Thursday 17 January 2013

Sopa de ajo



That's garlic soup, very much with a Spanish twist. And while it's true that the old woman cooking eggs in  Velázquez's pungent early bodegón (painting with still-life ingredients) is frying them in a substantial amount of olive oil rather than poaching them in a soup-mix, the atmosphere is right for this fabulous recipe - as Sam and Sam Clark note in their seminal Moro cookbook.

I've never dined at Moro, but I love this book and its stylish layout. It's yielded firm favourites like baba ghanoush - the muhammara with which I usually accompany that as a starter is to be found in Claudia Roden's even chunkier Book of Jewish Food - and a few one-off fish and meat dishes. This, though, seems to have garnered the biggest raves and is a fine staple in these cold winter days.


It's so simple to prepare yet satisfying in the contact with its main ingredients: you fry the cloves of three or four garlic bulbs with their skins on for about 20 minutes and then squeeze out the flesh almost as paste (in fact you can purée them or leave them as they are). Fry chorizo, add the garlic with thyme leaves and smoked paprika and then one litre (probably two is better) of  good chicken stock (better the tubs from Waitrose than melting stock cubes). Once properly simmered, you add toasted sourdough/ciabatta bread and throw in an egg to poach for each of your guests (given a large number, I downsized from hens' to quails' eggs).


J and I first had sopa de ajo in Asturias, travelling to the town of Cangas de Onis at the foot of the Cantabrian mountains. Both of us had stinking colds - it rains a lot in northern Spain - but were determined to carry on walking, and this soup was sheer balm. Our friend Florian cooks an Austrian garlic soup, Knoblauchcremesuppe, which I love, but this one is better, of course, for the lactose intolerant or the sinusitis-plagued like myself.


Anyone else crazy about garlic, pictured above in a detail I took from another Velázquez bodegón, Kitchen Scene with Christ in the House of Martha and Mary? I was obsessed about the noble bulbs to the point of unsociability at university, eating raw cloves when I had a heavy cold (never again). In San Francisco, I was tickled to discover the Stinking Rose restaurant, the motto of which is 'we flavour our garlic with food'. The garlic ice-cream to finish, needless to say, was not as successful as the rest. Anyway, our visit was poorly timed, as we were catching the plane home later that afternoon, and boy did we stink. I think the virtue of cooking the garlic in this recipe is that you don't stink much, as far as I can tell. ¡Buen apetito!

Food features amusingly - I can think of no better segue - in Two Days in Paris, starring and directed by the hugely talented Julie Delpy. She does a neurotic, pacy double act with Adam Goldberg that reminds me of early Woody Allen with Diane Keaton; though while our Woody has so gone off the boil as to treat Paris and other European cities like one big tourist cliché, Delpy avoids the obvious sightseeing highlights (Goldberg's Jack wants to see Père Lachaise and the Catacombs) and undermines the isn't-Paris-romantic adage.


We wept with laughter at the scenes with the cat ('my father calls him "Eat-Shit-Sleep" ' - no doubt sounds even pithier in the French), the cooked rabbit, the eccentric father scratching cars as he wanders down a posh street, volatile maman coyly confiding her racy past; all the more astonished am I to learn that the actors playing these two are Delpy's own parents. As J said, it's an insight into hetty love life, I would add with sometimes more information than you want - Allen and Keaton couldn't have got away with this level of frankness in the 1970s - and I only wish there were a gay romcom on the same level (though Andrew Haigh's real and true Weekend, admittedly not a comedy, is in a class of its own). I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't find Two Days in Paris hysterically funny; fail to laugh uncontrollably, and I guarantee you your money back.

14 comments:

Deborah vdB said...

Moro cookbook (mine's the same as yours in the pic., David)is one of the few I've actually tried more than one recipe from, despite some ingredients not being available out here in Wiltshire. Really worth having. Chickpeas with spinach and saffron, eggs with fried sage keaves, barley salad, chicken with bay and garlic garlic garlic.

David said...

Thanks for those tips from the Moro treasury, Deborah. Knowing you to be the finest practitioner of locally sourced produce, they're worth taking seriously (even if the Moro ingredients aren't local to you, the fact that the recipes allow them to 'taste of themselves' reminded me of your fabulous kitchen). I especially heed the 'three or four bulbs' bit of their Sopa de ajo; other recipes suggest minimal numbers of cloves.

Now, ho for the season of your white wild strawberries...

