Hot and Cold Soups

I like all kinds of soups: thin soups, frugal soups, lavish soups, and rich soups, so long as they’re interesting and enjoyable to eat. What I don’t like are stodgy, boring soups. Soup recipes can be one of the best culinary prisms through which to view new places and gain a feeling for other people’s lives. And since I’m writing here specifically about traditional and modern versions of Mediterranean soups, I’m hopeful these recipes will offer insights into the Mediterranean way of life.

For me, at its best the Mediterranean lifestyle is about authenticity. Yet authenticity is not always to be found on the contemporary Mediterranean table. I’ve visited home cooks from Migas, Spain, to Kars, Turkey, who only want to reproduce the same gorgeously photographed easy-to-cook food they see in food magazines. And many restaurant chefs from Tangier to Istanbul are only too eager to create new dishes. Yet for all the new food magazine and inventive chef recipes, very few measure up to the traditional dishes. The old simple soups, especially, are rarely equaled—proof, I believe, that as Leonardo da Vinci put it so well, “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”