Channeling Julia

This week we visit Simple Pleasures Coffee Roasting Co. in San Francisco.

Let's begin by looking at green (unroasted) coffee beans. The beans are seeds in the fruit - they look like cherries on the tree. Several species of coffee trees are used to produce beans.

So why do coffees differ? Factors like location of the farm, altitude, climate, soil and even the people who care for the plants all make a difference. Variables such as the weather, harvesting, washing, drying, bagging, temperature, humidity, damp, storage and handling all play a part in the coffee you drink.

Coffee is classified by varietals - the source of a particular bean. Jamaica Blue Mountain is one of the most highly regarded, but production is VERY limited and prices are sky high. Commonly available varietals are: Kona, Java, Sumatra and Columbian.

Most coffee is sold as a blend. Only a few of the varietals are of a quality that allows them to stand alone. Jamaica Blue Mountain is so expensive that almost all coffee sold as "Blue Mountain Blend" contains less than 5% of the Jamaican bean. It is very common to choose elements in a blend for a particular local taste, economic realities or brewing process. Other blends include a House Blend (never the same in two different establishments) and an Expresso Blend designed to withstand the expresso brewing process.

Special thanks to Ahmed Riad and Simple Pleasures Coffee Roasting Co.

Many recipes for potato leek soup attempt to make a dish that is white - only the very white part of the leek and potato skin has been peeled. But ours is a rustic version with burnt onions as well as the slightly green part of the leek. The potato skins are washed instead of peeled.

For complete recipe goto http://www.evilauntie.net/potatoleek.shtml Our recipe is served hot. The hot soup was first mentioned in a French cookbook published in 1869.

Vichyssoise adds cream to the basic potato leek recipe and is typically served cold. This seems to have originated at the New York City Ritz-Carlton in 1917 and was the creation of Louis Diat (a chef from France).

So is it a French soup? an American invention? or both?

The Roman Army is said to have marched on minestrone which at the time was thought to be a thick soup made from anything (vegetables, beans, meat) that had been leftover. Historians argue this point with one school of thought saying the dish had always been prepared with fresh vegetables (not leftovers) even in pre-Roman times.

In Italy today there is still no set recipe for minestrone which is a thick soup usually made with beans, onions, celery, carrots, stock and tomatoes. Pasta or rice are common additional ingredients and the soup sometimes contains meat. The preparation and the ingredients themselves vary from region to region with dried vegetables and lentils being used in some locations and only seasonal fresh vegetables being used in others.

The introduction of tomatoes and potatoes to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century changed the recipe significantly from the original. These two vegetables are staples in most variations of minestrone and it can be said that the true recipe emerged during the 16th and 17th century.

Pea soup, made from dried peas, has been around since antiquity. It was mentioned in Aristotle's "The Birds" and sources say that the Greeks and Romans cultivated this legume as early as 500BC. Street vendors sold hot pea soup on the streets of Athens.

Pea soup is popular in many cuisines and can be grey-green or green-yellow in color depending on the variety of peas that are used. It is a traditional dish in Canada - very popular in Quebec where chopped salt pork is added and Newfoundland where other vegetables and dumplings are added to become more of a stew. In fact French Canadians are sometimes referred to as "pea soupers" by their English speaking counterparts. It is also a popular dish in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and the United Kingdom.

There is a well know English nursery rhyme - " pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold..." that dates from 1765. And most of us have heard of London's infamous "pea soup fog". There are numerous other references to pea soup in 19th century English literature where it was described as a food eaten by the poor.

In the United States it is a well known dish and usually prepared as split pea soup, a thinned down version containing whole peas, ham and other vegetables. In the 1973 film "The Exorcist" pea soup was used by the special effects team to simulate Linda Blair's projectile vomit while she was possessed by the demon. On a more appetizing note, it is often found on St. Patrick's Day menus when green food is called for.

The origins of tomato soup are lost in the jungles of South and Central America. At "some" point in time, "someone" threw tomatoes into a pot, cooked them for a while with water, removed the skins and drank/ate the contents.

So tomato soup spread across the world as did its principal ingredient. Tomato soup was the first soup introduced by Campbell's in 1897.

Today, tomato soup is most widely sold in the canned condensed form, though powdered forms are available for campers. Campbell's Soup has sold over 20 billion cans in the U.S. - Tomato soup is one of the top ten grocery items purchased weekly in America.

Trivia: The citizens of Minneapolis consume more canned condensed tomato soup per person per year than almost anywhere else in the country.

I'd encourage you to raise your own tomatoes and make your own soup, but I'm in touch with contemporary society enough to know that LOL would be the typical response. However, health conscious Americans have begun to read labels on cans, and the recent declines in domestic consumption of canned soups have forced manufacturers to revise their recipes. MSG was first ingredient to be taken out (caused migraine headaches), but the flavor suffered and consumers complained, thus the amount of salt was increased. As the adverse effect of high sodium consumption became clear, manufacturers began to experiment to find ways to keep flavor while reducing salt. Campbell's found that they had to use sea salt because it has more flavor than rock salt.