Our friend Michael wanted to celebrate his birthday. He chose a potluck with a twist: A soup competition. The crew came ready to rumble with a variety of options. Michael made two varieties of vegetarian hot and sour soup; one spicy, one suitable for chile wimps. Chicken tortilla, Cuban black bean, African peanut, and sunchoke/cauliflower rounded out the list. Folks who didn’t make soup brought appetizers and desserts.
We made two different soups. Julian made a Spanish garbanzo soup out of Anya Von Bremzen’s The New Spanish Table. I made a cold sour cherry soup with fennel that Julian downloaded from Food and Wine magazine. The tricky part of my recipe was finding sour cherries. Luckily, Julian found them frozen at Central Market. The recipe went together very nicely. I cooked the onion, garlic, and fennel the night before so all I had to do was blend everything together when I got home from work.
This was an audience participation contest. Revelers scored soups on aroma, flavor, and texture. There were also three special categories: What to eat after the zombie apocalypse, what would you crave after consuming cannabis (we had some youngsters there), and an all purpose question. And we won! Julian received a Dr. Who mug for winning the craving category, and I won a coveted silver (stainless steel) ladle for second best soup. The golden ladle went to the African peanut soup. A fun competition.
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