Here Is A Recipe For Toast Soup
I find this recipe for “Toast Soup” profoundly soothing. Just reading the copy, looking at the pictures, thinking about how manageable this could be, should I choose to get up and make myself food today, brings me great joy and great calm in equal, steady waves.
Toast soup — containing both toast and soup — ought to be the most primal of comfort foods, suitable to be fed to any ill person or baby. Not to mention the rest of us — grown, technically-well adults who’ve maybe had a long day. And, yes, toast soup is all that its name implies: soothing, restorative, uncomplicated.
Probably this is all related to “shut-in culture” and adult-onset-emotional paralysis, but let’s not examine this too closely, shall we? Just think about toast soup. Think about eating it with a big wooden spoon. Perhaps you are a soft little bear who has been running around in the woods all day, and you live in a tree with your mother, who loves you and has made you this toast soup.
The bitter element here is the toast, which you burn intentionally. “Don’t be afraid,” the author Jennifer McLagan writes. “Toast that bread until it is burnt on the edges and very dark in the middle.”
For toast soup, which McLagan adapted from L’Astrance restaurant in Paris, you’ll first make an enriched broth out of bacon (a.k.a. let bacon sit in warm chicken stock for 20 minutes), then sop it up with burnt sourdough. After adding hot milk, Dijon, and vinegar from the jar of cornichons you forgot were in the fridge door, you blend all of it. Yes, even the bacon. Don’t worry about it.
I won’t worry about it. I won’t worry about anything.
It will look a bit like a full-bellied mushroom soup, but its taste — yeasty, earthy, tangy — is oddly reminiscent of a beer and cheese soup, without beer or cheese. I credit the bread, which also makes the broth thick and hearty, with delightful tiny bits of bacon and softened bread crust to bite down on as you go.
These ragtag ingredients balance each other gracefully, but you can do this anytime: Next time you make a bread soup — pappa al pomodoro, ribollita, salmorejo — consider toasting or even charring the bread first. The Maillard reaction isn’t limited to steaks — browning just about anything will give it a more developed flavor.
This is good. I will burn bread, and I will make soup, and I will blend it, and I will eat it, and I will eat it with a wooden spoon, and I will be okay, and all manner of things will be okay.
[Image via Food52]
Tags: being a little bear instead of a human adult, food, soup
Well, I ate some, and now I'm a Hobbit. Thanks a load.
You'd probably drink whatever an ent handed you too!
http://jaynagyphoto.com/NigelJoke.png
This is definitely a day for being a small bear instead of a human. Bacon chicken stock can only make things better.
The little bear thing just made me tear up at my desk sooooo, that's how my day's going.
Clearly we're not alone!
I just have to be a human until 5. Then I'm giving myself permission to be a small bear for the rest of the day.
For some reason I thought that Mallory was in the "Soup Isn't Real Food" camp.
She wants you to believe that but it is a LIE
Next we'll get her secretly adored hummus recipe.
Just don't ask her to knit you a soup, or you will get in trouble.
I hope to see many, many more celebrations of "being a little bear instead of a human adult".
"Human Behaviour"'s in your head now, right?
Hang on, beer & cheese soup is a thing? I need it now.
Oh heck YEAH it is! http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/beer-and-chedd…
We made some for supper on Saturday actually! It was amazing! But if you like to bring leftovers to work for lunch like I do… well, it's pretty decadent.
The Toast and The Butter are meeting all my previously unknown needs today. I make a version of this with warm milk, honey, and cinnamon but have never even CONSIDERED a savory version. Little bear life = best life.
L. Rust Hills's "How to Make Milk Toast" in _How to Do Things Right: Memoirs of a Fussy Man_ is the locus classicus for this. Actually, everything in How to Do Things Right is delightful.
I have never needed anything as much as I needed a recipe for toast soup today, and I didn't even know it until it was waiting here for me.
It would be weird of me to buy a jar of cornichons just for the vinegar, right?
You have my blessing. Not that you need it, but you definitely have it.
not if you don't tell anybody
If you need someone to help you eat the cornichons, I volunteer.
From the somewhat lesser-known Revelations of Divine Soup.
At first I thought I couldn't enjoy this at all as a vegetarian, but she said not to worry about the bacon. Fixed!
I am not myself a vegetarian, but I am commenting here to say that if you haven't ever considered making homemade vegetable bouillon you should really rethink that position because it's amazing. Maybe cut down a bit on the cilantro (or sub dill) if you don't like it, but making this is probably the best cooking decision I've made this year.
