February 24, 2012
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Soup Scoop
To preserve her leftovers, my grandmother kept a stock pot simmering on her stove around the clock, even after she bought her first refrigerator. Most of the foods that helped our Iowa ancestors survive long winters ended up in such pots where bones became the original brain food. (Anthropologists believe that human brain sizes only became possible after hominids began eating bone marrow.) Soups of potatoes, carrots, onions and especially squash figured prominently in early Iowa cookbooks. So did things that could easily be dried and dehydrated – mushrooms, fruits, legumes, meat and fish. In the 1950’s President Eisenhower hosted Soviet Union Premier Khrushchev at an Iowa-grown dinner in Des Moines.
Their first course was split pea soup with smoked trotters. Soon after that, two crop agriculture put an end to Iowa split peas and centralized meat processing removed trotters from the state’s diet. Stocks were replaced with convenient soup starters or bouillons that lacked the nutritional values of liquefied bones. By the late1970’s, few Iowa restaurants bothered with the labor of bone stocks.
Then Governor Bob Ray saved our soup. His leadership in bringing southeast Asians to Iowa led to a number of restaurants specializing in pho.
That scrumptious soup is usually made here with a white stock (raw bones are used) of beef, and sometimes pork, bones. They simmer for at least eight hours before rice noodles, sprouts, cilantro and choices of meats are added. This winter at Lucky Dragon, Pho 888 and TNT, the Caribbean herb culantro has been added to the mix.
At Simply Asian, a similar glass noodle soup included black fungi and enoki mushrooms plus divine tofu skins while bar kut the, a mushroom soup,
added lychees and pork ribs or viscera.
At Cafe Paris, a pigs blood soup is made with chicken stock.
Most stocks in Asia (and curiously Montreal) are made with pork bones but the only pork stock soup I found in Des Moines this winter was a ramen at Gateway Market Café. Chef George Formaro spent a year translating Japanese recipes before he settled on this one which also adds chicken bones, leeks, onions, garlic and ginger to the pot. Most non-Asian chefs in Iowa only make white stocks with chickens.
Lisa LaValle starts with six whole hens and mirepoix for her chicken and noodle soup at the Art Center Café – the richest tasting such soup I‘ve ever found, with little hand made dumplings for noodles. At Mojo’s on 86th, Anthony Johnson makes chicken stock with Iowa raised, free ranged chickens and Cornish hens.
That was the base recently of his Italian chicken tomato soup.
Most classic European soups in Des Moines are made with brown stocks (of roasted bones). Little else is consistent one chef to the next. Formaro uses veal and beef bones in Django’s French Onion soup. David Baruthio uses veal and marrow bones in his version at Baru 66. Enosh Kelley mixes roasted duck and veal bones in his sumptuous caramelized French onion soup, finished at Bistro Montage with sherry. At Tally’s, Robert Sanda even makes a brown stock of veal bones for his chili.
Iowa’s mother soup is squash. Two of its most illustrious varieties — Acorn and Sibley — were born here and stay fresh all winter. Iowa soup makers are divided over whether squash soup should use chicken or vegetable stock. State Fair champion soup maker Lynn Jeffers prefers chicken stock.
At Alba, Jason Simon makes his pureed butternut squash & Granny Smith apple soup with leek stock. Other vegetarian soups impressed us this winter too. Baru 66’s celery root soup has deep flavor and divine texture. The Art Center Café’s ginger lentil soup and multiple dhals at both Namaste and India Star all have flavors that could bring back Iowa legumes. Ike and Nikita too.
Side Dishes
Dom Ianarelli (Jethro’s) won the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society chili cook off… Amateur Ellen Yee won Slow Food Des Moines’ soup competition with a spiced parsnip soup with Marsala, in white chicken stock.
Art Center Café
4700 Grand Ave., 271-0332
Tues. – Sun. 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.
