Recipe: Creative Cooking French Peasant Soup

Entrant #2 in the Spring/Summer Soup Contest

Last weekend we enjoyed a French provincial supper al fresco featuring Creative Cooking French Peasant Soup. (More photos here.) This is a hearty soup, perfect for supper after a day of farm work-- and fun to make, too. I especially like collecting items from the garden for the Bouquet Garni.

As you know from recipes I've posted previously, Mr. Big Food often includes a bit of commentary from the cookbook where he's found the particular recipe as he enters it into The Big Food Manual and Survivalist Flourishing Guide. Here's the introduction to this soup recipe:

“Main Dish Soup: French Peasant Soup is a main dish soup which is actually a hearty, healthy meal in itself. It is eaten in vast quantities by the simple peasant folks of France. They accompany it only with a little local wine, French bread and a bit of cheese or fruit.

Since this reputable French soup makes such a satisfying, hearty meal, we can hardly classify it as an appetizer, so we have included it here …”

“This hearty, delicious French Peasant Soup may be made in quantity and frozen in quart containers for convenient use. It is generously filled with pork, white beans, carrots, leels and cabbage.”—The Creative Cooking Course (1982)

Recipe below the fold. (We cut the recipe in half and still had some leftover for lunch, and some to freeze.)

CREATIVE COOKING FRENCH PEASANT SOUP

Makes 15 to 20 servings

1 lb package dried Great Northern Beans, brought to a boil in water to cover, removed from heat, covered, stood for 1 hour, drained well

1 lb salt pork, diced, rinsed well, soaked in cold water to cover for 30 minutes, drained on absorbent paper

1 lb cured ham, diced

2 ½ C carrots, scraped and diced

1 C sliced leek bulb or onion

3 C celery, sliced thin

4 C cabbage, chopped

Bouquet Garni

1 clove garlic, pressed

1 tsp fresh ground pepper

½ tsp turmeric

6 C water

Preheat oven to 300^o. Fry salt pork in a heavy iron skillet until browned lightly, drain off excess fat leaving a small amount in skillet, add ham and cook, stirring frequently, until browned lightly. Place pork mixture in a large casserole, add beans, bacon, carrots, leeks or onions, celery, and cabbage, add Bouquet Garni, garlic, pepper, and turmeric, and mix well. Pour in enough of the water to cover well, cover casserole, and bake 3 hours 30 minutes. Remove Bouquet Garni to serve.