Una Sopa Romero Malisima

I could see it, and it was inspired.

Rosemary Red Soup. Delicious. Creamy. Vegetarian. And, like the name suggests, a deep, ruby red.

It would look fantastic in my Heath bowls. Never mind that I didn't have enough for all the guests. Such details were not bothering me at the time. I could only see the visuals.

Details often come back to bite me in the butt, however. Indeed, it's a wonder I have any backside at all these days.

A friend of mine, a fabulous woman with a PhD in Moroccan Jewry and enviable hostessing skills gave me this recipe, promising that it was so simple even I could make it. The secret, she told me, was in the beets and the miso. Red beets give this vegetarian soup its shocking color, while the miso gave it a sort of salty kick from deep within. I made it only once, probably five years ago. But as I recall, it turned out, and impressed everybody so much that nobody minded that it also terminally stained clothes.

As with so many dishes I ruin, this one started out with my focus on entirely the wrong element: I was concentrating on the reaction it would surely win, instead of focusing on the constructive details.

First I bought the wrong kind of beets. We got two kinds at the Farmer's market, neither of them the right ones. We needed red beets. The kind that are red throughout, not the ones that are just red on the outside. The orange beets weren't going to work, either, although yes, they were very pretty and exciting.

The proper beets seem to be an essential element in creating soup of this color. Most cooks would understand this fact. But not me. I have said this all my life, but clearly it remains true: The obvious never occurs to me.

Second problem: We started late in the day, when the Tagine was a bubblin' and Julia was assembling the bitter herb salad and attending to a trillion other details. This would have been fine, had the soup turned out.

Bad enough the soup wasn't the color I'd expected. But it wasn't any acceptable color, unless you like your diarrhea color on the mustard-yellow side of the spectrum. For some reason the puree wasn't as smooth as it needed to be either. Maybe I hadn't cooked the lentils long enough? Hadn't chopped the vegetables enough? Hadn't minced the rosemary right? Realizing you've botched a recipe at the very first, most basic step is pretty demoralizing. But if your dish tastes OK, it's possible to redeem yourself.

Alas. Even Julia, a hardy optimist, was underwhelmed with my Rosemary Red Soup That Was Diarrhea Colored. For a soup with several vegetables, salty miso and an herb widely understood to be taste-enhancing, this was remarkably taste-free. I held out the wooden spoon for her, accepting my fate.

"I don't think it's any good," I said.

She tasted. She didn't grimace, which gave me hope for a small second.

"No. It's not good."

That's when I panicked. It was 6 p.m. People were going to start arriving any minute, and we didn't even have the soup course done.

"We can't serve this! We can't serve this! What are we gonna do?!"

Now I was openly cursing myself. For not paying attention to the ingredient details. For telling Tony NOT to bring Matzo-ball soup as originally planned, because I was going to make my own soup. What the hell was wrong with me? WHY was I even trying to pull off a Seder when obviously it was horribly beyond my abilities, even with more experienced backup? You've heard of fight or flight?

"I'm going to Trader Joe's!" I yelled, running for my keys. "I'm just gonna buy some soup!"

"Wait!" Julia held up her hand. "I have an idea." Obviously she intended to fight.

Her idea involved orange juice. Audacious, I thought. And if it weren't Zero Hour I would have embraced her creativity. But I was already flying. "Ginger carrot soup! I'll just get four boxes of it, we'll heat it up, and nobody will know the difference!"

"Quiet. Taste this now. What do you think?" She'd poured probably 3/4 cup of orange juice directly into the soup and turned up the heat.

I swallowed my heart and tasted.

It had *some* taste. As opposed to the no-taste it had just moments before.

Maybe it would work.

And in fact, in the end, people ate their soup. Some confessed to enjoying it. The two vegetarians at the table wanted more. Wanted the recipe, even. "...this isn't really the soup I'd intended to serve," I stammered.

Here's the soup I intended to serve. Maybe Sher or Janelle or one of the Gracious Bowl gals can make this correctly and show the food-blogging world what it's really supposed to look like:

Rosemary Red Soup
3 medium carrots, chopped
2 beets (RED!!!) chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 tablespoons chopped rosemary (fresh)
1 tablespoon chopped oregano (fresh or dry)
1 cup red lentils (washed and picked over)
2 bay leaves
6 cups water or vegetable stock
2-3 tablespoons light miso

Saute onions in oil, add carrots and beats. Saute as long as you feel prudent. Add herbs, lentils, bay leaves and stock. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer 40 minutes. Remove bay leaves and puree soup in blender. Dissolve miso in 1/2 cup water and add to soup. Reheat and serve.

Writing it down now, transcribing from a stained and well-thumbed notepad from another life, I note that I didn't follow any of these simple directions. Saute first?

That'll teach me to cook under pressure. Probably should have made this the night before, with a glass of wine in my system and no time constraints. But that's just one of the many lessons learned this Passover holiday. Stay tuned....

Never mind

I'm not one for labels, but damn, am I ADD. I'm probably even ADHD, because that has an extra letter, and so most certainly means extra unfocused and extra spacey. It's no laughing matter, this Attention Deficit Disorder. They put kids on medication for it all the time now.

