A HOT BOWL OF COMFORT
Di Stasio soup cookbook adds a personal touch
If people are comfortable approaching Josée di Stasio when they see her out and about, at markets or at cafés, it’s probably because they feel they know her from their time together in the kitchen, she suggests.
OK, so they were at home and she was at a stove in a television studio, cooking with a highprofile chef on À la di Stasio, the long-running show that won all kinds of awards and made her a household name.
“But it was as if they were sitting across the counter from me,” she told the Montreal Gazette this month. “And the kitchen, like food, has a way of bringing people together.”
Di Stasio knows both intimately. She has an abiding understanding of food and food trends, she has long promoted the best possible ingredients — ideally local and in season — and she is well connected to the chef community.
“Chefs know I respect them and their work, and they respect mine,” she said. “They know that I have read and travelled a lot and that I have credentials.”
As one of Quebec’s bestknown and most beloved food personalities, di Stasio has had a hand in changing the way we cook and eat. Her fifth cookbook, À la soupe (Flammarion Québec), was published this month, just as our thoughts were turning to the comfort of hot soup on cold days. She contributes online recipes regularly to IGA, where she has her own avatar and where a ready-to eat tomato and fennel soup she created for the grocery chain is available for purchase. The inaugural issue of a biannual magazine, di Stasio, appeared on newsstands in April. More book than magazine, it is, like its namesake, thoughtful, informed and delightful.
And yet di Stasio does not come across as a vedette. “She is humble. That’s why people love her,” said author and food historian Anne Fortin, owner of Librairie Gourmande in JeanTalon Market. “We trust her. She has people’s unconditional love. Few people in the cooking world have that.”
Di Stasio’s authenticity seems to beam across the airwaves and through the pages to her fans. “We have something in common,” she said. “People listened to me and they watched me make soup. It has always been informal. Who they’re meeting is who I am on television.”
Indeed, di Stasio is as engaging and gracious in person as she is on the screen. There’s a timeless beauty about her, a casual elegance she wears well.
Chefs know I respect them and their work, and they respect mine. They know that I have read and travelled a lot and that I have credentials.
À la soupe is a beautiful, generous work full of simple and soothing recipes that are nearly all her own takes on classics we know and love. There’s always a personal twist: there’s ginger in her squash soup, and Dijon mustard in her cauliflower soup. “That’s how I cook it,” she said. A cream of tomato soup references “the one of our youth, but it is the top — the best it can be.”
There are a few recipes from Montreal chefs, including a zuppa di nonna, a meal-in-a-bowl soup from Emma Cardarelli of Nora Gray and Elena, a cucumber soup from Jens Ruoff at Le Butterblume, and a barley, mushroom and caramelized corn soup that Dyan Solomon of Olive & Gourmando, Foxy and Caffe Un Po’ di Più once prepared on di Stasio’s show.
The photos, by Dominique T Skoltz, are simply gorgeous. Di Stasio, a stylist before moving to the other side of the camera, had a hand in choosing everything photographed, from the bowls (they are all different, all simple, all white) to the garnishes and even some of the produce, which she bought herself.
In addition to 52 soup recipes, the book includes recipes for accompaniments ranging from crackers to grilled cheese sandwiches, as well as suggestions for garnishes and tips on everything from freezing soups to minimizing food waste (there’s even a recipe for an empty-the-fridge soup).
“I have always loved soup,” di Stasio writes in the introduction. “I love soup because it is unpretentious. It demands no special technique, no sophisticated equipment. Soup is generous: it asks for little and offers a great deal in return.”
A soup is a canvas, she said when we spoke, depending on the garnish or the serving vessel, it can be humble or spectacular. She illustrated the point with three variations of garnish for a butternut squash soup: Puy lentils tossed with shallots and topped with a citrus-y yogurt, a simpler topping of the yogurt alone, and, even simpler, just a scattering of pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and flaked almonds, all toasted.
Fortin of Librairie Gourmande called À la soupe “a book of atmosphere and mood.… The ingredients are simple, but they are the best and they are accessible.
“That’s Josée. She has always worked like that. And she has a way with flavours and with fragrance. Almost everyone can make a squash soup, but not everyone will add ginger,” she said. “Something about the recipes makes you want to cook the soups.”
From start to finish, the book is di Stasio, Fortin said.
“You are surprised; you are delighted. You enter her world.”
The À la di Stasio television show ended its run of more than a decade suddenly when its host was blindsided by a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2014. Following what she referred to as her “health break,” she returned to Télé- Québec in the fall of 2016 with a new show, Di Stasio, that was, if anything, better than its predecessor.
It took her out of the studio and into people’s kitchens — and gardens and living and dining rooms, as well as to markets and cafés as she explored the myriad ways in which we nourish ourselves: with food, to be sure, but also with creativity, ideas and community. It was an ideal vehicle for her.
“I wanted to do something that would nourish me not just at the table, but also in terms of lifestyle, who I meet or where they take me,” she said.
These days, she savours life and takes nothing for granted. She has taken up yoga and says she has a clearer vision of what is truly important to her. After “years of doing three things at once,” she no longer wants to: she took a break from television to work on the magazine and the new cookbook.
She envisions a return to the small screen, although she’s not sure in what form — or when. She’s interested in documentary work and, in particular, women and the place of women, and children — maybe children and cooking.
For now, di Stasio mused, “I like the freedom I have.”
I love soup.…. It demands no special technique, no sophisticated equipment. Soup is generous: it asks for little and offers a great deal in return.