Icelandic soup gets revamped
Popular concoction adapted for Canadian ingredients.
Dec. 21is the winter solstice, the first day of winter, and it’s the shortest, darkest day of the year. Although it means the days are about to get longer, there’s still a lot of cold ahead and that calls for comfort foods: stews, casseroles and, of course, soups.
Soup is an ancient food. Signs of soup-making have been found in a 20,000-year-old cave in China; the surviving pottery showing signs of fire on the outside and stirring on the inside. John Speth, an archeologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, has hypothesized that even Neanderthals made a simple bone broth, possibly inside bundled — and probably leaky — layers of wet leaves, if only to extract the nourishing bone marrow.
A reasonable soup can be made from almost any collection of ingredients plus water and, because of the water, it’s both filling and hydrating. Indigenous chef and cookbook author David Wolfman says soup-making goes way back on this continent, too. “We know that Indigenous peoples made soup using various means before the introduction of metal pots. I was told that Mi’kmaq in the east coast would use a large tree stump; they’d cut out a hole in the top, build a fire, and then add water and ingredients and let it cook.”
“Some of the plains people — Cree, Blackfoot First Nations — would dig a hole in the ground and line it with leather, then add stones and wood and build a fire,” says Wolfman. “Then they added water and other ingredients to make soups and stews.”
Almost every culture and cuisine includes a traditional or even nationally significant soup or two. Recently, Ukrainian chef Ievgen Klopotenko caused a stir by going to UNESCO to have borscht declared uniquely Ukrainian, much to the collective clucking of Polish and Russian grandmothers.
In Canada, we know a thing or
two about getting through a long, dark, cold winter, and we have our own soups to keep us warm; every region of the country is home to an old, traditional recipe that combined the Old World cuisine with whatever was on hand or came from the land. Every new wave of newcomers brought their soups with them, often adapting the recipes to use local ingredients.
“First Nations’ soups were traditionally made using ingredients that were available within the local region,” says Wolfman. “Coastal peoples naturally had greater access to fish and seafood, whereas woodlands and plains peoples relied on large and small game.
“Pre-colonization soups were made with meat, fish, game bird bones and thickened, in some regions, with local wild edibles: ground nuts, cattails, grasses, wild rice, wild onions, etc.,” says Wolfman. “Proteins were either fresh, dried or smoked and, for my people — the Xaxli’p — it’s all about the salmon. Even today they still wind-dry their fresh salmon along the banks of the Fraser River and consume that over the course of the winter, as a snack or in soup.”
Canada’s coasts are famous for their fish soups or chowders, which vary from region to region. Newfoundland and Labrador is home to a particularly
idiosyncratic and meaty stickto-the-ribs soup of split peas and “doughboys” or dumplings. The soup features salt beef and picnic ham, and is best made with leftover broth from another East Coast specialty, the Jiggs Dinner, a meal of simmered salt beef, cabbage, carrot, turnip and potatoes.
Borscht came to the Prairie provinces and British Columbia with Russian, Ukrainian and Polish immigrants who began arriving in the late18th century and, although it can be a vegetarian soup, for the deepest flavour it’s traditionally made with bone or beef stock.
The Quebecois iconic pottage is yellow split pea soup — soupe aux pois — traditionally made with ham hock, ham bone, trotters or salt pork, and dried yellow peas. It’s thick and filling and made with the most affordable — low on the hog — ingredients available.
The Scottish, who had enjoyed mutton in the U.K., brought a soup made of turnips, potatoes, carrots, barley and mutton in beef stock. Initially called Scotch Mutton Broth, it was popular enough that Campbell’s Soup introduced it as Scotch Broth in 1937 but discontinued it in 2016, though not before pop artist Andy Warhol immortalized a can of the stuff in 1969.
Also known affectionately as Jewish penicillin, chicken broth is the starting point for Matzo Ball Soup, brought to Canada with European Jewish immigrants in the 1800s and possibly earlier. Cookbook author Bonnie Stern’s grandparents came to Canada in the early 1900s. “They had 11 children,” says Stern. “They came from Poland and brought Ashkenazistyle chicken soup and matzo balls with them.
“Matzo balls are the Jewish version of Eastern European dumplings that were adapted to make kosher for Passover when Jews do not eat wheat,” says Stern. “They substituted matzo, which they ground up to make the dumplings. I can remember having them since I was little at Jewish holiday dinners and Friday night dinners, even when it wasn’t Passover.”
In Iceland, it’s traditional for families to each have their own meaty soup recipe and, in Reykjavik, Dec. 21 is “Meat Soup Day,” when chefs and restaurateurs dish out bowls of their unique versions of meat soup in a street party setting. Of course, this year the pandemic made all that warming conviviality out of the question, so chef Gisli Matthias Auounsson of popular restaurants SKAL! and Slippurinn created a contest for the best meat soup. Icelanders voted and the winner was Grandma’s Meat Soup, a rustic concoction of local lamb, root vegetables and barley, which sounds perfect for a Canadian winter, too.
Add lamb to a large saucepan with water over medium-high heat and bring to a boil.
Once the water has started to boil, foam will float to the top; skim it off with a slotted spoon.
Add the potatoes, carrots, barley or rice, dry herbs and onion; simmer on medium-low heat for 30 minutes.
Add the turnips, cabbage and fresh lovage; continue to simmer until all of the vegetables are tender. Add salt.
Makes 4 servings