It's a good thing they hadn't discovered this particular affliction yet when I was growing up or I would never have made it through graduate school.

Because I am a space cadet. In my own little world most of the time. I am amazed I get through every day without forgetting something important like waking up or releasing my parking brake. I'm also amazed I have to ability to eventually finish work assignments, because more often than not, though I do enjoy getting paid, I tend to lose all interest in the topic at hand very quickly, which makes it hard to muster any enthusiasm at all, much less a clever kicker.

But see? I digress. There was this hearty garlic and potato soup recipe in Cook's (my new favorite cooking magazine. A little homespun, true, but they are pedantic about their recipes and I need pedantry when attempting to cook.) At the time I saw the recipe it was cold and rainy and the thought of hearty garlic and potato soup made me sigh with desire. I decided I would make some.

But I needed a few special provisions first. I needed several heads of garlic. And two different kinds of potatoes. I needed some heavy cream. Finally, I needed a leek.

These ingredients took several weeks to procure. I got busy with other things and remember, it's hard for me to focus. While I slowly collected them I read and re-read the recipe. I needed two kinds of potatoes, for example, because one kind broke down easily and provided starch while the other held up better in simmering chicken stock. I had to read the sidebar on how preparing garlic three different ways would lend itself to the perfect garlic taste, and how this taste would blend perfectly with the two different kinds of potatoes. Did I mention that Cook's is pedantic?

Finally, I was ready for a trial run. But wither my leek? I asked Luke, my ex, if he could find me a leek when he went to the Farmer's market on Friday.

He arrived that day to pick up the kids and handed me a pair of long, green leeks. I snatched them from his hand, held them above my head and pronounced, in my finest Elizabethan accent, "If you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek!"

"What's that from?"

"Shakespeare!"

"No it's not."

"Yes it is!"

"No it's not."

For the record, Yes, it is. Hah!

I like any vegetable you can quote Shakespeare by. Leeks are fun. It's a silly word. And apparently, according to Luke, the leek is the national vegetable of Wales. I aim to do more with leeks in the future.

Still, it was another week before I could get around to being ready to attempt my hearty garlic and potato soup, and I only did so because I was afraid my leeks would go over in the crisper.

Here is the recipe (Cook's Illustrated, March/April '07, page 12. Written by Rebecca Hays):

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium leek, white and light green parts halved lengthwise, washed and chopped small (about 1 cup)
3 medium garlic cloves, minced, plus TWO whole heads of garlic, with the outer papery bits pulled off and the top third cut off.
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth, plus one cup to thin soup if necessary (huh?)
2 bay leaves
table salt to taste
1 1/2 pounds russet potatoes peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes (about 4 1/2 cups)
1 pound Red Bliss potatoes (unpeeled), cut into 1/2 inch cubes (abut 3 cups)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves, minced
1/4 minced fresh chives
garlic chips (recipe below)

Now, this might seem simple to some of you readers, but it's fairly complicated for me. And we all know how I don't tend to pay attention to details. Basically this was a disaster waiting to happen.

First challenge: How to cut potatoes into cubes. At my age I'm too embarrassed to ask anybody how this is supposed to be done. So I make my own approximation of 1/2 inch...shapes.

Again I digress...

Melt butter in Dutch oven over medium heat. When foaming subsides, add leeks and cook until soft (but do not brown), about 5 to 8 minutes. Stir in minced garlic and cook until fragrant. Add garlic heads, broth, bay leaves and 3/4 teaspoon salt, partially cover and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Reduce heat and continue to simmer, partially covered, until potatoes are tender (between 15-20 minutes).

Discard bay leaves. Remove garlic heads and squeeze their garlic mush into a bowl, using tongs or whatever implement you can find. Use a fork to mash the mush.

Stir cream, thyme and half of the mashed garlic into the soup; heat soup until hot again. Taste soup, then add the remaining garlic paste if desired. Using an immersion blender (??WHA? luckily I have a regular blender), process soup until creamy, with some potato chunks remaining. Season with salt and pepper and serve. Sprinkle with chives and add garlic chips (see below)

Garlic chips - 3 tablespoons olive oil
6 medium garlic cloves, sliced thin lengthwise.
Heat the oil, fry the garlic. Sprinkle lightly with salt.

You might think, gentle reader, that your humble narrator stumbled and impaled herself on any one of several sharp challenges this recipe presented. But the fact of the matter is, the soup came out pretty well. But it took well over an hour, and, by the time I doled it out into a bowl to taste, I had lost all interest.

The result? It tasted like garlicky potato soup. Nothing more, nothing less. I had a few spoonfuls, but felt nothing. No ahhing, no soul-satisfying mmm-ing. In fact, it cried out for something, but I couldn't figure out what. And there was no one there to ask. No Tony. No Audrey. The kids certainly wouldn't have anything to do with it.

If you eat soup by yourself does it satisfy anyone?

Then it was bedtime and I poured it all out into my big green Tupperware container and shoved it into the refrigerator to think about on the morrow. Only the morrow came and went and I couldn't be bothered. A week went by and out of guilt I opened the Tupperware to heat up a bowl for lunch and was so affronted by the heavy garlic smell that I threw the whole thing out.

I wonder what Ritalin brownies would taste like?