2 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Place parsley and olive oil in a blender and puree until the herb is fully integrated into the oil.
2. Add salt and pepper to taste.

One of my favorite culinary mash-ups of recent years is the Vietnamese-Chinese-Cajun crawfish boil served with rice or garlic noodles. Following the arc of families moving from Vietnam to New Orleans to Southern California to, finally, San Jose and San Francisco, mud bugs have taken a garlicky turn and shown up, of all places, in Little Saigon's across the country.

Red Crawfish in San Francisco's Tenderloin is the one closest and dearest to me, as I head over that way anytime I'm craving familiar, comforting flavors. Boiled crawfish is a new tradition among my peeps, but it's one that I'm very happy to adopt, too.

Eating here is a dress-down, messy affair that requires friends with absolutely no pretensions about food. The red, steaming, spicy crawfish come out from the kitchen in pails and are plopped down on the paper-topped table inside plastic bags, rather than piled right on the table, to hold in all that the thick, rich broth.

I love very spicy food and found that the medium was just fine for me. If you're hungry and a bit of a glutton, you could eat two pounds of crawfish with nothing else, but it's definitely hard to resist popular side orders like batter-fried sweet potatoes, buttery garlic noodles, buttery garlic toast, or just plain rice. You can also order potatoes and corn on the cob, and they'll throw them right in with the crawfish. If you don't suck the heads (and the purists among us would insist that you do), you should at least order some garlic noodles or a bowl of rice for soaking up all the juicy goodness that spurts out of each one.

There are other entrees on the Red Crawfish's menu -- the usual suspects of Vietnamese fare dominates over the Cajun influence -- but I haven't yet strayed far from the namesake of the restaurant. The huge bowl of spicy seafood soup is definitely worth sharing, while next on my list is one of my favorite dishes, bun rieu, seafood and tomato-tinged broth served over rice noodles.

For the DIY folks, there's also plenty of local crawfish harvested from the Sacramento Delta and from California's rice fields. Although the Isleton Crawdad Festival was canceled last month, another victim of the recession, you can still pick up live mud bugs (more for the rest of us!) from Bob's Bait Shop a.k.a. The Master Baiter. Located near the Sacramento Delta and the premier sources of live bait in the area, the shop also provides local crawfish for cooks picky about freshness. Be sure to call in advance, especially if you need more than 15 pounds. Check also with large Asian supermarkets near you, especially 99 Ranch Market, where crawfish can often be found crawling around live in the tanks.

Those of us who have no shame will even ask the server at Red Crawfish to leave all the shells on the table so that, at the end of the meal, we can bag them up, spices and all, to make a very tasty stock back at home. Add some Cajun trinity, some dark roux, stir in a little heavy cream and lots of dry sherry, pull out a blender and a mesh strainer -- and you have a pot of mighty tasty soup.

RED CRAWFISH
611 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 771-1388
Map

BOB'S BAIT SHOP
302 2nd Street
Isleton, CA 95641
(916) 777-6666 or (916) 777-6806
Map

Sometimes, when it's cold outside and you're bundled in bed incapable of cooking and yet you need some food that feels and tastes homemade, but your mom is maybe 1,500 hundred miles away, it's time for the smart shortcuts.

Sure, the first can of chicken and stars brings back fond memories, but by the tenth or twelfth, even after heretical adulterization with dandelion greens or hot sauce, that bowl of comfort starts tasting rather thin. You've finished that delicious chili dropped off by a friend and your loved one is in meetings all day. Driving a stick shift up hills is most definitely beyond your abilities, assuming you even get past peeling off your flannel nightgown and navigating the laces on your shoes.

That's when you call for an order of pai gwat, those savory little tidbits of pork spareribs that dim sum houses and any decent, neighborhood Cantonese restaurant list on their menus. Then you dig around in your vegetable bin for any possible hint of vegetables, preferably a not too wilted head of mustard greens or a bunch of watercress or even, in desperate times, a well-rinsed bag of baby spinach already past its prime.

You still have to open a can: chicken broth. Then all you need is a spoon to stir it all together and bring the savory tidbits of goodness to your lips.

