Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Butternut Squash Soup Is So Passe


“Butternut Squash Soup Is So Passé”

Butternut Squash (2.5 lbs)

Right now, the squash is roasting in the oven. As an afterthought, I’ve put a clove of garlic in each of the hollowed out bulbs, and they are now floating in a sizzling puddle of butter and maple syrup. The combination of smells tells me this was a good idea.

I turn on the oven light every few minutes or so just to watch: watch the garlic turn glossy, and then a deep brown; watch the squash form a crust of caramelized sugars. And I know: This isn’t about fall; It’s not about wearing sweaters, huddling up to a fire, or drinking cider or mulled wine. It’s about watching a squash caramelize at 450º, with a little jazz in the background, and the house empty and quiet.

Later, I’ll mash the squash, the roasted garlic, add a touch more maple syrup, some salt and pepper, a little Plugras butter. The mash will go into a simmering chicken stock, and then I’ll puree it into a soup. I’ll sit down to the table, scoot in the chair, lift the spoon, and sip.
In other words, this, is about cooking and about eating.


Roasted Garlic (2 cloves)

When I was a baby, my mom made most of my baby food. She liked to cook. She made everything, and she made everything well, from pot roasts to soups to meatloaf to latkes to applesauce. We used to go up to Strawberry, Arizona, to fill baskets of apples that we’d bring back down to Phoenix. We’d jar the applesauce with those little red-checkered pieces of cloth, and give them out as Christmas presents.

And I’ll tell you, it wasn’t nostalgic—homemade such-and-such that gets shelved and then gathers dust. It was damn good applesauce.

My dad cooked too, though he went in for the big stuff: baby-back ribs; tamales; shredded beef tacos—project food. Which might explain why, last year, I dug a pit in my backyard to make pit-smoked ribs; or why I convinced Emily, my wife, that we could cater our wedding; or why most of my kitchen is stocked with restaurant-grade materials.

But it wasn’t until my parents got divorced, my mom going back to work full time, my dad moving away, and my sister and I becoming latch key kids, that I started cooking.

My sister and I had time after school, and besides watching a lot of TV, fighting like crazy, or building bombs (me), we cooked. Maybe it was out of boredom. Or maybe it was because, if either of us had a hankering for a cake, and we didn’t just happen to have a cake hanging around, we knew what flour, water, eggs, and sugar did, if mixed in the proper proportions, and baked at 375°. Some parents hide the cookies—my mom had to hide the baking powder. And that’s what it was about—what it came to mean: it was what we wanted to eat. We didn’t have much money, but we had developed taste; and we had to figure out a way to satisfy that taste.


Chicken Stock (3 quarts)

For the soup, I made the chicken stock from the roasted bones of a chicken I carved up earlier in the week. Lunchmeat goes for $7.99 a pound; add that to the fact that I’m in Alabama, where it’s harder to find natural meats, and it doesn’t seem trivial to take the 15 extra minutes to cut up a whole, organic, free-range chicken. The cost still works out to be a little cheaper, and I can freeze some parts for dinner, roast other parts for lunchmeat, and use the bones for, well, soup.

I learned about the all-important stock in at my first real cooking job, which, oddly enough, was managing a kitchen. Pronto Ristorante was small, fast-paced, and did a brisk lunch service geared towards a business crowd who wanted something just a little bit better—which means, though the food was good, and the menu original, it was still a no-brainer. There was no mention of Alice Waters, Thomas Keller, or Charlie Trotter. We didn’t need them to make Pasta al Pomodoro, Chicken with Gorgonzola Cream Sauce, or Open-faced Focaccia Pizza.

Andy, the chef, had called me when the person they’d just hired for the job didn’t work out. He was in a jam and he needed someone to fill in for a while. I was smart, I showed up for work on time, I did what needed to be done, and I could follow recipes—I could cook. Plus, I was dating Andy’s sister.

“A week or two” turned into two years.

After working there a year or so, I became pretty efficient in the kitchen. I read books on cooking, practiced knife skills, experimented with new foods; and I became a real cook insofar as I drank, smoked, and watched, no longer in disbelief, but with a casual disinterest, as my salad man poured his daily half-gram of speed into his Mountain Dew, and my line cook hollowed out a carrot stump, removed the screen from the bathroom sink, packed his newly made vegetable pipe, and smoked it, there on the line, blowing the smoke into the fume hoods.

But I also learned about stocks. The one thing that is essential to cooking, the thing I learned to love, the thing that took me over a year to even become aware of (under proper apprenticeship/tutelage, it would have been principle #1), is that when it comes to good food, everything worth anything starts with a good stock. And this is no metaphor. Sure, if you want you can apply it to life, to love, to money, to business—whatever. I could probably write a book titled, Everything I Need To Know I Learned By Making Stocks. But there’s something more to a stock. Something that exists, in and of itself, that, if metaphorized, or made into something else, takes away from the natural beauty of a perfect stock. Even calling a stock “beautiful” takes away from what it is, which, in some ways defies definition.

I must have made a hundred soups before I realized that. And the best soups are the ones with only one or two ingredients added to a well-flavored, nicely reduced stock. Roasted Garlic; Potato Leek; French Onion; Bouillabaisse. Don’t get me wrong—the word “stock” is misleading—it doesn’t just mean carrots, celery, leeks and parsley. Some stocks are insanely complicated and essentially require a Frenchman, with a penchant for beating people with wooden spoons, to get them right. But once I figured out the basic stocks, soup making became something entirely different—as did cooking.

And that is when I understood why. Why I cooked. Cooking is a craft, a deeply rewarding craft. Each step can be improved upon, improvised upon, in infinite ways—as long as one has the basic principles. It’s like music. And that’s why I’m at home on a Tuesday night, making butternut squash soup, which is so passé anyway.


S+P (To Taste)

The squash is resting on the counter. I scoop the fruit into the stock, along with the roasted garlic, and then carefully pour the little bit of maple syrup and butter that’s left in the bottom of the hollowed-out shell. Then I puree it with a hand mixer. I taste it, and decide it needs a little more salt, a little more ground pepper. I taste it again and it’s good. Really good. I ladle some into a bowl, slice off a nice piece of bread and sit down at the dining room table. Emily isn’t home yet—won’t be until later—so I’m eating alone. But that’s the point. I’m not using the good ingredients—scratch stock, Plugras butter, fresh grated nutmeg—to impress anyone. Unless it’s myself. This isn’t about fall. It’s not about Saveur or Gourmet or Food and Wine. It’s not about conjuring images of sweaters, fires, or cider and mulled wine. It’s about watching a squash caramelize at 450º; then mashing the squash, the roasted garlic, adding a touch of maple syrup, some salt and pepper, a little Plugras butter, adding it to a simmering chicken stock, and then pureeing that into a soup. It’s about sitting down to the table, scooting in the chair, lifting the spoon, and sipping, and tasting.

I sit back, in the, quiet, empty house, listening to a little jazz, and enjoy a well-made, well-crafted soup.