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Gulf Coast

with calf ’s head cooked in stock and flavored with Madeira. She does, however, maintain the pretense that it is real turtle soup by serving it in a shell.” The ubiquitous nature of mock turtle soup as a dish that was fancy — but not real-turtle-soup fancy — carried over to the United States, where most cooks continued to make it with calf ’s head, brains or a combination of offal meats. And while the Found- ing Fathers were known to fawn over turtle soup (the real thing), Abraham Lincoln made it a point to serve mock turtle soup at his inaugural luncheon as a message of austerity and frugality. (In 2009, President Obama used a similar tactic, serving a menu of dishes inspired by Lincoln’s choices at his own inauguration — including mock turtle soup.) Mock turtle soup remained a staple across the country — most notably as a signature dish of Cincinnati, Ohio, where slaughter- houses were plentiful and calf heads extra-cheap — until the mid- 20th century, when the penny-pinching dishes of yore tapered off in favor of low-priced TV dinners and the heat-and-eat concoc- tions that fill our freezer aisles today. It’s even increasingly rare in turtle-soup-loving New Orleans, where — if you can find it on a menu — the “mock” portion of the soup is likely veal, ground beef or a combination of the two. But, to this day, there remains — among a certain type of culinary oddball — a strange affection for dishes like mock turtle soup, if for no other reason than its relative scarceness and, for that, cultural value. “Soups are like paintings, don’t you think?” Andy Warhol mused in a 1962 interview. “Imagine some smart collector buying up [Campbell’s] Mock Turtle when it was available and cheap and now selling it for hundreds of dollars a can! I suppose it’d be smart now to start collecting Cheddar Cheese soup.” And while Warhol might’ve deemed mock turtle soup his favorite, it’s author Lewis Carroll who ensured that the dish will continue to be a literary and artistic reference for generations to come. In 1865’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , our heroine-who-fell- down-the-rabbit-hole, Alice, meets a sniveling, crying creature known as the Mock Turtle, illustrated as having both a tortoise shell and flippers but the head, hooves and tail of a young calf. He regales Alice with a story about how he was once a “real turtle” but fate had different plans: “When we were little,” the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, “we went to school in the sea.The master was an old Turtle — we used to call him Tortoise —“ “Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn’t one?” Alice asked. “We called him Tortoise because he taught us,” said the Mock

Turtle angrily: “really you are very dull!” Eventually, the Mock Turtle stifles his sniffles long enough to recite a poem for Alice about (what else?) the glory of mock turtle soup, that could just as easily be used as an ode to the real thing: Beautiful Soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a hot tureen!

Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

MockTurtle Soup Serves 6-8 bowls WHAT YOU WILL NEED 4 tablespoons butter 1 medium onion , chopped 2 stalks celery , chopped 1 medium carrot , peeled and chopped 2 tablespoons tomato paste ½ pound spinach , finely chopped 3 cloves garlic , minced ¾ pound ground veal ¾ pound ground beef 1 teaspoon white pepper ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper 1½ teaspoons dried thyme 1 teaspoon dry mustard 1 teaspoon black pepper 1 teaspoon dried basil ½ teaspoon ground cumin ¼ cup dry sherry ⅓ cup flour 15 ounces tomato sauce 2 quarts beef stock (if store- bought, simmer the scraps from the onion, carrot, celery, and pars- ley with it in a pot for 30 minutes) 2 bay leaves 2 teaspoons lemon zest , finely chopped 3 hard-boiled eggs , finely chopped 1 tablespoon parsley , fine chopped HOW TO PREP In a heavy-bottomed pot, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onion, celery and carrot.

Cook the vegetables until caramel- ized. (Tip: Use a little water to help scrape some of the fond off the bottom of the pot. It will help the vegetables brown more evenly.) Add the tomato paste and sauté for 3 minutes to cook down the natural sugar. You must stir this often so it does not stick and burn on the bottom of the pot. Add the spinach and garlic, and cook for an additional 2 minutes. Season the ground beef and veal with the white pepper, cayenne, thyme, mustard, black pepper, basil and cumin. Add the seasoned ground beef and veal to the pot, and brown. Deglaze the bottom of the pot with the sherry, scraping up the fond on the bottom of the pan. Add the flour and mix it in well with the meat and vegetable mixture, and cook for 3 to 5 minutes to cook out the floury taste. Add the tomato sauce and beef stock. Add the bay leaves, and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the lemon zest, hard-boiled eggs and parsley to the pot 10 minutes before serving. Ladle the soup into warmed bowls, and serve.

everyday JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019

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