Pork Sparerib and Mustard Green Soup

If you're feeling healthy and motivated, you can track down a butcher who will cut spareribs into little one-inch pieces. Simmer them for 40 minutes in water flavored with a bit of dry sherry, salt, pepper and ginger to make your own soup base. Or you can just pick up the phone.

Ingredients:
1 order of take-out pai gwat (usually about 1 pound)
1 can good-quality chicken stock (about 1 1/2 cups)
Extra ginger, as much as you like, cut into slivers (optional)
Black pepper
A big pile of dark greens, such as mustard, turnip, watercress, spinach or escarole

Preparation:
Dump the pai gwat directly from its take-out box into a pot. Stir in the chicken stock, ginger, black pepper and a cup of water. Bring just to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, wash the greens and tear them into large pieces that will fit onto your spoon. Add them to the pork and stock, and cook to desired tenderness. (The worse I'm feeling, the longer I tend to cook the greens, for that lovely silky texture and for the more rounded, mellow flavor that develops.)

Serve over rice in a big bowl.

This 1970s commercial shows how to make a big production out of soup. Ann Miller was a much-loved dancer who was discovered before she even hit puberty right here in San Francisco at the historic and colorful Black Cat Cafe.

Eat your heart out, Ann Miller!

On the other side of the world, Campbell's soup plays a quieter role. I found this lovely reuse of a can in an alleyway in Macau. Half filled with dry rice grains, the can holds incense sticks burnt as an offering to dead ancestors. The lazily drifting smoke serves as a bridge to connect the spirit world to the homes of faithful descendants. Perhaps someone's grandmother loved creamy corn with chicken soup? Or perhaps the day-to-day tasks of honoring the dead has settled into the comfort of reusable containers?

In my print studio are two drawers of old copper and zinc cuts, from the days when metal -- not pixels -- spread words and images around the world. Mixed in with farm manual illustrations, matchbook covers for defunct restaurants, and finely etched maps of roads crisscrossing San Jose's orchards lay lots of product images for food adverts. Campbell's iconic soup can is one of my favorites. While my childhood memories involved many more bowls of chicken and stars than tomato, Andy Warhol's conflicted critique of mass production still holds my attention.

Even better, an actual can of pepper pot in my office reminds me of all the quirky, real-life, meaningful intersections between the distant past and the relevant present, our private stories and public memory.

Perhaps soup is not so humble a food after all.

Indian Summer indeed! Global warming is alive and well when it's pushing 100 degrees in San Francisco in September. Not wanting to make anything that involved getting near a stove, I called my friends J & J and asked if I could come over to their uber swanky and air conditioned kitchen and whip something up for us for dinner. When I woke up yesterday morning and it was 82 degrees, all I could think about was cold gazpacho soup with some thick crunchy crusty bread.

I asked J various questions. Do you have a Cuisinart? No. Do you have a blender? No. Do you have a stick blender? Yes. Is it charged? No. Ok, I'll run to the store, I'll bring my stick blender, and you chill the tomatoes. An hour or so of chopping later, accompanied by a glass of champagne, we dined on some darn good gazpacho soup, much to my amazement, relief and delight. I hadn't made it in literally years, maybe a decade (?!?!), so I was quite nervous but thanks to some gorgeous heirloom tomatoes and a lot of love, it was a hit. I showed some restraint in the chopped garlic area -- vampires, be damned -- but had I not, it would have overpowered, so go with 2 cloves, not the 4 that I originally intended. One jalepeno and we were sufficiently spicy.

J served the soup with a crisp rose, Domaine de Beaurenard, from the Cotes du Rhone and we toasted (our one minimal use of the oven) some thick country bread and rubbed it with a garlic clove and a roma tomato cut in half as they do in Spain. A little garnish of basil chiffonade and we were good to go...

