When I said I was working on a soup book, the response was often, "Oh, I love soup!" People enthuse about soup in a way that’s so heartwarming it makes me feel as if I’m in the right camp...
If you're a vegetarian who secretly envies those who can enjoy a brodo with pasta or sip on chicken soup when ill, you'll be happy to know that there are brothy vegetarian soups that can effect a cure or two. It's not easy to make a vegetable-based broth that's as robust as a good chicken broth, but it's possible to create a liquid that's good enough to be sipped and savored with a few additions for interest or amusement.
Developing vegetarian broths and broth-based soups has been a challenge, but I'm delighted with the results. They have depth of flavor, interest, and inherent lightness. Broth-based soups are appealing to those with small appetites, who are recovering from illness, or who are dieting, and they provide a light beginning to a large meal.
Restoratives are soups intended to help vanquish a cold or flu. In times when food wasn't as plentiful as it is today, restoratives were rich with cream, egg yolks, and meats, on the theory that calories and protein were needed to nurse a person to health. Twice I've had jobs that involved caring for women who were born before the turn of the century (the twentieth, not the twenty-first). When they were ill, they asked for chicken broth enriched with cream (plus curry powder) and eggs. One always asked for warm sherry beaten into egg yolks, with some cream thrown in at the end, a kind of zabaglione. I always made extra of that! Many soups, by virtue of being hot liquids, can work as restoratives, but the five I've chosen to present here are especially known for their ability to make you feel better, no matter what ails you.
