“Love it! However the Sudado is not a soup.”
Soup or Stew?
Whoops.
Exec-chef-phew Wille was on my case after my last blog. “Sudado is a northern Peruvian dish typically made with tomatoes. I swapped those out and made it with butternut squash. It’s more of a stew. We use chunks of butternut that have been roasted, and grilled cabbage. The fish is traditionally put into the broth and cooked in the liquid with a top on the pot. We grill ours to get a nice crispy skin but also to have the charred bitter flavor balance with the sweetness of the butternut squash.”
What is the difference between a soup and a stew? I ask.
“In a technical sense, that’s an Alton Brown question,” Wille responds.
“Soup, I would classify as either ‘brothy’ with lots of ingredients or in puréed form which you could say ‘bisque’,” continues Wille. “I don’t know if it’s technically a stew either, apart from all the ingredients are stewed together, then chunks of squash and cabbage are added with the char floated on top. Then, (we add) Salsa Criolla for freshness and some Red Fresno chili peppers for garnish.”
Rather than broadcast my ignorance, I Google “Alton Brown”.
OK, so he’s the host of the TV show Good Eats and regular on Iron Chef America, Food Network Star, and Cutthroat Kitchen. Somehow I don’t think he’d take my call.
So I do my own investigation. Stew is chunkier than soup. Stews generally have less liquid and therefore are thicker than soups. Stews require a longer cooking time over low heat. I’m envisioning beef, potatoes, and carrots in a thick sauce on a plate. I’m looking for my knife and fork, and maybe a slab of bread.
Asparagus soup, on the other hand, cooks up pretty quickly. The spears are cooked in broth with a little lemon zest, then puréed in a blender. Voilà, pour it in a soup bowl and slurp away with your trusty soupspoon.
“Is your Sudado served in a bowl or on a plate?” I email Wille.
“It’s served in a bowl.”
Darn, I thought maybe the presentation—bowl vs. plate—was the key.
Then, I come across this limerick by Edward Lear, an English writer known for his literary nonsense during the Victorian era:
Second Bloom
There was an Old Man of Peru.
Who watched his wife making a stew;
But once by mistake,
In a stove she did bake,
That unfortunate Man of Peru.”
OK, so maybe the soup vs. stew issue boils down to a cultural thing.
Or maybe, it doesn’t: “If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks,” wrote the late, often stewed, Brendan Behan, who described himself as “a drinker with a writing problem.”
The answer, my friends, is blowing in these cold winter winds and is as transparent as split pea soup. But since this is soup weather, I continue to ponder the question. I would never say, “This is stew weather.”
“A stew is a stew if you can eat it with a fork,” I read. Yet I can’t remember eating oyster stew with a fork.
So I keep reading. “You can eat stew on a plate but you will need a bowl for your soup. However, they both come out of the same pot.”
Hmmm. In my humble opinion, chicken noodle soup minus the broth doesn’t become chicken noodle stew. It becomes chicken casserole.
Then I come across a pun: “I teach a cooking class called Insect Cuisine. I have many stewed ants.” Get it? Stewed Ants-Students. Which reminds me of the story of an old family friend, Stu Dance. He had a name plaque on his desk that read: Stewed Ants.
I’m sure Stu would have had some words of wisdom, or at least a song (“Stewball”) to sing as he strummed his ukulele.
Back to the soup-stew business.
“This is not that, and that is certainly not this, and at the same time an oyster stew is not stewed, and although they are made of the same things and even cooked almost the same way, an oyster soup should never be called a stew, nor stew soup.” (M.F.K. Fisher)
Somehow I think M.F.K. agrees with me or I agree with her … but I’m not 100% sure.
So, I keep reading.
“There is a charm in making a stew, to the unaccustomed cook, from the excitement of wondering what the result will be, and whether any flavor save that of onions will survive the competition in the mixture.” (Annie Besant)
Meanwhile, Wille has moved on. He’s working on a recipe for Honduran fish stew (NOT soup) and he came across an amazing Brazilian recipe for Apricot Flan Meringue that he thinks I would love. I wonder, if the meringue doesn’t set, will it collapse into soup and weep?
I’m not going to get all stewed up about this. I’ve got to go. Soup’s on! Laurie Lynch
Cookbook Coincidence: My friend Karen sent a note after my blog on Marcella Kriebel. Her daughter was in Washington, D.C., in 2016 when she found the perfect gift for her mother, Marcella’s Mi Comida Latina cookbook.
Calling All Comments: Is there a soup or stew that has a story in your kitchen? Please share it. And, not to confuse the issue, but where does chowder fit in?
Written on Slate: “I live on good soup, not on fine words.” Moliere
This just in, Sudado–you decide!
One Christmas chef-phew Wille gave me a family portrait. It is a drawing/watercolor of the Allium Family: Papa Garlic, Mama Shallot, Sister Scallion, Brother Leek, Aunt Pearl, Uncle Walla Walla, cousins Chives and Cipollini, Grandpa Bermuda and Grandma Wild Onion. It is hanging in a place of honor on the pantry door of my mother’s kitchen.
Fleur-de-Blog 