Cold Gazpacho Soup

Ingredients:
1 large can (20-something oz) whole peeled + 3 - 14 oz cans Progresso diced tomatoes + juice
2-3 heirloom tomatoes (diced, save juice and add to bowl)
1 basket small orange baby tomatoes (cut in half across the equator)
1/4 - 1/2 cup white wine or champagne vinegar (depending on consistency & taste)
1 red pepper (cut out ribs, seeds & dice)
1 yellow pepper (cut out ribs, seeds & dice)
1 jalepeno pepper (cut out ribs, seeds & dice)
1 avocado (half for the soup, half for the garnish)
2 large shallots, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 ribs celery, diced
1 english cucumber (cut off most of the green, leave a little for color, scoop out seeds, dice)
juice of 1 lime
sea salt, fresh ground pepper

Preparation:
1. Save a few tablespoons of the baby tomatoes, red pepper, yellow pepper, cucumber, celery, half the avocado, and 1/2 tbsp of diced jalepeno for the garnish.

2. Put everything but the avocado in a small bowl, add a swirl of olive oil, some sea salt, fresh ground pepper and stir. Add the avocado and stir gently. Set aside.

3. If using a stick blender, combine all the vegetables + lime juice in a large glass (or non-reactive) bowl along with half the vinegar and blend. I like mine a bit chunky, not super smooth, so I blended in pulses moving the stick blender along the outside of the bowl. If using a cuisinart, just pour it all in and pulse until you get the consistency you'd like. Add more liquid (vinegar, stock, water) if you want a thinner consistency. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as you'd like.

4. Mine didn't not come out a bright red as you might imagine because I added the avocado but I like the creamy consistency it gives the soup. I topped each bowl with a tbsp or two of the vegetable brunoise garnish, a few ribbons of basil, a drizzle of good olive oil and a few drops of really good balsamic vinegar.

Bon appetit and stay cool!

It's that time of year.

Farmer's Markets are exploding with great spring fruits and vegetables. My favorite among them is cherries. If this were prime time television, the cherry would be a superstar, hosting its own variety show in the best time slot possible. Like a Saturday night bookended by very special episodes of The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Both of which would guest star Adrienne Barbeau.

It's been a while since I've watched television.

Well, I've taken to cherries again this year like I always have , but this time, I am looking at them through Hungarian eyes. With the possible exception of the cucumber, whenever a Magyar is faced with a piece of fresh produce, he or she does what comes most naturally to them-- they boil the hell out of it. Or pickle it.

There's an dish I have always been meaning to try from our dear, goulash-eating cousins, and that's Meggyleves, or Sour Cherry Soup. The only problem was that I didn't have immediate access to sour cherries. I wanted it now, so I had to make do with the local ones instead. Since I wasn't going for authenticity, I thought I might as well just appreciate the recipe for its inspiring qualities and move on.

Not-so-sour Cherry Soup

I've taken some liberties with this recipe. What I like about the original is its simplicity. I've basically adhered to that theme, just some slightly different ingredients. I do not recommend substituting whipped cream for sour cream. I tried it and it was, well, cloying. The sour cream adds just the right amount of tang-- especially since we're not using sour cherries. The Hungarians do know what they're doing.

Ingredients:
1 pound fresh cherries, pitted
3⁄4 cup sugar
1 quart water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cardamom (some like cinnamon, others, clove. You choose.)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1⁄4 cup Amaretto (or Kirschwasser, or holy water from Lourdes.)
Juice of one lemon
Sour cream

Preparation:
1. Bring water, sugar, cherries, and cardamom to a boil. Simmer for 30 minutes.

2. Make a slurry of the cornstarch and two tablespoons of water. Pour into stewing cherries and stir until clear and slightly thickened.

3. Remove about one cup of the cherries and purée. Add back into the pot. Add lemon juice, stir, and chill.

4. Add Amaretto or other liqueur before service, stir, then pour into bowls.

5. Place a generous dollop of sour cream on top and garnish with whatever you like, or nothing at all. I chose crumbled amaretti for all the obvious reasons.

Serves: 4 to 6.

When I spent time in Morocco a couple of years ago, I found harira on nearly every menu. Traditionally, it is the food that breaks the month-long, daylight fasting of Ramadan, but I was told by more than one old geezer that it was also referred to as "Smoker's Soup" because it helped purify the lungs. From what I saw, these men most likely ate spoonfuls of the stuff between long drags on their Marlboros.

Owing to the fact that I was not only riding, eating, and wearing camels, but smoking a hell of a lot of them, too, I decided to join them in their health regimen. My lungs didn't necessarily feel any better, but my stomach did. And maybe my soul, too.

