February 12, 2025 | Rome, Italy

Confessions of an opinionated cook

By |2025-01-25T00:34:31+01:00January 25th, 2025|"Suzanne's Taste", Home|
To make the Soup of All Time, you need a bit of EVERYTHING.

I am a seasoned cook of some odd years, much too numerous to mention here. The cooking saga began at five years old with a little red-handled rolling pin which I used to flatten mama’s leftover pie trimmings and make cinnamon roly-polys.

The years flew by. I grew into a teenage cook making Christmas cookies, and crab dip, and cheese grits, and New Year’s black-eyed peas. And then into a young woman gathering and storing mama’s incredible knowledge of food and preparation, and then segueing into a fanatic who started on page one of Volume I of the Gourmet magazine cookbook and ended up on the last page of Volume II, ready to take on anything that walked, flew, swam, or simply grew.

That said, after explorations into every bread and pastry imaginable, poaching, sautéing, frying, steaming, anything French, an obsession with Chinese and Japanese dishes after having read Tai-Pan and Shogun, a joyful passeggiata into every Italian pasta, meat, poultry, and vegetable dish imaginable, a romp into curries, anything with lentils, Indian breads, and the treasures found in my collection of almost 500 cookbooks, my mama’s Gourmet Magazines from 1942, and the long experience of having a large bakery business for 10 years, I came away with this pithy and liberating thought. Simple is best.

I came away with this pithy and liberating thought. Simple is best.

Yet, on some days, I still find myself meandering into creative territory that requires being crazy in the kitchen and always and ever simply going for it, whatever “it” turns out to be.

But never, if possible, use sprouted garlic without removing the little green sprout. And my opinion about peppers. Green means exactly that, green. Not ripe. Not sweet. Not a red, yellow, or brown pepper. Try to keep those greenies out of your food unless you’re making jambalaya or gumbo.

This overly wordy essay about the development of a philosophy for my cooking is only to show you how two-faced I am in my belief that simple is better.

Okay, the truth, it’s not always better. But mostly it’s better. Gilding my lily dishes is not in my character. Parla come mangi, speak as you eat, give it to me straight, shoot from the hip is how I love to cook and eat and taste, but there’s a glitch.

Only a few days ago as I felt the winter a comin’ in, my love of soup emerged full blown when the bones of a recent roast chicken called to me from their broth pot and said, “SOUP, SOUP, NOW, and don’t think about it too much.”

Chicken bones can be very persuasive sometimes and so I strained the finished broth and sallied forth.

Goodness, did I have to say all this to say this? This is to say, I couldn’t count the number of ingredients I used to create possibly the best soup I’ve ever made. And I was fully aware of being a hypocrite.

My love of soup emerged full blown when the bones of a recent roast chicken called to me from their broth pot and said, “SOUP, SOUP, NOW, and don’t think about it too much.”

And so it is I offer you a recipe from Miss Simplicity, with all vegetables sliced or chopped in reasonable bite-sizes:

A large soup pot with lid

Olive oil, a good slosh to start things off

Sweet onions, a couple or so

Fresh garlic cloves, whatever you like

A few shallots

Fresh tomatoes, a couple or three

A cup or two of homemade tomato sauce

Lovely carrots, about 4 or 5

Zucchini of whatever variety, maybe two or three (depending on size)

Whatever potatoes you like, a couple or so

Leftover rice, just a few spoons of it

Celery branches with leaves, a couple

Parsley, a handful

Cilantro, the same

A spoon of homemade cashew butter if you have it around

A slosh of white wine, or red, no matter

Stalks of Swiss Chard, a few

Beet tops, a nice bunch

Spinach, whatever you think

Leftover broccoli flowers

Leftover broccoli Romano flowers

Leftover roasted cauliflower, not too much

Leftover mushroom soup, a cup or so

Leftover baba ganoosh, just a tad!

Leftover white beans cooked with toasted sage, garlic, and white wine, a cup or so

Chickpeas, a cup or so

Leftover spoon of reduction of red wine sauce from another dish

The juice from sautéed sweet red peppers, juice only, no peppers

A few small pieces of a ripe Comice pear lounging on an after-dinner fruit plate

very small spoon of Espelette red pepper paste

A half cup of leftover shrimp curry, which no one could taste, but it was wonderful with its cumin, garam masala, xacuti spice, and a bit of yogurt in the sauce

The siero from a large mozzarella (makes great soup liquid along with the broth)

Lemon juice, just a bit to add acid for balance

A bit of lemon zest grated in

I cannot remember anything else, but it’s probably in there.

So you see, my “as simple as possible but not simpler” creed has taken flight. At least for today.

Still, maybe next time I’ll rant about cream in spaghetti alla carbonara, or onions and peppers in spaghetti with clam sauce, or using excessive egg yolks or sugar when enough will suffice or using garlic and onion powder instead of the fresh magilla. I can rant with the best of them, but meanwhile, the cold tramontane is blowing, my honey is bellowing up a nice little blaze for cocktail hour, and the Soup of All Time will later be spooned into bowls awaiting a dusting of Parmesan or a spoonful of pesto and all will be right with the world.

About the Author:

Suzanne Dunaway, a longtime major magazine writer and artist, is the author and illustrator of "Rome, At Home, The Spirit of La Cucina Romana in Your Own Kitchen" (Broadway Books) and "No Need To Knead, Handmade Italian Breads in 90 Minutes" (Hyperion). She taught cooking for 15 years privately and at cooking schools in Los Angeles, and now maintains a personal website and a blog. She divides her time between southern France and Italy.