December 21, 2008

• Soups of Iowa

  Iowa Souper Bowls

  I live for good soup, not fine words. Moliere

  Years after buying her first refrigerator, my grandmother still kept her leftovers in a soup pot simmering around the clock. Raised in Ireland and Iowa 100 years ago, when food was never wasted, she couldn’t break that old frugal habit. Grandma didn’t live to own a garbage disposal, and I doubt she could have ever lived long enough for that.

  Iowa has a long soup tradition. Most of the foods that helped our ancestors survive long winters ended up in a soup pot where bones gave up their last measure of nutritional value. Potatoes, carrots, onions and especially squash figured in early Iowa cookbooks. So did things that could easily be dried and dehydrated – mushrooms, fruits, meat and fish. Most 19^th and 20^th century Iowa soup recipes came from the Old World. Czechs and Slovaks brought mushroom soup to Cedar Rapids long before Campbell’s put it in a can. German and Irish immigrants favored soups of dairy decadence, with sweet butters and creams complimenting cabbage and potatoes’ blandness.

  Others soups were more esoteric. In Winneshiek County, the Norwegian-American population brought sotsuppe, a fruit soup that is traditionally eaten as a winter treat, particularly on the holidays. There are scores of variations, but it’s usually made with a grape juice base, plus dried fruits like raisins, currants, apricots, prunes and cherries, before being sweetened with sugar, given an acidity boost with lemon juice, spiced with cinnamon and thickened with tapioca.

  All these European immigrant groups discovered squash in Iowa, along with its native American siblings corn and beans. European Iowans never really had the patience to make soup out of mature corn, and even most 21^st century Mexican-American chefs in Iowa take the short cut of using canned hominy to prepare posole. Sweet corn soups, legendary in the first half of the last century, were a casualty of hybrid seeds. Today’s sweet corn varieties don’t yield the same magical sweetness to a soup pot.

  In the 1950’s President Eisenhower took Soviet Premier Khrushchev to dinner at the Hotel Fort Des Moines. They began with an Iowa split pea soup. Lisa LaValle at the Des Moines Art Center Café makes a marvelous “green lentil ginger” version of that now, but most Iowa bean and lentil soup recipes have been imported from other states.

  Of the basic native American foods, squash figures most distinctively in the state’s soup traditions. Two of squash’s most illustrious varieties — the acorn and the Sibley — have deep Iowa roots. Iowa soup makers have long been divided over whether squash should first be cooked, or be added raw to the soup stock. At Fairfield’s Revelations Book Store & Café, an “ova, lacto, vegan-friendly, organic restaurant,” chef Maki Bishop makes a rather famous “butternut squash curry soup with red lentils and ginger.” She believes in simmering raw, cubed squash in her vegetable stock. State Fair champion soup maker Lynn Jeffers prefers roasting her squash first in olive oil, with apples, carrots, shallots and tomatoes, before adding it to her chicken stock. Martha Wolf at Burlington and Fort Madison’s Ivy Bake Shoppe and Café makes it similarly, but with leeks instead of shallots and tomatoes. Rob Beasley at Johnston’s Mojo’s on 86^th likes to extract every nuance of squash into his soup. He makes a “squash stock” with various root vegetables and then adds roasted, sauteed, caramelized and raw squashes for myriad textures and flavors.

  In the last half of the 20^th century, convenient short cuts, like bouillon and base mix, threatened to wipe out the tradition of boiling bones and vegetables to make stock. Lately there’s been a revival of the old, slow methods, on many levels. Thanks to Community College culinary schools, Iowa is now blessed with a large number of academy-trained chefs who wouldn’t think of making soup with anything less than pure bone stock. So, “liquid bones” are returning to the fine dining scene. At the same time, Southeast Asian immigrants have imported a traditional cuisine that is based around a 12 hour bone stock soups. At Café Shi in Ames, or a dozen places in Des Moines, a bowl of pho delivers a balanced meal in the finest of stocks, for less than most chain restaurants charge for reheated canned soup. From Mexican tortilla soups to Japanese miso, from Thai tom yum gai to West African peanut soups, the world is now Iowa’s oyster stew.

  Some Iowa soups have faithful customers willing to drive long distances. Just off the square in Shenandoah, The Sanctuary draws people for their fresh home made soups year around, but especially when asparagus is in season. Southside Des Moines neighborhood café Baratta’s pepper cheese soup is the most famous cheese soup in a town that adores that dish. Smokey Row Coffee House in Knoxville and Pella has been known long for their cheeseburger chowder in a bread bowl.

   

  
  George the Chili King in Des Moines, plus Milwaukee Weiner House and Coney Island in Sioux City have all been serving a Greek-American take on chili, in which herbs and meat trump tomato and beans, for half a century or more. All their recipes are remarkably similar, but different enough to be closely guarded family secrets.

