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. So what's it doing in a book called "Bitter"?
At first, the answer isn't clear. (It's not like it's called radicchio soup or lemon pith soup.) The bitter element here is the toast, which you burn intentionally. "Don't be afraid," Jennifer McLagan writes. "Toast that bread until it is burnt on the edges and very dark in the middle."
And she's right — if you don't burn the toast, the finished soup will lack depth. Mustard will run rampant and milk will wash the rest out, with nothing to pin it all in place. As Nicholas Day wrote in his review of the book on Slate, "If we cook without bitter, we cook with an impoverished palate; we eat food that has less character." Bar Tartine even advises putting burnt toast dust on roasted carrots, or anywhere else you'd like to add a little nuttiness and smoke.
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.
It's a soup out of almost nothing, and yet somehow, as written, the recipe will only work for people who eat meat, gluten, and dairy, and don't keep kosher. (The rest of you, please substitute at your own will.) I 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.
Should I have run this recipe, which we have been lovingly calling "brown sludge," in the more barren depths of winter? Maybe. But it will still comfort us until it gets hot enough that we want gazpacho instead. Once spring finally arrives in earnest, you may want to have your toast soup with a simple salad, rather than a platter of roast pork (or maybe not).
At any time of year, it would not be gilding the lily to serve with good bread on the side.
Adapted slightly from "Bitter: A Taste of the World's Most Dangerous Flavor, with Recipes" (Ten Speed Press, 2014).
Serves 4
1 3/4 oz. bacon (about 1 thick slice)
2 cups chicken or veal stock, preferably homemade
5 1/4 oz. sourdough bread, about three 1-inch slices
1 cup hot milk
1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp. vinegar from a jar of cornichons
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 oz. butter, cut into 6 pieces
Cut the bacon into small pieces and place in a saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat until the fat renders and the bacon is cooked. You want the bacon to be cooked, but not crisp. In another saucepan, bring the stock to boil and then pour it over the cooked bacon. Remove the pan from the heat, cover, and let stand for 20 minutes.
While the stock is infusing, toast the bread slices very well, allowing them to burn a little on the edges. Add the toast to the stock, breaking it into pieces if necessary, cover and leave for 10 minutes. During that time the bread will soak up the stock.
Add the hot milk, mustard, and vinegar to the saucepan, then season with salt and pepper. Using an immersion blender, purée the soup until smooth (alternately, transfer the soup to a standard blender to blend). Return the soup to the saucepan and heat gently, stirring to scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan.
When the soup is warm, whisk in the butter, check the seasoning and serve.
This article originally appeared on Food52.com: http://food52.com/recipes/34484-jennifer-mclagan-s-toast-soup
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