Two years later, as I struggle to leave the Camels back in the Sahara where they belong, I have returned to harira in my latest and most successful attempt at purification. Nowhere on the internet could I find any mention of this being a smoker's soup. Of course, the old men who imparted this wisdom looked as though they'd never heard of a gmail account. God bless them and I pray that they never do.

It comforts me to know that you can't find everything by Goggle search.

Harira

There are probably as many harira recipes as there are families who make it. No two recipes I've seen are alike. This is one I happen to think is really good. Some people like to add pasta, some people prefer a bit of egg. And some people can get a thrill knitting sweaters and sitting still.

This soup can be made meatless by simply omitting one of the ingredients. If I have to tell you which one, you are a very bad vegetarian.

Serves 6

Ingredients:

1/2 pound lamb. Not fancy cuts, just stew meat. Cut into 1 inch pieces. Throw in a few bones, too.
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup lentils. Not French lentils. Some Moroccans still take issue with the French.
3/4 cup tomato paste
1 bunch parsley stems, tied together like some sort of Morticia Addams bouquet.
1 bunch cilantro stems treated as the parsley has been treated, leaves reserved for garnish.
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 cinnamon stick, three to four inches in length
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
A pinch of saffron
1 cup (for this recipe) canned chickpeas, drained
1 tablespoon flour
The juice of one lemon
Water
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. Heat oil and butter in a large Dutch oven. Add lamb bones and meat to brown nicely.

2. Add onion and cook until translucent. Then add spices, tomato paste, lentils, parsley, and cilantro stems. Cover with 8 cups of water, stir, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, add the canned chickpeas.

3. Make a slurry of flour with 1/2 cup of cold water and add to the soup, stirring well. Simmer for another 15 minutes.

4. When finished, remove lamb bones and the parsley and cilantro stems. Add as much salt and pepper as you deem necessary. Be generous with the salt, if you don't think it will kill you.

5. Ladle into warm bowls. Garnish with a scant fistful of cilantro leaves and wedges of lemon. Have at it with a loaf of very crusty bread and a spoon.

6. Repeat as needed.

Now how do you feel? Has the tar from 20 years of passionate cigarette smoking suddenly found the urge to leave your body? Oh. Well, I hope your soul is satisfied. Or, if you lack one of those, then at least your stomach.

Lucky me, the flu came visiting last week. Even after three days of sleeping in bed and swallowing nothing more than bananas and Advil, I could tell my uninvited guest had no intention of leaving. Time to get serious.

Cooking was out of the question -- I could barely stand up straight with the long, invisible spikes piercing both sides of my brain -- so I smiled as sweetly as possible at my husband and said three words: Pho ga. Please.

He'd never made the soup before nor did he have a mother who cooked it once a week, so I scribbled down some notes on a scrap of paper. I fell back asleep before he left for the grocery store, and by the time I woke up again, blessed me, I could smell the lovely scent of star anise and cinnamon and ginger all the way into the bedroom.

Now, lest you think that I'm married to a kitchen wizard, let me just say that during the five years he lived alone, the only meat he ever bought was bacon and he never, ever, not once, turned on his oven. Fortunately, the best foods for the soul are always the simplest.

Pho ga is an excellent way to prepare meals ahead of time. My mom used to simmer the chicken on Sunday, boil a big batch of noodles, wash all the herbs, and then refrigerate the components separately. It only takes about 10 minutes to reheat the stock and noodles for a comforting bowl of soup anytime during the week.

Eating my way through my husband's very first pot of pho ga brought me back to the land of the living. Here, verbatim, is the recipe:

Half-Conscious Notes on Making Pho Ga

Preparation
1. Cut chicken in half & pull off fatty chunks @ tail

2. Cover with cold water. Add onion (halved), some carrot logs, lots of star anise (8-10) a few cloves, teaspoon of peppercorns, and cinnamon stick. And Bay Leaf for the French. Add giblets, etc. & fennel seeds.

