Soups

I encountered Iberian soup in its most basic form while cooking one afternoon with a group of grandmothers in the Catalan village of Sils. One of them grabbed half a loaf of stale bread and crumbled it into a pot. She added water; she tossed in a few mint leaves. Intently and patiently, she stirred the soup with a long wooden stick until the bread all but dissolved into the liquid, swelling and forming a porridge. “Sopa de menta cura la venta” (mint soup cures the stomach), she intoned, swirling an egg into the soup to thicken it. Then she splashed in some olive oil. Basta. Maybe it was the taste of the good country loaf or the special aroma of the freshly pressed oil. Or was it the fact that the egg had been laid just that morning? No matter which, four simple ingredients added up to one of the most deliciously nourishing things I can remember—a taste I have never been able to replicate in my own kitchen. Spanish cuisine is full of such miracles.