Too little known outside of France, sorrel’s refreshing acidity can enhance endless meat, fish, poultry, egg, and vegetable preparations used in small quantities as a flavoring herb, as the principal element in a soup or sauce, or as a vegetable garnish in itself. A graceful and welcome change from the sempiternal lemon.
Richard Olney, Simple French Food (1974)
It takes a particular kind of word lover to become enamoured with a recipe that describes a green vegetable as “graceful” and an ordinary lemon as “sempiternal”, but it takes no qualifications whatsoever to fall in love with the dish it produces: a light, creamy and refreshing soup, best enjoyed cold with the windows thrown wide open, to catch the soundtrack of spring.
This sorrel soup takes its origins in the French countryside, where the author of the above quotation, an American artist and contemporary of Julia Child, settled in 1951, until his death in 1999. His writings about French food and wine and his generous hospitality were to be a huge influence to prominent figures in the American food world, such as Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse and pioneer of California cuisine, and Kermit Lynch, author and wine importer, who introduced Americans to many great French wines.
Richard Olney saw French cooking as a way of life more than a set of techniques and recipes. He espoused the view that “one can only eat marvellously by respecting the seasons,” a lesson that, in the age of convenience and globalization, we seem to have largely forgotten. Alice Waters used the word “artistry” to describe not only the way he cooked but the way he applied conscientiousness to every practice in daily life. “He lived his life so consciously and purposefully. When some people build a stone wall, they think about it for weeks beforehand. Richard spoke that way, wrote that way, cooked that way — strict, demanding but unpretentious. There are hundreds of great cooks, but not many with his talent and aesthetic sense” (quoted in the New York Times: 1999).
Garden Stroll
This recipe starts with a necessary detour to the garden. Climb the stairs, cat in toe, open the gate and duck under the plum tree. Stop by the bird pond to fill it with crisp, crystalline water, remove a few weeds hiding among your rows of radish and gai lan seedlings. Crouch down beside the lush eruptions of green leaves and start snapping off the young, tender leaves. As you work, the cat happily rolls around in the warm earth, threatening to smother your seedlings. From across the fence drifts riffs of acoustic melody, mingling with birdsong and the distant thunder of a lawnmower. When your bowl or basket is full, saunter back to the kitchen, pausing to collect a few sprigs of chives or chervil to garnish your forthcoming spring opus.
Indeed, you might be hard-pressed to find today’s main ingredient anywhere other than a vegetable garden, but luckily, as I discovered last year, sorrel is the novice (and sometimes reluctant) gardener’s best friend. Plant it once, and it will come back faithfully, without much maintenance, every year, and bless you with an abundance of nutritious leaves from spring to late summer.
The tender leaves have a lovely acidic tang reminiscent of green apples, and the useful property of “melting” into simmered soup, bestowing their refreshing flavour to the stock as their texture disintegrates. The larger leaves tend more toward bitterness and are best sautéed or parboiled as you would a mature bunch of spinach.
Recipes Notes
- Simple recipes allow the ingredients in it to shine. In that spirit, choose the highest quality dairy you can afford, whether that be organic or grass-finished.
- I bought my sorrel seeds from West Coast Seeds, available locally at garden stores like Garden Works and The Root Cellar.
- No sorrel? No problem! Use other tender greens, such as baby spinach, and, right before serving, revert to Olney’s “sempiternal lemon”: a little zest and juice until the soup tastes just right to you.
Joëlle
Serves 4-6
Light, refreshing and creamy, this French soup is a simple and yet decadent way to celebrate the bounty of spring.
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Ingredients
- 6 ounces sorrel (preferably tender young leaves—if older, they should be parboiled for a few of seconds before adding to the butter)
- 1 large sweet onion, finely chopped
- 3 tbsp butter
- 1 lb Chinese taro root or potatoes, peeled, quartered lengthwise and finely sliced
- Salt
- 1 quart boiling water
- 3/4 cup heavy cream
- Pepper
- Handful chopped chives or chervil leaves
Instructions
- Pick over the sorrel leaves, removing any coarse and stringy stems by pulling them off backwards from the leaves. Cut the leaves into a fine chiffonade.
- Melt 2 tbsp butter in a saucepan over low heat and add the onion. Stew the onion, stirring, until translucent and meltingly soft, but uncoloured, about 15 minutes.
- Add sorrel and continue cooking until it has "melted" into the butter.
- Add the taro (or potatoes) and cook a few minutes more, stirring.
- Salt and pour in the boiling water.
- Cover the saucepan and gently simmer for 30 minutes.
- Uncover and use an immersion blender or potato masher to reduce the taro (or potatoes) to a fine purée.
- Stir in the cream and remove from heat.
- Serve chilled, garnished with chives or chervil and freshly ground pepper.
Notes
If you would prefer a warm soup, substitute 3 additional tablespoons of butter for a quarter cup of the heavy cream in step 8. Bring the boil back to a boil before removing from heat.
Calories
Fat
Carbs
Protein
Storage
Because this soup contains cream and potatoes, it does not freeze well. It keeps well in the fridge for 3-4 days, and usually disappears way before the end of that timeline!
References
Olney, R. (2014). Simple French Food. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
