January 1999

Like everyone, I feel a bit let down after the holidays. OK, it's a new year, and I'm a new me, ready to start fresh and do great things. But the new me I see in the mirror weighs a few pounds more than the old me who tangoed into Christmas in a skinny dress.

What to do - go on a diet with the rest of the world? It's too cold to eat salad all the time. January requires something that nourishes body and soul - while helping me get back in fighting shape.

Last year about this time I wandered into my kitchen one day, feeling even hungrier from knowing that I should eat less. There were still remnants of Christmas here and there - a few cookies in the bottom of a tin, some chocolate truffles. It made me weary to think about how many of those truffles were riding on my hips, and what it would take to dislodge them.

But I had been to the farmers market, so my refrigerator was full of hope and leafy greens. I started working in my favorite way - no plan. I pulled things out - chard, big shiny leaves. Green onions. Cilantro. A head of curly kale worthy of Mr. MacGregor's garden. As I washed and trimmed and chopped, I thought - garlic, onions...

I caramelized the onions in the tiniest, most restrained amount of olive oil. I threw the garlic into another drop of the same, filling the house with the most comforting of aromas. Who could feel downhearted with the smell of sizzling garlic around them? I added a potato because I'm Polish and can't help it, and simmered it all together in some broth. At the end I added a pinch of pepper and a bit of lemon juice, and puréed the soup in a blender.

It was so green! I ate a nice, hot bowlful, and sat up straighter at once, more ready to face the year. Vitamins, minerals! And phytochemicals, those mysterious things they don't understand yet but know are good for you. I could feel them racing through my system. Most important - it was delicious. That's the beauty of a good soup - like a massage, it feels great while it does a body good. Casually, I counted up the calories, and decided I had probably expended more energy making the soup than I would take in if I ate every drop of it myself.

Over the next few days I dipped into the soup often - a snack while working, a bowl for lunch with a bagel, another bowl for dinner with some white cheese crumbled into it. Yum. Everyone ate it. Even Teddy, my twelve year old son, who would rather eat snakes than anything green, grudgingly admitted that it was OK. ("This is embarrassing, Mom - I kind of like it.")

Then, as happens with even the biggest pots of soup, it was gone. But the green soup had hit the seasonal spot. I hauled home another cartload of greens from the market - spinach, leeks, turnip greens - and made another version. When the hunger struck, I answered it with a bowl of soup. More green soup, less of everything else - that was my new plan.

Soon after, friends were coming to dinner. The green soup had become my private habit - why not take it out to a party? I had some mushrooms on hand; I sautéed them in a miserly amount of olive oil, with lots and lots of garlic, and when they were nice and brown I tossed them into the simmering greens. No potato this time. A dash of rice vinegar instead of lemon juice, and everything puréed again.

The green soup with mushrooms seemed more important somehow. It had mystery - the earthiness of the hidden mushrooms, the zing of acid. It as great. People starting calling for the recipe. "Is it in one of your books?" - "Well, no.."

Over the next weeks and months I made many green soups, and not one was the same as the one before. I took some notes, determined to have the definitive recipe. Soon my desk was littered with scrawled green soup formulas. I had lost my holiday pounds, but the green soup had become my standby. When the weather was raw, green soup took the place of salad in my daily lunch.

If you cook often, you have had this experience: the soup that keeps re-inventing itself. I made it with yams instead of potatoes. I made it with spinach, green onions and nutmeg - more green than any spinach soup you've ever seen. A friend brought me bags of fresh watercress from her stream, and I put it together with yukon gold potatoes - excellent.

Once I found I had no potatoes, and my eye fell upon a kabocha squash, something I count as a staple in my kitchen all fall and winter. I made the green soup with winter squash and was smitten again. Another time, by chance, because I'd been roasting beets and had all the fresh tops left, I came up with one of my favorite versions - beet green soup.

Usually I puréed the soup, blending the flavors into one pungent, savory essence of green, but sometimes I left the individual elements intact - pieces of squash gradually softening and thickening the broth, flecks of brown onion, and always the strips of dark green. Sometimes I garnished the soup with cheese or croutons or even a spicy salsa, and sometimes I ate it in its perfect simplicity. It always was good.

By now, I know that it's not so much a recipe as a way of life. It's January again, and there is a pot of green soup simmering on my stove. The method is always the same, and the basic formula is this:

First - lots of greens - the nicest greens you can find, dark green, crisp. No tired old greens auditioning for the compost. Two or three big bunches of greens are not too much for a really green soup.

Next - something to give the soup a little body - this could be a potato or two, a yam, those delicious mushroom, or some winter squash.

And then - always some onions for sweetness, slowly caramelized in a tiny bit of oil until they are an amber-colored marmalade, and some lemon juice or vinegar for acidity.

Finally - add vegetable broth, or chicken broth. Season the soup with salt and pepper, maybe cayenne. Basta. That's it. Except for all the things you change to make it different, but you know about that already.

Now, here are the exact recipes for two of the thirty or forty unique green soups I have made over the last year: a basic Green Soup, and the Green Soup With Mushrooms variation. If you like green soup, you will surely come up with your own favorite combinations. When you hit on a great one, e-mail it to me -- I will appreciate it!

January 1999 recipe