Nov 27 2008
Questioning The Need to Stop Questioning
The Good | Squashing Your Fears
This year in my family we decided to adopt some of our own Thanksgiving traditions sticking around the house as opposed to putting ourselves through a weekend of travel floating to other people’s traditions.
Part of the parade was to plan and prepare a multi-course healthy meal on a relative budget, but doing it efficiently (versus hours and hours of roasting, for example, with a giant conventional bird - tonight was all about the breasts) and as a family.
It was as successful as I could’ve realistically expected, but there was one food element in particular that stood out: the pumpkin soup.
The basic ingredients aren’t all that snazzy. It includes onions, celery, chicken stock, heavy cream, and of course pumpkin, in puree form. The magic happened in the arc of its little story. When I took my first taste, I was dismayed. The kitchen was a little hectic and everything sounded good in concept, but the taste was kind of flat. A bath-like, tap-watery almost exclusively cream taste, although not as good as that sounds.
Maybe it needs help, I though. The recipe called for nutmeg but we choose not to get it, but cinnamon would serve a similar purpose so I threw some in there. It was sweeter, but that just was a mask. Nothing was full-bodied about this at all.
After it simmered a while I tasted again. It seemed better with concentration, but it still was hard to identify as any of its constituent ingredients.
Then it was time to serve it. We ladled it in bowls, spooned a dried cranberry and apple relish in the center, and topped it with a couple of rosemary leaves.
That took just a few seconds and a few second later it was on the table ready to eat. Taking a spoonful of the deep ocean of soup, near neither the relish or the garnish, I found it to be absolutely delicious. Restaurant quality, that I would choose to order. Well-rounded in every way.
Was it love? Context? Who knows, and that may be the point in itself. Sometimes you won’t get to know why a thing works. You just make sure that while it’s still around, you appreciate that it does.