Susan Scheid said...

I had no idea Velázquez had such garlic-laced paintings (though of course it makes perfect sense). There is an excellent cook in our household (she is not me) who believes garlic is the essential foodstuff (and who likes nothing better than to see garlic growing in the garden). The Moro cookbook looks like a winner, and the Julie Delpy movie entertaining. Such a fun post!

Meanwhile, I must report that Anne Schwanewilms in Der Rosenkavalier is SUBLIME. Now THAT is singing (not to mention acting). Ja, ja.

David said...

Ah, garlic in the garden - I wish. Can't wait for May, when the wild garlic with its white flowers scents the air - if you like that sort of thing, of course I do - and grows between the bluebells.

SUBLIME is indeed the only word for the lovely Anne. I wish we saw more of her here - a Royal Opera Marschallin from her is long overdue.

David Damant said...

David, I knew that you and J were Foodies, but did not realise till I read this entry how far you had gone in that direction ( Meeting me at the extremity of course).

Definition of a Foodie - It is suggested that you miss dinner. Reaction, Disbelief ( NOT irritation or even anger)

The real problem is the rarity of even semi-foodies, which is why even those restaurants which could cook properly if they wanted to don't bother as no one notices ( if the chips were cooked hours ago etc etc)

I once had a most lovely meal in the country near Warsaw - the first course was ravishingly fresh peas with a few little onions - and in the Mercedes( to emphasis my point) back to the hotel the Westerners were saying "Very poor food"

I am told by my garlic enthused friends that a LOT of garlic in a recipe achieves the aim as regards flavour but does not overwhelm with the smell. Is that the case?

Bruce MacRae said...

Ah, friends with amazing kitchens ... or who are amazing IN the kitchen ... to be treasured. We recommend Moro restaurant, David, though the noise levels are fortissISSimo due to tile floors. Have you tried any of the sweeties from the cookbook? The apricot/chocolate tart is rich, sinful and easy to make. I cheated and used jam instead of authentic "apricot leather" and it still went down a treat. Warka sounds well beyond my culinary skills - pity, but maybe that's a Great British Bakeoff challenge yet to come.

David said...

David - I fear I only qualify as semi-foodie, as many's the time I've missed dinner in a foreign city to catch an opera, a play or a concert. But we appreciate your hard-to-please-ness ever since you remarked that lemon was needed in two of our dishes - and you were absolutely right.

The case of much-garlicked food in the instance of this soup, I can report, does not redound to the breath so much as the...well, I'll leave it at that. Let us say that the air was garlic-perfumed afterwards.

Bruce - funnily enough I was just thinking of trying some of the desserts as I adore rose water and orangeblossom water, and we have supplies of both.

Will said...

Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food is in constant use here, the moussaka being beloved and asked for by friends and family to the pointt that I have to ask them please to let me try something new.

I'm preparing a two session symposium on Puccini to be delivered in March. I decided to get a couple of ENO Puccini Opera Guides that I didn't have and, in the Boheme, discovered your Discography. Nice surprise!

David said...

I remember you writing about your famous moussaka. If you want something new, you'll surely find it in the Moro cookbook - though Roden is the best.

Pshaw, those old discogs - I used to get thrown them in the old days when I proofed - and got to write one article for the series, on Oedipus Rex - for ENO dramaturg Nick John. He died falling off a mountain: what a loss, and how we miss him.

Good luck with your Puccini seminar. After six weeks on Magic Flute, I embark with my City Lit students on five devoted to Boheme, a miracle of operatic construction, of course.

Gavin Plumley said...

Very impressed with the soup... but you must get to Moro if you can. The rosewater ice-cream is worth it alone.

David said...

Has to be better than the Stinking Rose's garlic ice-cream. We will go.

BTW I think it was your high praise for the film Weekend which encouraged us to rent it: a real low-key gem.

Will said...

We're going to have a bit of a wait for Weekend, unfortunately, as it will not be released to Netflix for another month or so. Hopefully by March . . . .

David said...

In the meantime, don't turn your nose up at this non-gay romcom - nor its equally original successor, Two Days in New York, which we've just seen. There's pathos in that Delpy's mother, who was due to reprise her fabulous role here, died before filming, and JD had to rewrite the script.

Gavin Plumley said...

So glad you've caught Weekend. Disarmingly simple, heartbreaking and I loved Room with a View and Brief Encounter references...