3. Bring just [double underlined] to a boil, then lower heat, cover partially & simmer gently 1 1/2 hour.

4. Remove chicken. remove big chunks of meat & return carcass. continue simmer 2-3 hrs.

Shopping List and Additional Notes

Ingredients
One 4-5 pound chicken
1 package wide rice noodles
A small hand of ginger
1 large onion
1 small carrot
Spices: star anise, cinnamon stick (preferably Vietnamese cassia), peppercorns, cloves, fennel seed
Fish sauce
Fried shallots

Fresh herbs: scallions, cilantro, Thai basil, saw-leaf herb, Bay leaf (optional)
Mung bean sprouts
Lime wedges
Fresh Thai chiles

This is the dream list for a homemade bowl of pho ga. Decent shortcuts include using good-quality, prepared stock and the meat of a rotisserie chicken. If you keep a box of premixed spice packets in your pantry (they look like big teabags), you can infuse plain chicken stock with Vietnamese flavors in 20 minutes. I've been known to enjoy a bowl of pho with only scallions for garnish, but each additional herb really does make a huge difference.

When buying rice noodles for this soup, look for the words banh pho ga on the label. If you're lucky enough to find fresh ones, you'll just need to immerse them for 10 or 15 seconds in very hot water. Dried noodles require 2 to 3 minutes of boiling.

I have a wide, extremely sharp cleaver that eases right through chicken bones. Halving chickens is also super simple if you have good kitchen shears. If you don't have a pair...get some. One of the must useful tools ever. Look for the heavy-duty ones with a round indentation at the base of the blades; that's what allows you to snip through the ribs and along the backbone. For those who think this all too much, just go ahead and buy chicken parts (bone-in!), but be sure to simmer the meat for only 30 or 40 minutes before stripping it off the bones. Having exposed bone marrow extracts more flavor. Besides, anyone who's tried to remove a whole chicken from a pot of simmering water can vouch for the wisdom of chicken halves or parts.

If you can, throw in a few extra chicken wings or, best of all, a couple of feet.

My family never bothered to strain the soup. All the aromatics and bones sink to the bottom of the pot, and we'd just ladle the soup from the top. If you prefer, though, you can strain the stock and reheat.

Vinegared onions are a favorite topping that's rarely available in restaurants. To make your own:
1. Slice an onion very thinly.
2. Drizzle generously with white vinegar.
3. Stir in lots of coarsely ground black pepper.
4. Let stand for 10 minutes and then serve alongside the herb platter.

Arrange sprigs of the fresh herbs, lime wedges, bean sprouts and chiles on large platters for finishing the soup at the table. Set a big bottle of fish sauce right on the table, too, because this is a Vietnamese meal, after all.

I like to pour boiling water (from cooking the noodles) over the bean sprouts to blanch them so they aren't hard and cold in the soup. (Shhhh, don't tell my Saigon-born mom. That's a Northern trick that I adopted after leaving home.)

For each diner, place a small nest of noodles in a large, preheated bowl. Cover with very hot stock and add a handful of shredded chicken. Sprinkle with chopped scallions, chopped cilantro and fried shallots. Let guests fine-tune their bowls with herbs and other flavorings as desired.

What do you do when the rain won't relent, when those gorgeous bay windows welcome in the wind, and when staying home in your pajamas is not only comfortable but life-saving?

Why, make soup, of course!

Soup of the Day

Yesterday's soup highlighted a lucky pantry find -- a forgotten can of Italian white beans. First into the pot went a lonely though generously proportioned carrot, two stalks of celery, a tight-skinned onion, and the final sprigs of holiday herbs: oregano, thyme, rosemary, and parsley. After these were sauteed to fragrant softness, in followed chicken stock, hand-torn plum tomatoes plus their juices, and those toothsome white beans.

I let the pot simmer for as long as it took to read a few chapters from The Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency. For an extra chapter, I tossed in some leftover roasted potatoes, the last of the red wine jus from the New Year's rib roast, then any and all dark greens hiding out in the fridge. That meant, for this pot, some slightly wilted mustard and a wedge of ever hardy cabbage.

Sense a theme here? A simmering soup pot is the best way to clean out your kitchen while steaming up your windows. Slice some bread, pull out the biggest mugs you have, and -- voila! -- the best food ever for curling up on the couch.

Mandu Soup

Around now, the first of the year, is also the time to enjoy ddeok mandu guk, Korean dumplings served in a simple broth. My friend Jineui invited me over to her brand-spanking-new kitchen in Sacramento to celebrate the start of a delicious 2008. Her promise to make mandu was all I needed to hop in the car.