  Since this is the corn state, the last word in soup belongs to the Red Avocado. That extraordinary Iowa City café, which buys more fresh and local produce than any other place in the state, has a signature soup that compensates for modern hybrid corn with culinary ingenuity. It mixes sweet corn with coconut, salts it with tamari and accents it with freshly made chili paste, creating a vegan and organic version so popular the recipe is proprietary information. Partner-chef David Burt says more than one customer has described it as “an orgasm in a bowl.”

  
  Three Iowa Classics

  Last Chance

  At Alpha‘s on the Riverfront in Fort Madison, owner-chef Kumar Wickramasingha had almost given up trying to introduce his native Sri Lankan cuisine to customers. Then for a Christmas banquet, he made this soup and called it simply “curry vegetable soup.”

  “They loved it and kept telling me put it on the menu. So I decided to market it, I put a little page in the middle of the menu, telling people how I was giving it one last chance, I wrote ’I swear I’ll take this off the menu if you don’t try it.’

  “It was so popular I had to make 6 gallons a day.”

  Kumar Wickramasingha’s Curry Vegetable Soup

   

   

   

  1 cup chopped celery

  1 cup chopped carrots

  1 cup chopped mushrooms

  1 cup chopped onions

  6 cups chicken broth

  1 tsp. chopped garlic

  Half cup chopped cilantro

  2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

  4 teaspoon curry powder

  3 Tablespoons flour

  One fourth a cup heavy cream

  Put all the celery, carrots, mushrooms, garlic & half a cup of onions with chicken broth and bring to a boil, simmer until vegetables are soft. When the vegetables in the broth are slightly cool, puree the soup. Once it turns into a velvety texture, return the soup to the pan and bring it to a gentle simmer.

  In a skillet, heat the oil and fry the rest of the onions until they turn caramel brown. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Add curry powder and flour to oil and onion while stirring rapidly. Add this mixture to simmering soup while stirring constantly to prevent lumping.

  Simmer until the soup is thickened. Add cilantro. Just before serving, add a dash of heavy cream to each bowl.

  Cool Pepper Sprout

  At Pepper Sprout in old downtown Dubuque, area growers bring their fresh garden harvest to Kim Wolff’s kitchen door. The owner-chef’s scratch soups have quite a reputation. Many are personal family heirlooms, with relatives even growing the ingredients. Kim wastes nothing.

  “We utilize the whole food, the trimmings from the peeled vegetables tonight go into the stock tomorrow morning.”

  She rotates several cold soups on her Spring and Summer menu, but her personal favorite is this champagne and cantaloupe soup with fresh spearmint. It’s so cool, she even makes martinis from its base.

  Kim Wolff’s Champagne Melon Soup

  serves 8-12

  3 fresh melons

  1 shallot, or green onion

  2 bottles Asti Spumante

  half cup chopped spearmint, plus as many sprigs as servings

  One fourth pint fresh blueberries

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Sugar or honey are optional

  Cut the melon from the rind and puree, in a blender of food processor. Chop the shallots or green onions and add to the puree. Pour the champagne over the puree and let settle about two hours. Add spearmint and blueberries.

  Serve in martini glasses with fresh sprigs of spearmint.

  Holy Mushroom

  Many Slavic groups, particularly the Slovaks, have kept the same traditions as their ancestors who lived in the Tatrý Mountains of Eastern Europe. Even with the variance of certain traditions Slavs in Iowa gather as a family and share the Christmas Eve meal, complete with its religious significance. The meal consists of 12 dishes served in honor of the 12 Apostles. One dish includes machanka, a thick mushroom soup, prepared with Zapraška base. Zapraška is a thick brown sauce used in preparation of various soups and gravies.

  Slovak Machanka

  Courtesy of “Czech & Slovak Heritage: Families, Stories, Traditions, Recipes” by The Museum Guild of the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library

  For Zapraška

  4 tablespoon salad oil

  4 Tablespoon flour

  For Machanka

  Zapraska, from above recipe

  Mushrooms (canned, fresh, or dry)*

  salt and pepper to taste

  1 16 ounce can tomatoes, mashed, undrained

  In large skillet, make Zapraska by heating oil and add flour gradually stirring constantly until browned.

  Add mashed tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste. Then add mushrooms with liquid. Mix well and cook for a few minutes on low heat.

  For thinner machanka, add more liquid from mushrooms; For thicker machanka, drain some of the liquid and add enough to your desired thickness.

  * Canned Mushrooms: Put mushrooms and juice into saucepan; heat. Then proceed as directed above. The amount of mushrooms depends on your preference.

  Fresh Mushrooms: Put cut up mushrooms in a saucepan; add water to cover; cook. Use the amount you prefer.

  Dried Mushrooms: Wash and soak overnight. Cook next day in lightly salted water, slowly, 2 hours or more.

  • 3:51 pm
  • 2 Comments