I haven't ever considered making homemade vegetable bouillon, and I am rethinking that position this very minute. And considering that I am one of those people for whom cilantro is the best thing that has ever happened, I will be glad to enjoy the recipe as written.
What an awesome find, thank you!
I'm going to make it with fakin bacon.
Oh, I can't wait for summer so I can start making salmorejo again. I will definitely burn the toast (that's how I like my toast anyway).
Right? Salmorejo. Oh, summer in a bowl…
I'm just nodding at the screen with tears running down my face. Thank you. So much.
The Victorian English version (suitable for vegetarians):
"TO MAKE TOAST-AND-WATER.
1876. INGREDIENTS.–A slice of bread, 1 quart of boiling water.
Mode.–Cut a slice from a stale loaf (a piece of hard crust is better than anything else for the purpose), toast it of a nice brown on every side, but do not allow it to burn or blacken. Put it into a jug, pour the boiling water over it, cover it closely, and let it remain until cold. When strained, it will be ready for use. Toast-and-water should always be made a short time before it is required, to enable it to get cold: if drunk in a tepid or lukewarm state, it is an exceedingly disagreeable beverage. If, as is sometimes the case, this drink is wanted in a hurry, put the toasted bread into a jug, and only just cover it with the boiling water; when this is cool, cold water may be added in the proportion required,–the toast-and-water strained; it will then be ready for use, and is more expeditiously prepared than by the above method." (from http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications7/beet…
Oh yeah sometimes you do want your toast-and-water in a hurry
This is totally what I'm doing tonight!
Except for the cornichon juice, substitute an olive.
And for the toast, substitute ice.
And for the stock, substitute gin.
And for the bacon, substitute…more gin.
Well played.
But bread in milk — I'm to understand that that's no good? What are the key differences?
Is it the cold/hot thing, the milk/burned toast thing, or something else?
"Little bears" are how I refer to my cats when I'm talking to them, so it follows logically that Toast Soup must be my dinner tonight.
i thought i was the only one who did this. i would like to know more about you, person on the internet!
Oh god, I'm so glad I'm not the only only with a primal, sometimes melancholy desire to be a little bear who eats honey and warm milk and berries and soup her mom makes her because life is scary but running around chasing butterflies in the forest is fun, and you're just so *tired* and you really need to be in a tree trunk with comfort food and your bear mom.
Oh. Oh yes.
you've basically described my ideal life so no, you are definitely not alone.
I really, really needed this today.
Also, my parents enlightened to me how all vegetables are delicious when they're roasted until half-black. Especially brussel sprouts.
Perhaps you are a soft little bear who has been running around in the woods all day, and you live in a tree with your mother, who loves you and has made you this toast soup.
*solemnly adorns this on a fresh page of the notebook dedicated to Favorite Mallory Quotes*
I saw this on the sidebar and gasped, and before even knowing it was written by you I thought, "Daniel Mallory Ortberg does not disappoint."
*whispers* I don't understand, it's not just soggy bread???
ETA: OH no, I see! You blend it! Oh man, this sounds so great, I even have an immersion blender, all my soft little bear dreams can come true!
My partner calls me "little bear" and tells me stories about a different little bear who lives in a tree and makes biscuits and I love my partner very much.
Grade A Julian of Norwich ref, too. This has hit all my bases.
It's a beautiful day outside, but also a blustery day. A happy day (exceptionally so), but happiness has its hour and then dissipates. So a bowl of something grounding is perfect. P.S. I really need a toaster.
Fffffff thanks for deciding my dinner tonight, Mallory.
(n.b. it works with all SORTS of desperation/pantry substitutes: pumpernickel instead of sourdough, buttermilk instead of real milk and cornichon brine, a mix of creole mustard and Chinese hot mustard instead of Dijon…I mean. We had bacon, bread, bouillon, and a stick blender, basically.)
Also, in case you, like I, had never heard of bread soup as a concept: some variations.
Shdreis'l Suppee –Pretzel Soup
Heat a bowl of milk for each person to be served. To each bowl of milk add a small piece of butter and serve. At the table each person should break up enough large pretzels to fill the bowl. — PA Dutch Cookbook, Culinary Arts Press
There is a recipe for beef tea on the same page, plus many fine potato-based recipes, and gingerbread, and plum conserve. I feel the little bear would approve.