Some dedicated cooks still make their mandu dough by hand, but many just buy thick, round prepared potsticker wrappers. (Be sure to look for “potsticker” on the label; “gyoza” or “wonton” wrappers are too thin for the distinctively chewy mandu texture.)

Jineui’s filling starts with ground beef and tofu that's been crushed finely between her fingers. She blanches bean sprouts then chops them. She adds minced cabbage, salt, pepper, and not much else. No sesame oil for her (“makes them taste funny”), but she does take time to squeeze moisture out of the vegetables. An egg wash helps seal the half-moons, and then the dumplings go into bamboo steamers lined with cabbage leaves.

(Photo by Jasmine Lee)

Serve the first batch of mandu straight from the steamer with dipping sauce. Serve the next few batches in bowls of clear stock with a light sprinkling of green onions and maybe some nori or egg strips if you're wanting to be fancy. Freeze the other few hundred or so mandu to eat through the rest of the winter. (I have one friend blessed with a mother who visits once a year and leaves about 2,000 or so homemade dumplings in their garage freezer before heading back across the Pacific.)

You can read how different families ring in the new year with mandu at the Kimchi Mamas. The Asia Society posted a simple recipe from the Korean National Tourism Organization, about as official as it gets for a humble dumpling, but a much more detailed recipe with helpful technique shots and lessons learned from past mistakes appears at My Korean Kitchen.

Oxtail Soup

Another Korean treat, ox-tail soup, is as easy as they come: Dump a few pounds of bones in a pot, add water plus a healthy pinch of salt, and then simmer for six hours, three if you're in a hurry. Jineui, always going the extra mile, likes to blanche her bones first for a clearer stock. During their long simmering, the bones give off their milky white goodness into a supremely flavorful broth. Serve with a spicy sesame seed dipping sauce. For those of us who live on the edge (fault lines and BSE be damned!) a bowl of liquified marrow manages to be both comforting and decadent at the same time.

What happens if you leave the pot over the wok burner instead of the special, low-flamed simmer burner? Umm...add more water and know that a few crispy brown bits floating around just means more flavor.

Vietnamese Crab Soup

On the more labor intensive side of soups comes one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes. Few restaurants even attempt to offer bun rieu, and a mere handful get it close to right. After feasting on Dungeness, I make broth with crab shells, shrimp shells and pork bones. Tomatoes add brightness, fried tofu offers some chewiness and, for old-school folks like me, cubes of freshly coagulated blood punctuate with silky richness. There's a raft of crab and shrimp bound with egg that hovers over rice noodles. And, finally, there are platters at the table piled high with sprigs of fresh mint and rau ram, chiffonade of cabbage and banana blossom, wedges of lime, tiny but fearless bird eye's chiles, and a dollop or two of shrimp paste to provide those layers of flavor that make Vietnamese food so distinctly fresh and complex.

So...what if you don't want to spend a day at the stove? Then head over to Pho King in East Oakland for a proper bowl. Di Da, one of my favorite Vietnamese restaurants in San Jose, an excellent establishment that happens to be vegetarian, also offers a wonderful, satisfying interpretation of bun rieu.

Pho King
638 International Boulevard, Oakland
(510) 444-0448

Di Da
2597 Senter Road, San Jose
(408) 998-8826

Soupsong

In my last love note to soups, I'm pointing you to the best resource ever for recipes celebratory and everyday, favorite and obscure. I fell hard for Pat Solley the "Soup Lady" a decade ago, while we were trapped in a car among the hills of West Virginia. Her job at the J. Edgar Hoover Building kinda, sorta freaked me out, but her dedication to all things brothy tugged at my heart. Of course, my stomach was never in doubt -- Pat knows more about soup history, traditions, tales, jokes and, of course, recipes from around the world than anyone else I've met. It's rare to find someone who can quote Herodotus and Bob Dylan in the same breath while cooking with all four burners going at once. She's now ensconced far away in Paris, but fortunately I keep warm with her Soupsong website and her excellent book An Exaltation of Soups.

(Illustration by D.C. Bloom)