12.16.06

Soup’s On!

Posted in The Story, Recipes at 4:25 am by Chef Matt

For those of you who have been following this blog, you know that I almost had my first addition to the menu at Tirolo in the form of butternut squash soup. I planned it out, and even researched different preparation methods to better suit the equipment we had available to us at Tirolo. I give and I give. But alas, that was never to be, as I had to leave Tirolo before I was able to make that addition simply because I was not being taken all that seriously as a chef there, and so I headed to the greener pastures of Vero.

So imagine my surprise when I arrived at Vero yesterday and Edwin - the line cook who gets it all done - told me that if I had the time, he would love for me to make the soup for the next few days. Wow - what a shock! I mean, this was my free reign to make whatever I felt like, and offer it up to the public. And I had planned nothing. Hell, I was still in the middle of cutting 200 jerk chicken skewers for a corporate Christmas party. What to do?

They are great sautéed, and they make great soup too!

Well, there was no butternut squash in house, so that was out. The next thought was to think of what was in season. Well, the fall squashes we have had recently looked good, so I decided to make a cream of zucchini soup, basically working form a recipe tat I had learned at Tirolo. (Once again, this was a recipe that they refused to teach me, I learned it by watching. I am sure they would be mad to know I actually learned when they weren’t paying attention…) Anyway, I set about cutting the vegetables and preparing the pan.

All was going well. I was making the right progress, and I was still making inroads into preparing the fruit and cheese platters for the many upcoming catering events as well. Multitasking at its best! But as the soup boiled, I noticed that something was missing. There was a thinness to the soup, and I was having trouble filling it. No need to worry, this is where a little touch of stock helps out every time. If you just add water to soup, it can taste, well, watery. If you add some stock though, there is a richness and depth of flavor that really helps boost the soup to the levels of fantastic that make you want to curl up in front of a fire with a good book and forget about everything else. So no problem, just reach for the stock and…

Uh oh.

For reasons that could not be explained short of a most unfortunate planet misalignment, there was no stock in the kitchen. Here I was with my first real attempt to show these people how I could cook and create on my own, and the most basic soup ingredient was missing from my arsenal.

The “oh shit” alarm began to sound itself at some very high frequencies in my brain.

“Your soup should be green! GREEN dammit!”

Fortunately, the doctor was in, and I was doing everything I knew how to do to make the soup richer, and thicker - pureed potatoes, more salt, some cream, anything to richen the flavor, but all were just not giving it that “oomph” I needed. But the increased boiling time involved in all this doctoring now meant the greens were discoloring, and the green soup was turning quite brown. However, I could solve that one too: blanch some spinach, puree it, and add it to the soup for a boost in chlorophyll which makes everything more green. The overall doctoring process was taking so long though, I needed to do this color boost THREE times, just to keep my soup green while I stitched my soup creation together like some liquid version of Frankenstein’s monster.

I then hit upon the idea of kicking up the flavor it with some form of a bastardized stock. We were cooking some bacon (bacon makes everything better!) on the side, and so using some of the bacon fat I was able to give some sense of a front taste to the soup. But now my soup was tasting a little too “bacony” (as if there were such an ailment…). So I changed the soup’s direction in my mind. Now it was a “roasted zucchini and bacon” soup.

Yeah - it sounds weird to me too.

I needed to make the whole thing come together more. It was time to break out the garnish. I sliced some zucchini on the mandolin, roasted them in the oven, and crisped some bacon in the oven as well. I also chopped up some parsley, basically to add some green to the whole affair, which couldn’t hurt given my soup’s proclivity for turning brown on me. I finally had the soup where I wanted it. I figured it was good enough for the other cooks to taste.

Who knew these would make a great stock substitute? I will have to remember this trick…

They liked it, but were hardly turning hand-springs over it. Quite frankly, I wasn’t either. It was still that front note that was bothering us all. It took the tastings of everyone, and the great input of Joy - one of the owners - to come up with the idea to caramelize some onions, puree and add them in with some sour cream to help fill out the front notes of the soup.

Back to work, and away I went on this. The soup was now entering it’s third hour of making, but it was now ready for service. I had a pretty garnish together, and the soup was at the place where I would be happy to have my name attached to it. I asked the servers to push it, and one of the first orders was for the soup “Roasted Zucchini Cream with Crisp Bacon” - yummy sounding, huh?…

I plated the soup myself for the first bowl - I wanted to make sure it was as good as could be for this first customer. With much anticipation, I awaited the server to return to the kitchen. She finally came back for her entree order, and I immediately asked, “So what did they think of the soup?”

“They RAVED about it,” she replied. “They want the recipe!”

Vindication. I would be able to keep my job for another week.

The recipe would have been easy enough to provide - if I could have remembered the 12,000 steps I put into making this thing finally work. So no, I didn’t give them the recipe - not because I am mean, or because I guard my recipes like at Tirolo. Simply put, I would have been embarrassed to reveal all the miscues and changes I made along the way to actually create this soup.

I am just happy they liked it.

But back in kitchen-land, mistakes and fuck-ups like this are not forgiven quite so quickly - even if the customers like the final product. The soup I made is now hyperbolically known as “Matt’s 6-hour zucchini soup” and while they think the final product is good, they still rib me for all the time it took me to make it. I was actually able to take the ribbing in good stride though, as Jay was giving me shit about the whole ordeal and said to me:

Yeah, I wanted to keep the soup vegetarian, but who can resist the Siren song of bacon?…

“Well Matt, I think it came out well for 6 hours of work, and maybe next month, we’ll have you make another soup.”

“Next month?” I replied. “Shit, I better get started now!”

He found that really funny, as did I, and thankfully the soup continues to sell well. But I knew it would. As I have always said - bacon makes everything better!

Matt