by Kylee Walton
I was born the daughter of a professional chef, but I rarely cook. I wouldn’t say I’m poor at it or anything, I’m just not very good at improvising. I can only cook when I have a step by step recipe in front of me that’s painfully detailed, even down to how many grains of salt to include. I’ve seen my partner, who cooks 95% of our meals, look at a recipe maybe three or four times, and they only do it when we’re trying to make something new. They’ve explained to me that they had to learn to cook for themselves because when they became vegetarian, their family didn’t want to alter their meals to accommodate for that. Despite my fathers profession, I never asked how to cook and he never offered to teach me.
Of course I know how to cook some things like eggs, stir-fry, mac and cheese (not from the box), and soup. Dearly beloved soup.
Soup wasn’t exactly a staple in my household growing up. We didn’t eat it that often because my dad is a steak and potatoes kind of person and when my mom makes a home cooked meal it’s always something like lasagna. Recently, I’ve been exploring many different soup iterations. I’ve been trying to cook more meals in general for both my and my partner’s sake.
I started off with a simple tomato and garbanzo bean soup. When I made it, it was one of my test runs for me cooking on my own without my partner’s help. After plating it, I anxiously served it to my partner.
They took a bite and said, “This is great, Ky.”
Success!
I’ve made the soup many times since then, though not always with garbanzo beans. It’s certainly gotten better each time, and there were times when it was not as good as the previous time, but isn’t that just a natural consequence of cooking? I remember eating in restaurants as a child and thinking Wow, how does the chef make the food taste the same every time they make it? Certainly there must be times when they add more salt than usual, or accidentally leave potatoes in the oven for too long. How do they do it?
I questioned everything as a kid, which I feel is natural, but I tended to question every facet of life I was able to grasp. I had a similar thought process whenever my mom made corn chowder, and I still have it when I make soup now.
After I mastered the garbanzo bean soup, I moved onto new pastures. The other day I made a fettuccine noodle soup with carrots, broccoli, tofu, and vegetable broth. It was very different in terms of taste to the garbanzo bean, but it gave me that equally comforting feeling when I devoured it. This is what soup is known for, this feeling.
Where did this reputation come from? Soup, for ages, has been used as a healing food to eat when sick. The base is good for a sore throat and the ingredients usually in soup have immune boosting properties. It’s also considered to be more filling compared to the standard meal of meat and vegetables (my fathers classic go-to meal), which makes it even more favorable in the cold seasons as well. After some brief research, it seems that soup is around as old as cooking itself, and was initially sensationalized for its health benefits and easy construction.
I feel like I’ve connected more to soup for these reasons as well, and also because it’s the first meal I’ve cooked for my partner all alone. They’ve told me they’re not the biggest fan of soup, but are coming around to it due to my influence. I’ll always remember that first time I made them soup, and their face when they took the first bite. I swelled with a specific form of pride, one only accessible to a cook.
When we sat there and ate it together, I felt healthy and warm.
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